Meditation shows you, again and again, a very simple yet powerful reality, that whatever you resist disturbs you, and whatever you accept cannot disturb you.
– Adyashanti from The Art of Meditation
Meditation is a laboratory. We get to see the patterns of how our minds work.
One of the things we notice early is that when we fight with an experience, we add to the discomfort and what we mentally battle is not going away through battling it.
And if we, through grace, find peace with what’s here, even if it’s exactly the same as what we previously fought, then we have peace with it.
The experience we either fight or find peace with can be an uncomfortable feeling, an unpleasant or disturbing memory, physical pain or discomfort, our reaction to a sound, or anything else.
We may notice this early on. We may notice that it’s grace when we find peace with what’s here, it’s not something we can decide or make happen on command. A key is to notice, allow, and accept the part of us wanting to fight with what’s here. There is always more to discover around this process. And if others are like me, then any shifts around this, in meditation and daily life, tend to happen over time and is an ongoing process. It’s not something that happens once and for all, even if some part of us wish it was that way.
We can support this process through more active inquiry, through working on related emotional issues, through noticing what we are, and through heart-centered practices.