The inside creates the outside.

Years ago, when I taught meditation using that phrase, it had plenty of meaning. Our mood, frame of reference, orientation, even how much caffeine or other substances (the inside) literally create how we perceive and, thus, interact with others and the immediate environment (the outside). Now, with the open-ended question of “who” (is thinking, is emoting, is wanting, is doubtful, is confident, is angry, is excited and so forth), we are recognizing that the “who” is a chameleon. The “me” is an ever changing actor on the ever-present stage of the moment; even when only with our self and the enveloping accoutrements of a moment. Our insides do, in fact, create our outsides.

“Noticing the usually not noticed” has matured into a living vipashyana practice: an ongoing potent insight practice. Insight into what? Into the “who” and its self-made reality constructs. Some constructs are shared or agreed upon with others, with society, or with tradition. Some are innocuous accepted frames of reference like blue, yellow, gender, or 1+1=2 though such are realized as arbitrary with a little analysis. Similarly so the sense of self: fundamentally, it’s arbitrary which is why it is so changeable and changing.

Revisiting shamatha basics is a reminder of them but also provides another opportunity to let be, for the do-er to see that it tends to make a big thing even out of no-thing. So, we sit. Quietly.