The Choice to Believe the Mind
La elección de creer a la mente
A student asks whether there is any point in trying to appreciate experience, or whether one should simply be with whatever arises.
The Choice to Believe the Mind
A student asks whether there is any point in trying to appreciate experience, or whether one should simply be with whatever arises.
So there's no sense in trying to appreciate. You just are with whatever the experience is.
Because this is, again, the mind creating others. Whereas I could say: what do you want? You want to appreciate it, then appreciate it. If you don't want to, don't. Be true to your deepest will. There is only one will, which is the creator.
It feels like my will is to be with exactly what it is, without resistance or fighting it in any way, because that's the freedom. You can practice that every single moment. There's always that opportunity.
Seeing beauty in what seems not okay
Exactly. And that's what I mean. At any moment, if there's something that seems not okay, look for that beauty, because it's here. And if you don't see it, if your mind is convinced through thought that there is no beauty here, look at that. Why are you choosing that reality with such conviction?
So there's a choice there. It feels so deeply known here, at a deep level, but then what feels frustrating is that there's still this mind's rejection of it. But you're saying that's still a choice. Stay with that.
Living reality directly versus believing thought
Yes. It's a choice to believe the mind, or to live the experience of reality directly, where mind isn't a reality of things but just thought. In the metaphor from Ramana Maharshi: there is a snake on the trail. That snake only exists in the mind. The reality, in the story, is that it was a stick or a rope.