Returning to Beginner’s Mind

Sunset on our recent trip to Kirra

Through my journey of Awakening there’s been a movement in my own experience over time that I can only really describe as a kind of circling. Not a straight line of understanding, but something more fluid—expansions, collapses, clarity, confusion, depth, simplicity—and then a quiet return.

At times I’ve been deeply absorbed in questions about reality, the self, consciousness, truth. Questions like: what is real? what am I? is anything actually as it seems? These questions open something vast. They have also, at times, completely destabilised the usual sense of illusionary certainty that most of us rely on to move through life.

There have been moments where that sense of certainty felt very thin. Where even simple things—thoughts, perceptions, interpretations—didn’t feel as fixed, reliable or even true as they once did. It can feel disorienting to be in that space, as though the usual reference points have loosened. They were being dismantled

And yet, something else has always been quietly present alongside it all.

Not an answer.

Not a final conclusion.

Not a philosophy.

More like a shift in how reality is met.

Like every arising is met with infinite silence.

I’ve noticed how the human mind has a strong tendency to turn everything into 'meaning'. It naturally builds narratives, definitions, draws conclusions, and continually tries to locate something stable, reliable and trustworthy to stand on. It wants to know what feelings and sensations are and what they ultimately mean. Even the most profound spiritual or philosophical ideas can become part of that structure—a way of settling and organising the infinite unknown into something more defined and structured. Thought says If I can understand and know exactly what's happening, I'll be safe.

But underneath all of that, there’s something simpler that keeps revealing itself....ever deeper.

A kind of eternal, silent, unknowing.

Openness.

Silence before language and meaning making.

A clarity that doesn't need to know or reconcile anything.

It simply is...

The space between thoughts and words.

Before minds interpretation and definition.

Not “nothing” as a concept, idea or explanation, but something more like the absence of immediate grasping or a need to reference, understand or know.

An openness where experience doesn't need a conclusion.

Where perception is just… happening, without believing thoughts' definition of it.

It’s very subtle.

Ordinary.

And yet it feels significant in its effortless simplicity.

Here in this effortless silence, before a separate character called Melanie, there isn’t a need to resolve, reconcile or determine what reality or experiencing, ultimately is, or what the self ultimately is. Not because those questions are definitively answered, but because they don’t require an answer in that moment for experience to be complete and whole. It is realised that they come from the mind that 'thinks' it needs to know. From a mind that believes its completion is in 'knowing' or being enough.

Thoughts still arise....

Interpretations still happen....

The mind still moves....

But the movements are not taken as true reflections of 'unknowable' reality.

They can come and go without being believed as defining reality.

This is what I would call something close to a return to beginner’s mind, just like the pristine, clear perception of the new born baby.

Not innocence as something regained, and not ignorance. But a softening of the need to definitively know or understand reality or experiencing.

In beginner’s mind, experience isn't definitively labelled. It isn't being pinned down into fixed conclusions. There is curiosity and openness without ownership or claiming of certainty. There is direct engagement with experiencing without immediate interpretation; which is always based on past data and experience. Interpretation waters down direct experience in to something 'known'; stale almost.

What I notice is that this isn’t a special state or something to achieve. It’s more like a natural quality of open or expanded awareness that becomes visible when the urgency to definitively understand or conceptualise experience, relaxes. It is the silent space that exists before 'thought' is believed.

It’s always been here, in all of us, underneath the layering of thoughts, beliefs and concepts, that seem to create the illusion of a separate 'me' walking through time and space.

"Right action', 'right thinking' doesn't 'get' you 'there'.

There is no better or more enlightened version of you 'there'.

There is no 'there', only in imagination.

It is already ALL that is here.

And what becomes clear is that the search itself was never really pointing toward a final answer or the true or ultimate Self.

It was a returning...

An unravelling...

An undoing...

tracing the imaginary steps taken...

back...

home...

to this simplicity—the ability to be with THIS direct experience without constantly turning it into something to resolve, understand, perfect, escape, reconcile or know.

Not because questions are meaningless, but because life doesn’t actually require a final conceptual resolution in order to be lived.

It is already whole and complete, in and of itself, in its every expression.

Always and only NOW.

So the movement of thoughts attempts to define experiencing, seems to soften or be seen more ghost like over time.

Less grasping.

Less needing to know, reconcile or organise reality.

Just more and more effortless allowing of experience to be EXACTLY as it is, fluid and fleeting, without believing minds need to convert it into something fixed, solid, controllable and reliable.

Life is neither reliable or unreliable...

It just is..

And in that realisation, something very ordinary...free... and very quiet remains.

Just this.....

As always lots of love to you and if you ever want a guide in to this effortless space beyond the thinking mind don't hesitate to reach out. This space is where the nervous system gets a reprieve and space to reset and heal. 0432 659 044 or email with any questions melangelic11@gmail.com