A mind of confusion simply masks the ‘light’ within us all to see clearly.

Most can probably remember the old proverbial… “once I was lost… now I am found”. We spend most of our “waking” hours in this rather unconscious dream or illusion about who and what we are as a separate and solid “self” mired in repetitiveness, habitualness, and the automaticity of our conditioning. For many of us, we are stuck in a certain way of thinking, feeling, perceiving, and behaving- often in ways that condition our suffering. When do we step back, pause, and take stock of the causes and conditions that dominate our lives as cyclical, endless, and fundamentally dissatisfying?…

It is our mindfulness practice, and more specifically meditation that helps us to cultivate a better perspective into our moment to moment happenings. We come to know and to understand what is going on by stabilizing our situation. We pause and slow down- to open our senses and get a feeling of who we are and what we’re doing while we are doing it. Through the practice of meditation… and of just being… we learn to penetrate with free attention and open awareness with a clearer ‘mindsight’ into the confusion and bewilderment of our mind’s workings.

We begin with mastering the roots of our attention training through ‘shamatha’ or ‘peaceful and concentrated abiding’. From here, we continue to emerge into a new Way or process of being in the moment with free attention and open awareness by curiously exploring and examining with insight and exercise the true nature of why we are the way we are. Once the mind has been ‘tamed‘ to become more open, relaxed, stable, and focused, it may be prepared for ‘clear seeing or ‘vipassana’ meditation. It is in this more developed practice where the mind of confusion really begins to mature as we embrace the work of true spiritual and psychological warriors by cultivating and sustaining real intent and purpose to ‘see’ and ‘penetrate’ the confusion that holds us back from a more fulfilling life of clarity and well-being.

With committed practice, patience, and heart-felt openness, the afflictions of the mind-body experience may come to be revealed as the manifestation of our conditioned perspective. Through our deeply patterned and ‘solidified’ minds of confusion, we may also come to realize our misperceptions and misunderstandings to be mainly rooted in our scattered and unattended energies of constantly ‘doing’ and ‘being’ without clear awareness, intent, or sense of purpose. For many of us, we connect and relate to others and to the world out of a projection of a mentally constructed & patterned ‘self’. Our fixations and aggressions manifest from the illusion of ‘separateness’. A prideful ‘me’ is separate from ‘you’, and ‘I’ will do what it takes to protect what is ‘myself’ and ‘mine’.

Mindfulness meditation practice helps us to cultivate the ‘mindsight’- an open awareness & free attention for a shift in our consciousness… a transmutation of less ‘selfishness’ to greater ‘selflessness’. From an integrated and universal perspective, we are all part of a larger process that takes significant care and discipline to come to see and to know. Our practice is simply a means or a tool to help uncover what is already inside of us all. We till the soils and nourish the seeds so that this change or shift in consciousness may flourish. By taking the time to step back and pause- regularly & routinely, we slowly and abidingly release the grip of our reactionary forces and begin to notice and transmute our confused patterns of mind.

Our intention to change flows from our intention to sit… curiously and abidingly.

Without calmness and stability, there can be no real clarity. The often (subconscious) subtleties of mind driving our confusion and ‘unawareness‘ can only be seen in the ‘space’ and ‘light’ of relaxed, focused clarity. The truth will reveal itself when we are quiet and stable enough to receive it. In the ‘light’ of inquiry and reflection lies the mystery of our humanity- our tendencies for mental subservience as well as our deep, heartfelt longings to be free from this subjugation.

Are you curious, open, disciplined, and caring enough to step into this ‘space’ and into this ‘light’?.. the ‘space’ and ‘light’ already within you?…

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