Trust In What Is
Some approaches reflect a distrust of what is, while other seem to reflect a trust.
The former often suggest some form of manipulation of content, of phenomena, whether they are physical or mind. The latter approach often suggest working with content to support what already is unfolding, or leaving content as is. In either case, there can be suggestion of merely notice what already is, finding clarity in what is already true for us and alive in immediate experience.
The Byron Katie inquiries is an approach that seem to reflect trust in what is, in who or what we are and what the world is. This includes allowing all our hangups to come out and be seen in question no. 3, how do you react when you have that thought? As Byron Katie says, we give the ego free rein in expressing itself, allowing it all to be seen, without adding drama to it.
Adyashanti's guidelines for practice also reflects trust in what is. One guideline in meditation is to just notice whenever the mind wants to manipulate experiences, including noticing tendencies to want the manipulation to go away. In this, the deep peace and silence already here can also be noticed more clearly. There is an alignment with pure awareness, and with Ground, which naturally and inherently allows anything to come and go.
I listened to the interview with him at the end of Spontaneous Awakening, where he mentioned that the ego also really wants awakening, it wants the truth. This can be covered up because it will want to go wherever there is a boundary, wherever there is a "no" it will want to explore, so the surface desires of the ego tend to take the form of going into mild or stronger taboos, such as money, fame, sex, and so on.
If we dig a little deeper, if we allow all these to be seen and explore them, again without adding drama, we see that what we really want may be things such as coming home (whatever that may mean), truth (because lies and illusions are painful), awakening (again because illusion, including the belief in the idea of I, is painful).
I'll explore this a little further in the next post.