When we practice meditation, one of the things we learned is how to begin again in each moment. You notice that you're distracted, even lost in thought for who knows how long, and then suddenly you return to a clear witnessing of the contents of consciousness. You notice a sound or the breath or some other sensations in your body or you see the present thought itself unraveling and in this clear noticing of this next appearance in consciousness we're training our minds.
We're practicing a willingness to simply return to the present moment without judgment, without disappointment, without contraction with a mind that is standing truly free of the past. It's always possible to recover this freedom, no matter what happens. Let's say you notice you're distracted and rather than just observe the next sound or sensation, you're immediately plunged into self-judgment.
You're annoyed. You subscribed to this damn app and you're supposed to be meditating but you just spend the last five minutes thinking about something that you saw on television last night. But you can break this spell and begin again at any point by just noticing self-judgment and frustration as appearances.
And the truth is they're as good as anything else you can notice when it comes to revealing the intrinsic freedom of consciousness, its openness, it's centerlessness, its selflessness. Honestly, frustration, real frustration, a mind like a clenched fist is just as good as the breath or a sound or even an expansive emotion like joy if you'll just drop back and recognize what consciousness is like in that moment.
Now this ability to begin again has ethical force as well. It's actually the foundation of forgiveness. The only way to truly forgiven other person or oneself is to restart the clock in the present. And this habit of mind allows for a resilience that we can't otherwise find and they're literally hundreds of opportunities each day to practice it.
If you notice that a conversation with a friend or a family member or a colleague isn't going very well or you're not having fun at a party or you've been trying to get some work done, but you found you've just wasted the last hour on the internet or you're working out in the gym, but you haven't been making much of an effort, the moment you notice this ghost of mediocrity hovering over the present, you can fully exorcise it just by the beginning again and then fully commit by relinquishing the past. There's no real reason why the next 10 minutes in the gym can't be the best you've had in years. There's no real reason why you can't put this conversation that's almost over on a new footing by saying something that is truly useful. So the practice is to stop telling ourselves a story about what has been happening and to fully connect with experience in this moment.
Notice this present thought, this fear, this judgment, this doubt, this desire to be elsewhere as an appearance in consciousness. And then just beginning again.