The Futility of Battling What Is Already Happening
La futilidad de luchar contra lo que ya está sucediendo
A student shares how racing thoughts during meditation dissolved the moment he stopped treating them as a problem, prompting a discussion about the difference between forced acceptance and simply recognizing what is already the case.
The Futility of Battling What Is Already Happening
A student shares how racing thoughts during meditation dissolved the moment he stopped treating them as a problem, prompting a discussion about the difference between forced acceptance and simply recognizing what is already the case.
I've been finding that my mind has been racing with a lot of thoughts lately during meditation. It's interesting what you say about inner dialogue, because apparently some people have an inner dialogue of spoken thoughts, while 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. I kept trying and trying to refocus, but as soon as you said "everything is perfect the way it is," my thoughts stopped racing. It was as if you led me to just accept that this is normal, that our mind does this. That tiny suggestion gave me the little bit of distance you mentioned, and it created so much calmness. That's all I really wanted to share.
When something good like that happens, there's not much to say. But you mentioned the word acceptance, and that's worth exploring.
The root pattern: something is missing
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 interpretation becomes so fundamental that something feels 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: that rightness is only ever possible now.
Creativity versus fixing
I always distinguish acceptance from creativity. Creativity is what you can do with your current experience, 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 respond. I like the word dance. There is a creative aspect to meeting what is here. But if we start from the premise that something is essentially wrong and missing from our current experience, then it is impossible to dance properly. We are just tumbling.
Discovery, not training
That is why this matters, and it is a discovery, not something you can train yourself into. For you it happened in one moment. There was a momentary discovery, something let go, and there was what you called 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. This is the work of all spirituality: to discover 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 just words, and they do not point to what it really is. I was pointing to it in the meditation. 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. Trying to fix it is an impossible task.
Battling reality creates the turmoil
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 it is just going to create more battle. That 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. What you can realize is that it is exactly what is happening, and that battling with exactly what is happening is futile.
Layers of resistance
From there, you can respond directly. For example, my cat just came onto my lap. Imagine I didn't 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 I will start to have inner turmoil. Instead, I can just grab her and take her off my lap. And even frustration: if I have frustration and then I don't want to have frustration, I am having a problem with exactly what is happening, which is that I am experiencing 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 and directly, without mental interference. Because it is exactly what is happening. In that sense, it is seeing what is true and real, versus having a practice of forcing myself to accept something.
It is really subtle.
Yes.