Sonam Hoani

In meditation, we are usually taught to overcome mind wandering. Mind wandering is, however, wonderful. Advanced practitioners know that it is unnecessary to block or avoid any thoughts, as they themselves can be accepted in the context of centre-less awareness. 

If we go down this path of training, returning from thoughts to a different sensation, we are constructing an unhelpful habit that might lead us to a very disembodied state of realisation. We can start to think Spiritual Enlightenment isn’t congruent with our full selves. Rather, it is a separate space we construct, necessarily within ourselves and that of which some parts of ourselves can’t enter (like thought sensations).

This problem often looks like a formal practice, where we strive to leave the mind as it is, but we do so by continually attempting to disengage with the thoughts that arise, in an attempt to construct a mind that is, as it is. Even this reads as self-evidently impossible.

As the problem persists, we also come to this practice of “glimpsing,” and I think this can unfortunately become an extension of the same lack of skill. At least, I think I can see a more natural way of embedding ourselves into the unceasing recognition of the nature of mind. 

But first, the problem with “glimpse practices,” is that they are often presented in a similar fashion. You are living your life, and then you glimpse.

This is a description, once more, of a mind already as it is and One then doing something to get there.

My concern is that there’s an inherent duality in this formula to begin with. If illuminated and alleviated directly, it could leave us with a more effortless stabilisation of the nature of mind.

What I’m suggesting as the shift is that we develop a system which doesn’t create this incongruence in ourselves–between our lives and recognition in the first place.

If we are practitioners of something like IFS, we can create the requisite harmony between ourselves, which enables us to have compassion for our mind-wandering–to see it as completely organic, and with increasing clarity.

Now, one needs an explanation of how to do IFS in this way, and that’s what I’m interested in, and I believe Loch Kelly is too. For those unfamiliar with IFS, I am somewhat suggesting that there are modes of therapy out there, and some map to be put together that enables us to recognise increasingly that more so than an agent, we are an awake-evanescent flow of experience. What’s more, this map does not necessarily involve ever having to formally learn anything about meditation (although this could occur, as through the aforementioned process, we might become increasingly curious about ourselves and desire to feel more familiar with our internal dynamics).

I am curious about this space and the opportunity I see here. To create an increasingly sublime congruence in how we think about AND experience ourselves generally, in a way that makes recognition of the nature of mind an emergent continuation of our experience (as it sometimes already is in the moments of peak experience in person’s lives), rather than something we take from the artificial environment of the meditation hall to then apply into our lives–via the gap between who we take ourselves to be and the ‘technique,’ itself.

From this kind of intellectualised, disjointed and dissociated incongruence of a self, to recognition of the nature of mind as emerging from the process of ourselves (just like it is, and even as it seems it is).

Take mind wandering as the path into flow rather than glimpses, because it turns out you don’t need to worry. Innate wisdom is inside of you. The surprising discovery is that this Sage is a Venerable-Roshi-Rinpoche and many other wonderful things. Whether or not you have been already, if you listen to them, I think you’ll find she often wants you to spend some time in renounced and disciplined practice; he can teach through cryptic and sometimes mysterious metaphors; she is also incredibly penetrating at the right time with the right words; and he has so, so many more spectacular lessons and ways to inspire and lead you, respectively.