The impression is that “I” exist, that I am here — that each of us is a person, recognizable, ongoing. That life is a medium, like water or air, through which each person moves. That life is something that happens to you, or something you attempt to direct the course of, and so you (that person you seem to be) are affected in some way.
If you do nothing else in your inner explorations, pay attention to this. How in a given moment of life, of awareness, “you” are not separate from life. It’s in the now (and only in the now), in the momentary felt sensation of actual experience (inner and outer), that you can tell somebody is here, aware, alive. Life isn’t happening to you, nor are you bringing it about. Life — this moment of it — is what you are, just now. It is how you get a sense of a self-being-here.
What is presently occurring is not separate from your perception of it. You cannot directly know anything of present-moment life in the immediate scene except what your senses indicate to you. This is the primary thing; this is life itself. It’s only in the very next instant, when the mind takes hold of what has been perceived, felt, experienced — it’s only then that all the trouble has a chance to begin. It’s only then that “life” starts to look like something happening to you, something needing an opinion, a story, an emotional reaction.
Missing momentary life in favor of the mind’s occupations is why regret comes to terrible flower on the death bed. Learn this then or learn it now.
What you call your life, looking back over the so-far of it all, is really just a collection of the mental/emotional images of these re-collected lived moments of life itself. Moments in which you were the experience, the impression, the encounter. What you call “you” is the sum total of what your mind has made of it all, the vast collection of stories and opinions and beliefs about all the lived moments.
What each of us wants — how vivid this becomes approaching death! — is to live. More and more moments. We want to sense ourselves being here, tuned in, feeling life itself surging through us. It isn’t more stories and achievements we’re starved for. (If this isn’t clear yet, just imagine lying on your death bed.)
The appearance of a continuity of a self that’s roughly stable and familiar, that has “issues” and desires, is something that occurs in the mind, as it looks back and ahead, making stories and judgments, assigning significance, searching outside present-moment awareness for “meaning.”
But see this: when do you feel alive? It’s not when you’re in your mind. It’s when your senses are attuned, when your body is in motion, or when you’re paying close attention to something beautiful or alarming, demanding or fun, or to some ordinary physical task. It’s when all of awareness is on something that’s here right now. When you’re looking deeply into another’s eyes. It’s when your heart cracks open — with exhilaration, with grief, with surrender. Notice how alive you feel at such a moment. It’s the alive of it that deeply registers, that matters — not the “good” or “bad.”
It’s when your mind has taken a rest, however briefly. Let this observation be your teacher, your constant companion as you continue on. See how thinking and awareness are different. How both are available to you, constantly.
Actual life — felt experience, in which awareness is enlivened — does not involve the mind and its ongoing assessments. Life is momentary, fleeting. When you take hold of it with the mind, you are putting yourself at an artificial distance from it — as if you could be separate from a moment already under way! Or as if you could “live” a moment that’s already come and gone. You are “living” in your head. Which is not (alas) living at all.
Missing momentary life in favor of the mind’s occupations is why regret comes to terrible flower on the death bed. Learn this then or learn it now.
Discover how life is not apart from you. You are life: this moment of it. And that’s all. Where is there a “self” in that? It’s without significance whether you like or dislike the moment. (Imagine that.)
Oh, but see how we want there to be a self! We want our assessments to matter terribly. Everything we’ve ever been taught insists that there is a self, and that it is of enormous value. Worth cherishing and healing and asserting and all the rest of it.
What, dear one, is the cost of this apparently-real self? The self is created and maintained at the expense of life being lived. But it’s no wonder (isn’t it clear?) why there is the reluctance to see through the whole thing, to stop taking it so seriously. It’s no wonder so few people ever come to know the deep truth of existence. What, after all, is at apparent risk?
Yet the very thing that seems to be at risk (what could be more ironic?) isn’t even real. The self exists in the mind, which is at a distance from life. To the extent that the self feels real and important, we are doomed to a life at a distance from the only thing that is real: this moment’s awareness.
Pay attention to how all of it goes on, in your daily life. In the moment-to-moment. When you notice the mind trying to do its habitual thing, be gentle on yourself. It’s a lifelong habit, after all. Do observe it, but don’t waste your time (life!) in lamenting it, or in trying to change it.
The miracle, you will discover, is this: simply by observing the thing happening, without judgment, bit by bit the habitual machinery will lose momentum. It’s only because you’ve been unconscious of it all your life that it’s continued in its seemingly-inevitable way. Once you see it happening, it’s stopped being inevitable. It’s held in conscious awareness. Just keep returning awareness to the now. That’s all. What could be more simple, more blessedly rinsed of effort? Finding your way to the truth does not involve strained effort — contrary to the impression of so many seeking freedom and clarity.
Be patient with yourself. But do remember: the cost of looking away, of taking refuge in the mind, is life itself.
When awareness is allowed to be its naturally spacious self — when the self is felt to be the present moment — whatever happens is received absolutely, without resistance or mental handling. Life moves through you, as you. The familiar tendency of the ego to like or not like the moment, to process it in any way, has wound down to stillness. Unresisting awareness is what is. You are life. Then everything changes. Life in the next moment is a different thing. Like you, it is ever new.
It’s not what you “do with” life, or what you make of “your self,” that turns out to matter. It’s that you live.