Ponder this universal teaching: Once we understand the nature of our personality’s mechanisms, we begin to have a choice about identifying with them or not. If we are not aware of them, clearly no choice is possible. (The Wisdom of the Enneagram)
One of the issues our meditation practice must touch upon if it is to be effective is the specific way that we distort reality because of our conditioning and wounding. As we develop a more dispassionate (but still compassionate) relationship to our experience through meditation, we begin to see patterns in the way that we interpret and react to events in our daily lives. And this awareness gives us the potential for freedom from self limiting beliefs and behaviors.
When we are hooked by our way of seeing and reacting to events we are shackled, stuck in reactivity and judgment of self or others. It is by seeing where we are hooked and then letting go of our beliefs that underlie our pain that we gain freedom. As it has been said in a political context, the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.Meditation is a way of increasing our relaxed- yet vigilant- awareness. One humorous example that is given for what this vigilance looks like is that of a cat poised before a mouse hole. The cat holds no tension in its body of expectation yet it is completely focused on the mouse hole waiting to see the mere hint of a whisker…. In our meditation we develop a strong observer consciousness that can just see what our minds and emotions are doing without identifying so completely with them.
