Our usual way of thinking & speaking is dualistic, constantly comparing opposites: good / bad, beautiful / ugly, desirable / repulsive, etc. How does this habit make us feel? Incessant up & down mood swings, moment by moment! To try to minimize the trauma, we do our best to grab & hold onto the good / beautiful / desirable, and avoid & push away the bad / ugly / repulsive. It's an exhausting, unwinnable battle, resulting only in constant tightness and misery.
Wordlessly opening up to and accepting what is natural, with curiosity, and even an attitude of loving embrace, brings about an ease, a spaciousness of heart and mind. And yes, if we "pick our battles", we even gain a greater facility to do something about things that can and should be changed.
This does require letting go of puffing up our ego with incessant mind-numbing self-talk: "I like this", "I hate that", etc etc etc etc. We need to examine very carefully what such a simplistic, unexamined identity does to our quality of life. Once we see its affects clearly, we'll want to minimize it's corrosive effects as quickly as possible.
For most people, life is a black-box: imagined to be solid, unchanging, indestructible, impenetrable, dark, not to be looked at closely. Never mind the wise counsel that "a life unexamined is not worth living."
Most of us do our utmost to keep feverishly busy, precisely so we won't have to ponder the two most meaningful questions: "Who am I?" and "What is this?" Avoidance, magical thinking, dogmatism and rigidity go hand-in-hand. A quick hard response to complex questions keeps things simple & controllable - but only in fairy tales.
Sitting still, letting go of self-talk, opening oneself, remaining as open as one can, as long as one can, to actual reality - things as they are - is the opposite of a black-box life. It's a decision to step out of a dark, boxed-in prison, into the light and openness of real life. It's a bit scary at first, but prisoners can and do become acclimatized to, and come to enjoy freedom.
Sometimes we're swept up and carried away emotionally with the momentum of the moment. We may ascribe it to going with our feelings or with the flow, but in fact, we're just being impulsive, ignoring most of our other faculties or intelligences - often with negative results. "It seemed like a good idea at the time." It's a bit like getting a tattoo while drunk.
On the other end of the spectrum, sometimes we get derailed by ignoring most of our other faculties or intelligences and instead of going with emotions, we rely entirely on linear thinking. We allow an insignificant detail, even a single word or phrase to completely turn us off an otherwise reasonable, convincing story or plan of action. All we can think of is how we find one particular detail completely unacceptable. One small item trips the fuse, and we can't go forward. This is an example of black-or-white thinking, being overly critical, using a legal-eagle approach out of context. Example: not being able to enjoy an otherwise wonderful symphony because we couldn't tolerate (our impression of) the first violinist's attitude.
Mindfulness is somewhere in the middle of these two extremes. The equanimity that develops from mindfulness practice allows seeing external as well as internal events objectively, in perspective, in a balanced manner. Seeing things as if for the first time, with curiosity, with a "beginner's mind" are not slogans, nor even aspirations, but the natural results of mindfulness training. It's inevitable that we keep noticing & dropping distortions. It's inevitable that with practice, we perceive progressively more clearly. Our perceptions become more and more direct. Clarity is surprising and fine.
