The situation in which you must live now is not more burdened with conventions, prejudices and errors than any other–and even if some occupation appears to offer greater freedom, it is a rare person who is able to stay open to the great matters that shape authentic living. Only the person who accepts solitude can place himself under the deep laws of the universe. When he steps into the fresh morning or out into the event-filled evening, all that is not him falls away, as if he had died, although he stands in the teeming midst of life.

Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, Rome, December 23, 1903 as translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy in A Year with Rilke

How do we “stay open to the great matters that shape authentic living”?
How do we  let “all that is not [me fall] away, as if [I have] died”?

Natural happiness and ease appear when we get out of our own way. This requires a clarity of mind that comes not only from solitude, but from seeing clearly within the space of solitude. Clarity expands as we open to things as they are. What is the mind wanting to avoid seeing? What do we keep pushing down? What do we use to try to fill, to avoid the empty space, the disappearance of I?

The mind or personality has several strategies for escaping its own best interest (seeing clearly). We don’t have to go into battle with these strategies, in fact battling is just another interfering strategy. Rather we simply recognize what is present, for in recognition there is clarity. And with clarity what does not work gradually falls away.

How does the mind try to escape itself?

• By filling itself up with experiences, with thoughts, with entertainment, with work, with anything .
• By rejecting experience, pushing away awareness, or ignoring of what is true in this moment.
• By becoming sluggish, by zoning out, by being still without being alert.
• By restlessness, unwillingness to choose opportunity for stillness and accept what is – including the restlessness.
• By an assumption that one’s mind cannot impact itself, by doubt in even the possibility of freedom.

You can select any one of these at any time and look for is presence or absence. When you are aware of the absence of any particular strategy, appreciate those moments. Expand awareness and appreciate the fact that you do have moments and even long periods of freedom from one or all of these ways of interfering with your own unfolding. When you do notice the presence of clarity, of absence of interference, let the knowing register in you consciousness.

Whatever is happening, be willing to stay with the experience to investigate. Perhaps write about the way presence or absence of these qualities of mind works in your life.

The first four can be arranged into pairs.

• The first two, grasping and pushing, away are opposites, extremes of reaction rather than wise awareness and acceptance of things as they are.
• The second pair, sluggishness and restlessness, are also opposites. Either extreme can keep the mind off balance. Can you find an appropriate balance for current circumstances? For any given situation?

This sounds so easy to do. In fact, the basic skills of being awake are simple. But choosing them is not so easy. Being awake and free from our own limitations requires self-kindness and courage. So, take heart. Do not be discouraged. Every moment of clarity  increases further likelihood of increasing clarity and freedom. And these are the foundation for the manifestation of other positive qualities – satisfaction, contentment, intelligent thinking, and innovative processes.

“Thinking that I am disconnected or different from everything else is somewhat arrogant, in fact it is very deluded!” Ajahn Amaro

When times are dark, when we have little hope, the weight of this life may require too much effort to do anything. But this sense of darkness, this immobility may actually be the right action. Perhaps we can let ourselves just stop. Quit trying to accomplish anything. Instead let the mind be still. Drop efforts to fix ones self or anything in the environment.

In this space of stillness, even for just a few moments, tap instead into connection with all of nature, the universe within which we are embedded. We can here be freed by our sense our smallness, from the relative smallness of our immediate concerns, and taste significance in our connection with the rest of the universe. We can choose to wait until it is clear what action to take.

Ajahn Amaro makes a great analogy, comparing this natural ability for connection to accessing the Internet. In personal experience we can think of plugging in with the heart. The heart is an aspect of mind that, through its freedom from the limits of conceptual thinking, can access other ways of knowing. From this broader connection we can let every action flow in harmony with nature.

When in experiments black and white americans were flashed pictures of the other race, their amygdalas, the brains center of fear and anger, were activated so quickly and subtly that the centers of the brain were unaware of the response. The subject, in effect, could not help himself. Wilson’s example refers to black and white, but his writing addresses all kinds of social groupings in which we are each embedded.

The case he describes is an example of the way feeling tones operate. Feeling tones are more prevalent than we are aware. We don’t necessarily act on these automatic responses. We have in fact also learned behaviors that may prevent action on the automatic responses. However, with a mature meditation practice the awareness of the original feeling tones can be developed. We can increase the capacity for recognizing automatic responses and unfolding tendencies before we take action (even mental action). And, especially good news, the developing capacity for recognizing feeling tones impacts positively future feeling tones.

Wilson goes on to say that …When…appropriate contexts were added…two other sites of the brain integrated with the higher learning centers, the cingulate cortex and the dorsolateral preferential cortex, lit up silencing input from the amygdala. Thus different parts of the brain have evolved by group selection to create groupishness, as well as to mediate this hard wired propensity. He refers to this social organizing and identification process as a higher function, necessary for survival, a group mechanism that comes into play and puts the need for self-preservation below the impulse to protect the group.

Training in recognition of feeling tones may go further. Not only can higher brain functions come into play, but the hardwiring may eventually be modified through mature mindful awareness…not changing the immediate response, but creating conditions for different responses in the future – and thereby influencing our evolutionary consciousness.

It strikes me that in spiritual practice we are trying to broaden the group to include, not only our own groups, our own species, but all living things. Through a committed awareness practice (concentration and insight) we uncover a natural heartfelt friendliness toward all living beings. This heart quality is not something we need to create, but it does take time and skill to uncover. We break through by accepting that the mind is limited by its conditioning, that it is naturally set to see things from its personal perspective (and is therefore naturally deluded), and by learning to see more simply, seeing things clearly just as they are, and at increasingly subtle levels.

As awareness expands, we recognize that we all have prejudices. The challenge is to be willing and able to see them and to learn to access the very subtle early automatic and amoebic-like reactions. Where are you most sure there is no prejudice in you? It might be a good idea to start by examining these most defended positions.