AWAKENING NATURAL MIND
In the Shambhala tradition, moments of perception are considered sacred, as they contact us to life as it is. The more we train the mind to rest in its immediate moment to moment experience, the clearer life becomes. The more contact we have to this unfiltered contact to reality, the more stabile the mind becomes. This reassures the more impacted aspects of mind and reduces their need to hijack the moment, and obscure reasoning. The repeated coming back to the breath, frees us from the need to over conceptualize experience, and creates a tactile connection to the earth that enables the mind to settle. As the mind settles, its innate clarity dawns. We rest in our experience and contacting the present more deeply and clearly gain a richer and more rewarding connection to our life.
Mindfulness is the primary tool in creating that connection to present experience.
Meditation assumes a certain quietude of mind. If we are triggered emotionally and unmindful of the feelings inside, we can have a physical reaction to our perceptions. We actually grasp the object – or more accurately, grasp the IDEA of the object – and either thrust it away, cling to it, or struggle against it. No longer constrained to our psychology, grasping is actually a PHYSICAL phenomenon. We lock ourselves in place and become desynchronized from the flow of the moment. This unease instigates a further grasping that becomes fixation and compulsion. We begin to lose any objectivity, or control over the event. The tension is no longer just psycho-physical at this point, but unleashed into the environment, creating friction in our life.
In order to avoid that pain, we often eschew the object and drift away in distraction. Thus, we play the game of fix and drift. We fix to things too tightly and as the tension in our body, mind and life reaches a critical pressure, we repel from them into distraction. Influenced by this strategy, our life supports these vicious mental cul de sacs.
However, if we instigate an inquisitiveness to the process, the mind can open to it and even rest in any aspect of the process. We call this waking up, because it is as though we were awakened from the somnambulistic patterns of inattentiveness. In mindfulness meditation we endeavor to rest the mind on an object suitable to quieting and opening the mind. We rest the mind on the object and beginning to glean information, we rest further, until we achieve a temporary union with the object. So, while we may begin by holding the object, we are not physically grasping. We are, in fact, releasing. In meditation we gradually let go into the experience until we become one with the object.
Meditation with the breath simultaneously bores the clinging mind into letting go as it simultaneously awakens the natural mind simply resting in its present experience. But, as our conditioned mind is prone to grasping and distraction, awakening runs counter to our conditioning. Each time we forget, become startled or otherwise interrupt the practice there is a subtle panic that urges us back into thinking, and desynchronization. To many, meditation practice is the arduous retraining of the mind to pay attention without distraction or its needy twin, fixation. Its like going to school. This is why many of us have resistance to the practice and yearn to skip out for a cigarette, imagine our lunch tray, or fantasize about of the cute person at the next desk.
But, when we relax the process entirely and simply learn to gently rest the mind on the object. But, to rest AND wake up which is to say rest and open. We rest the mind in order to open the mind and see. At this stage, we stop looking and begin to see, we hear rather than listen and feel more than touch. We are training the mind toward a passive RECEPTIVENESS. We are not invading space, occupying space or containing space, but rather allowing ourselves to open into space.
In this way, we are learning to contact possibility devoid of preconceptions. Rather than map out the possible, and follow maps we’ve repeatedly followed into the same cul de sacs in the past, we can simply rest, open and see. Or, you might say, contact, open and receive. And, then instead of clinging to the information, we can train the mind learn to release into the experience.
Contact. Open. Receive. Release.
Once we open, we can receive information. This is YIN mind. The mind of receptivity. We gain access to the (sometimes) unconscious information that streams back up form the point of contact, to be interpreted by the mind. A purer contact comes when we allow the process to become felt. We open to the information, as it is, before the mind interpretation. In truth, the mind’s interpretations are pretty immediate. But by conjoining that with the actual felt experience, we have a truer access to the information, than our projections, judgements, or concepts provide.
CONTACT
The act of contacting an object is assertive. It is an expression of YANG mind. And in most cases, we leave it there and allow the assertive mind to impute its authority overt he situation. After our initial contact, we then tell the mind how to feel, or catalogue our experience against other past experiences. If not checked this type of mindfulness will create a conceptual overlay of the experience. At some point the mind, disembodied from experience, picks up speed and we begin to grasp and cling to the supposed experience in order to find a semblance of ground. Most meditation occurs this way. If we are well trained we feel the grasping and learn to release the thought, and return to the breath. This is better than no meditation, as a wordless connection to reality will eventually occur. However, the experience of direct contact happens when the concepts have exhausted themselves and we – for lack of alternative – relax into the non-conceptual experience of mind. This is akin to exhausting the left brain, so its dominance can recede, and allow the right brain to open.
The ideal state for meditative inquiry into our experience is a balance of left and right brain. In terms of Gentle Mindfulness, we can employ YANG mind to contact the object, and then train it to let go into the felt experience of YIN mind to receive information. So, a most effective method of employing mindfulness would be in incorporate that YIN mind, or receptivity into the process creating an integrated approach. So, we are talking about Mindfulness not as a thing, but a process that we can unpack. Understanding the mechanics of mindfulness, we can train the mind to relax further into the experience and – before we begin intellectual imputation of our ideas – begin to open to WHATEVER information comes back up to the mind.
OPEN
Therefore contact is precise and definite in order to know what is its we’re looking at. But the mind remains open enough to receive accurate information. Thus, rather than holding to the information which skews our understanding, we are holding the MIND steady and opening, so we can receive the information accurately. IF ARE AFFECTING ANYTHING, WE ARE AFFECTING OURSELVES in order the hold to the object, without affecting the information flow.
It is like the “Prime Directive” in Star Wars. We are contacting the exo-planet wiht all means of awareness, but have the directive to gain information without affecting the experiment.
Sakyong Mipham refers to “resting the mind on an object”. It is not invading the object, or appropriating the object, but simply contacting the object definitely, but gently. Touching the object in the present. Touching now, you might say. And then instead of clamping on it, opening to it and training the mind to rest there in nonaggressive contact.
RECEIVE
This aspect of the mechanics of the mindful process is akin to allowing information from an outpost to come back to command intact, with minimal compromise or corruption of its integrity. The more aggression employed, the more resistance we create, and the less true our reading of the situation. In this case the object of inquiry does indeed affect the outcome of the experiment. In fact, I believe the purity of an observation is directly proportional to the amount of force applied. The greater the force, the more compromised the assessment. So, relaxing into precision is the means to gaining the best possible reading.
This has profound ramifications in our everyday life. The more open we are, the easier it is for someone to open to us. The more we can keep a steady, open and relaxed entry to a conversation, the more the other is willing to tell you it version of the truth.
However, should we become triggered by the information and, driven by inner impulses, try to find an answer, a solution, or a reaction, we clamp down on the process, and compromise the flow of information. As we search for meaning, we will proportionately begin to understand less about the experience. The more we try and interpret or react to the information, the less we will actually understand it. In our political world, violent means of interrogation are only meant to intimidate. They act as retribution. But they are crude and limited effectiveness do not gain real information. Real information comes from deep listening. There has been much said about the steps of training to the mind to listen to others. But, those steps can be employed in listening to ourselves.
RELEASE
The process of opening doesn’t end on contact. Nor does it end with receiving the information. Opening up is a way of life. It takes ongoing effort. The effort then is self-assertive. That is, rather than trying to change life, which keeps us from understanding life, at all, the effort is employed to training ourselves to rest in the moment. However, moments lead to moments. Life in the present is moving. Now is a river, more than a destination. So, release is the word I like, as though we were allowing ourselves to renter the stream of experience.
Releasing thoughts is a nice way to energetically explain a non-aggressive approach to working with CLINGING to thoughts. This implies that thoughts are NOT the problem, but that clinging to them keeps us from seeing the larger context with which the thoughts arise. In time, if we allow thinking without clinging to thoughts we can begin to understand the process. In other words, we eschew the what in order to understand the why.
Releasing beliefs is a way of opening our life to experience
TOUCHING NOW
T’ai Chi.