Right Attitude II

We have talked about the best attitude for practice (and, perhaps, for life) is to attend to our experience with open, non-judgmental awareness. That would assume, of course, that we are aware in each moment of our experience. More often than not, we are so caught up in the storyline of our experience, we have relinquished our innate awareness to the attraction for or aversion to our current experience. This is the level of awareness that we have had for most of our lives.

However, when we step onto a spiritual path, we are called to greater awareness. We are asked to be aware at all times. In a practical sense, that means, “remembering to notice the movement of the mind.” Not just during practice, but during the day when we are engaged with activity.

Well, we all know that doesn’t happen. Right? Even during meditation, with the mind more settled and having fewer distractions, we still end up caught in thoughts of the past or the future, regretting, worrying, or fantasizing. Whenever we are lost in thought, we have let go of mindfulness in the present moment.

Fortunately, the energy of a particular thought or feeling will eventually subside and we will remember to notice we have been unmindful. At that moment of remembering, we have to be careful. If we try to push the thought or feeling away, it will resist and become stronger. If we try to distract ourselves by using a specific technique, we only put off the distraction until later, and it will catch us again.

Thoughts and feelings are very subtle aspects of our mind. However, whatever arises has already been accepted into awareness by the attention of the mind. So, in some sense, you could say that thought needed to arise in that moment. In order to maintain awareness of the movement of the mind, we have to be gentle with ourselves, recognizing what drew the mind away, and relaxing the mind and the body around whatever is present in that moment.

So we acknowledge, accept, allow, and relax: resting in the awareness that knows how the mind is moving in relation to thoughts and feelings. All of our experience is then held in the broader awareness that realizes thoughts are just movements of the mind.