Ever felt the tension between expecting control over life and the sense of unpredictability that awakening may bring?
In an eye-opening video clip, Jan Frazier shares how awakening dissolves certainty, replacing it with true presence. She explains how being awake isn’t about controlling thoughts but just simply observing them with a radical acceptance that is truly freeing...
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Hang on to your hat if awakening has already happened or if it awakens. If you're lucky, there won't be any stability. One really significant difference between before and after regarding the mind is that before, the mind is pretty ceaselessly running.
Since the whole thing about being awake, whether it's in this moment or in an apparently sustained way, the whole thing about it is really "being here now" as Ram Dass said. And if I'm lost in thought in a given moment or looking ahead to the future or looking back to the past, typically I'm not aware that that's what's going on. So to be here now, to really be aware in this moment is to know that I'm lost in thought and that doesn't happen.
Sometimes people that I work with one-on-one will say, and they'll say it in a lamenting way, they'll say, "I realized this morning that I'd been lost in thought the whole morning"... And they're going, ah, what am I, how can I...? And I say, you know, right now you see that you're lost in thought. You're here now.
That's all that matters. The past is done. So if you catch yourself having fallen asleep, please notice that in the moment that you catch yourself, you're here.
And one of the strange and to me surprising things about being awake is the radical neutrality of everything. Kind of like it's said about the unconditional love of God, no judgment. One thing's the same as another.
How can that be? And yet we've all, well, many of us have wanted to be enfolded in the loving arms of unconditional love, whether by a beloved, our parents, God. But guess what? Unconditional means there's no condition put on it. Many years ago at a teaching thing I did, I said something about how, and there were a lot of parents in the room, I was aware of that, I said, you know, very few of us parents are capable of loving unconditionally.
People got really mad. I understood though. Unconditionally means we can't assure our children's well-being.
We cannot keep them ultimately safe. Who wants to reckon with that? It's not just about children, it's about anybody we dearly love. An elder, a friend, ourselves even.
So sometimes somebody will ask me, why do you think awakening in a stable way is so rare? And I don't know. I don't know anything, including that, but a theory I've had is that it's so unnerving to live in the land of knowing in your body, I cannot know anything about even seconds from now, let alone hope to control it. Who wants that? But somehow when you're there and you're registering in the now that this is the case, somehow it's okay.
Interested in more...?
If you'd like to experience Jan’s wisdom and guidance first-hand, she'll be teaching a powerful masterclass series in November. Click the link / image below to find out more...
"Expectation and Surprise Along the Way" (3-part series)
Look forward to seeing you there!
