Who are you without the story you tell about what's happening?

When you begin to understand that mindfulness is not narrow, that it is openness and welcoming, while staying connected to something beyond your definition, you begin to understand what it means to have intimacy with 10,000 things. Dōgen puts it so beautifully.

Perhaps the disconnection does not come from the many things that life presents to us. Perhaps it comes from who we become in relation to them: through attachment, expectations, conclusions, our need for control, anxiety and fear. And then, just like that suddenly, the many things of life begin to feel like too much.

So, we withdraw. We cut ourselves off, often in the name of mindfulness, meditation, awareness, or even self-preservation.

But what if the 10,000 things are not the problem? What if the question is how we remain connected to the self that can hold an intimacy with all that life presents? Perhaps that is where our practice begins.