The Obsessive Mind

The obsessive mind is addictive. It has a life of its own. It can’t be controlled or manipulated, and ultimately it cannot be satisfied. An example of this would be the longing one might experience in unrequited love. Many thoughts and feelings might arise about the desired person, but underneath would always be the essential pain of longing. Longing is its own reality. Its nature, literally, is not getting the unavailable. It isn’t about being satisfied. Its reality is being unsatisfied. As Mick Jagger put it, “I can’t get no satisfaction.” If one remains caught in trying to get satisfaction, the obsessive mind continues to be fueled by that desire.

So how do we become free of the obsessive mind? By letting the intense energy of the underlying emotional state fully discharge through the body. This can only happen when we give 100% of our attention to what is—in this case, the movement of the emotion, or the pain of longing. This attention does not arise from personal will, but from the absence of a self. This 100% attention is pure awareness: without story or projection, without anticipation or expectation, without conclusions or judgments. It is pure intelligence, and pure wisdom.

If a particular obsessive pattern is very old, arising from early conditioning or early wounding, then it may recur, even as we deepen into awareness. One may naturally be concerned about—or disturbed by—this recurrence. But in reality, the pattern's recurrence is not our business, or our problem; we simply need to ride the waves when they arise. At some point, the pattern becomes fully dissolved into awareness. We cannot know when this will happen or how long it will take.

So in our example of longing: When the longing has been fully allowed, and not acted upon, a clarity opens in our heart, and we find ourselves free of the obsessive mind. The vastness of our true heart has blossomed, and the fragrance of its essential nature, love, fills every realm of perception.

Dissolving Into Light

To awaken is to dissolve in one place and simultaneously appear everywhere. Awakening can also be called being presence, being energy. Karmic arisings, whatever their nature, are fuel for dissolving. So rather than resisting, or fighting, or arguing with what is—instead of all that, simply accept what is. Receive what is, allow what is. Become what is.

Now there's no separation between perceiver and perception—there's simply being perception. There's just listening, just observing, just feeling. There's just thinking. And you allow this gestation to happen, you allow this growth, as painful—or ecstatic!—as it might be.

The good news is you don't have to understand how it works for it to work. Being here is enough. All you have to do is learn to allow yourself to cook. To be dissolved into light. To appear everywhere simultaneously. That is freedom.

The Space of Listening

Wanting other people to change is actually a very interesting realm of resistance. We think it’s about them, but it’s really a trip we lay on ourselves. When you eventually learn how not to lay a trip on yourself, then pretty soon you’re not laying a trip on anybody else either. That doesn’t mean you can’t offer something or be supportive — in fact you may then become more helpful than before. You become the space of awareness and listening — that’s more helpful, though the results may not be what you expect!

So be the awareness, and then the listening will be very deep. Everyone needs that kind of listening; in suffering we’re craving that kind of listening, wanting that reconnection. And that listening can actually provide that. It can even support someone in dying. The greatest support you can give to somebody in dying is to be complete openness.

Satsang is really the space of listening, and as each so-called individual deepens into listening, you can feel the awareness deepen and expand, and letting go happens all by itself.