The Futility of Battling What Is
La futilidad de luchar contra lo que es
A student shares how accepting a racing mind during meditation brought unexpected calm, leading to a broader exploration of why resisting present reality creates suffering, and how releasing that resistance opens the door to creative, direct engagement with life.
The Futility of Battling What Is
A student shares how accepting a racing mind during meditation brought unexpected calm, leading to a broader exploration of why resisting present reality creates suffering, and how releasing that resistance opens the door to creative, direct engagement with life.
I've been finding that my mind has been racing with a lot of thoughts lately during meditation. It's interesting that you mention inner dialogue, because apparently some people have an inner dialogue of words, and some of us have an inner dialogue of images. Quite often in life, I tend to have a hard time putting my thoughts into words, but I find that my mind races with these image-thoughts very fast.
Lately during meditation, my mind has been racing with a lot of these imagined image-thoughts, and I kept trying and trying to refocus. But as soon as you said something like "everything is perfect the way it is," my thoughts stopped racing. It was as though you led me to just accept that this is normal, that our mind does this. That tiny suggestion gave me that little bit of distance you mentioned, and it created so much calmness. That's all I really wanted to share. I don't know if you want to say anything about it.
When something good like that happens, there's not much to say. But you mentioned the word acceptance, and this is very common. It is the root of being human: to interpret experience as something that has a problem and needs to be changed. That becomes so fundamental that something is essentially missing in our current experience. When we focus too much on that, and this has been happening since we were born, we miss something essential, which is that a kind of rightness is only ever possible now.
Acceptance versus creativity
I always distinguish acceptance from creativity. Creativity is what you can do with a current experience and how you can relate to it. I use the word "co-create," because in a sense it is you with another part of you, you with life, you with the universe. In that dance with your current experience, you can move, you can dance with it. There is a creative aspect. But if we start from the belief that something is essentially wrong and missing from the current experience, then it is impossible to dance properly. We are tumbling.
That is why this is a discovery, not something you can train yourself into. For you it happened in one moment: a momentary discovery of something. Something let go, and there was what you called a calmness. That is the loosening of the belief that something is essentially missing. From there, we can interact and create from a much deeper and better place, because we can see more clearly, we are more calm, we can relate more directly with what is really happening.
Seeing what is true versus forcing acceptance
This is the work of all spirituality: to discover what was called God, but which is what is here and now. There is something beyond words. You can say it is loving, you can say it is peaceful, but these are words, and they do not point to what it really is. In that discovery, with the disbelief that something is missing, we can act and move and dance and create, rather than trying to fix the moment. The moment is exactly as it is, so fixing it is an impossible task. If the mind is racing, the mind is racing. That is exactly the reality of what is happening. If you are trying to stop reality, you are going to battle, and that battle is actually what creates the inner turmoil.
Not accepting what's happening.
But it is really subtle, because it is exactly what is happening. You cannot really accept it or not accept it. It is exactly what is happening. You can realize that it is exactly what is happening and that battling with it is futile. From there, you can respond.
For example, my cat just came onto my lap. Imagine that I did not want her on my lap. She is coming onto my lap. If I have a problem with that exact reality, I will be frustrated and start to have an inner turmoil. Or I can simply grab her and take her off my lap. And even frustration: if I have frustration and then I do not want to have frustration, I am having a problem with exactly what is happening, which is that I am having frustration. Layers and layers and layers. We live like that. The other direction is: this is exactly what is happening, and I can relate to it fully, directly, without mental interference, because it is exactly what is happening. In a sense, it is seeing what is true and real, versus having a practice of forcing myself to accept something.
It is really subtle. You don't really know how you're reacting to it, because it's happening in the moment.
The reality you cannot change
Everything that you are experiencing, you cannot change. You cannot change the exact thing that is happening. You can relate to it and move with it towards something different. For instance, I can make a coffee now. I would be changing the current reality of being out of coffee. I can change that in a sense. But the fact that I am out of coffee cannot be changed in the moment. And that is what we have a problem with.
The issue we have with ourselves, with our lives, with our reality, is ninety-nine percent the issue with what is exactly happening right now. We are not okay with that. We have a problem with reality exactly as it is, at every moment, most of the time. In this work, the practice of presence and meditation is to sometimes suddenly, but often gradually, start to see that more and more, and start to see the futility of it. We become better artists, better creators.
And there is more. You can realize that reality exactly as it is right now is mind-blowingly beautiful, beyond what you could have imagined. But that is a realization. When the part of us that is constantly resisting, or believing that what is happening is not okay, when that stops, you can see reality as it is.
You make it sound so simple.
It is simple. The mind is going to make it complicated, and it takes time because we have trained ourselves for so long to see things in a really complex way, because we are looking through our thinking. But it really is that simple. It is just one simple thing, and it makes all the difference.
I will remember that moment of calmness once I accepted what was happening. I'll keep that in mind. Thank you.
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In facing a situation of intimacy with another, when communication is difficult, I'm not seeing whoever is there of me in that moment. I'm not seeing the reality of the whole picture. My granddaughter, for example, is asking something of me. I think I know what she needs or what I can give her, and yet the relationship with another human being who is so intimately related to me is far more complex. She is another and is not another.
I can't think that what I think in the moment is the total picture, because this is a complex being and the relationship is subtle. I can't stay mute and say nothing, because that person is asking, and that instant can change. How do I advise? How do I talk? What do I say, when I'm not seeing the total thing?
At that point, the only thing I can do is choose to relate to that instant in a different way, to be creative. But how? Without knowing what? All I could do, and this happened yesterday, was wait and see what comes: what am I listening to, what is coming in from inside of me, what am I being creative with?
That instant I cannot change. Whatever mistakes I made, whatever happened between her and me, I can't change. I can be frustrated, I can be a lot of things. But what about if what you're saying is that I can be creative with the way I relate to that instant and the next instant, because that instant is forevermore intact? So I guess my question is: how do I not interfere with that moment?
The moment is always now
The moment I am talking about is now. We can think of moments, the moments when this happened or that happened, the other moments that will happen. That is mind. That is thinking happening now. What I am talking about is now, and it is always now.
Right now, you are relating to your granddaughter through what you are experiencing now in relationship to her. You can look at, for example, the planning of when you are going to meet her, what you can try to do differently. That is happening now, which is this conversation.
That's mind.
It is mind, but it is a conversation we are having, and mind can also be a tool. It can be useful. But it is useful if, right now, we are aware that we are talking about a plan for when you meet her, or something you want to look at right now.
Examining the underlying beliefs
How can you not interfere? How can you be more creative? It is always going to be about looking at where you are coming from. What are the beliefs that you have? You said, "I know what she needs," or "I think I know what she needs." So it is a matter of looking at the beliefs you have about yourself, about her, and about what is essentially wrong or missing.
If there is something that needs to be changed, addressed, or fixed in you, in the other, or in the relationship, look at the beliefs that make something essentially not okay. When we come to a relationship with anything (it could be a coffee maker, but it is far more complex with a person we love), if we come from a very subtle, hidden belief that something is essentially missing, that something is essentially not okay, then we are going to try to fix that. This root sense of "something is not okay" often lives in myself, in the other, or in the relationship. From there, the way in which I am relating, the way in which I am metaphorically touching that relationship, myself, the other person, is going to propagate a noisiness, a friction, a problem. There is often going to be a certain level of anxiety around it.
I want to comment on this dialogue, and it is something that keeps coming up for me. There is something miraculous about this process. Something you said sparked something, and it usually happens during these meditations, at least one or two things. It sparked something that does not usually get sparked out there in the world. There is a noticing not only of the content of what you say, but of where it is coming from. I find that infinitely miraculous: that I can hear you and then I am immediately brought to another place. I cannot even put it into words. It is wonder, it is gratitude. It happens so often. I don't know if I'll ever be able to analyze it, and I don't even need to. But I have to say that this is where it's at: you say the thing and then it is actually recognized. It is so deeply moving. It could be just a tiny something. It does not matter how big or small it is. It is where it is coming from.
You are remembering yourself
I would also say that it is you.
That's a miracle, that I could recognize it. I don't have any skill. It's just obvious.
I am just talking from a place that is natural, and I know it is natural in humans. In a sense, it is just a reminder. But you are the one who is remembering, and you are remembering you. So it is really just you, and it is available to you always, because you are available to you.
Maybe that is what was so miraculous about this recent trip I was on. Maybe I never saw so many reminders of the reality of who I am out there in the world. Mundane or chance encounters, events. I can't believe that just happened, I can't believe that I received that.
This experience you are describing, this "I can't believe," is a sense of coming close to mystery. The more you live in direct contact with reality, the more you see it, because you are seeing reality. There is this sense of wonder. In a sense, it is a virtuous circle.
That is exactly what I see happening. It is a virtuous circle, because the more open I am to it, the more it happens, and the more it happens, the more open I am. And as you were saying earlier, I have no control. I am here for the ride. I am not doing a thing. That's crazy good too.
That's lovely. That's true.