Allowing Meditation to Work on You

   During the group meditation, I had this idea of completely trusting and allowing the method to be fully experienced, as though it were working on me, rather than me working on "it". What I mean by this is that I normally approach familiar things with this preconceived notion of myself as the actor who is actively 'working' on something to somehow mould or shape it into something that is favorable. Quite opposite to the attitude of meditation, this attitude tends to assume that there is a desired end result to practice, and my goal is to somehow make my experience into the mould of this stylized, idealistic experience.
    How or what does 'allowing something to work on you' mean? I think it means taking something to be for the first time. When I was doing the yoga exercises at the opening, I just treated the exercise as though I had heard it for the first time. I savored the words from the instructor and allowed the words to guide my movements, whereas before I would simply interpret the words through the filter of my previous experience or habit. This way, I was really connecting to the sounds from the facilitator, rather than only connecting to memory or expectation.
      At times when I was trying to do the same with meditation practice, it felt a bit like trying to open a very tightly shut door. The door would give way at times, only to slam back in my face. And in those moments when I allowed myself to experience huatou as a raw question, it felt so releasing. What or who was being 'released'? All the self-reference points I cherish were being shifted and eased in that moment. The experience is like any tectonic shift: extremely painful and vulnerable, with a distinct fear of what is unfamiliar or new. And there is also this added sense that all my familiar reference points are falling away. What is this mind anyway? Can I really approach mind as it is unfolding now, without filtering it through these blinders?
     It's not so easy to allow something to work on me because deep down inside, I am desiring to hold onto something that I know is mine, or 'me'. Yet, when I catch those glimpses of 'something working on me', I feel such a relief, like I am taking off this heavy armor which I thought was supposed to protect me, but is really just unnecessary burden. What is really being lifted is expecting something to be a certain way and not tolerating any other way. In this sense, meditation becomes devotion to something that is such an integral way of being but has somehow become foreign to us. We have to somehow rediscover what is always there, but do so by throwing out our preconceptions of what must follow from a certain activity.