Following is the meditative or contemplative “practice” that honors both the structural insight and the radical, unconditioned seeing

The intention is to:
– Hold tension without escaping into belief or passivity
– Involve rhythm and interruption (Law of Seven – rythem )
– Engage the triadic forces (Law of Three – Active, Passive, Reconcile)
– Remain choicelessly aware
– Allow insight to arise from direct contact with the real

Stage 1: Affirming – Conscious Attention (5–7 min)

“I am here.”
• Sit upright. Eyes gently open or closed.
• Become deeply aware of your body, breath, sounds, sensations.
• Don’t seek to change anything. Just affirm the fact of being.
• Let attention embrace the total field of experience.
Think of this as the Active Force: presence, attention, existence.

Stage 2: Denying – Letting Go of Control (5–7 min)

“Let it be.”
• Begin to notice impulses to control: to fix posture, judge thoughts, “do it right.”
• Each time such a thought arises, see it clearly, and let it pass.
• Now attend to what is not happening: the quiet, the spaces, the inner silence.
• Release the will, without becoming passive.

This is the Passive Force: receptivity, surrender, stillness.

Stage 3: Reconciling – Holding the Tension (10–15 min)

“Yes and No arise together.”
• Sit now in the full paradox: I act, but I do not force. I see, but I do not grasp.
• Feel the tension of opposites: the absurd, the ecological grief, the Yes/No of your life.
• Don’t solve it. Let it burn gently in the awareness.
• Remain as a mirror, not fixing, not escaping.

This is the Reconciling Force: consciousness itself. Insight may arise—but you don’t seek it

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🔔 Conscious Shock (Built-In):
– At 7 and 14 minutes, sound a bell or chime (or use a gentle timer).
– This mimics the “shock” in the Law of Seven: to awaken you from drifting.
– When the bell rings, ask silently:

“Am I here? Who is here?”

This conscious jolt returns you to the moment—not as a judgment, but a refreshing of attention.

Integration (Final 3–5 min)

“What remains?”
– Open your eyes (if closed).
– Let yourself feel whatever remains, not what you think should be there.
– No analysis. No conclusion. Just the afterglow of being fully present, of having held paradox without collapsing into certainty.

This is intended as a “practice” of listening to the “music” between Yes and No, between self and world, between rhythm and silence. A place where structure meets silence, where law not mistaken as love meets freedom. A practice that is not done but lived.

Hi Anita I appreciate the questions as they mirror my thoughts.

There were a few questions so I’ll start with this one and maybe the others will fade: How do we stay present with emotion—without clinging to it, numbing ourselves, or rushing to fix it? How do we let difficult feelings sing through us… instead of scream “Danger! Danger!” at every turn?

If I have read what you wrote correctly the danger sensed is arising from past experiences (now memory) and is not immediate. If that is not the case and the danger immediate what I write of would not apply. The meditation is intended for the second half of life and the dangers of the past dealt with even if handled badly and their remains a wish of ‘if only’ it wasn’t so.

The thought of the mirror of the moment was to stay in the tension of such questions without intention other then holding it.

Emotional mindfulness reminds us that Emotions are not problems to solved but energies to witness. Here we sit in tension between the witness and our conditioned mind, our habit of categorizing and creating constructs. Observing the tension between the Yes and the No the space between witness and mind may dissolve and a something else arise. Here the observer is the observed and the thought the thinker – a mirror choicelessly aware.

When we don’t intervene with our habitual sorting and fixing, we open ourselves to a different mode of relating to the thoughts and feelings that arise. We do so with curiosity and space not judgment or measure. A space for something new to arise.

It is a difference of being present to an emotion holding space and being present in the emotion as identification with the feeling. Holding the tension, you will notice both. Staying in the tension honors the complexity of our experiences, resisting the urge to resolve or soothe our discomfort the tension becomes a teacher rather than a puzzle to be solve.

“Let difficult feelings sing through us” is a poetic call to metabolize emotion through presence. Where a scream cries out emergency the mind reacts to act and fix. A song, even a sad one, is expression and invitation to stillness in movement, resonance and maybe healing.

The notion I am playing with here is that of being a Mirror to the Moment and allowing what will arise and be seen. A mirror does not choose what appears nor try to fix what it reflects or claim ownership of what is seen.

To resolve the tension a third ‘force’ is required only the force isn’t action., nor can it be it be willed. It can only be allowed which the constructing ego mind is going to resist, thinking action must be a doing certainly not a being. This force is not a push but a rhythm, not will but a welcome. This to is a holding of tension.

The ego equates agency with control, believing doing is superior to being and allowing ia weakness. But this “third” isn’t passive, it’s radically alive, quietly dynamic, and spacious enough to hold contradiction without collapse. To the ego, it feels like “nothing is happening.” But to the deeper self, it’s everything. Presence without grasping. It’s the alchemical vessel where transformation happens because it is not forced…even as the fire heats the contents. (another tension to hold)

The past, the minds constructs, the fears remain, these experiences reside in the tension we hold. The Yes and the No, the like and not like. The meditation a kind of spiritual aikido, meeting the moment not with resistance but with yielding presence. Holding tensions not as weakness, but strength. A willingness to live the mystery, not to master it.

To be a mirror is to surrender authorship. To allow the third is to become a space through which life speaks. To embody this is to dance with the ineffable, not by leading, but by listening.

I seem to have used a lot of words which I fear may be misread as an attempt at understanding and understanding control and create a process to follow…

I can’t deny understanding hasn’t been the driving force of my youth, my ego and hope. A hope that if I understood I would no longer fear and no longer feel lost or alone. I would instead be in control and safe… That has proven to be a fool’s game and one I played badly.

I acknowledge the tension in that and holding the tension sense the rhythm of movement between a No ‘not this anymore’ and a Yes ‘I am still here’, listening.

I see I have named a fear – to be misunderstood. Within that fear a paradox that its ok to feel the pull for understanding and the tension that the point isn’t to not understand but to no longer demand the understanding protect me… I have named other fears, to be lost and alone… the tension of feeling separate from the world I know I’m not separate from.

I may still scream… just not in desperation… a holy scream.
Not a scream of “save me!”, but the scream “I am here!”
Not desperation, but declaration. Not collapse, but liberation.
Not trying to flee the fire but becoming the flame…

This too is part of the alchemy: Letting the voice rise, not to demand an answer, but to announce presence. Letting emotion move, not to control, but to release. Letting the scream sound, not to be rescued, but to be real.

So, scream. If it comes, let it come. Not as a symptom but as a signal that you are alive, unhidden, and unwilling to mute what is most vital. Even the soul needs a sound sometimes. Let it be wild. Let it be true. Let it be yours. The sound and mirror of AUM.

Hi Anita

To be candid my posts of late have surprised me with the call to ‘scream’ seeming coming from nowhere and resonating deeply. Holding the tension of one’s paradoxes with no other intention nothing is fixed, the old fears remain but a something else arose. Holding the fear and the clarity of the No and the Yes something else emerged, a something that was not constructed but revealed. The blank canvas, always blank, painting itself. This is how the soul speaks, not in formulas, in emergence, in surprise. The scream not from despair but from truth.

Leaving me to wonder that perhaps healing isn’t the disappearance of wounds but the weaving of those wounds into wholeness. Healing not always making the pain go away but can make it sacred. The wound does not always close, but perhaps it no longer needs to. Perhaps it opens into a space where mystery lives. Where sorrow and beauty are not two things, where a scream isn’t failure but a song.

I note that the Buddha (nor any of the wisdom traditions when not misunderstood) promises that a ‘way’ will fix life, that healing will fix life. The Dharma doesn’t promise that life will stop hurting. It offers a way to relate to that hurt with spaciousness, awareness, compassion. Not as answers but as mirrors.

Each moment met openly reflecting the very thing we most need to see. The wind doesn’t fix you it reflects your resistance, a mountain doesn’t’ offer solutions, it reveals your stillness, wisdom teachings don’t change you, they return you to yourself.

In the past I have approached the wisdom traditions as pathway to fixing instead of allowing. Today I see the teachings as mirrors to reflect the Self back to me. Nature a mirror, teachings a mirror, each of us a mirror… The mirror not an object but a state of being.

So let the mirror reflect, let our screams sound, let healing arrive not as a fix but as a flowering in the soil of unguarded presence. Life is not broken, we are not broken, we are an unfolding.

This feels like a place to pause, contemplate if only to avoid the temptation to cling to what arises or mistaking a path as destination.
I hope everyone enjoys the weekend.

Into the gone, into the gone, into the gone beyond. Into the gone completely beyond, the other shore awaken.
Into the gone, into the gone, into the gone beyond. Into the gone completely beyond, the other shore return…