I.46 — Relapse

The grip that was loosened last week will close again. Expect this. It is not a sign that the looking failed, or that the practice does not work, or that the earlier loosening was fake. Grips close because the conditions that grew them in the first place are mostly still around, and a hand does not stay open on its own any more than a door does.

There is no point in this practice, ever, at which a grip is gone for good. No stage, no number of years, no depth of looking arrives at a hand that simply stays open from then on without further attention. Anyone who claims to have reached that state has not described an achievement. They have described a new grip, on the claim itself, on the identity of being someone who is finished, and it is usually held tighter than any of the grips it replaced.

What is actually on offer is smaller and more useful: re-seeing. The same grip, looked at again, as many times as it takes, for as long as it keeps returning. This is not a defeat repeated. It tends to get faster with practice, the same way a familiar knot gets quicker to untie the tenth time than the first, even though it is, each time, the same knot.

Watch for the return of a grip you thought was settled. It will come. Meet it the same way as the first time.