How did you find the practice?

"How did you find the practice of mindfulness?" someone asked me recently. I answered him: "I found it when I stopped looking for something." He was confused: "When did that happen?" "Oh, only very recently, long after I arrived here."

You see, what I had been doing was whenever an unpleasant feeling would arise, I would just try to become very 'mindful' in order to make it go away, and I would tell myself that I would have to practice even harder in the future to prevent this from happening. But now matter how hard I tried, unpleasant feelings would still arise, which after a couple of months, made me quite desperate.

It was only then that I realized that this was not what the practice was about at all. I was just running away from things I did not like (unpleasant feelings) and holding on to things I liked (pleasant feelings). In the end, this was not different from what I had been doing before whole my life. In fact, it is how most people lead there lives, regardless from the fact whether they call themselves practitioners or not.

What the practice really is about, so I realized, is to stop running away from things and to truly start accepting things the way they are. You cannot prevent unpleasant feelings from arising. When they arise, you just have to accept them, embrace them, and be confident that they will go away again if you do not resist them, because feelings, like all things, are impermanent and ever changeable.

This was not easy. Not only did I have to admit to myself that I had been wrong all along (quite a blow for your ego!) and let go of this very strong tendency to resist, to fight, built op through months (years? lifespans?) full of struggle, but when I finally was able to do this, it seemed like all the unpleasant feelings that I had been holding back, came rushing in at once. You see, trying to suppress something does not solve it, it only makes it stronger.

It is not easy to let go, in fact it is quite painful. It is like the pain of giving birth. If you run away from it, nothing new will ever be born, but if you are willing to embrace it, seeing that it is inevitable, if you are willing to go through it, if you can let go, then a new you can be born, a real practitioner.