When you notice you don't like something — do you get smaller?

By Simone Claridge · True Better You

I was in a room recently, gathered around someone I care about deeply. The intention was clear. Everyone there had come for the same reason — to hold a field of support, to offer something in the direction of her wellbeing.

And then something happened that I did not resonate with at all.

The form that arrived — the sound, the style, the way it was being offered — was not mine. I noticed it immediately. I did not like it. That was honest. That was real.

And I noticed something else.

Something in me tightened.

Not dramatically. Not obviously. But there was a contraction — a small withdrawal, a narrowing of the space I had been holding. The awareness that had been open to the whole room began organizing itself around the not-liking. And in that organizing, I became slightly smaller than I had been a moment before.

That is the thing worth sitting with.

Not whether I should have liked it. Not whether my preference was right or wrong. But what the preference did to the field I was carrying.

Because when I shrink around a like or dislike — when I tighten, when I divide — I am no longer holding everyone. I have handed the whole moment over to the preference. The like or dislike is now running what I can receive, who I can include, how much of the field I can be present to.

And the question that arrived quietly was not "can I like this?" It was:

Is this small enough to hold what I am here for?

I have noticed that the fixation on a like or dislike — the grip around it — can soften. Not through effort. Not through deciding to be more open. But when awareness rests in something deeper, the distance between the two poles begins to close. What was "I like" and "I don't like" as two separate, opposing things starts to lose that form. They merge into something more neutral. More unified. Not gone — but no longer the organizing principle of the moment.

And from there, something more interesting becomes available.

Not the preference itself, but the awareness of the movement underneath it. What is actually happening when I tighten around something I don't like? What is the quality of that contraction? What does it say about where I am drawing the boundary of myself?

Likes and dislikes become less interesting as destinations — I like this, I don't like that — and more interesting as pointers. Each one is a small signal about where awareness is currently fixing itself. Where it is holding on. Where it might be worth staying a little longer, not to resolve anything, but to see.

The room held everyone that day. The intention held. The person we came for was held.

And I stayed. Not by suppressing what I felt. Not by performing openness I didn't have. But by noticing the tightening — and asking whether I was willing to be larger than it.

Not always. But in that moment, yes.

That staying — that slight opening beyond the preference — is not a spiritual achievement. It is just a choice available to awareness when awareness knows it has more room than the thought currently filling it.

What is the awareness of this movement?

What remains when the question becomes quiet?

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With Mingjue love and warmth,
Simone

With gratitude to Grandmaster Pang Ming, Teacher Wei, and Teacher Xu, whose teaching this rests on.