The Freedom of total Experience
and what happens when you stop living life halfway.
Dear friend of the present reality, cherished reader,
In this week's Soul-Letter I want to explore one of the greatest reasons why so many of us feel stuck in repeating patterns, repeating emotions, repeating relationships, and repeating desires.
Many people believe freedom comes from getting more of what they want.
More pleasure.
More success.
More experiences.
More validation.
Yet if that were true, humanity would have been free long ago.
Instead, most people find themselves running in circles, chasing the same things year after year, wondering why fulfillment never seems to last.
The reason is surprisingly simple:
We rarely live anything completely.
We touch life with one hand while the other hand remains occupied with thoughts, judgments, expectations, memories, and desires.
We are eating while thinking about tomorrow.
Listening while preparing our response.
Loving while fearing loss.
Meditating while waiting for a result.
We are present only partially.
And life cannot reveal its fullness to someone who is only half there.
"Be – don't try to become."
There is a story of a mystic who, after awakening, entered a period of complete emptiness. For some time, he did not know who he was, where he should go, or what should happen next.
Then something profound became clear.
If he sat, there was only sitting.
If he walked, there was only walking.
If he ate, there was only eating.
If he looked at a flower, there was only looking.
No separate "someone" managing the experience.
No inner commentator.
No constant evaluation.
Just life living itself.
This may sound simple, yet it points toward one of the deepest truths available to a human being:
Any experience lived totally, you get freed of it.
Read that again.
Not suppressed.
Not resisted.
Not escaped.
Lived totally.
Because what is fully experienced completes itself.
What is only partially experienced continues asking for attention.
This is why so many cycles repeat.
The same arguments.
The same emotional reactions.
The same attractions.
The same fears.
The same stories.
Not because life wants to punish us.
Because life is patiently inviting us to be fully present.
When we are not fully present, the experience remains unfinished within us.
And what remains unfinished tends to return.
"The moment you accept yourself, you become beautiful."
The mind often tells us that more is the answer.
More pleasure.
More achievement.
More excitement.
More spirituality.
More experiences.
Yet the issue is rarely that we have not had enough.
Often, we have simply never been fully there for what was already happening.
A person may spend years pursuing pleasure, while never completely tasting a single moment of it.
A person may spend decades searching for the One-Mind, while never fully entering the present moment where the One-Mind is already expressing itself.
This is why desire can become endless.
We keep wanting what we have never truly lived.
The invitation is not to want life.
The invitation is to live it.
Completely.
Fear when fear appears.
Joy when joy appears.
Silence when silence appears.
Love when love appears.
Without resistance.
Without grasping.
Without trying to hold on.
The wave moves naturally because it does not cling to the shape it had a moment ago.
Life moves the same way.
When an experience has offered everything it came to offer, something within naturally says:
"Enough."
Not from discipline.
Not from control.
From completion.
Here's a practice for this week I'd like to offer you:
For the coming week, choose one ordinary activity each day.
Perhaps drinking tea.
Walking.
Washing dishes.
Eating a meal.
Watching the sunset.
And for just a few minutes, become completely available to that experience.
Not thinking about it.
Not analyzing it.
Not improving it.
Simply living it.
Notice what happens when there is no separation between you and the moment.
You may discover that what you have been seeking is not waiting somewhere in the future.
It is waiting in the fullness of this very experience.
Because the One-Mind is never absent.
It can only be overlooked.
And perhaps the greatest freedom is realizing that life does not ask us to want it more.
It asks us to live it more completely.
Closing Prayer
Great Mystery,
May we have the courage to meet each moment fully.
May we stop standing at the edge of life and enter its living waters.
May we release the habit of wanting and rediscover the art of experiencing.
May our hearts become available to what is here, now.
And may every experience, lived in totality, reveal the silent presence of the One-Mind shining through all things.
May you recognize yourself in all that appears before you,
O-hey-O
Bear Saorin
The One Mind Sanctum
P.S. What if the freedom you seek is not found in having more experiences, but in being completely present for the ones already here?
Responses