What I want.

It is easier said than done to remember the true nature of self and reality as nothingness.

It is not as simple as walking away from material lust; for walking away can often be an act of spiritual lust, which is lust all the same.

In thinking about it, I've come to consider that what I'm seeking is neither the acts of grasping nor letting go, but rather the act of witnessing—seeing clearly.

I first experienced this during trauma healing.

When healing trauma felt more like fighting trauma, and I spent days and weeks in a wrestling match with my past just trying to help my present, there came a day when I simply stopped fighting. I took a step back and took a good look at what was actually there, and in the act of my seeing and witnessing, the trauma released itself with no further effort on my part.

I did nothing more than look. Yet, it wasn't easy to do something so simple. It still isn't.

Expectation, projection, possession, obsession. These—and many more—cloud my will to look, long before they cloud my perception.

But therein lies the trick of perception that I also need to remember: It isn't about fighting any of these, either.

This was never about fighting entanglement, attachment, suffering, obsession, forgetting, delusion, fighting anything.

There is no fight.

(You know I had to add that! 😝)

Wherever there is fight within me, I am the one bringing it. The more I thrash, the more I muddy the waters for myself, making it that much harder to see with clarity. I end up exaggerating some things while obscuring others—or even completely making shit up!—distorting my view and warping the data that is there.

When I surrender to what is and still myself, I see better. I may not like what I see, but that's a different problem. 😅

Stillness doesn't magically confer omniscience. I often only see fragments of the puzzle. I often do not even understand what I'm seeing. It takes time, patience and experience, like anything else.

But thrashing about—fearing, raging against or denying reality—has never helped. It turns incompleteness into drama, and process into victimhood.

Stilling. Seeing. Witnessing. Arms drop. Contrivance drops. Scheming drops. All I ultimately want. What I am practicing.

Clear perception is effortless, agenda-less. It guarantees only itself. It illuminates effortlessly. It liberates effortlessly. It transforms effortlessly.

Such a simple thing; to open eyes and see. So challenging to see all the things that hold me back from seeing!