What happens within us when an unwanted moment takes place? The answer is that we are instantaneously filled with resistance to that moment. What we call the unwanted moment is really a reflection of an order of ourselves that the moment reveals. We never meet anything other than ourselves. When a moment reveals something that we do not like, it is actually something within us that doesn't want to meet itself, and the moment has simply revealed this nature to us.

These unwanted moments go on and on in spite of all the different ways in which we meet them. Unwanted moments go on and on as they presently do because the level of ourselves that is their reflection goes on and on. We cannot expect to change the way we experience our lives until we actually see what it is that is giving us that experience. It is impossible to find our native wholeness by further dividing ourselves. Every time that we go into thought over an unwanted event, we have effectively ensured that the self that is the cause of that suffering will continue on.

We must dare to lay down our sword, shield, and armor. What would happen to us if we did not seek an explanation for the pain we feel in any given moment? What would take place is that we would finally see the self through which all of these punishing states manifest themselves. In the direct seeing of these states of ourselves, a true change would take place. Rather than agreeing to take part in the negative state's continuity, we are giving ourselves over to the understanding that these states do exist, but they do not belong to us.

Real meditation is the act of seeing completely clear of all things past. We must dare to cut ourselves off from our own past. We must dare to see that every time we get drawn into deliberation over the darkness that we see in ourselves, we have handed ourselves over to the darkness itself that seeks to continue itself through the dialog it initiates. Seeing this is an act of pure awareness that cannot be deceived into dividing itself up.