Just Being
I woke up at about 5:30 this morning, with a familiar sense of an undercurrent of stress (anxiety, fear, etc). It tends to come up when I am in a transition period (as I am now), and also when the discrepancy between not living at a practice center (Kanzeon, Vækstsenteret in Denmark) and my deep desire for it regularly resurfaces.
Of course, I know that I can be it - whatever it is that comes up. I can be fear, stress, anxiety. And the lack of separation between "me" and "it" allows the suffering inherent in it to dissolve. There is whatever is going on - as before - but without the suffering. Instead, there is a sense of fullness and intimacy.
From the stuckness that comes with separation (trying to push it away or "do" something with it), and the suffering associated with it, there is a sense of movement, fluidity and intimacy.
I know very well that I am aligning myself more with reality (there is no separation), and that gives a sense of relief (dissolving suffering). I have access to both a sense of separation (small self) and of no separation (Big Mind), and in the moment - I shift my attention to Big Mind.
Still, there is also a sense of a "trick" being applied. Small mind and Big Mind are both there, and I choose to move attention away from one and to the other. Isn't something left out? I guess it is all about fluidity - to be able to fluidly move between the two and not get stuck in one or the other. Not ignore or deny the experience of one or the other.
If I habitually shifted attention exclusively to Big Mind in these situations, at the cost of small self, it - everything ignored on the relative side - probably would come back to haunt me. I would use Big Mind as a "buffer" against the suffering inherent in being a human being.
Although Big Mind includes everything, and is beyond all polarities, it is paradoxically a partial view - it excludes the realities of the small self.
An inclusive awareness is in both small self and Big Mind, both are there at the same time, and there is a fluidity in which one is more clearly expressed in the situation. An exclusive awareness brings attention to one, at the cost of the other. And if the "other" is small self, including the sense of separation inherent in small self, it will come back and demand its due attention.
Both are there, and the easiest - the path of least resistance - is to allow awareness to be both fully, as they are and come up in the moment. There is small self with its sense of separation, and we can be with and be it. And there is Big Mind with its no separation, and we can be that as well. We can be both, because that is what is. And we can be the fluidity between the two, because that is what is as well. It is only what is.
No need to try to change it, to ignore one or the other, to try to hold onto any particular expression of either, because this is adding something extra to what is there. It creates another separation, with its inherent suffering. And it requires an extra effort, instead of just relaxing into being with and being what is.