One of the biggest hidden agonies of the human experience is the need or the desire for the present experience to be different. We often have a background feeling of “my current experience is somehow not enough, it needs to be different in some way”, and this manifests as many different desires and intentions to make us feel better, to take away the background sense of unease or discontentment.
After we see that nothing in the “outside” world can provide a lasting and stable sense of ease or contentment, the “answer” then becomes an inner one – enlightenment. “Once I am enlightened and experience the kind of thing the sages have been speaking about, this oneness with god or the universe, the bliss of no-mind, then I can be happy.” This is still the unsatisfied and resistive ego searching for salvation in the future, when its own existence is the very cause of misery.
Rather than chasing any experience at all, try simply accepting the present experience, without even wishing it be different. Even if the mind is noisy, or pain is present, or discomfort or restlessness is there, do not judge these things, fully let them be there without aiming for some better or more pleasant state.
We hear that acceptance and non-judgement lead to peace, so even these become more tactics of the mind, more things used as a means to an end to get or experience something better in the future.
If you stop chasing the next experience, and allow the current experience to be as it is, you may realise that the constant search for the next one has been quite a laborious, sometimes agonising task. This constant need for the “next experience”, is itself the ground for so many other miseries and conflicts. When you no longer argue with the present experience, no longer compare it to past ones or try to manipulate it, the experience is no longer so all-consuming. Without striving to escape the experience, or this moment, the experience that seemed inadequate, is seen to not be so significant. We naturally then become aware of the ground in which experience takes place, which is free from whatever the experience may be.
Have no aim or no tactics in your allowing of this present experience. Just let it be. The need to escape or avoid this moment is merely part of the human condition. It is not personal. Let this be as well. You may then see that despite the efforts of the mind, this moment can not be avoided, it already is as it is, and to resist it merely creates suffering.
Be aware that even if the mind says “acceptance of this experience then hinders action, change or progress” - this is completely untrue. The opposite is the case. Resistance hinders action, resistance clogs the flow, makes things tight and clingy. Allowance and nonjudgement do not impose barriers on Life, they leave the gate open for useful change if needed. Inspired action arises in a body and mind not dominated by resistance, and in themselves can simply impact events with greater lightness and ease, which can directly influence situations and promote useful change without any effort