Remaining at Home Even as the Mind MovesRESTING THE MIND IN THE HEART OF AWARENESS
When the mind is not needed for functioning,
it rests in the Heart.
When thoughts emerge, we do not need to leave home.
When I speak of “resting the mind in the Heart of Awareness,” I am simply inviting You, Consciousness, to become aware of the felt sense of living from your home ground rather than being identified with the thinking mind. No one can tell you where to find your home ground, since it is not a place in time, but there is a felt sense in the body. For many, there will often be some sense of attention dropping down from the head to the heart or the gut, of the body relaxing, of the mind quieting, of the heart opening, of being more sensitive to energies moving in the body or to sounds in the environment. But do not try to feel these things. Just allow yourself to have your own experience of your home ground. This is not an attempt to control the mind, tether it to a place, or try to maintain a state. No efforts by an illusory “self” can produce our natural state of awake being, nor can they “make” the mind “stay” in the Self.
Even after profound openings, many people remain at war with their mind, or at least with certain conditioned productions of the mind. They imagine that living from the Heart of Awareness, from one’s true nature, must be separate from the changing faces and functioning of the mind of thought. Let’s experiment a bit to see if this is true.
Remaining at Home Even as the Mind Moves
Let yourself experience thinking consciously. Any thoughts will do. Notice what the energy is in your body, your mind, or your emotions when attention is focused on thinking. You may notice the energy of your entire body seems to rise to the region of your brain. Your shoulders may move up; your jaw or your forehead may become more tense. Let yourself really get a sense, a feel, for the energy of thinking as it shows itself in your body.
Now let yourself come home, however your home ground appears in your experience. I cannot tell you how to come home, but You know. Familiarize yourself with this felt sense of home. Even if your home ground does not have a location, you will feel yourself experiencing this dimension of your Being through your awareness. Rest your attention in the experience of your true home. Allow your attention to remain for a while on the felt sense of this home ground.
Now, let yourself have a thought while remaining in/as this home ground. Thoughts do not require a separate “thinker.” They arise from emptiness and actually need not interfere with the unfolding of life or the movement of your body-mind in it. Keep playing with your experience for a few minutes, moving from thinking to your home ground, then remaining at home even while thoughts are appearing. The latter could be called “resting the mind in the Heart of Awareness.” Thoughts do not have to disappear for You to remain at home. Who or what is thinking your thoughts, knowing your sense of home, witnessing attention moving, being aware of the whole show? 
Thoughts arise from the Self. The thought “I” arises in the mind of a human body; this, too, arises from the Self. However, this I-thought is then taken to be our whole identity and embellished with all kinds of descriptions. It is recreated from memory each morning when we wake up. Some of you may have had the experience of being very open when you first awaken, before thoughts appear to tell you who you are and what you have to do that day. This is a lovely time of day to investigate your experience of the moment before the I-thought so boldly returns. You may still have sensations, feelings, thoughts, the urge to stretch, but all of these simply arise in your awareness and are known by it.
Even when we have had many glimpses of our true nature or even one or more authentic awakenings, egoic consciousness may very well continue. Usually, even if our ambitious spiritual ego has not claimed the whole of the awakening process, it will reappear to rebuild a structure around the emptiness that was revealed. We can have many experiences of being awake, and yet the mind retains its separation from Totality; it holds on to its core identity of “self.” The Buddha referred to that which holds up our separarte identity as the “ridgepole.”
THE RIDGEPOLE
During the Buddha’s search for an end to suffering, he tried many different methods of reaching his heart’s longing. He studied with the most revered meditation teachers of the day and mastered each level of meditation being taught. Still he did not reach an end to his search. He tried becoming a total renunciate, an ascetic, eating only one grain of rice a day, according to legend. His body became emaciated; he was near starvation. Still the search did not end. Finally he sat down under the bodhi tree and vowed not to get up until he attained full enlightenment.
Mara and his forces, ego’s inner voices of limitation, delusion, and fear, came to visit, appearing as angry demons, tempting him with dancing girls, appealing to lust; still he was not moved. The awake silence that was/is the Buddha’s true nature saw through every guise, every identification. It delivered knowledge of the Buddha’s countless lives, the understanding of karma and the cycle of causality. The Buddha saw that there was no independent “self” in anything, but rather that everything was dependent on every other thing. Shortly after enlightenment revealed itself, the Buddha uttered these words:
House-builder, you have now been seen.
You shall not build the house again.
Your rafters have been broken down;
your ridgepole is demolished too.
My mind has now attained the unformed nibbana
and reached the end of every kind of craving.1
Investigating Your Ridgepole
I want to draw your attention to the image of the ridgepole. The ridgepole is what holds up our illusion of a separate self. For a moment, consider the ridgepole of a tent or a house. Imagine the structure is yourself, your own mind, and there, in the center of your idea of yourself, is a ridgepole, holding it all up. What is your ridgepole made of? What keeps your idea of a separate “me” standing? What do you experience on a daily basis that holds up your identity?
Stop for a moment, inquire, stay open, and see what wants to be revealed as you contemplate your own ridgepole. . . .
When you have seen a bit of the truth of your ridgepole, imagine that it comes down. You are the tent or the structure of your own mind, and the ridgepole of what has been holding up your idea of a separate self is taken down, demolished. What is your experience? What remains without the ridgepole?
What is still here when everything you have thought or felt about your “self” is (at least temporarily) removed?
One man told me that he saw his ridgepole covered with sticky notes about all the ways he had been told he was “supposed” to be by parents, grandparents, teachers, and others; and when it was taken down, there was a sense of tremendous freedom.
SEEING INTO THE STRUCTURE OF YOUR OWN MIND
Until we see into the structure of our own mind, we will likely not be free, even if we have had authentic awakenings to the absolute nature of mind, Being, life, God. We cannot see what we are, because that is what is seeing; but we can begin to see more clearly how and in what ways we continue to “unenlighten” ourselves through our attachments to certain beliefs, ideas, feelings, and the like. Truth will continue its thorough housecleaning if we remain open. Such thoroughness comes from clear seeing and carries not one speck of judgment from our true nature, but we will bump up against many things that our thinking mind will want to judge. As soon as this happens, we are thrown off the scent of liberation, because now our attention has moved to the judging mind and not to what holds up our separate identity. Begin to see in what ways and for what purpose your mind keeps putting the ridgepole back up.
Part of the embodiment process includes getting to know the nature of our own mind, its habit patterns, its preferences, its places of holding or of separation. Anthony de Mello once advised that when you are looking into your own mind, be like a bird watcher rather than a dog trainer. Can we see how often and by what means our mind pulls attention to itself, away from the deeper truths of our being? Can we become familiar with the things that fascinate our mind without judging that we should not be fascinated? The more deeply we simply see, the more things become transparent.
Seekers often imagine that when thought appears it means they have “lost” the Presence that they felt at some other point. Attention has simply moved. Presence has not gone anywhere. Thoughts appear, but what notices them? What notices your feelings, sensations, and interpretations of life? Thinking does not see. Keep noticing that thoughts come and go, but freedom comes in discovering what does not. The Heart of Awareness has nowhere to go, no goal to achieve, no judgment of what should or should not appear. This perspective does not appeal to the identified mind, which has lots of places to go, many goals to achieve, and innumerable judgments daily. But it is possible to begin to have a felt sense of returning the mind and attention again and again to the Heart of Awareness, to the openness of “not knowing” mind, to our home ground.
Resting our attention in the Heart of Awareness begins to bring that awareness forward from the background it always occupies. We feel its presence, sense its vastness, experience its peace. The mind of thought is seen as simply mind and not our true identity. Life becomes an adventure. How will it move here? How will it move in this situation, in the face of this feeling or this challenge? The Heart of Awareness, which is itself awakened heart and awakened mind, will move.
As mind merges inside the heart, true understanding awakens.
You are the invisible inside the visible, the unmoving inside all movements.
Like space moving in space glowing inside a thin skin called human being.2