IT’S BEEN HERE ALL ALONG
In meditation today, I noticed myself trying to push my mind toward where I thought it should be. This morning my mind most certainly did not comply. As my focus wavered, ancillary stories began to surface — aging, memory, the need for better sleep. I started vetting strategies like caffeine or ginkgo. None of this was meditation. Then it struck me: my meditation had become an attempt to “fix” my mind. Rather than simply seeing it as it is I was trying to change it. By stepping back and letting go of the pressure to fix, I allowed myself the space to simply see.
The ideal meditative state—clarity and acceptance—rests on the openness and settledness of the body, heart, and mind. However, life rarely offers us perfect conditions. For me, morning practice often begins with a scattered or resistant mind. The first step, then, is acceptance—meeting the mind as it is and not as I wish it to be.
Acceptance begins with recognition. We notice the mind’s current state— distracted, cloudy, resistant, or grumpy— and then acknowledge what we meet without judgment. This allows us to step away from struggle to control anything. We open the door to meet our mind as it is. Instead of ego’splaining we listen. This acceptance is an act of love. We are opening our mind to accept ourselves in this very moment. Once we accept, synchronization naturally follows. This isn’t something forced but rather a harmonious alignment that arises when we stop struggling and simply allow things to be.
Miraculously, we find ourselves in meditation.
From synchronization grows wisdom. Wisdom sees a larger process unfolding: the mind observing itself, guiding itself, and offering comfort and love to its own experience. Wisdom understands that all states of mind, even those we perceive as negative or incorrect, have value simply because they are part of us. Awareness embraces the distracted, discouraged, angry mind as colors in the painting of the present.
When we are frightened, our mind tightens in defence. When the mind tightens, it reduces what is sees to binaries such as good and evil, right or wrong. Thus triggered, the mind sections itself in order to reduce the landscape of reality into that which is controllable. Although rarely helpful, this narrowing is a natural process we need not fight. But if we don’t buy into the game, and simply listen or see, we connect to the space around the event. This allows the wisdom of awareness to resolve the binary. Wisdom never chooses a side as it holds the entire picture. Wisdom isn’t the opposite of confusion—it’s the space that contains it. This spaciousness lets us recognize, accept, synchronize, and ultimately return to the present, using tools like the breath or an object of focus with a light, precise touch. In this way, the mind naturally meets itself. And it will quite naturally allow itself to develop toward further awareness.
Once again, meditation isn’t about fixing; it’s about seeing. The mind of meditation arises in awareness like a point in space. And as the space of awareness is relieved of the pressure to fix itself or chose a side, it remains loving and supportive. It is a state of grace. By stepping into the grace of awareness, we don’t need to force change—we simply allow what we notice to be with us, remembering none of it is as real, solid or urgent as our fear suggests. Trungpa Rinpoche famously wrote, “good, bad, happy, sad – all thoughts vanish like an imprint of a bird in the sky.” Once we release ourselves from the grip of control, we see everything as ephemeral, diaphanous and in dynamic transition. Sakyong Mipham calls this the displaysive activity of mind. All of our worries are the mind revealing itself. Many of our worries are kid fears. And like kids, they need to be loved and accepted, but not always believed.
Meeting our mind is meeting our oldest ally. It’s been with us longer than any relationship we’ve had. Accepting it with the loving space of awareness we see its many colors and configurations. Sometimes it displays in black and white, and sometimes it opens into a rainbow painting. When we return to present awareness, we are in a point in space where the colors of life become clear.
