I know this sounds simplistic, and it also seems quite accurate.
Compulsively avoiding velcro is what creates discomfort and suffering, and what keeps it in place. When I avoid velcro, I avoid feeling certain sensations and looking at images and words associated with it.
Velcro here refers to the sticky conglomerate of sensations and associated images and words. When sensations stick onto images and words, it makes these images and words seem real and solid. It’s another word for belief, or identification, or even “ego” as its sometimes used in spiritual circles.
When I compulsively avoid velcro, I compulsively seek something else. That helps me avoid the velcro. It gives me something else to do, and it may even appear to promise deliverance. They are two sides of the same coin.
I go into compulsive avoidance, overthinking/intellectualizing, rumination, hopes or fears about the future, regrets about the past, eating, entertainment, spiritual practice, work, wanting to be a good person, being liked, being admired, and more. For some, the compulsion may even involve drugs and alcohol.
The remedy is to do the opposite. To feel the sensation component of the velcro. To rest with it. To examine the associated images and words. To look at what’s really there, and already there.
This approach supports us in noticing what we are, and in the healing of who we are. As velcro (identifications) soften or fall away, it’s easier for what we are (presence, what experience happens within and as) to notice itself. It’s easier for the natural rest that’s already here to notice itself as what’s already here, and more consciously rest in itself. And it supports the healing and maturing of who we are, as an ordinary human being.
In this way, what a thought calls spirituality and psychology are both included, and the thought-created division between the two becomes less or not important.
Note: This experience, as it is, independent of how peaceful or turbulent it seems from a conventional view, is already natural rest. Sometimes, that’s noticed. Other times, it’s not. It’s still natural rest. And when that’s noticed, independent of the content of experience, something shifts. There is a sense of coming home. Of release. Of relief.
In what sense is it already natural rest? It’s already happening within and as presence. It’s already happening within and as what we are. It’s already sensations, images, words, each of which happen within presence and natural rest.
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Initial notes…..
– avoiding velcro
– avoiding feeling the sensations (resting with) + looking at images/words (examine them)
– compulsively avoiding
– creates compulsive…. seeking, going into stories, addictions etc. (compulsively seeking something else, to distract, fill apparent holes etc.)
– also, creates sense of I + other, identification as an I with an other
– which distracts from noticing ourselves as what is + already resting as is (this field of experience)
– addresses “spirituality” (what we are noticing itself) and healing + maturing as human being (who we are)