When you learn to meditate, you learn a mantra, or sound, and how to use the mantra. It’s as simple as that. There’s not much to understand. In fact, it’s so simple that some people discard it as simplistic. They think, “How could something so simple be of value?”
That’s because they are looking for something flashy.
The Same Thing Happens With The Work
When people start doing The Work, they sometimes think, “I know this already! This is no big deal.” And they discount their answers. They are looking for more flashy insights. Insights that will blow their socks off. And they miss the subtle insights at their fingertips that can transform their lives.
For example, if you turn around the thought, “I need him to be nice to me,” it becomes, “I need me to be nice to me.”
Well, of course! Everybody knows that! We should all be nice to ourselves and all our troubles would be over. It’s hard not to be cynical when thinking like this.
But This Is A Subtle Way To Block The Work
Anytime you think, “I know that,” your mind and heart are closed. You are not open to learning anything new. You can only continue living in the same stuck place you started.
But if you take the turnaround, and hold it in your hand a moment, and look at it, if you use it gently like a mantra, it can reveal a world of change, and new direction.
“How can I be nice to myself in this situation? Where am I not being nice to myself in the same ways that the other person is not being nice to me?” If you sit in these kinds of questions, you may be humbled and excited to see how you’re the one that’s causing your own suffering.
Most of the time, there’s no big flash of “aha,” but rather, a quiet understanding that grows with time. An understanding of what it means to live a different way in the same kind of situation.
That’s Why I Say There’s A Difference Between Understanding And Understanding
Anyone can understand in general. But can you understand in the specific context of your stressful moment? That’s the place where we need to get it. And that’s the place that The Work holds us.
The Difference Is Experience
Intellectual understanding is wonderful and nice, but experience is what transforms suffering to peace.
That’s why The Work, as intellectual as it may seem, is not what it first appears to be.
In reality, The Work is meditation, a process of opening to a new experience, right within the same old understanding. Right within the same stressful situation.
So Give Your Budding Experience A Chance
Don’t rush away, when your mind says, “I already know that.” Remember, your turnarounds were custom made for you by you. Your stressful thoughts in a particular moment, when turned around, are your specific prescriptions for happiness in that same moment.
I encourage you to let even the most obvious turnarounds have some time. Take them in, and let them show you something new.
That’s precisely what a mantra does.
Have a great week,
Todd
