I'm trying to listen.
Although I perceives the need of an empty mind, I can not really feel it, and I perceive a resistance.
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Hello,
you see, it is the mind that considers the mind as if it was a problem and it would like to have it empty because what is really tried to be achieved it is the void that witnesses it. In fact, the mind is not a problem at all, neither it is necessary to create an empty mind for this realization to take place. If the mind is a jungle of thoughts or it is well-disciplined and quiet, it remains anyway just an object of which you are aware.
It does not matter how the mind is coming up, otherwise it would be like saying that in order for you to witness it, it should manifest a certain way. And this is not the case. You are always the witness of the mind, not the main character of its stories, even when this is not yet consciously recognized. You know that thoughts exist because you are aware of them. When you are consciously aware of thoughts, or when you witness the mind consciously, then it is not really important to you which kind of thoughts or feelings are passing by, they are anyway just stuff that comes and goes, passing clouds in the sky.
The reason why we are so attached to the fact that certain thoughts should not be present it is because these particular thoughts have at their center as an imaginary subject our "me" or what we think we are. We do not want those thoughts, because they disturb us, they bring up with them an uncomfortable feeling and we believe them - no matter how horrible the scenario that is proposed -because we feel to be inside our thoughts and we think that really what they say could happen TO us.
This is a tragic error of perspective. The thoughts do not happen TO us, but IN ourselves. In other words they are subtle objects passing by and we are not the protagonists of them but only the witnesses!
For example, let's say the mind projects a negative scenario regarding a particular event. We will feel the anguish of that possibility and more the anguish will grow and more -if you really believe that those scenario will happen - you will believe you will feel even worse in that moment. The strategy will be then to try at all costs to not make happen that event in the idea to be able in this way to silence the feeling of anguish. Basically, what is happening is that we want to dispel that feeling that accompanies the story through an action that seems to be able to avoid that it can become true and happen.
Now, that story since the beginning is based on a lie: it is JUST a story of mind, as we really are it is not the subject of the story, but just the witness of it. That character seems to be the protagonist of the story, and who is? Its existence is based on a memory of events that have happened, a bunch of actions and thoughts that had passed through your form, but it is nothing but a memory! Your body and your mind are constantly changing and therefore who is the one that the mental story is talking about?
The story in itself it is just a story, and alhtough it does not seem at all like this when the story appears, what it does REALLY happens it is never what the mind had projected. The feeling that accompanies the story it is what we really suffer, and it is the feeling that fuel the strategies and tricks that are put into place to prevent the manifestation of the mind scenario. The strategies in themselves bring more suffering and so on.
It comes a time in our life in which it is no more possible implement strategies in order for not feeling that feeling and it is the time in which we are forced to confront our stories and the feeling in itself. Part of the story of the mind will be if the story will come to rest also the feeling will fade away. Actually it is not like that: the story is present only to the extent that one is not able to be present to the feeling that accompanies it.
Although it is not maybe immediately obvious, the story comes FROM feeling and not the other way round: if the interest in the story falls away because you can see that no matter how many strategies are put into place, the feeling is anyway coming back, then you just have to sit down with the feeling, feel it and be in a position of conscious witnessing about it. Then and only then for the first time we're really in the position to dispel that feeling, in the just staying present to it.
The story of the mind was desired to be dispelled only in the believe that in this was one could have eradicated the feeling. When you grasp that not only you are not the real main character of that story but it is not the story the origin of the feeling but its consequence, then the interest in the story will fall away automatically. One will remain just in the conscious witnessing of the feeling. The feeling will grows in intensity 'till come to a climax and it will disappear into conscious recognition.
We moved in this way from an only conceptual level - the world of the mind stories - to perceptual level. And it is ONLY at this level that suffering can be dissolved. So let the mind be present and not try to empty it. Let the stories that the mind present to pass by and if possible rather be aware of the feelings that accompany them. If it were possible to feel them without repressing them or expressing them they would reach their peak and would disappear along with the stories.
What it would remain would be what it was there since the beginning, the empty sky in which the clouds were happening.
A big hug,
Shakti
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