While traveling recently, Life presented the opportunity to look at and practice “Not Knowing” in a series of lessons.
Traveling can remind us of how much “knowing” the mind can conjure up and solidify into beliefs and assumptions, particularly if there is too much thinking about the upcoming cities, towns and planned events.
If I am not vigilantly aware as I travel about, my mind will construct images of each town I’m about to visit, including the buildings, the landscape, and even what the residents will look like. I’ll imagine what side of the street my planned housing will be located, and what the owner will look like. The next more ludicrous step conditioning can take, if not reeled in, is what my experience will be.
Upon arriving at each new location, there was, thankfully, the awareness that the reality did not match the “imaginary knowing.” If the movement was then to presence, seeing “What Is So” became available. Of course, along the way, there was the choice point of dropping the story or engaging with conditioned mind in a comparison of the two. Dropping conditioning was always the way to proceed.
Seeing the tendency in travel to “know” what I have not yet experienced opened the portal for seeing the parallel in my day to day life.
The chance to see and practice with these obviously fabricated beliefs and assumptions provided me with a springboard and motivation to pay very close attention to the construction of all the unconscious “knowing” that can get spun into my daily life.
When I am here, present, open to what is, there is a joyful ease and availability to be in life just as it is. The availability arrives and life opens when the mind disengages from its habitual knowing.
Each day, each person, each breath, each movement …. Don’t know… just here and available to experience and come back to “beginners mind” over and over again.
Gasshō,
Lynette