CHOICELESS AWARENESS - AND OPENING TO THE FLOW OF LIFE

CHOICELESS AWARENESS AND OPENING TO THE FLOW OF LIFE

I spent many years trying to get somewhere in meditation, I tried to be calm, I tried to feel good, I tried to have only positive thoughts. I tried very hard to get rid of all my "bad" feelings and have only "good" ones and I tried get into higher states of consciousness. God loves a trier they say, but it didn't seem to be doing me much good. Then I came across a teaching called Choiceless Awareness and I was intrigued. I was intrigued mainly because I was trying very hard to "choose" my experience and it didn't seem to be bringing me much calm and joy.

Choiceless awareness is the way of mindfulness and effortlessness. That doesn’t mean to say it is easy. It is a way of opening to experience rather than trying to control it. When we “practice” choiceless awareness meditation everything about ourselves is allowed to arise and to pass away in its own time and in its own way. It is a way of sitting loose to ourselves rather than frantically trying to manipulate and control our experience into what we want it to be, or how we think it should be.

What I realised by bringing choicelessness  into my mindfulness practice was  that I was aligning myself with the natural way of things. The natural way is for all things to arise and to pass away. What I had been doing for many years in meditation was to deny this natural flow that is life. I realised I was frightened of life. Life isn't something we can hold onto, and if we attempt to do this it creates stress and suffering, because we are denying a simple but profound fact of life – what arises, passes. We could say that meditation is waking up to the facts of life...that what comes into being will eventually pass away, but we don't want to hear this. We want to think that we are a fixed and separate being and not part of life, but a-part from life, even though we long to be at one with it. Our efforts go into maintaining this sense of a fixed and permanent entity and it uses up a lot of energy often leaving us exhausted.

We not only want ourselves to be fixed and unchanging (even though paradoxically we want to change) we want all that brings us pleasure and comfort in life such as possessions and reputation to do the same. When we hold onto things emotionally the result is pain because the law of nature is what appears also disappears. When we grasp after pleasure the possibility of pain is alway there. It is like picking up a stick - you pick up one end and the other end comes with it. You cannot have a stick with only one end. It is the same with pleasure and pain. If you attach to pleasure you will get pain too. However, if we can welcome pleasure and indeed enjoy it without grasping then pain does not arise. This is something we all have to work out for ourselves in our own experience - this is the stick with only one end - amazing isn’t it!!!

I remember for years how I used to have a view that to be happy and peaceful I had to keep any unhappy thoughts and any un-peaceful feelings out of my experience. What I was actually doing was repressing energy and aspects of myself that wanted to follow the flow of life, to arise into consciousness and pass away. Fortunately I came across teachers who had been through the same process and were kind and wise enough to pass on what they had learned.

What I realised is that peacefulness isn't something that I can create through choosing what to experience. I had to have the courage to open to all of my experience and to let it be. Letting it be means to allow it into awareness. It means to feel what I may not want to feel because I have a view that it's bad for whatever reason. Letting things be isn't passive. It means being gently curious about what is happening in the body, feeling all the tensions, all the tight areas, it means feeling the open and expansive parts too. We bring things into awareness and that's all we need to do. We cannot trust that life will always be what we want it to be, but we can trust in awareness of it. 

We cannot open ourselves in a flash - it takes patience, kindness and sensitivity toward ourselves. But if we are willing to be choiceless more and more as time goes on we will see a change. We realise that the peace we were striving for by trying to control our experience happens when we don't need to control our experience anymore. We can come to see that who we are is not limited to the contents of awareness but we are also the very spacious awareness in which they appear. 

We all intuitively know that there is something about us that is boundless, limitless and joyful. However, when we turn back to our experience we certainly don’t experience ourselves as boundless, limited and joyful. Often our experience is just the opposite. We experience ourselves as very limited and unhappy. However, the unlimited and joyful has not gone away, but has been covered over by views, desires and fears that we spend our time sometimes following and other times battling against. The unbounded and joyful is our true nature and is not a thing in itself.  It is like the sky, the sky exists but is not a thing in itself – it is the absence of things - but yet it exists. 

You cannot grab the sky and put it in your pocket nor can you bottle it, but it’s there.

The intuitive sense of boundlessness and at the same time the experience of pain and limitation is often referred to as the holy war. The more we open and listen intuitively to the call of the unlimited the more it manifests in our life. But we must also work with the limited. We must face the fears, desires and anxieties that we have as humans on this earth. This is where being choiceless is helpful. When we practice choiceless awareness we let go of any object or focus of meditation. We observe anything and everything as it arises. We observe any judgments and opinions and let them go by like clouds in the sky. We watch and listen to any uncertainty and doubts about how we are doing. We notice thoughts and bodily sensations as they arise into awareness and watch then change too. In other words we are choiceless about what we give our attention to. 

There is nothing that is given attention because we want more of it as in pleasant feelings or that we want to get rid of it as in unpleasant sensations. However, if the urge to get rid of something unpleasant arises that too is given space and allowed to follow its course. The practice of choicelessness is the opening to nature’s way. Nature’s way is that life appears in certain forms for a while changes and passes away. As this arising and passing away becomes clearer to us we see that there is no permanency to any of our experience and that none of this really belongs to us – it just happens. Just like the heart beats, the blood flows and the body breathes without any effort on your part.

Mindfulness allows us to sit at ease with the flow of emotions, thoughts and images that pass through our being. We see more clearly natures’s law – that all is changing moment by moment. But we also see something else that we had ignored all our lives – we begin to notice space. 

When I walk into a room what I notice are objects in the room. I notice curtains, carpets, chairs and maybe people. I notice the walls with pictures hanging and I notice the ceiling. What I don’t notice is the space. What I immediately do when I enter a room is to scan the objects. It is the same with my mind. What I notice about my mind are the objects - thoughts, images and memories. If I learn to notice the space of my mind which is the purpose of choiceless meditation it brings with it a sense of ease. This is because we begin to realise that there is “something” other than thoughts that we can rely on. It may not be something tangible like a chair or a house – which it must be said aren’t always that reliable – but is definitely there. This is an intuitive awareness of space. We can sit and think about this spaciousness for decades and we will still be no nearer understanding it. Once we begin to trust this spaciousness - which is our natural intelligence – we then start to loosen our attachment to thoughts and this is one of the greatest blessings we can experience.

Have a go at this:

Take a seat and allow all thoughts to enter your awareness. Observe all your judgments and opinions about them - more thoughts. Notice how some make you tense, some carry you away. Some may make you feel good and some make you feel bad. Be honest here and acknowledge all that is happening. Being choiceless doesn’t mean not having reactions to whatever happens it means being honest enough to admit what is going on. It is only through this honesty that we create the right atmosphere and be at ease with passing thoughts.

www.mindfulnesscic.co.uk

The Zen master, the cleaning lady and the vase.

A STORY: The old Zen master Hakuin the abbot of Kukai monastery decides to go visit his old friend Shotsu. They have been friends for over 60 years and he is looking forward to spending a week together. Just before Hakuin returns Ami, the little old cleaning lady decides to clean his room so that it would be ready and prepared for him. Ami adores Hakuin who could be very very kind but could also be very very fierce when necessary.

She moves her way around the room vaccuming and dusting the shelves and book cases. She gets to his desk and decides to pick up his favourite vase to dust. This vase is a lineage heirloom - being handed down to him from his master, and from many masters before. Hakuin would at times just sit and look at the vase in wonder at its beauty.

As she is dusting it she drops it and it smashes on the floor into a thousand pieces. Just at that moment Hakuin returns from his vist away, Ami turns towards him with horror and fear on her face. Hakuin looks directly into her eyes and says, "Don't you worry me dear, I got that vase for pleasure not for pain." He walks over to old Ami and bends down and helps her pick up the pieces.

I really love this story and I was reminded of it only this week. I got my partner a new iPad and found myself playing on it and really liking it. Then of course I realised one iPad wash't enough for our household so I bought myself one. 

Anyway my partner took hers to London and when she returned I could not find her iPad. I thought she had left it on the train. The next morning however she knew exactly where it was. 

I realised two things here. The first is that I did not respond as graciously as our friend Hakuin - I was a little peeved that she may have lost it, but all this was going on in my head, she hadn't lost it at all. The other thing I realised is just how pain is the shadow of pleasure. Whatever is a source of pleasure, in the blink of an eye - or in the belief of a thought - can become a source of pain. This does not mean that we don't possess the objects of the world but we need to look closely at our relationship to them.  

The image of a stick came to mind. There are always two ends to a stick - you cannot have a stick with only one end. Pleasure and pain are similar. It seems to me that they are like the two ends of a stick - you pick one end up and the other comes with it. They seem inseparable. 

I realised the best I can do is not carry the pain longer than I need to - what I need to do is to learn to let go of it again and again and again.

www.mindfulnesscic.co.uk

Mindfulness - Never Turn Away

All of us to varying degrees have aspects of ourselves that we either don’t like, are ashamed of, or are afraid of. If you think you don’t then you are either very spiritually mature or you don’t know yourself very well. 

Normally we keep all these parts of ourselves well hidden from ourselves and others. However, they leek out in various ways. It may be covert behaviour, sneaky remarks, gossiping, or anger that we don’t want others to see. We keep these hidden because we have a view of ourselves and these aspects don’t fit in with that view. I had a view of myself as a generous person, and indeed there is that aspect, but when I was on meditation retreats – and I was leading them – I would notice how obsessed I could become when queuing for the meals. I would stand there hoping that the guy in front wouldn’t get the large piece of pie that was left, or would worry that there wouldn’t be enough porridge left for me if I wasn’t at breakfast early. I realised that although I am capable of generosity I am also capable of being greedy and obsessive. At this point I began to recognise not just the aspects that I liked but also the parts that I didn’t. I started to bring into consciousness all those banished energies/parts that I viewed as unacceptable either because I was uncomfortable with or frightened of them.

This led to a very different way of practising mindfulness meditation. I found that instead of trying to control my experience so that I could feel good, I would bring curiosity to my experience. I would intentionally look for the very parts that I was previously running away from. This led me to face myself in a way I had never before, and it’s been the best thing I have done.

This is now how I teach mindfulness meditation. Instead of controlling and running from their experience I encourage people to turn toward whatever it is that is upsetting them or are afraid of. This is a way of bringing love and acceptance into meditation rather than control and being judgemental. Mindfulness in this way is a way of truly loving yourself, it is saying to all those hurt parts “I am not abandoning you any longer, it may take me a while to accept you but I am going to do my best.” And our best is all we can do, it is not about heroic endeavours but more about little ways we are willing to stay with uncomfortable sensations and feelings instead of zipping off to use the internet, phone a friend or eat more cheese. Sometimes we may even reach something that just feels too much right now, and that is accepted too. As well as curiosity we also need patience and kindness.

I am occasionally asked - Why do this? Well either you are drawn to wanting to heal your life or you are not and I have found that mindfulness practised intelligently does work. 

When I meditate nowadays I rarely turn away from myself no matter what is present. I know that I am a good person, and I know that I am capable of some pretty nasty things. The difference now is that I am aware of them and mostly I don’t act them out. One of the main benefits of healing in this way is that we become more comfortable with ourselves and other people. Once I stop demonising parts of myself, I stop demonising that very same behaviour/trait in others. Mindfulness is a path to liberation, love and happiness but is not without its trials on the way. 

So I urge you to never turn away from your pain but to gently turn toward and even greet it. Treat it like a hurt child and give it space to feel as it wants to feel and to reveal itself to you. This is not analysis or trying to work out why we feel like this, but more like simply being with whatever is hurting. We tend to have a view that if we keep bad feelings out of awareness we will be well, not so. They stay around and often rebel in the form of negativity or illness. What we often fail to see is that if we have anything inside that feels sick, ill or uncomfortable we can turn toward it and breathe. Let it be felt. This is the way it can release and transform into what it needs to. This is the way of compassion and compassion to oneself is compassion to the whole of life.

Try this
Sit down and bring to mind something about yourself you find difficult. It may be violent or sexual thoughts, maybe dishonesty or secrecy, it doesn’t matter. Notice your reaction to this and how it makes you feel. Give it space and breathe. Notice the thoughts about this part too. Stay with this for a few minutes then just drop it into your heart. Don’t be scientific about it, “where’s the heart”? The intention is enough. The heart always receives and forgives without judgement. If there is judgement that is not the heart, but then drop the judger into the heart too. This is an act of love.

www.mindfulnesscic.co.uk