Even when the nervous system feels guarded, even when the mind feels contracted, something in experience is already wide open.
Not as a special state you have to manufacture. Not as a mystical peak you have to earn. More like a simple, immediate context that doesn’t depend on whether today feels clear or messy.
The familiar “game of myself” can be loud—problems to solve, emotions to manage, a sense of needing to relate properly to everything. But the space in which that game happens is already free.
Wide openness isn’t a destination. It’s what’s here when you stop treating experience as a personal project.
Even When You Feel Contracted, Something Is Already Wide Open
Even if we feel guarded, even if we feel contracted, there’s a very profound dimension of our self—or our spirit, our experience—that is wide open already.
And to the degree that we can attune to that wide openness, this does not have to be a complicated process. It doesn’t even have to be a difficult process.
There’s a wide openness that’s always available. And that wide openness isn’t necessarily obscured. It’s just that we get distracted by the game of myself.
The game of myself is so familiar that it’s a little hard to see as such, because it’s the one thing you’re identifying with.
But the context in which that’s happening is already wide open.
The Context Is Already Free, Even When Thought Feels Sticky
So it’s okay if you feel distracted by thought. It’s okay if you feel like you get into that standing wave of identification with the problem that needs to be solved—the problem of you.
It’s okay if you feel contracted. It’s okay if you go through difficult emotions.
Because the larger context—or the more immediate and unbound context—is always free and wide open.
And the more you engage these processes, the more you engage your tree, the more you engage one moment of inquiry, the clearer that context gets—until it seems absurd to give attention to anything other than that.
[Possible clarification needed: what does “your tree” refer to in this context—an inquiry map, a sequence of practices, or something else?]
When I say “context,” I don’t mean some kind of view or frame of reference. I just mean that which is not bound by that familiar illusion of self.
The “Self” Here Isn’t a Thing—It’s an Activity
That familiar illusion of self is more of an activity: the selfing tendency.
The tendency to refer everything back to me. The tendency to refer everything back to the familiar. The tendency to refer everything back to something you can grab onto so it feels like you’re doing something—so it feels like you have agency.
It can also show up as continuing to uphold a certain relational experience:
How do I relate to what just happened?
How do I relate to that last round of meditation?
How do I relate to the emotion that’s being experienced?
How do I relate to literally everything?
You’re not necessarily asking yourself those questions all the time. You might sometimes. But it’s more of a feeling.
It’s a feeling of relational positioning.
And that feeling of relational positioning is the subtle self. It’s the residue of self.
Reorienting to the Unbound
We’re not really engaging in some big project to eradicate this.
Through the naturalness of reorientation to the wide openness—to the unbound, to the unborn—it dispels itself. It finds itself out thoroughly enough that it just kind of stops.
[Possible clarification needed: “unborn” is being used as a pointer—confirm it means the unconditioned/unbound context of immediate experience, not a metaphysical assertion.]
And when it stops, it’s kind of funny, because there’s nothing that really notices it, so to speak. Or I should say: there’s nothing left that needs to do anything with it.
In a way it’s useless information, but it’s also very remarkable.
There’s no reason to bake a cake over yourself at that point, and yet it’s noticeably a very important transition—an important revelation from the standpoint of insight.
It’s one more deep attunement with reality, with naturalness, with simplicity, with innocence, with freedom.
No Buffer, No Veil: Experience Becomes Seamless With Naturalness
At that point, anything that could be called a subjective experience is seamless with that naturalness.
There’s no subjective buffer anymore.
It doesn’t mean there could never be a thought about “I.” There can be a thought about “I,” but there’s no buffer between that thought and anything else.
There’s no buffer between that thought and that which seems to react to that thought, or seems to pertain to that thought, or to whom that thought seems to pertain.
The buffer’s gone. The veil’s gone.
So everything is clean and simple—even a thought. Even a delusional thought can be a clean, simple appearance.
It doesn’t mean anything. There’s nothing reacting to it. It doesn’t cause contraction.
You could even say contraction could happen, but it would feel very different.
It would feel like a collection of sensations—maybe bodily responses: tension in the body, emotion, crying, something like that. Things can happen that we would have used to call a contraction, but the contraction part was the self part.
It’s the self that was contracting—maybe trying to protect, maybe trying to go inward, maybe trying to form an inner world that can step away from something.
That would be the contraction: some visceral sensation in the so-called body, and then a sense of wanting to pull out and away from that.
That dualistic movement—that fundamental dualistic movement—is probably the most fundamental movement of dualistic experience.
And when it’s seen there’s no one who could benefit from doing that, then it just kind of doesn’t happen.
Again, sensation can happen. There can be an intense sensation in the gut. There can be thoughts coming through. But nothing suffers from that.
It doesn’t land anywhere. It doesn’t implicate anyone. It doesn’t suggest a process beyond simple appearances—simple appearances of sensations, simple appearances of non-dual textures.
Nothing is implicated. No one is implicated.
Simple. Clean.
Let the Retreat Be the Practice: Nature, Bodies, Sounds, Air
So let the retreat and the environment—the physical environment, nature, the movement of the bodies in the room and the movement of the bodies outside the room, the taste of the food and the cool air on your skin, the sounds at night and the silence at night—let all of that be your attunement to naturalness, your attunement to the wide openness.
Because all of it is wide open.
All of your sense gates are wide open. They’re unfiltered. There’s no filter.
The sense of self is not a filter. It’s a distraction, maybe. A bouncing around of attention in a certain way.
Wide Openness in Sound, Wide Openness in Sensation
Notice the wide openness in sound. Notice how utterly empty it is.
Notice the wide openness in sensation—whatever that is for you.
It could be pain somewhere in the body. Tension in the head, behind the eyes, in the neck, in the jaw. Pain in a limb, in a joint. A sore throat. A feeling of congestion in the head or neck, if you have a cold.
Feel those sensations. Notice the sensations. Notice how utterly, utterly wide open and empty they are.
Notice that anything that is believed about them is simply thought.
There’s no relationship between thought and sensation. There’s no relationship between thought and an imagined self, because the imagined self is just another thought.
[Possible clarification needed: “no relationship” appears to mean no binding/implicating link, not that thought and sensation can’t arise together.]
So there’s no relational complexity. There’s just wide openness.
Feel it wherever it appears and however it appears in the body, knowing that’s perfect practice. There’s no higher practice. There’s no better way, no better approach.
Just let the sensation be what it is. That’s the highest practice.
The Highest Practice: In the Felt, Only the Felt
Buddha said it clearly in the Bahiya Sutta—very clearly:
In the felt, there’s only the felt.
In what’s felt, there’s only what’s felt.
It sounds like circular logic, but it’s clear. There’s nothing else there. There’s only what’s felt.
So anything else that seems to be added—notice what that is. Notice where your attention is, because it’ll be in thought.
And in thought: one thought, one consciousness. Just like sensation, it’s wide open and empty.
There’s no one suffering from it. There’s no one that needs to resolve it. There’s no resolution necessary in that wide openness of one thought.
It could be an “I” thought. It could be any kind of thought.
The Five Senses as Practice: Exquisitely Simple Attunements
So notice the wide openness in the five senses: in the environment, in sensations and sounds, the movement of bodies.
And even anything that happens within thought—within consciousness.
These exquisitely simple attunements are your practices.
Other practices that seem more complex—meditational approaches—are really just to get you here. Once you’re here, the best practice is to notice what it is in its most basic mode, its most basic presentation.
We could spend this entire retreat contemplating only direct experience.
One sound. One sound.
There’s more than enough there. There’s nothing there.
And that nothing is more than enough.
You don’t need to overcomplicate it.
Movement Happens: Bell Rings, Body Moves
Notice the body move. Get up and move. Bell rings, body moves.
You didn’t do any of that.
It’s empty, wide open, clear, innocent.
If it feels like something’s resisting movement, feel it. Feel that sensation. Find yourself in that sensation, and then release yourself into that sensation.
And notice: it’s exactly right. It’s exactly where it is. And in its exact position, it’s wide open and empty.
Nothing needs to be resolved. No resolution is needed. No completion is needed. No understanding is needed.
We’re in a perfect place to practice this wide openness. You can feel it outside, feel it inside.
There’s nothing to do here.
You can set aside doing for the week and just be wide open.