Life ist full of changes. It's the very undeniable nature of life. We can not conserve experiences, freeze beautiful moments, rely on permanent happiness and beauty. At the same time, also pain and negative feelings have to bow to time. Your suffering is impermanent, like everything else.
Likewise, every day, even every minute, your feelings express in many diverse shades and colours. They depend on your mood, level of energy, health or the weather. Many many factors that can never all be known. Over the years your personality changes, your preferences and aversions.
The constant impermanence has something beautiful. Because the only thing that is truly never changing, is the fact that everything is always changing.
Not the change is the problem but your resistance
We can not hold on to it. No matter what the present moment is, you can be sure, the next moment will be different. So there is really nothing you can do, but to accept the situation. Dance with this beautiful flow of life. Up and down, slow and fast. Only resistance to the changes will create suffering. It is really only this. Not the changing situation is the problem, but the way you react to it.
Every time you want to change the moment as it is, you are denying the moment its right to exist.
You are craving something else. When this “something else” is there, you experience a short happiness, until the next craving arises… a never ending circle. Wouldn’t it be so much easier and delightful, not to get upset with changes and unplanned situations in the first place?
Taking life as it presents itself to us? I am not saying, that we should be content with every shit that is happening to us. Some things can be influenced in a healthy way, we do what is necessary, but don’t fall into the trap of forcing and wanting to control it. Life should be a balance between what we can control and what cannot be controlled.
Your expectations are only one way to see the world
The same holds true for all our expectations. When we expect something, we think that it is the only truth and reality. But we forget, that this is only the “truth” from our individual point of view. It’s not the same for everyone and even for ourself, it will not be the same viewpoint forever. As expectations are changing, we should not get too attached to them.
Dancing a tightrope between effort and surrender: that’s were we want to be in our meditation.
We don’t want to force meditation, but of course it needs a little effort and discipline in the first place, to reach a state of concentration. Once we reached this state, we can work on surrendering to what we encounter. It is not about forcing ourselves not to think. We want to work on accepting upcoming thoughts. They are just the nature of our mind. So let them come, look at them, let them go.
Disturbing emotions are emerging? Thats ok as well. Surrender to the feeling. It is there, you didn’t ask it to come. Look at the emotion with a loving attitude and you will realise, that it is not you.
As you watch emotions or thoughts appearing and dissolving, you realise the changing nature of yourself.
Why take them so seriously, if they suddenly vanish into emptiness again? We train the mind to see through its own nature and behaviour, that is clouding the true unchanging still and empty reality behind everything.
On a physical level we watch the circle of our breath. Breathing in and out, belly rising and falling. Forever and ever the inbreathe is surely followed by the outbreathe. We don’t have to do anything and it can not be controlled. Just taking on breath at a time and resting our mind in it.
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