We are creating. Every moment, every interaction. Now we may not have control individually. But we choose, hence we create.

We do not create so much by trying to create. It is the opposite. We create, when we allow ourselves to create. Our experiences are the greatest asset we have. If we can pay loving attention to our moment to moment experience, yes we will have beautiful moments and sad moments, but by paying loving attention to it, we can exist separately from the ups and downs. Our intuition learns. Every difficult experience adds a new invaluable skill, if we allow ourselves to come out of it.

With experience, we learn that it is all us. Even those other people. We can choose to see reality as divided pieces working against each other or as a synchronous musical composition that goes together. We can come to the conclusion that seeking is futile. What we want is already here. Every moment. Flowing into another. Those difficult emotions and physical sensations that come out time and again are helping us learn, if we can pay loving attention to them. These can be from our own experience, when we were less prepared and more traumatized. Or from our ancestors’ experiences, inherited. But it is all helping us. Allowing the moments to flow with loving attention, these too shall pass, and we will learn and have a new reality going forward.

Enjoy and co-create!

The natural flow of life alternates between happiness and sadness, excitement and dullness, moments of creativity and several moments of the opposite, contentment and dissatisfaction, and yet it is possible to experience this with loving attention. This is what meditation is about. Witnessing the experiences with love and kindness.

Being able to witness the vast range of experiences from a kind/loving standpoint is what makes one realize that they are not their thoughts, they are not their emotions, they are not their physical sensations (body). They can witness all this, just like they can witness the sunrise or their immediate surrounding, including other life.

So why then do we have such range of experiences? We go up and down. There is no absolute answer to this question. It can depend on how you want to answer it. Just like why is there water? It just is. You could break it apart and say water is made of molecules, and smaller constituents, and try to explain the properties. At each level, you can still find something deeper. How you want to see it, changes what you see.

From one perspective, what you call as ‘you’ goes up and down for no reason. It just does. Just like the wind blows. Or just like you add meaning to experiences. But looking from another perspective which we as humans would appreciate more, there is an order, direction to things. While in the grand scheme of things, this order or direction is inconsequential, but each constituent has some order/direction. Now that if you have an order/direction, naturally you will seem to go up and down, side and side, and all possible ways. ‘You’ cannot exist separately from the rest of this moment, including other human beings, other forms of life, wind, sun, or the cells inside the body.

What is this order/direction that we so appreciate as human beings.  It is the natural flow of things within the whole. Now from a human perspective, going up and down, seems to create a story, that we can relate to, and that adds resonance to our experience, if we can witness it with loving attention. Regardless of the cause and effect, going up and down is like the notes of music. You cannot create good music with a monotone. That is the music of the rocks. The music of humans and living things has more complex notes. Notes are synchronous and yet different parts of the sequence have contrasts. You cannot appreciate a particular note in the absence of a contrasting note in another part of the sequence.

These ups and downs are in some ways helping you grow (in one perspective). In another perspective, they are helping you feel resonance in the different notes of the sequence.

We like to talk about happiness, connection, and positive experiences. But negative experiences, even if it is merely gloomy weather, or a dull week, or moments of feeling lost at points of change in life, are unavoidable. If life is an art, then negative experiences can be the difference between clutter and masterpieces.

Negative experiences are challenging. They are inviting to our egos. Ego helps in survival. But in other situations, it replaces one problem with another, when there was none in the first place. These experiences are robust learning grounds for the awareness. Can you pay loving attention to the ego trying to come out and take control? Trying to blame. Trying to play victim. Trying to dominate. Trying to run away. Trying to mask the difficult moments by seeking temporary moments of pleasure that will not solve anything (as they are not in the flow).

A true artist can accept being lost with loving attention, and allow moments to take their course. We are talking about the only artist there is. That which we can never be free from. That one thing we are all part of. We can call it the present moment, we can call it the universe, we can call it ‘that’ that can only be pointed to — thatness ‘Tathātā‘ in Sanskrit. Everything is part of that, and playing its role in ‘that’.