Maria to Piet, Rod and Heloisa

Heloisa, Piet and Rod,

It is interesting to see the different angles we took for this one day experiment of "Let go of the habit of trying... take a chance... and see what happens."

As for me, the day of the experiment, I woke up feeling a bit blue and as the day progressed, the feeling got worse. So my meditation on trying and not trying was to shake the cloud of sadness, fatigue and depression that shrouded me.

What I did to try to get out of this feeling was to detract myself by calling friends, doing chores, and thinking of different things I could do to further occupy myself. Of course, this worked for short periods of time but then the feeling came back and stronger than before.

Then I tried no trying which was to just feel the energy behind the depression, and then let go by asking myself “who is the one feeling this, is there any concreteness to the feeling, and who else can directly feel what I am going through?” By asking these questions, I was able to center myself again and see that all that was going on was just an energetic stream of thoughts and feelings that were happening in my mind space and nowhere else. This realization helped release me from the mood and allow a more open and direct contact again.

As part of the negative mood that I was in, I was also fed up with the whole experiment, the whole practice and thought it ridiculous that I was giving up the "I", the "trying" and the "am...ing" since all that I ever have known is that "I know that I am". So I was in total rebellion. But at the end, I had to surrender as there is no escape from the fact that all is happening within a mindspace that lacks in concreteness and solidity. There is no escape from the mind. There is really no trying to not try or to try. There just is. There is no "I", as there is just am. There is no "am...ing" as there is just "ing". Thank goodness that all are just mirror reflections and lack substance, as it sure can be trying.

Maria