rest in the flow of existence

Reducing stress, dealing with depression, dealing with illness and adversity, improving interpersonal skills, and the ability to make better, less biased decisions are all benefits that come from mindfulness training. However, they may all seem like by-products of traveling on the path to deeper awakening. It comes from the realization that nothing in life, including ourselves, is trapped by habitual thinking.

In the practice of mindfulness, you practice letting go of your stories about stress and pain, learning that thoughts are not facts, and observing how your sensations change from moment to moment. We realize that experience is fluid and can be recognized without taking it too personally. We learn that pain, stress, thoughts, and everything that happens to our mind and body is not “me.”

Why does “I” always change?

So, what kind of “I” is there? If you ask yourself this question, most people will come up with a list of identities, including name, occupation, role in the family, and nationality. This already has problems. As Jon Kabat-Zinn says, your name is “just a sound your parents gave you at birth.” It may be applied consistently throughout a person’s life for convenience, but what it refers to will certainly change over the years. I am not the “me” that was given my name as a baby.

The composition of our bodies is constantly changing. Over the past few weeks, your epidermis (the layer of skin that covers your body) has completely regenerated. Stomach cells are replaced after about five days, and the liver regenerates every year. Our entire skeleton is replaced every 10 years. The brain also constantly changes. Over the past 15 years, researchers have learned that neural changes occur as a result of events in the mind, body, and life. An experienced taxi driver develops an abnormally large hippocampus (a part of the brain associated with learning, memory, and spatial processing), while an expert musician’s fine motor cortex reflects years of practice. Even just a week of learning to juggle produces observable neural changes in the brain. Many people believe that the core of “self” is located in the brain, but if we don’t have the same brain from moment to moment, how can such a core exist?

What constitutes “I”?

Evidence from neuroscience research shows that what feels like “me” is actually a myriad of changing aspects of the mind, brain, and body working in harmony to create a sense of coherence and agency from life’s events. The experience of being “I” is a projection. It’s a bit like when a movie appears on the screen from projections of different colors. This projected “I” is responsible for the actions that actually occur as a fluid exchange of indefinable aspects of the mind.
body, brain, and environment.

This assumption comes at a high price. You don’t have to be depressed to see that close identification with thoughts, feelings, and sensations creates suffering. Every time we make an idea a fact in our minds by calling it “mine,” we become blind to the reality that it is influenced (and often biased) by a myriad of causes and conditions, past and present. Once we identify with an idea, it becomes difficult to recognize our biases and we become trapped in a virtual life doomed to self-righteousness, paranoia, negativity, and other distorted thought patterns. Similarly, when we identify with an emotion, we become addicted to our mood. And when we become trapped in our bodies, we feel at their mercy and struggle with life’s journey towards weakness and deterioration.

Why losing control makes you happy

Relief comes from changing your perception and letting go of the false belief that you are in complete control. By recognizing the conditioning that deeply affects our lives, we can begin to give ourselves, and others, a break. At the same time, we can begin to practice riding change by recognizing that we are multifaceted, ever-changing beings in the midst of ever-changing biological, psychological, social, and environmental conditions. We can hold our beliefs and opinions lightly, rather than blindly constructing a fixed identity from them.

As soon as we become aware of the thoughts and sensations that arise in our experiences, rather than getting caught up in attempts to grasp or deny them, a subtle space appears between life’s events and our reactions to them.

As soon as we become aware of the thoughts and sensations that arise in our experiences, rather than getting caught up in attempts to grasp or deny them, a subtle space appears between life’s events and our reactions to them. In this space, reactions become reactions, and tensions and resistances can be released along with the stress they create. Life becomes a dance with the world, not a battle with it. Flow, not struggle. By letting go of our rigid identification with what comes to mind, body, and life, we can begin to feel better. A famous meditation teacher said: “If you let go a little, you’ll get a little happiness. If you let go a lot, you’ll get a lot of happiness. And if you let go completely, you’ll be completely happy.”

You can watch a video of me speaking on this and other mindfulness-related topics for Action For Happiness here. And below are some exercises you can practice as you rest in the changing flow of moment-to-moment experience.

rest in the flow of experience

Being human is like flowing like a river. Many moving water droplets create a flow. Although the river is always changing, there is continuity as it follows well-worn grooves in the landscape. Just as we humans tend to follow courses set by past events and patterns, rivers do not suddenly change direction. But the more aware you are of how your flow occurs and how you follow your groove, the more relaxed you will be on your ride. When you can see things more clearly, you can better navigate the flow. A good place to start is to practice resting in the flow, like this meditation.

Read the guided meditation script below and practice, pausing after each paragraph. Or listen to audio exercises.

Settle into a seated meditative position and feel the connection between your body and the floor, cushion, or seat. At any time during this practice, especially if you feel disconnected or disconnected from your body, return to this grounded feeling to ground your experience. Begin to pay attention to your breath and realize that each breath, in fact, each breath moment, is a unique experience, not the same as the previous or the next. Notice how the breathing happens without you controlling it. Your breathing is happening within you. You are not choosing to breathe. Also know that all of your body’s automatic processes occur in the same way, such as oxygen delivery to cells, blood flow, and heart rate. Relax and soak up the experience as much as possible. Now open your awareness to your entire body. As sensations enter and pass through your consciousness, realize that they are all impermanent and continually changing in intensity, location, and quality. Let them be experienced moment by moment, and let them pass with as little attachment or rejection as possible. Also recognize that the physical components of your body are in flux. The skin is shedding, cells are growing and dying, and some nerve connections are strengthening while others are weakening. Next, turn your attention to your thoughts. Observe with tender interest the patterns of thought that flow through your mind like the clouds that create the weather across the sky of your mind. Like the weather, these patterns constantly change depending on atmospheric conditions. Recognize that the thoughts you had one year ago, five years ago, and ten years ago, while they may have seemed very important at the time, are now just memories, and that the thoughts that appear in your mind now also share that fate. Finally, open your mindfulness to all aspects of conscious experience: sensations, sights, sounds, tastes, smells, and thoughts. Go into the space within and around you, pay attention to what comes, and be present. Allow the play of experience to occur naturally in the flow of each moment. When you notice your attention wandering towards a particular place, acknowledge the wandering and once again look at the entire panorama of your experience. This post is adapted from Into The Heart of Mindfulness by Ed Halliwell and published by Piatkus. Download a set of 14 guided audio meditation practices from Ed’s books here.