Primary Experiences

Every experience starts out as a primary one, that is until one needs to add a story to it because the ability not to isn’t in place. Until it is, one’s primary experience will always be secondary to their story.

Life will always be as it is, but how that’s experienced will be to the level of the experience remaining primary as opposed to needing to add to it. Adding to what arises is what most people do, anything that arises is primary, but usually one adds to it to create a life of how they think it should be. When what’s primary is liked and is pleasurable there will be much effort made to make it last for as long as possible, even if it’s not the healthiest choice. And if what’s primary is disliked and is deemed unpleasurable, there will be much more effort made to push it away, until something that’s thought to be more pleasurable comes along. Check this to see if this isn’t so in your life.

Everything that arises is always primary, it’s what’s there before it’s labeled and added to. The further away one gets from what’s primary the more a pattern is developed to not be with what’s primary. This is why it’s so hard to sit and be still because there aren’t many primary experiences that one can fall back on; they’re there, but they’re pushed away and replaced with a story. Everything is primary before it becomes a story, but unless the mind is settled a story will have to be added. The key to this is learning to see the primary arising and just being with it, this way nothing is added and whatever it is that arose will now become a primary experience, and when this occurs no story will need to be added.