“Not till your thoughts cease all their branching here and there, not till you abandon all thoughts of seeking for something, not till your mind is motionless as wood or stone, will you be on the right road to the gate.” – Haung Po


The emotional pain, discomfort or suffering inside you can be directly attributed to the heaviness and weight of your mind.

Imagine having to run across a country, (can be any country) and the beginning of your life begins at the starting point and the end of your life is at the very end on the very opposite side of the country.

Let’s assume that you have all the energy in the world at the beginning of your life and as opposed to running you can dance from one side to the next, like a free flowing cloud in the sky.

The moment you begin, the whole world stops; the only thing that matters is the step that you’re taking, you feel like a weightless ballerina.

But then imagine a weighted vest gets plopped on top of you. Now the dance, has become a run with each step, energy is getting sucked completely out of you.

The dance is who you are in your most absolute sense before the mind begins to take its toll and weigh you down.


“Tension is who you think you should be. Relaxation is who you are.” – Zen Saying


Before, it was flowing across the country, as effortlessly as a steam of water.


“Be soft in your practice. Think of the method as a fine silvery stream, not a raging waterfall. Follow the stream.” – Sheng-yen


Somewhere along the lines of linear time, the average human mind has accumulated tons and tons of weight.

This weight comes in the form of resistance, of seriousness, of needing to get things done and over with, and of waiting.

Seriousness

Man is tense, the past has scarred him and the future can’t get here quickly enough in order to make up for those scars.


“Life isn’t as serious as the mind makes it out to be.” – Eckhart Tolle


Take a quick glance at all of the drama going on between humans. Feelings are being hurt every half second, and attacking others is being disguised as “playfulness” when the attack is born out of pain.

It’s very rare when you see a feather-like human being, just floating in space without the need to “GET THINGS DONE!


“The moment is freedom— I couldn’t live by a rigid schedule. I try to live freely from moment to moment, letting things happen and adjusting to them.”– Bruce Lee


Waiting

Waiting seems very necessary almost as if it’s the same thing as patience.

No matter how seemingly significant it seems to wait, there is always a little bit of discomfort underneath.

Anytime you need to be somewhere other than where you are now, you will have an undercurrent of unease.

There are of course larger degrees of waiting. But most importantly, waiting has been imprinted in our minds and is a key source of a heavy mind.

Resistance

The world outside of you is in a never-ending flow of change. Generally, we are taught that pleasure is directly equal to happiness.

Pleasure is not sustainable, however, in a never ending world of change.

There will be situations; circumstances that arise that test your consciousness— little things here and there, according to the mind, that irritate it.

Until a higher consciousness has been born from within, resistance will continue to occur and an irritation will live underneath ALL experience.

Which is why pleasure does not equal happiness, because pleasure will come and go; and when it goes, does that mean you should automatically suffer?


“Let go or be dragged.” – Zen Proverb


The world is going to change, your pleasures are going to come and go. When challenges come, are you going to flow with them by being aware of that which is beyond them or resist them?

In unconsciousness, as time passes and challenges arise, resistance will become the norm. 

The mind will think it’s just the way that reality is… seemingly!

Because the world is ever-constant flow of change, it exists in opposites. Situations that give you pleasure today may give you pain tomorrow and vice versa.

Situations that cause you pain are always an interpretation from the heavy mind of how things should be.


“When you catch yourself slipping into a pool of negativity, notice how it derives from nothing other than resistance to the current situation.” – Donna Quesada


Pain is an inescapable polar opposite in this world which gives pleasure it’s flavor. Pleasure is also inescapable which is what gives pain its distaste.

This is why pleasure and pain are two sides of the same coin.

Furthermore, we will get to the bottom or how to let go of the weight of needing pleasure and avoiding pain which both of which cause weight.


“Suffering usually relates to wanting things to be different than they are.” – Allan Lokos


So how do we drop all of this weight that the mind carries?

The first thing, and EXTREMELY important, is that the mind should never be seen as bad….

The last thing you want to do is go against the mind, resistance would come through the backdoor and continue to keep the weight that has been anchored in the human mind for so long.

The mind is a tool for practicality, for survival and communication with the rest of the world. It is a great tool, but it becomes really dangerous if you think it is who you are.

The single source of all weight, waiting, resistance and seriousness is a mirrored reflection of your misidentification with the mind.

This means that, without realizing it, who you thought you were was the mind. What you thought you were was the mind.

I never realized for 24 years of my life that I was stuck in my mind, in thought and not able to see from beyond it.

I had been hypnotized by thought, like being stuck in a dream without realizing that I had been dreaming, or that I had become the dream itself.

It wasn’t like I had ever thought to myself that I am my mind; it was more of the underlying acceptance from the normal unconsciousness that plagues most human beings.


“Melting our attachment to self is the most powerful medication for bringing imbalances in check.” – Dzigar Kongtrul


Your emotional pain, your suffering, your internal discomfort can be DIRECTLY related to believing that who you are is your mind.

This isn’t about trying to have a less heavy mind, it’s about being no-mind whatsoever, thus about being and the mind will shed weight off naturally.

Who you are is not a who, or a what, but the feeling and stateless state of no-mind, of emptiness being aware of itself.

If you were your mind you would not be able to experience the present moment. You would be in the dream of thought forever.

The mind equals thoughts of past and thoughts of future, both are components of weight.

Presence cannot be understood by the mind, or the awareness of breath.

And it is the feeling of being here, the one and only true sustainable freedom.

If change is never ending in the physical world (which is why pleasure and pain are the same things and inescapable) then what’s the point?

The point is to be free from suffering. Pain is necessary, suffering is optional.

Suffering takes your pain into its deep dark depths.

Like when you take a magnifying glass in the front of the sun, over a leaf, the leaf is going to eventually catch on fire.

Your unconsciousness, thus the weight of your mind, is putting a magnifying glass to your pain and letting the sun in.

So who are you?

Who you are is not a who, or a what, which is why words (even these) could never explain the direct awareness of it.

The best thing that words can do for you is point you in the direction of your feeling aware presence.

When your body becomes empty, hollow you will then feel your true essence.

If what you are is not an object beyond the weight of the body and mind, then what you truly are is pure weightlessness.

You are space in which the never-ending physical world of change can take place.

You are not running across the country, starting or stopping you are the witness in which all of that happens.

The space in which you are is not a separate island from the physical world, the physical world lies inside of the space but beyond words; they are one.

Tying this back to the weight of the mind is that: the weight that the mind holds is an entire accumulation of everything that has happened in your past that you think is you, and all of future projections that you think are going to enhance that identity.

The is only way to drop that weight, and that is to drop your mind, is to let it dissolve into the inner body sensation “I am.”

The mind is blocking you from feeling your essence as the space, as the weightless, effortless feeling presence.

The deeper you begin to feel the spaciousness of the feeling presence, the less serious you will take the world, the less waiting, the less resistance to situations and more freely that the body you occupy, the mind you occupy begins to dance.

When the mind and consciousness align, the realization, the awareness has finally felt the dance and the dancers merge into each other and life then becomes weightless.