Moving from content to process in meditation and in life

I spend a lot of time trying to figure out what we're doing in meditation so I can talk about it with other people.

Are we cultivating beneficial qualities of the heart? (yes)

Are we releasing the contractions that keep us hurting? (definitely)

Are we collecting the mind so we can see clearly? (for sure)

Ok, but how?

What are we actually doing with this racehorse of a mind every time we sit down and take a look?

One frame I've been using lately is that we move from content to process.

I'll try to explain.

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Most of the time we're obsessed with the contents of experience. We're chasing the pretty objects and rejecting the ugly stuff.

So when we see a chocolate chip cookie, attention locks onto the look of it, the smell, the way it tastes in our mouth.

We are, in other words, wedded to the contents of experience.

What we don't typically do is turn our attention to the process of experiencing that chocolate chip cookie.

We don't recognize the pixelated waves of arising and passing that congeal into this experience we call cookie.

Because we don't recognize all that, we get stuck. The mind becomes adhesive, like a glue. That adhesion leads to the push and pull, the liking and disliking. Which leads to a host of other problems, like agitation, dissatisfaction, and even suffering.

It's a subtle process that underlies all our painful moments. And it can be reversed.

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We can step back from the contents of experience, let go of our enchantment with the objects we're seeing, hearing, and sensing—we can even unstick our attention from the continual flux of our own mind states.

We can steady the mind through attending to the breath, and then look.

Look closely. Look long and with interest.

Until we begin to see—for real, for ourselves—the momentariness, the arising and passing, the flitting, unstable, dynamic movement of . . . all this.

We recognize the process itself. And this recognition unsticks us. We're released.

It's hard to describe that moment. It doesn't seem like it should be so good. It's like a fire alarm has been screaming in the back of your mind for a thousand years, and suddenly it just stops. It's like you've been carrying a sixty pound pack and all at once you put it down.

It's like you're free.

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Does that make sense? Let me know. I’d love to hear.

all the best,
nico hase

p.s. for more on this, you could join me for an online daylong this Saturday. Click here for more info.