This is an exercise to engage in when you are feeling distress or discomfort. It doesn’t matter what that is. It could be a feeling of frank pain, anxiety or boredom or that vague sense of being incomplete or needing something more. Begin this exercise by acknowledging that you are not alone in experiencing this sense of discomfort. Ask yourself what your needs, concerns, urges, interests or abilities (or a lack thereof) are at this moment? In your experience, do these stay constant and steady or do they continuously change? See that they are always changing and shifting. From moment to moment, needs, desires, urges and interests change. Is this ‘movement’ also who you are? If it is, isn’t this movement expressed in you just as seasons are expressed in nature or as a seed transforming into a sapling, then a tree, or the sun rising and setting? Ask yourself, is this desire to have something more or to somehow change how things are at this moment, a natural expression of this movement. Isn’t this sense of discomfort also a natural expression of this happening, this movement? Do you see that you can abide with this sense of discomfort just as you can abide with a sense of joy or happiness? Aren’t these states, an expression of the very same movement of nature at different times? Are all mental states and thoughts, feelings and sensations as well as needs and desires, an expression of this movement, of nature, of what is? Is even the preference to inhabit a happy, joyful state over a state of discomfort, a natural expression of the movement of what is? Is it ever possible to be outside this movement? Isn’t everything, including the seemingly incongruent and even the very painful completely included in this movement?
This exercise helps to put the inner censor into perspective. Often, a singular focus on this inner censor, this imagined authority leads to unease and discontent. Getting caught up in what this inner authority deems desirable, pleasurable and comforting creates a sense of lack, and we forget that the totality of experience includes both the good and the supposedly bad. The experiencer and the experience are not set apart. The realization that all of it is one movement, one dynamic happening might help you to weather uncomfortable states with grace. What is deemed undesirable also happens to be a natural expression of the total movement of existence. The impulse to condemn, compare and judge is not a remedy but a cause of getting mired in discontent. The agency that views experience as bracketed into categories creates an illusion of order and results in a constant fragmentation of what is seamlessly whole, spontaneous and all encompassing. The movement of existence might even be beyond any kind of static description or compartmentalization that the self, the experiencer creates. A wholesome attention to the fact of this undivided, mysterious happening, as opposed to judging parts of it as supposedly this or that helps bring about peace.