Fundamental to the Way of Mindful Intelligence is… “Do No Harm”.

A way without confidence opens the door to fear & timidity, and gives way to “ego”. It is our ego that acts as a barrier to the mind’s natural ability to know. Often reflexively, the ego steps in and takes over knowing and claims our perception of our experience- knowing no moderation and no contentment as it moves on and on from one thought to another- one activity to another until it becomes habit- and the chain of habits that seem endless. This habitual cycle represents involuntary involvement that strips our freedom to be spontaneous and volitional.

We project a thought, and then the second thought believes the first. Subsequent thoughts become a string of projections, and reality can often be a mere projection validated by the ego’s self-perpetuating ownership of our experience- “ego clinging”–  and its emotional imperative to take charge and be in control.

The habit of a conceptual mind keeps moving, grasping, and chasing- farther from its own nature and the reality of the direct experience as it is. Grasping and controlling the object of our attention can manifest into an exercise in futility as the law of nature ultimately takes hold- “impermanence”– whether we are free to see it or not.

As ego takes hold of our experience it can become lost in our perceptions and conceptions. Simplicity of direct experience is often replaced with complexity and obscuration as thoughts, interpretations, and emotions quickly pour into our situations- and separate us from what is naturally occurring. We become colored by our automatic patterns of thinking & feeling- the “ego trip” of self-absorption is riddled by fears and expectations about how things should be or how we desire things to be- often different from the way things may be occurring- and often leading to a state of cognitive and emotional dissonance.

In our mindfulness practice, it is free attention and open awareness that we may discipline us from getting caught up in our conditioned, reactive, and habitual thinking- or in the stream of disturbances often accompanying our feeling states. It is this awakened state of mind that helps us to see our own “reactionary forces” for what they are- and to protect us from the consequences of our own habits of emotional reaction, forgetfulness, and unconscious harming- to self and to others.

The full spectrum of our awareness is realized when we can stay with the “impulse” without giving into the “trip”. The fullness of our lives cannot be realized through a fixed idea of “self”- and a capacity colored by conception. Life is “degreeness” and “suchness”– and it is this inner orientation that is hard work to realize as conditioning is deep, layered, and webbed in fixating who we think we are and what we typically identify with. What our lives are supposed to be don’t always harmonize with our conceptions. Life’s experiences are not the cause of our suffering, but rather our conception of how they don’t seem to conform to our expectations or desires. It is this orientation that we aspire to transform through our mindfulness practice.

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