I want to clarify something that Sonja was asking me about in last night’s session of ‘Integrity of the Heart.’ We were speaking about the fact that we cannot control our inner experience in the way we have been taught to believe, and that all of our different attempts to control the mind create an endless and futile struggle within ourselves.

First of all we need to be clear that I am only talking about our relationship with what arises in the field of our inner experience. Coming to grips with ‘the illusion of control’ does not mean that we are going to start shouting at our children, or pushing people out of the way in the line-up at the store, or throwing things out of windows! Our authentic self, the being we discover when we rest in presence or awareness, has a tremendous capacity for acting in the world with both wisdom and compassion. So this inquiry into control is focused on our inner world, on the arising of thoughts, perceptions and emotions. Can we actually control a feeling? Can we stop something from arising within us? Many people believe that this is what spiritual practice or meditation is all about, and I am afraid that they will be very disappointed, as I was, with the results.

Real inquiry requires a profound willingness to see things as they are, not as we imagine them to be, or as we would like them to be. If we look clearly at the nature of our inner experience, we will see, again and again, that thoughts, perceptions and feelings come by themselves, and go by themselves, and there is nothing we can do about them. One of my teachers used to say this to me a lot, and I had tremendous resistance to hearing it. I wanted my meditation to take me to a ‘good state’ a blissful place, a better moment. I couldn’t understand what I would get by letting everything be as it is.

What Sonja asked me about was something else—she was inquiring into the choices we have over how we respond to our inner experience. And this is where our freedom lies. As we spoke about last night, our conditioned mind has some very basic responses to our moment- to-moment experience. It will push something away, reject it, deny it, or supress it. Or it will try to change one experience or thought to a ‘better’ one. Or it will indulge in the experience, give it energy and food by engaging in it, believing in it. Often we indulge in very negative experiences-- we intensify them, make our suffering more powerful, without being fully conscious that we are doing so.

If we are ready to open to another possibility, we need to take a good look at all of these habitual responses, and ask ourselves how they have worked for us. Sometimes we need to reach a place of great pain, or hopelessness, or crisis, before we are willing to ask this question. At this point a great deal of clarity can begin to dawn. We realize that we have another choice, and that is to simply be present, not as a separate witness, but as presence, an open space of awareness that allows everything to be as it is. When we are simply present, we are not rejecting, not indulging and not trying to change or control our own experience. And then the experience, whatever it is, begins to unwind, to release, all by itself.

So even though we have no control over what arises within us, in every single moment of experience, we have a choice—we can try to avoid, or change or indulge, or we can simply be present.

This is a radical departure from traditional approaches to awakening, healing and transformation. In the beginning it can seem too easy, too simple, too good to be true. The only way to find out is to practice. This practice is more like a non-practice: just resting in presence or awareness, releasing any attempt to change what is happening inside you.

You are the only one who knows if you are ready to try something totally different. Perhaps this is this is the time, this is the moment, for embracing yourself, your life, and giving up the struggle for control. Perhaps you are tired of trying to squeeze yourself into a ‘higher’ state, and you can get a sense of how it feels to be wide open, and spacious. Maybe you are finally ready to fall into the deep ease that comes with radical acceptance, the willingness to be with things just as they are.