We can’t say what or why this is, only that it is. No conceptual formulation can capture this living reality. We habitually search for certainty and something to grasp. But in holding on to nothing at all, there is immense openness and freedom…

Thought conceptually divides, labels, categorizes, interprets and seemingly concretizes the flow of experience, creating the illusory sense of apparently separate, independent, persisting things, including bodies, minds, the world, and a self that is supposedly authoring our thoughts and making our choices.

But if we give open attention to direct experiencing, we may discover that all apparently formed things, including people, are like waves in the ocean—ever-changing and inseparable movements of the whole. There is no substantial boundary between inside and outside, nor any findable center to experience.

Our urges, desires, impulses, interests, preferences, abilities, thoughts, emotions and actions are all a movement of the whole. Nothing could be other than exactly how it is in this moment. Realizing this is the freedom to be as we are and for everything to be as it is, including our apparent abilities or inabilities to change, heal or correct things.

Joan Tollifson, from the introduction to her website.

Simply to sit still, making no effort – not even to concentrate, not even to not think – just quietly, inwardly watching, listening: that’s all there is. Open awareness is the freedom we always looked for, fought for, dreamed of; only it was here all the time. We just hadn’t noticed, being too caught up in the chase.

There’s nothing to be, apart from this immediate occurrence. Nothing else exists. There’s nothing to create. We are created in each moment. We are this movement, moving spontaneously, automatically. There is no “self” directing this. Any urge that arises is not our creation.

Why look for truth in fantasies of name and form, when it is so easily felt in the flowing of this moment? …

You don’t have to observe this moment or cultivate any special awareness. It already feels like this happening is happening, so merely sit down, or lie down, and rest, making no effort at all, and let this happening present whatever it presents.

Darryl Bailey, A Summary of Existence: the sense of here and now

The freshness that comes in this stillness is the freshness of first light, almost literal dawning – “the mind revealing itself to itself”* – the sense of relief is beyond describing, like the last day of school! It’s all over. There’s nothing to look for any more. Everything is given, just as it is – there is nothing to strive for any more. Only be still.

We search for gurus, for ideal states, for enlightenment, a better life, a more perfect self. We analyze, we think, we strain to finally, totally “get it,” to know the answer, to do the right thing. And in the end—in sleep, or death, or waking up—it all dissolves into silence.

Joan Tollifson, Bare-Bones Meditation: Waking Up from the Story of My Life

*Major Briggs to his son Bobby, Twin Peaks, Season 2