From Disturbance to Reminder
As long as we attach to thoughts, we have created the story of a fixed identity for ourselves. We see ourselves as this, and not that. Something is included, something else is excluded.
Disturbance
So whenever something comes up that does not fit this fictional identity, we naturally tend to attach to resistance to it. We may see it as threatening, uncomfortable, Other, a disturbance. We see it as something to protect ourselves against.
After all, it threatens our fictional identity, so we put energy into building up and reinforcing our temporary identity, create stories of how we are certainly not that, and so on.
And the reason we experience a need to do this, is that this fictional identity is fragile. There is a knowing that it is not true, that it is fictional, created. We are trying for dear life to attach to it and believe in it, but cannot really convince ourselves to fully do so.
We feel we have to try to build it up and protect it - maybe because everyone else seems to do so, yet also see how fragile and temporary it is.
Reminder
As soon as these attachments to the whole network of thoughts creating our worldview and identity starts to fall away, this whole dynamic changes.
Now, when something shows up, it is welcomed. There is nothing to protect anymore. It is OK as it is. I am that too.
Whatever shows up goes from being seen as a disturbance and something to protect against to a reminder of what I am. I am that too, whatever it is.
Attachments to thoughts falling away
This often happens gradually, as attachments to various thoughts fall away. But it can also happen more suddenly.
And it only happens completely when there is a realization of selflessness, when the context of selflessness comes to the foreground.
When what is awakens to its own nature, with no I anywhere.
Labels: disturbance