Giving it Over

One effect of focusing on inquiry practice for a while is that we begin to more clearly notice conditioned patterns that resist inquiry.

Let's face it - old patterns are old friends. We're slightly protective of them!

One of the ways we protect them is that we build little mental compartments (compartmentalization) where they can live without being touched by the light of awareness. When we are deep in an old internal pattern, we are in our own, private little world. That part is literally unintegrated with the rest of us, which is why so few of our resources are available when we spend time there.

Unwinding these is delicate work. One thing we can do to prime the system is simply set the intention that we're not going to keep the pattern walled off anymore. We're not going to give it private territory in the mind to hang out in.

Instead, we're going to "give it over." We're going to place it on the altar of our awakened presence. We're going to surrender it. We're going to be radically honest with every facet of it. We're going to open the shutters and invite the fullness of our true nature in to touch it, to heal it, to help it move. To help what has been stuck to re-integrate.

Just the sincere intention not to hide parts of ourselves from the light of our own awareness is an enormous potentiator of transformation.