The Futility of Fighting What Is
La futilidad de luchar contra lo que es
A student shares how accepting racing thoughts during meditation brought sudden calm, leading to a wider exploration of how resisting present reality creates inner turmoil, and how releasing that resistance opens the door to creativity and wonder.
The Futility of Fighting What Is
A student shares how accepting racing thoughts during meditation brought sudden calm, leading to a wider exploration of how resisting present reality creates inner turmoil, and how releasing that resistance opens the door to creativity and wonder.
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. I often have a hard time putting my thoughts into words, and I find that my mind races with images rather than verbal dialogue, moving very fast.
Lately during meditation, my mind has been racing with these imagined image-thoughts, and I kept trying to refocus. But as soon as you said something like "everything is perfect the way it is," my racing thoughts stopped. It was as if you led me to simply accept that this is normal, that our minds do 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 points to something important.
The root habit of resisting what is
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 feels essentially missing from 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.
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. I like the word "dance." There is a creative aspect to it. But if we start from the position that something is essentially wrong and missing from the current experience, then it is impossible to dance properly. We are stumbling.
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: a momentary discovery, 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, and we can relate more directly with what is really happening.
This is the work of all spirituality: to discover what was traditionally called God, but which is simply what is here and now. There is something beyond words. You can say it is loving, you can say it is peaceful, but those are 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, so trying to fix 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 will only create more battle. That is actually what creates the inner turmoil.
Not accepting what's happening.
But it is really subtle. It is exactly what is happening. You cannot really accept it or not accept it. It is exactly what is happening. What you can do is 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 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 inner turmoil. Or I can simply 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. So layers and layers build up, and we live like that.
Going the other direction
The alternative is going the other way: 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 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.
Everything that you are experiencing, you cannot change it. You cannot change the exact thing that is happening. You can relate to it and move with it toward something different.
I can make a coffee now. I would be changing the current reality of being out of coffee. But the fact that I am out of coffee cannot be changed in this 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 an 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.
Gradual seeing
In this work, the practice of presence and meditation allows us, sometimes suddenly but often gradually, to see this more and more and to recognize the futility of resisting. 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 and beyond what you could have imagined. But that is a realization. When the part of us that is constantly resisting, constantly 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 complex way. 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 person, when communication is difficult, I tell myself I'm not seeing whoever is there of me in that moment. I'm not seeing the reality of the whole picture. The other person is asking something of me. My granddaughter, for example, to be specific rather than abstract. 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'm not seeing the whole picture. I can't assume that what I think in the moment is the totality, because she is a complex being and the relationship is subtle.
I can't stay mute and say nothing, because that person is asking something, 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? I don't know. All I can do, all I did in that moment, is wait and see what comes. What am I listening to? What's coming from inside 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 many things. But what 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?
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, and other moments that will happen. But that is mind, that is thinking happening now.
What I am talking about is now. It is always now. Right now, you are relating to your experience with your granddaughter, to 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.
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 you hold? 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 you feel needs to be changed, addressed, or fixed in you, in the other, or in the relationship, look at the beliefs that make something feel 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, something is essentially not okay, then we are going to try to fix that. This belief often concerns myself, the other person, or the relationship itself. It is a root sense that something is not okay. From there, the way in which I relate, the way I metaphorically touch 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.
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 in me, and it usually happens during these meditations, at least once or twice. It sparks 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 it infinitely miraculous that this is possible, that I can hear you and then be immediately brought to another place. I can't even put it into words. It is wonder, it is gratitude. It happens so often, and I don't know if I will ever be able to analyze it. I don't even need to. But I have to say that this is where it's at: the fact that you say the thing and it is actually recognized. It is so deeply moving. It could be just a tiny something; it doesn't matter how big or small. It is where it is coming from.
It is you remembering you
I would also say that it is you.
That's the miracle, that I could recognize it. I don't have any particular 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. It is available to you always, because you are available to you.
Maybe that is what was so miraculous about a trip I was on recently. I kept encountering so many reminders of the reality of who I am, out there in the world. Mundane or chance encounters, events where I would think, "I can't believe that just happened," or "I can't believe I received that."
This experience you are describing, this sense of "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 becomes 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 just here for the ride. I am not doing a thing.
That's lovely. That's true.