Instead of trying to straighten out their messes, a lot of people like to say that the messes don’t matter, because the mind will then open up to something bigger, and somehow the messes will take care of themselves.

"We have to pay very close attention to our intentions. It may seem like we’re are focusing on little tiny things when the vast space of the unconditioned is all around us, just waiting to be found, but you don’t find the unconditioned by getting spacey. You find it by paying very close attention to what you’re doing, catching yourself in the act of creating suffering and then learning how to let go, i.e., how to stop doing that. It’s in seeing unskillful intentions, learning to drop them, and dropping them with awareness: That’s where the knowledge for awakening will arise.

So it’s in looking at the details that you’re going to open up to something larger. A lot of people don’t like that idea. They’d rather just let go of their lives and messes they’ve created. Instead of trying to straighten out their messes, they’d like to say that the messes don’t matter, because the mind will then open up to something bigger, and somehow the messes will take care of themselves.

You’ve got to clean up your messes. There are no two ways around it. This means looking at parts of the mind that you ordinarily don’t like to look at — i.e., your motivations for doing things — because sometimes they’re much less than honorable. We don’t like to admit ourselves that we have dishonorable intentions, but there they are. You’re not going to get past them by denying them, because that just creates more ignorance, which leads to more suffering.

This is why meditation is a chastening project. As Ajaan Mun once said, when you meditate, when you start practicing, what you see is your defilements. You get a chance to study them. And you study not to accept them as they are. You accept them just to the extent that there they are, and you’ve got to do something about them.

That’s the other thing you’ve got to accept: that you can do something about these things. It may take time, take energy, take a lot of dedication, which is why this is a long-term project. That’s something you also have to accept. Once you accept it, you get to work."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Ardency"