The crucial factor influencing how we can respond in a given situation seems to be the level of mindfulness we can bring to bear upon the moment. If we don’t care to be present, unconscious decision-making systems will function by default to get us through to the next moment, albeit in the grip of (often flawed and suffering causing) learned behaviors and conditioned responses. If, on the other hand, we can increase the amount of conscious awareness present by manifesting mindfulness, we expand the range of our possible responses. Even if disposed to anger, we can choose to act with kindness. This is the essence of our freedom in an otherwise heavily conditioned system.
Andrew Olendzki, Unlimiting Mind
When we examine this experience of opening, we find that we are expressing a part of ourselves that we may tend to overlook: we are expressing our ability to trust ourselves completely. In order to open — in meditation and in life in general — we must let go of our familiar thoughts and emotions, we must step out from behind the safe curtain of our inner rehearsals and onto the stage of reality, even if it’s for just a brief moment. When we open on the cushion, we renounce our attachment to our emotional security blanket, over and over again. We drop our pretense and our story lines and stand naked in the midst of uncertainty — the very essence of confidence itself.
J
The question is not, never, ever, whether or not we will be given challenges and limitations. We will. The question is, how will we hold them, how will we be changed, how will they shape us, what will we bring to the healing of them, what, if anything will be born in its place. 
The part of the mind that creates products is not the part of the mind that can grant us any lasting sense of happiness. The narrow often unconscious definition of humanity as primarily a producer and creator of products is fundamentally misconceived. All good art forms remind us of the broader horizons of existence that make sense of any of its particular artifacts …..The contemplative disciplines … are simply ways of learning to pay a profound attention to these outer patterns through disciplining the breath and the body at the same time. Eventually we learn not to choose between the inner and the outer world but live at a powerful frontier between these inner and outer correspondences.
