Get out of your own way

For people that attempt to grow spiritually on purpose, either by deliberately following some path or listening to some teacher, one common theme can be self criticism. You may be a self-critical spiritual seeker if:

You have berated yourself for missing exercises, or not doing them at all.

You have wished you could study in a monastery someplace, instead of wherever you are now.

You constantly scold yourself for letting your mind or thoughts drift.

You wish you were doing anything to evolve spiritually, other than whatever you are doing now.

Have you ever done any of those things or similar things? If you have, or if you are right now, don't stop.

That's right! I said don't stop.

Let me explain. Whenever you do one of these things, or similar things that involve criticizing yourself, you are getting lost in your own thoughts and emotions. You are forgetting who you are, i.e. Consciousness. Instead of identifying with all that there is, you are identifying with the argument or criticism inside your head. All of this noise inside your head originates from resisting what IS. When you put up resistance to what is, you create one of these thought patterns or emotional responses.

But here's the kicker, a piece of wisdom given to me my one of my karate Senseis: Don't resist resistance.

If you resist resistance, you are still resisting!

You cannot stop the argument in your head by out arguing it. You cannot stop resistance by putting up greater force against it. All you will do in that case is increase the argument and the noise inside you and ultimately you will wind up identifying MORE with the part of you that resists, i.e. ego.

So what do you do? Pay attention. Observe the resistance.

Here's an example of resisting resistance:

"Oh, look, here I go again letting my mind wander. I really should keep my mind silent. Ok, let's try to do this. Let's try to be silent in our mind. Meditation... yeah, that's it...."

Instead of doing that, let the mind say whatever it wants in this case. While it is doing that, put your mind into your hand, as they say in martial arts. Look at your hand and feel the skin over you palm and the opposite side. Feel the air flowing around your fingers. Feel the blood flowing through the whole thing.

Past this point, I personally cannot say what to do next. For me, it is a click that happens somewhere I can't define. Keep trying this and you are sure to have some experiences of your own. Just don't fall for the old mind trick of luring yourself into a fight with you.