So when I say that I want to understand what’s going on, I don’t mean that I intend to think about it and come to a logical conclusion. I mean that I want to first let myself be present in the experience, feel the experience, be fully in touch with the elements of the experience. The more I am in touch with the elements of my experience, the more clearly the experience will reveal its patterns and meanings. This is so because experience is a manifestation within our consciousness, whose ground and nature is knowing luminosity, so being in touch with experience means being affected by that ground of knowing. This revelation of the patterns as an embodied experience is understanding. I can then formulate this experiential discrimination mentally in concepts and words.

For the process of understanding to happen, three elements need to be there at the same time. The element of disidentification is one of them, involvement is another. The third element is the quality of allowing. These elements can be there when there is harmony among the three centers—the belly center, the chest center, and the head center. When there is this harmony, it is possible to experience fully, to allow, and to disidentify. Now, what do I mean by these three elements? Each center contributes to the process of understanding. If the head center is functioning correctly, it means that space or emptiness is allowed. What is the significance of space and emptiness? Space and emptiness make possible the quality of allowing. When there is space in the mind, there is no self-image. You’re not trying to stick to something in particular. You’re not trying to go somewhere. The mind is allowing whatever is there to be there. So the head center’s participation or contribution is space, which is an allowing, a welcoming in a sense—space for things to happen without rejection, without trying to hold on. You become complete allowing. The heart center’s contribution has to do with its central quality, which is the personal essence. The contribution of the personal essence is the diving movement, the actual living of the experience. You not only allow it, you’re in the midst of it, you’re one with it. You’re really it, you let it happen, you feel it fully, you sense it fully, you experience it fully, right? That’s the contribution of the heart center. The belly center has its contribution, which is represented by the self, the essential self. The contribution of the essential self is the disidentification, the turning away. When you are truly functioning in the belly, you are completely present, and being completely present, you are being yourself. So you are not identified with the usual activity of trying to get somewhere else.

In other words, there are two overlapping movements in our practices. The central practice of inquiry, whose core is nondoing and noninterference, contains an active engagement that, at some point, becomes completely spontaneous. And, there is the nondoing practice that begins with sitting in an abiding stillness in which, at some point, a spontaneous understanding and discernment can emerge because of the presence of our discriminating intelligence. Inquiry can become spontaneous nondoing, and nondoing can become spontaneous inquiry. In inquiry, we are actively engaged—we’re experimenting, we’re exploring, we’re delving into things, we’re reading, we’re questioning—while, at the center of it, we are not doing anything to our experience and are only interested in understanding its truth. In the nondoing meditation, we are sitting still, being the condition of realization, and the revelation of reality is a spontaneous arising. Our focus is nondoing and inquiry simply erupts. When that spontaneously happens, we don’t say, “No, no, this is nondoing practice; I have to remain still,” because the arising is not our doing—it is Living Being manifesting as dynamic revelation. So if we insist on remaining in our meditative stillness, we are clamping down on the dynamism of Being. When the dynamism of Being is free, it freely reveals the understanding of the situation we are in and reveals further and further realization.

The common view of understanding is that it is basically an intellectual comprehension of some content of experience, perception, or thought. It is usually an insight or idea that can occur after an experience has ensued. We use the term understanding in a specific way that is particular to our view. By understanding we mean the insightful awareness of our experience. There is immediate contact with the particulars of our experience -- both inner and outer -- plus the comprehension of this content, a comprehension that is part of, and inseparable from, the immediate experience. Hence, it is not merely an intellectual comprehension, although such comprehension forms part of it. Since the insight is part of, and inseparable from, the immediate experience, it does not have the abstract quality characteristic of intellectual comprehension.

Understanding an aspect of Being objectively means knowing it from its own perspective and not from one's own point of view, which is necessarily prejudiced by personal history. Objective understanding has the effect of altering the experience of the aspect, taking it to a new dimension of Essence. This dimension is that of objective understanding.

What is understanding then? How is it different from knowledge? Understanding means that you not only have knowledge of what is going on, you not only have the experience, but you also are in touch with the meaning of the experience. There is not just the knowledge of the fact of the experience itself, but also a cognitive appreciation of its significance… Understanding is thus the dynamic, creative flow of knowledge and knowing. Knowledge creatively transforms through the seeing of truth, and the truth is what transforms the knowledge from one form to another, taking it to a deeper, fuller, and more meaningful level.

Understanding, then, includes the mind becoming an expression or a channel for Being. Mind becomes connected to Being, not separate from it like it was when you were a child, or like it was when you were an adult just seeing your issues. At this level, understanding becomes the unity, the interface, the meeting of Being and mind. You are Being, but there is also awareness of the beingness. This consciousness of beingness is understanding.

Understanding involves three elements: a full in-touchness with the fabric of experience, the precise discrimination of the various patterns of this fabric, and the insightful comprehension of the meaning and significance of these patterns and their interrelationships.

So, as you see, understanding is very curious. If you use it correctly, it will take you through the whole unfoldment process, one layer after another, until you reach a place where understanding can’t go. And if you’re faithful to understanding, then you cannot but reach its end. Understanding is complete when it annihilates itself. When it dies, then the mind dies, too. There is just Being, Being with no mind. You become like an animal but with the understanding that you are not understandable and the knowledge that you are that which is unknowable. The moment you change, there is a shift from one state to another, and implicit in this is the possibility of understanding and differentiation, which are at the beginning of mind. But if this understanding can lead you to the unknowable, which is the undying and the unchangeable, then you are free to live life without fear. When you know that you are unknowable, you know you cannot be any image, you cannot be your body or your personality, you cannot be what your mother thought you were or what your father said you were; you cannot be rejected or hurt, you cannot die or be afraid because anything that can die is knowable. What can die? The body can die. What can be hurt? Your ideas about yourself, your self-image? But when you know that you are not knowable, how can anybody hurt or reject you? How can anyone do anything to you? Even your own mind can’t hurt you. How can you criticize yourself? What’s there to criticize? But as long as you have ideas about who you are, you will have ideas about how you should be, and criticize yourself: you should be bigger, smaller, smarter, better looking. But when you reach the place of understanding, your mind asks, “What is this?” and the only answer is “Beats me.” You honestly don’t know. So you can’t give yourself a hard time. You don’t know because you cannot be known. That’s freedom, then.

When I say you need to understand yourselves, I do not mean that you should all start thinking about yourselves and become hunters pursuing issues and insights. What I mean is that you need to be compassionate and loving toward yourself and let yourself be. If you let yourself be, there will be a spontaneous curiosity about what arises. To simply live and rest and let yourself be, allows this spontaneous inquiry. When you are just being, you are not busy thinking, worrying, trying to figure things out. Your mind is clearer and emptier, and whatever truth that you need to understand about your situation is already there.

True understanding allows reality and ourselves to unfold, to change, to manifest all of the richness and variety of being. The entryway to this world of wonder, world of magic and beauty is who we are. So if you know yourself, that human person is the opening, the door into that mystery. Being human, in fact, is the expression of that mystery. The most perfect expression of the mystery that exists is the human being. The human being has the potential not only to perceive and experience and see the totality of existence, but to be existence and to live existence.

As we go on, we discover that true understanding requires much more; it requires compassion, acceptance, forgiveness, love, clarity, strength, and will, among other things. Although these aspects of our being are cut off by the patterns of our personality, when we work in the dimension of essence, we begin to see things in terms of the interaction between ego and essence. We see that the work of liberating our essence involves understanding both our ego and our essence. This process ultimately leads us to the actualization of the true self, true individuality, true consciousness, and to the actualization of all the essential aspects.