The phrase above was a "pull out" quote for an article about meditation. I don't know or remember the content of the article - I likely didn't actually read it - but the phrase entered my brain and began to bounce around like a pinball, setting off all kinds of lights and bells.
DING! The first light goes on and I am confronted by my own actual tendency to actually scratch my actual itches when I'm sitting in meditation. I can be notoriously twitchy, much to the "delight" of my fellow meditators and my own dismay.
This set in play the question of, "What is it that causes me to regularly indulge myself this way? Do I not understand this principle or is it something else?" I had to admit that I do it without bothering to think about it first. I just do it. It's a subtle kind of laziness.
This shed an insight into how this translates into our interactions with our environment in general. My day is full of little pings of input, itches of irritation, distraction and annoyance. We scratch them (react) without any thought to whether they require a response or not. What would happen if we just sat with them? Just let it be, without the necessity to counteract?
Being present with our interactive "itches" creates a space for us to develop a relationship with them, providing an opportunity for insight. When we don't indulge in automatically dismissing them with a reactive "scratch", an awareness forms around them. This awareness is the first step to clarity, and the breaking of bad interpersonal habits.
Just once today, fail to scratch that itch, and see what happens.
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