Taking the Backward Step

There’s an old Zen saying: take the backward step that shines the lamp inwards. That backward step is precisely a step into the dark, into the mystery that is always with us, that just happens not to be so easily seen in the world before our eyes.

There are surely possibilities in practice that we can look for. We can look for greater mindful awareness, more capacity to be with our reactivity and our difficult emotions. We can look for more compassion for our own suffering and the suffering of others. We can also look for dropping in more deeply into meditation, and finding more peace, calm and fulfillment in our practice.

But there’s a whole other side to practice that we can’t look for. That we find only by releasing into it. That’s what this backward step is about. It’s about who we are already and have been all along — an aspect or dimension of our very own being that is already here, and can’t actually be found by looking.

To seek it is already to be looking in the wrong place. Yet it’s actually the deepest and most profoundly helpful side of practice. Yet still, at the same time, we can’t look for it.

This is a baffling and perplexing situation: that the best that practice can open up for us is something we can’t deliberately search for or look for? How does this come to be and what can we do about it?

Precisely, the old Zen instruction: “Take the backward step that shines the light inward.”

The term awakening refers to the discovery of something about who we really are that is present here right now, that is different from all other kinds of experience — whether emotional, physical, psychological, mental, or whatever — because it’s about the nature of all experience.

It’s something that has always been here, no matter what we’re experiencing. It’s been here since we were toddlers, since we were children and youths. Some traditions say it’s even been here since our parents were toddlers and children, or even since before they were born. And it’s still here right now.

It’s something within which time and all that time brings happen. It’s as if it’s outside time, includes all time, and is itself not conditioned by time. And yet it’s not something abstruse or esoteric, because it’s right here now, for all of us — not found at the end of a long search, but present all the way through that search. Nor can it be found only after decades of abstruse training. It’s not any kind of accomplishment.

It’s also not exactly something. Not exactly a thing. But nor is it nothing.

The nearest way we might try to come to know it is truly by not looking for it. Rather, we can see if we can get a sense of what we are, just behind where we think we are. Imagine that you’re gazing out at the world. Or notice that you actually are gazing out at the world right now. Just behind where your gaze originates, could it be that there’s actually a space? You can’t turn around and see it, because as you turn it’s still always behind you, so to speak. But you can let your awareness sink backwards a little bit, recede back into a dark spaciousness just behind you, and always with you.

That’s where we might have a chance of starting to sense this changeless reality, that is all-welcoming, all-perceiving, all-inclusive.

We can’t identify its size. We can’t identify its age. It’s timeless. It’s changeless. It’s a great peace. It is intrinsically fulfilled.

Can you let yourself rest backwards, almost recede backwards? Take the backward step that shines a lamp inwards. It’s not a physical step, and it’s also not a looking back. Again, if you look back, you’re still really looking forwards, from your vantage. It’s a falling back, falling back into something that’s already here.

The encouragement here is that the practice we do that’s more forward facing — developing mindfulness, exploring connectedness, absorption, and all the good stuff that those can bring — we continue to do, continue to get benefits from, continue to cultivate and work on.

But every so often, give yourself a moment of dropping all that, and resting in what you’ve been all along, no matter what has happened to you. No matter what you’ve been experiencing, there’s something that has never been absent. It’s just half a step, a micro step, behind the world as you see it, behind your own vantage point, just behind the one who feels they’re witnessing things. Just behind that witness.

It’s closer than close. So close we almost can’t but overlook it. Except we can take this subtle mini-step backwards. Back into the midst of our own being. Back into what we have always been. Where, strangely, we find the whole world waiting for us.

With love and thanks,

✨ Thanks for reading this week’s note. If you haven’t already, I encourage you to download and explore my meditation app: The Way. The Way is different to other meditation apps. You’re not inundated with choices and options – just one pathway of training, guiding you deeper and deeper into the healing and awakening power of meditation.

I also want to encourage you to browse my Events Calendar to see if there’s an online event you’d like to join, or if I’m coming to a city near you for a meditation retreat.