Unexpected Freedom

‘… and I know I should let go’benefits. The inspiration of the Buddha’s teachings and thewisdom of those who have practised them, can help toencounter this disappointment. The strength that comesfrom such inspiration gives us the courage to take a fresh andcreative approach to the forces of unawareness that we feelare driving us in familiar patterns of behaviour that wewould like to stop but do not seem to know how to.When we do eventually get around to opening up toourselves, it’s like opening a door to a room we haven’t beenin for a very long time. And it can smell really bad – I meanreally bad. We just don’t want to go in there. But, you know,it’s a room in our house and it’s only a matter of time beforesome guest comes along and decides to take a look. Then wewill have a problem. The reality is that we already have aproblem – we are just not aware of it. Although it smells bad,we’ve got to trust that the only reason it does so is because ithas not been aired out for a long time.When we first open up the doors and windows and seethe filth and the mess, it looks like a huge task that we’ve gotahead of us. It can feel like it’s just too much. The reason itfeels that way is that we’ve put so much energy into avoidingsomething for a long time. So we have to be very careful notto assume that the way it looks is how it really is. It can bedaunting when we start to open up some of these rooms andget to discover dimensions of ourselves that we were notexpecting to find.As meditation deepens, we start to see aspects ofourselves that we never even suspected were there. Orsometimes just with getting a little older or being under somekind of pressure, external pressures or pressures of health,we get in touch with things we vaguely sensed were there, butnever really saw the extent of. We think, ‘My goodness! Howam I going to deal with this?’ Again, we need to consider that171