Much if not most of the internal suffering we experience as human beings stems from our efforts to try and escape what is arising experientially. Our attempts to manipulate, control or rearrange our thoughts, feelings and sensations in order to find a sense of freedom, ease and well-being invariably ends up creating more tension and stress, a sense of being divided, alienated from ourselves and from life. It is, in a very real sense like waging war against ourselves, this effort to escape our own experience, this struggle with what is.

And yet what’s amazing is that we cannot actually pull it off for despite our best, most sincere efforts, we simply are not able to escape our present moment experience. We may try to keep experience at bay, try to shield or defend ourselves against the onslaught of life. But the reality is that no matter how hard we may try to barricade ourselves from our own experience, we never actually succeed in creating separation or distance. In the end, there really is no pulling ourselves out of or away from whatever is being thought, felt or sensed. There is no fleeing the here-and-now but only ever this unavoidable intimacy with what is.