Metabolizing pain
Burning through layers of conditioning
I'm not sure why states of calm and sedateness are associated with mindfulness and enlightenment.
It's true that resting at home experientially is deeply grounding and promoting of wellbeing, but all kinds of awareness-infused behavior that doesn't align with the meditator stereotype can emerge out of that base of peace.
Associating spiritual attainment with a low-key, unperturbable demeanor is not only inaccurate, it limits your opportunities for awakening by introducing an arbitrary constraint on experience.
If whenever you get frustrated, stressed, angry, or depressed you assume you've fallen off the spiritual program and you immediately start backpedaling toward a safe state of happy-calm, you’re missing a golden opportunity.
You're passing on a chance to metabolize pain into growth.
Every time a dysfunctional pattern comes up, you're given the option to face, embrace, process, and part with unproductive conditioning.
When we fight or flee challenging psychological patterns, we prolong their reign of influence. When we face and embrace them, we dissipate the power they hold over us.
Once you've burned through enough layers of conditioning, you'll notice a shift.
You'll no longer be so tightly bound to the patterns that once governed and smothered your life. They'll still be there, and they'll still exert some influence, but they’ll have been downgraded from crippling to annoying.
The attention this frees up will allow for experiencing the world more as it is on its own terms, and less as refracted through the contrived psychological entity known as "me".