It can really look like life repeats.
It looks like things come up and they come back around and there's a lot of repetition and that we somehow get the same stuff over and over again.
This is for sure a big part of the human experience I think.
But I want to point out something about that and have you really kind of look look at that.
In another way that feels a lot more fresh and immediate and real and kind of obvious when you look,
I'd have you consider the possibility that nothing repeats.
Nothing actually repeats.
That what you think and feel and what's going on for you,
Any experience in any moment,
You have never ever felt that before.
That everything is absolutely brand new and fresh as it's coming up.
And as much as the mind wants to pattern match and say,
I know this,
This is familiar,
I've felt this before,
I feel this all the time,
This always happens to me.
All of those things that generalizing minds do,
As much as that will happen and the mind will swear up and down that that's what's going on,
Actually nothing has been felt before.
Nothing that's here right now alive in this moment has ever been here before and will ever be here again.
I think this is huge to even just orient yourself in the direction of you don't have to get this,
It doesn't have to fully make sense,
It will probably never make sense,
It doesn't make sense to me.
Yet there's a real feeling of this of the absolute freshness and newness of every single moment of everything absolutely fresh and new that that is huge for people because we don't suffer in in what we don't know.
So said the other way,
Suffering is in what's known.
When we think we know things we can suffer around them,
We can fight against them,
We can pretend that we know they shouldn't be here or we can pretend we know exactly where this is going or why this is here.
All of that is in this false knowing,
All of that is in this sense of repetitiveness and I've been here before and I know how this goes and me me me it always happens to me this is just how things go for me.
These thoughts may not be there in a conscious way but there's a sense of that that is bringing things forward and having them feel like that kind of suffering,
That kind of stuckness.
But in something that is absolutely brand new and fresh and has never been felt before,
Even when it feels familiar,
Even when the mind is saying I always feel this way,
You can have both.
The mind can be saying this always happens to me,
I always feel this way and right now here in this immediate moment this feeling,
These sensations and these thoughts and this sensory information has never ever been here exactly in this way.
There's no suffering in what's brand new and unknown,
There's only suffering in in the known.
So really look at that,
Feel into that,
Feel feel the sensations.
Is there suffering and sensation?
There's not suffering,
I've never found suffering and sensation but you look and see what you see.
Sensation is just sensation,
It's just aliveness.
You look and see is there suffering there?
Is there suffering in sounds?
There's suffering in sounds after the mind takes a bunch of sounds and puts them together into some meaningful sentence that someone said to you,
Lots of suffering in that,
But that's the mind's construction,
That's way down the line,
That's an abstraction,
A meaningful abstraction that isn't really meaningful but an abstraction that's been given a bunch of meaning,
Again that likely has to do with you.
There's a lot of suffering in abstractions but is there suffering in sound?
Is there suffering in the visual field?
Is there suffering in what is here and immediate and unknown before the mind grabs it and knows it?
Is there suffering in thought?
Look at that and see for yourself.
Repetitive thoughts,
A thought that comes up and a thought wrapped around it that says I know this,
We always think this,
This one always happens to me,
This always comes up.
Look at that and see where the suffering is in that.
There's no suffering in thought unless you see for yourself but it looks to me like there's no suffering in thought until or unless another thought,
More thought is wrapped around that that says I know this,
I identify with this,
These are my thoughts,
My mind always does this.
It's that familiarity that feels like suffering but when there's just thought and without the I've been here before and this is about me identity wrapped around it,
Where's the suffering in that?
So really just take a look at this.
This is just an invitation to see that it's so weird because so much of the mind mechanism apparently is about continuity,
Is about repetition,
Is about what's habitual and that's all wonderful,
It's not a mistake,
There's great functional purpose in that and both are true.
At the very same time the the sense of familiarity is coming through that mind mechanism but is this actually known?
This,
Whatever this is for you,
Can you really know this?
Has this ever been here?
And look at troubling feelings and thoughts and things that come up and really see for yourself how they would be so different.
You don't have to even believe this but like just what if?
What if this was brand new?
Because I talk with so many people with especially around depression but anxiety around anything where there's a such a fear,
There's a mind saying like oh you could fall into that again,
This could come back.
Totally what a mind would say,
It's always just dealing in time,
Trying to put something out here,
Predict some kind of future,
Totally what it does,
Perfect that it does that.
But we believe that,
We get so kind of myopic in that and then it looks like oh this thing could come back and then there's this tension and this high alert and there's a tiny flicker of a low mood,
There's a thought that feels familiar.
What is that?
I don't know but a thought that has this central familiarity with it and then there it goes like oh I told you I knew this could come back,
See you're back here again,
It's going on again,
This always happens to you.
Those are thoughts,
They are not statements about life and just look for yourself and see,
Can you really see any true replication of this ever?
Could it even be?
And starting to kind of wake up to this and again seeing how it's both,
Mind talks in continuity,
Fine and then there's also this bigger reality where it just doesn't add up,
Just doesn't make sense.
Being able to kind of expand out and see both of these is massive,
It's huge,
It's huge when we're feeling like this always happens to me and I already know how this goes.
