The Seer

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A great way to get in touch with your resistance to what is, is asking the following questions: Am I willing to have the experience I am having right now? and Am I willing to not have the experience I am having right now? If the answer is even slightly no to either of those questions, then suffering is present.

This is a very high standard because it means that you have to say yes to every experience you’re having right now and yes to every experience you’re not having right now. One of our favorite ways of saying no to our current experience is fantasizing about all the other experiences we’re not actually having. We often think we should be having some other experience than what we’re having.

Fantasizing about the past is another way we keep ourselves outside of our present experience. The truth is that every experience you’ve had you’ve managed to lose. You’re already losing the experience you’re having right now, and a new one is taking its place. Are you also willing to lose every experience you have?

These questions help to broaden our focus so that we’re not just noticing what’s happening but also our relationship to what’s happening. They broaden your focus to also include what’s moving in you in response to whatever is happening-is it willingness or unwillingness? Is it a yes to this moment or a no?

When you ask these questions, what you quickly discover is that basically the answer is almost always no. Either grossly or subtly, there is usually a no there. For example, you might be willing to have a lot of money, but you aren’t willing to lose it. Or you might be willing to have an experience end, such as an illness, but you’re not willing to have it.

If you pay attention, you’ll discover that trying to manage your experience is what your life is about. We are always trying to have the right experience by saying yes to the right ones and no to the wrong ones. When you practice this inquiry, you begin to see how much of the activity of your mind is caught up in resistance, in saying no to something. Even wanting something is a form of saying no to the way things are. When you are wanting something to be different, are you willing to have it be the way it is? No.

Nevertheless, there are moments when we experience an aspect of our Being that says a big yes to it all, to whatever is happening. In those moments, willingness is present, but it doesn’t feel like you had anything to do with that. The suffering goes away, but we didn’t do it. In hearing this, we may get excited: “I get it.” — I just have to stop resisting. But this is just another way of saying no — this time to resistance-and this will cause you to suffer as much as ever.

What I’m pointing to with the inquiry question “Am I Willing?”; is not so much this dilemma (which you can’t do anything about, because anything you try to do would just be more resistance) but another way of being with your resistance. Can you ask this question simply to see what’s there?

We’re not very familiar with being with our experience in this way. Most of the time, our questions are in service to trying to get something to be better. What about asking this question just to find out what’s there? Just touch your experience without any added push or pull, without a sense of trying to change your experience. This isn’t a denial of your experience or an attempt to transcend it so that you don’t have to experience your suffering. You’re bringing your experience into focus but not doing anything about it. You’re just experiencing it with an openhearted curiosity about it as it is.

What’s it like to have the experience of resistance? In the space that this inquiry opens up, it’s possible to discover a surprising thing: This big yes even shows up for our resistance. There is a place in our Being that is perfectly willing to have any experience and perfectly willing to resist and therefore suffer. In touching our resistance this gently, just letting it be the way it is, it’s possible to touch more of our experience. To whatever extent we can touch our resistance, it’s possible to see what else is present. Space is given to our whole experience, beyond the struggle and dissatisfaction created by our various strategies and ideas about what we should and shouldn’t resist, what we should and shouldn’t allow.

This question, Am I willing? illuminates the endless flow of unwillingness that is our conditioning. This is what we were all taught to do. We’ve all been programmed to say no to this and yes to that.

It can be helpful to realize that none of your conditioning is your fault. All of it is inherited. Our parents, our teachers, our spiritual teachers, our friends, TV, and the books we’ve read have all contributed to the ways we resist. They’ve all been telling us what to say no to. The beauty is, if you’ve been around long enough, you’ve been taught to say no to everything, to opposite things: Don’t be poor and don’t be rich, don’t be proud and don’t be self-effacing, and on and on. If you get to know your own conditioning, you discover how contradictory it is. That’s why you never got it right — because when everything is wrong, nothing is right.

In the midst of this conditioning is the big yes that you can’t make happen. There’s no technique or process for bringing you to a place of that wholehearted yes. And yet, just by being willing to experience your suffering and struggle in this moment, you can discover that this big yes is also present. Nothing has been gotten rid of: Your conditioning is still present, but the view has broadened to include this Presence that has no problem with any experience nor with the resistance to it. Paradoxically, you discover that being willing to see all the ways you say no, opens the door to experiencing what is always saying yes.

From the expanded edition of Nothing Personal, Seeing Beyond the Illusion of a Separate Self by Nirmala