Experiencing things is often good and refreshing. However, too many of us habitually cling to experience. Experience manifests as the “experience” and the “experiencer.” That separation creates and invites conflict and limitation. Experiencing almost inevitably invites recognition. To recognize a particular experience, one has to have and use prior knowledge about the fundamental parameters and attributes of that experience. So, experience usually involves the past. Stored, old thought processes are involved in experience… even if the experience seems new.
We jump from one experience to another. Like the donkey chasing after the carrot dangling from a pole that is secured to the donkey, we run after experience. The “experiencer” is the experience. We need not, contrary to what we were taught, perpetually chase after experience. A sagacious mind often is not what endlessly pursues experience. It, like a dog that sees the futility of chasing its own tail, does not endlessly chase after “one experience after another.” Real, dynamic meditation, is not another calculated experience. When it occurs, without effort, it is not merely what gropes and reaches for more experience. (And to avoid experience is another way in which the mind can easily get lost and distorted.) Real poise and balance require a mind that is truly attentive, sane, dynamic, alive, and untethered. Most people — having been raised in (and educated by) a mediocre society — don’t want to delve into this or bother.
Tom's Nature-up-close Photography and Mindfulness Blog 