Experience is all there is. There is no version of your Self that is separate from experience. In fact, experience is the only means you have of being aware that you even exist. You are revealed to yourself, from moment to moment in relationship with the present in all the forms in which it appears. And the relationship you have with this present moment is what is defined as experience.
Each experience reveals to you another facet of yourself. And in that sense every experience is of equally significant value. Whether what you are experiencing right now is joy, anger, boredom, restlessness, anxiety, humor, hardship, creativity, heartbreak, victory - each of these moments reveals a different version of you. And each of these versions of you has a different lesson to learn, a different journey to take, a different depth to plumb. We tend to think of ourselves as one static entity moving in a dynamic universe, when what we really are is a universe of dynamic entities transforming into one another from one moment to the next. Who you are when you are angry is very different from the person you are when you are ecstatic. The way you see the world, your demeanour towards others, your willingness to be of service, your compassion towards yourself and everything else is completely different based on the experience of the moment.
You, and your experience, are not two separate things. They are inextricably linked. And each is responsible for creating the other. Consider this analogy: imagine that you are standing in front of your bathroom mirror, up very, very close so that your nose is almost touching the surface of the mirror. Your field of vision is limited so that at any given point of time you are only able to see one small cross section of your face. You can move your head around to different angles but for now you are unable to step back from the mirror. This mirror is the present moment; the portion of the image you are witnessing is your particular experience in this moment. As you move your head about, you will find there are certain angles of your face which please you and there are certain angles that don’t. Maybe you have a great profile, but when you tilt your head this way the light makes your nose look hideous. Maybe you have stunning eyes but a slight movement reveals a less than desirable chin. Every angle pleasant or unpleasant is an image of the same face, your face, seen from a different perspective. They are all you, and yet they are each unique and different.
When you deny one experience in favor of another, what you are doing is laying restrictions on the ways in which you can orient your head as you gaze into the mirror. Your fear or dislike of certain experiences and strong preference for others translates into movements that minimize or try to altogether suppress the harsh angles and maximize the beautiful ones. The result is a very rigid, unnatural and jerking experience of Life and ultimately one which creates an internal division and conflict in your being. You embrace and esteem only those aspects of yourself that you deem worthy, noble and beautiful and deny, despise and neglect those aspects of yourself that you deem worthless, base and ugly. But they are all the same face, seen form a different perspective.
When you are willing to see that each experience of your life is only a reflection of some aspect of yourself and is not something separate from you, you are making the choice to see yourself in totality. This is your decision to take a step back from the mirror to see the larger image - the one experience that contains all experiences, the one image that contains all the angles. This is what it means to be present - to be in tune with the totality of your being.
