It seems like most people, myself included, spend a lot of time engaging in little dialogues with ourselves. We continually consume information in ways that are new and all-consuming, and make hundreds of little micro-decisions all day long about what to do, what to eat or not eat, whether and how to move our bodies, whether to talk or not talk with someone, to worry about our relationships, our bank accounts, our health . . . .
The subjective experience of consciousness -- what it's like to be us -- becomes like a giant and ever-expanding shipping container into which we keep shoveling experience.
Is there any getting off this ride? Even for a short while? Even for a few seconds?!
Most of us are good at doing, but unfamiliar with nondoing. But: Not doing anything in particular is an especially effective method to lose the monkey chatter. If we just let everything be, without trying to change anything or avoid anything, we might tap a reservoir of stillness that's already in there. That should be really comforting: It's already there. So really it's about just resting into that spot that's already, and always, open.
Think of it as an invitation to rest; nothing more.
Easier said than done, as our minds have no idea how to do this. It doesn't know how to let go. It only knows how to focus and hold on and do. Any effort to will ourselves into something seems to take us further away.
Sometimes, though, you can catch glimpses of this place that's always already in a state of stillness and rest.
Maybe what we're really after is the art of discovering that we can be fulfilled before the next thing happens, not because it happened.
