The practice of mindfulness meditation can open our inner capacity of awareness, and the wisdom of our own true nature to remain focused, peaceful, and abiding with the stress and distress we experience in our lives. Our routine discipline of attending- taming, stabilizing, and recalibrating the habitually reactive nature of our minds has prepared us to begin to work with the insight for seeing clearly and for listening closely- to shine the light onto things as they are, and to diffuse our fear, stress, and suffering by realizing the highly conditioned ‘workings’ of our own minds.

When we can openly & compassionately abide our stressful situations, they become more benign- more ordinary and transparent. In the process, we also begin to see the impersonal nature of our personal problems, difficulties, and afflictions. They are simply experiences arising and subsiding in the field of our awareness. Both wakefulness and confusion emerge from the same ground, it just depends upon where we are ‘standing’ or ‘minding’ in the midst of the arising. Ultimately, our vulnerability is conditioned by our state of mind.

As we have previously discussed, stressful situations can stimulate significant amounts of energy and effect in the mind and body. Stress reaction is due to conditioning and habituation. As we begin to examine the reactionary process in our awareness, we start to diffuse the energy of its reactionary force (cause) and outcome (effect) simply through the realization that cause and effect are just states of mind- non-separate arisings in awareness. The direct, intuitive experience of our practice teaches us this- to focus energy that habitually wants to scatter and fragment our being… it’s that simple.

As an arising in our awareness, we notice- we acknowledge- we accept (if possible)- we let go and move on. We own our states of mind. There is no judgment or blame for our stress or our stressful situations. Its operation is simply part of the mental processing for our experiences. The only barrier between you and understanding your stress is you. We create it- and we have to take direct responsibility for it, otherwise we will never get to the root of its occurrence. We hold onto our stress because we cannot release a part of our “self” (e.g. beliefs, positions, etc.) in the process. With time and practice, we build confidence as we trust our capacity to let go of what’s simply running inside of our heads- and consequently we experience less stress and distress from sustaining this realization.

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