When our focus is on what is, our experience opens up and becomes bigger, richer, and more complete. But when we focus on what is not (including the past, the future, or any thought about what should be), our experience of the moment contracts down and becomes much narrower and full of struggle and suffering, because inherent in our focus on what is not is the tendency to struggle with what is.

Most of the time we are opposed to what is and focused on what is not. Our life is often about how to make things better and more pleasureable, or how reduce things that are painful. We like to constantly evaluate our experience, by looking to see what's wrong and how it could be improved. We tend focus on what's wrong or on what could be changed to it to make it better. Therefore, our attention narrows and our awareness becomes very limited.

When we see how much effort we spend struggling with what is, the tendency is to struggle with that-to try to change that. We decide the solution is to change our tendency to try to change everything. But that is only more struggle: except now we are struggling with our tendency to try to struggle. In a sense, we suffer over the fact that we are suffering.

Another possibility is to notice how you suffer, without trying to change anything about it. Just allow that you don't allow much. Recognize that that is the way it is. This struggling is what we were conditioned to do; and this it turns out that this conditioning is also a part of what is.

Once we take a break form being in opposition to what is, it becomes possible to see how our struggling comes from the idea of a "me". Without the basic assumption that something is happening in "my" experience, there is no point in trying to change anything. Our struggle and effort to change what is makes sense only if there is a me. It is in service to maintaining the idea or image of a me. In fact, the struggle is what makes up the me. When the struggle stops, there is no me. All of our suffering is the means by which we maintain an identity.

Once we realize this, the tendency is to try to fix this-to try to change our belief about who we are. We focus on getting rid of identification, which is again, focusing on what is not. We are still suffering because now we are at war with our tendency to identify. Instead of being oriented toward and accepting of what is (our struggle with identification), we are oriented toward how we think it should be: I should know better than to be caught in identification; I should know who I really am.

Another possibility is to be really present to this tendency to identify, without making any effort to change it. If that's what is happening, then that's what is happening. You just let it be that way. You can even be amazed by it all, including the fact that there is a sense of a me. You see how unreal this me is, but you don't struggle to be rid of it. There's no longer an assumption that something is wrong that needs to be fixed. This subtle being with what is is what ends the suffering and brings us fully into the now.

When it is completely ok for things to be just the way they are,l including our identity, then naturally more of experience can be included in our awareness. If we just be present to and allow our identification and struggle, then it is also possible to notice something beyond all of that. We can call that Being.

So along with the struggle and suffering inherent in identification, is a much larger ground of Being in which everything is allowed. Our identity is just a thought or idea, but there is no need to judge or turn away from that idea. In addition to the struggling inherent in our identification, there is also present a profoundly rich ocean of Being, which is allows everything, including the "me". The struggle is only a tiny bit of our entire experience and even this struggle is allowed in the limitless presence of Being.

We can sometimes even notice what it is that is allowing It is Being that allows and that is what we truly are. This realization can be a very surprising jolt or a very simple sense of waking up to something very familiar. It is Being that has always allowed even when it seemed like you were doing it.

Paradoxically, what brings us beyond the struggle and unlocks the bigger view is realizing how much we enjoy identifying. Once we allow things to be the way they are, it is possible to admit that identification has been a lot of fun. The illusion of a separate self is an incredible act of creation. It has created the whole drama of human existence. It has inspired many of the great works of art and literature. We love to identify, but that doesn't mean we also don't suffer from it. This creation and projecting of a false identity-a me-is not a mistake. It's natural, spontaneous, and inherent in human nature. It's one of the richest parts of our experience-and there is also the even richer possibility of no longer mistaking the me as the totality of who we are. Identification isn't a mistake, and yet there is much more to life-and to us-than that experience. The larger Being that we truly are is always here.