Nothing Solid

Moving away from our experience, moving away from

the present moment with all our habits and strategies,

always adds up to restlessness, dissatisfaction, unhappiness.

The comfort that we associate with concretizing and making

things solid is so transitory, so short-lived.

Moving into our experience – whether it’s the opening

experience of love and compassion or the closing – down

experience of resentment and separation – brings us an

enormous sense of freedom:  the freedom of nothing solid.

Something about “nothing solid” begins to equal freedom.

In the meantime, we discover that we would rather feel

fully present to our lives than be off trying to make

everything solid and secure by engaging our fantasies or

our addictive patterns.  We realize that connecting with

our experience by meeting it feels better than resisting it

by moving away.  Being on the spot, even if it hurts, is

preferable to avoiding.  As we practice moving into the

present moment this way, we become more familiar with

groundlessness, a fresh state of being that is available

to us on an ongoing basis.  This moving away from comfort

and security, this stepping out into what is the unknown,

unchartered, and shaky – that’s called liberation.

~ Pema Chodron –  “Comfortable with Uncertainty”

Chapter 22 – page43

from Nirmala Devi's Daily Inspirations