Practicing Emptiness

Practice, in the spiritual sense, is always one of letting go. There is no real practice of acquiring, changing, or anything like that. Growth in the spiritual realm is about loss, rather than expansion. The more we build our empire and foundation on "me" the greater the fall. On the other hand, our original pure nature requires no change at all. So the practice becomes one of emptying out all identifications, conceptions, experiences, purposes, and ideas to make room for That which is not contained within any of these. When the maturation of consciousness is in place, all things fall away easily and of their own accord. Until that ripening, there is a struggle to attain some pleasurable experience or get rid of some painful experience. To truly practice in a useful way is to just Be Still...to let the endless search for peace settle into the splendor of this Moment- right now. Here, no practice is required, Here, you just be as you already are.

You Get to Feel What You Feel

One of the most profound and profoundly simple things that my teacher said was, "you get to feel what you feel" .
You see, we spend so much energy analyzing, judging, and interpreting our emotions to determine if we should feel that way, or if we're right, or if it's spiritual to feel that way.... but the attention is so tied up in that cycle---which is suffering--- that we don't actually allow ourselves to feel what we actually feel. Instead, we come to some judgment about the feeling.
The great surprise comes when we actually allow ourselves to feel what we feel. So, in a moment of anger, sadness, hurt we directly feel the feeling... and that feeling has something very beautiful inside it. When we actually allow ourselves to feel what is already being felt then the emotion doesn't carry such a charge, it doesn't attach itself to our attention and cause us to spiral into suffering about it.
People often ask me, "what do I do with my anger, jealousy, resentment...and I always say just feel it for a moment. That's what we actually want anyway, that's where our attention is. The emotion has arisen in order to be embraced...not analyzed.
We often believe that what we're feeling must either be right or wrong, that we should feel it or should not feel it. The possibility in each moment is to not move toward any story of right or wrong, but simply allow.
And allow.
And allow.
But this is quite different than justifying the feeling. Rather than feed the story around the feeling you just feel it directly, and then it is taken care of by itself, then it is seen to be Grace.
Allowing what is here to be Here is simple Grace.