Natural Mind I

Here is a quote from the book, It’s Easier Than You Think, by Insight Meditation Teacher and author, Sylvia Boorstein.

The “mind” is essentially peaceful. For me, that discovery held both bad news and good news.

The bad news was that the relaxed mind, the mind free of disturbances, was not necessarily psychedelically exotic.

I had hoped it would be.

The good news was that the contentment turns out to be the most exotic mind state of all and is never tedious or tiresome.

We could experience it forever.

We [actually] could experience it forever, because it’s our natural mind.

If you read the quote above again, keep in your mind, that the “natural mind” she refers to, the “relaxed mind,” the “mind free of disturbances,” is, in fact, not a state of mind at all. It is our ever-present true nature that is revealed when we release the habitual patterns of thinking and feeling that obscure our “natural mind,” the experience of pure awareness.

We cannot call this a “state” of mind, as that implies it is something that is sometimes present and sometimes not present; like our thoughts, feelings, sensations, and perceptions, which are all temporary “states” of mind. The nature of mind, our true nature, is the ever-present sense of aware being.

Awareness is continually present as the foundational or underlying knowing aspect of our myriad experiences. As such, awareness is always present, but unaffected by the content of our experience. This experience of the nature of mind is the peace and contentment that can reveal itself in meditation, and, with practice, in the midst of all our activity.