esse jay

A thought arises, an emotion moves, something happens in your life, and immediately the mind asks: "What does this mean about me?" This habitual self-referencing is the machinery of separation. The invitation is not to silence life, but to see through the mechanism that creates a centre around which everything revolves.

The true noise is not the noise of the world. It is the endless self-referencing that turns every experience into a story about "me."

Your capacity to be intimate with the world, with all its brokenness—without having a story about the world—is the ripening process. It’s the maturation of awakening that allows the light of consciousness to flow through you and into your functioning in the world.

A feeling does not become suffering simply because it is intense. Suffering begins when the mind says: “This should not be here.” “This must change.” “What does this mean about me?” Experience is simple. The self makes it complicated.

Awakening is not the arrival of a special experience. Experiences come and go — bliss, clarity, silence, contraction, sorrow, confusion. What awakens is the recognition of that which does not come and go with experience.