Freedom That Doesn't Need Conditions
Libertad que no necesita condiciones
A student describes touching a subtle place near the core of belief and construction, and the teacher explores how genuine freedom includes, rather than avoids, all human struggle.
Freedom That Doesn't Need Conditions
A student describes touching a subtle place near the core of belief and construction, and the teacher explores how genuine freedom includes, rather than avoids, all human struggle.
What you are talking about is very close to what I've been sensing. The belief in something is really just a sort of construction, a structure. Something shifted in me, and I have never been so near to that place as I was during the meditation. I feel that I touched that intention. It's very subtle.
The realization of that, if I can describe what it looks like, is this: you can be fully in discomfort, with the mind being active, with negative thoughts, and none of that affects that peace, that freedom. It is so obvious, and it is not a big change. It is just a knowing that none of it affects what you are.
In a sense, I could say it differently: it affects you profoundly, but it doesn't matter. Saying it that way is more in favor of life, because realizing that freedom also gives freedom to the human life to be what it is, to be free to go through all kinds of human struggles.
Embracing fear and pain
There is no need to avoid a choice that feels like the right, free choice simply because it will bring fear and pain. Usually what happens is that life's freedom brings us to fear and pain, and we want to avoid that. We try to be free in life by avoiding fear and pain, and that is the struggle. But once you realize that no matter how much fear and pain there is, something in you is completely free, then human life can be fully embraced. The controlling of it, the avoiding of things, the wanting more of this and less of that, is released.
No condition is needed
Ultimately, it is just a realization. It is simple and profound. There are ways in which practices have historically seemed to help, and there are all kinds of meditative approaches to explore. But for that realization to happen, there is really no condition. Nothing needs to happen.
Someone once asked Eckhart Tolle: how long does it take for that realization to happen? And he said, "It takes as long as you need to realize it takes no time."
Right here, what is happening right now, including all of the possible distress, all kinds of discomfort and suffering, if it is happening now, or if not, the absence of that. Right here, right now, nothing else is needed. Nothing needs to change. There is full freedom and peace. All the words and practices are simply for that to be recognized and seen.
A practice of inquiry
For example, one practice is this: when you notice something you don't like, ask yourself, "What is the problem right now? What is wrong? What am I not okay with?" You sit and you explore that, and what you find could be many things. It could be boredom, anger, depression, frustration, sadness.
Now, whatever you find, notice this. If you are finding, for example, frustration, then that noticing of frustration, that which is noticing the frustration, that which is noticing what is difficult, what is not okay: is that frustrated? Is that not okay?
Metaphorically, there is a recognition of a certain distance, a discerning. There is frustration, there is something that is not okay, and there is something aware of what is not okay. You cannot be aware of something that is not okay if you are not separate from it. So that which is aware of what is not okay has to be okay.
This is what can be found, what can be realized. Because what happens is that we identify with, we believe we are, that which is not okay. But we can see that anything we experience, anything we struggle with, is always going to be separate from the awareness of it.
Something that confuses me a little bit about that is: aren't we trying to realize that there is no separation?
Well.