Eckhart Tolle offers an interesting pointer in one of his books.
When you are struggling with some issue, the instruction is to ask:
What problem do I have, in this moment?
The initial response will likely be a thought: I’m stressed, I slept poorly, I ate the almond croissant etc.
But the question is to ask what problem you have, right now, in this moment. Not just then or in a few minutes.
Look again.
The body breathes and the heart beats without your input.
You think your thoughts are private—yet every word is borrowed from a common tongue, inherited from others.
You feel your feelings—but they arise unbidden, in shapes we all seem to share.
Your senses reach outward, but what they show you is what’s outside of you.
You believe in a solid self, a “me” at the helm—but look for it directly, and it slips through your fingers. What you find is a rotating cast, not a lone actor.
If I ask you to pay attention to any tension in your shoulders, something interesting usually happens.
They will spontaneously drop, with little intent on your part.
What happened? You paid attention and the holding broke into awareness. You realised you were actively maintaining it. The truth became apparent.
Becoming aware of a contraction is all that is needed to release it.
Adi-Da often talked about the self-contraction in this way. He would often use his fist to illustrate the contraction in action.
When you sit down to practice Vipassana meditation, you observe your moment to moment experience with the intention of seeing the three characteristics: anicca (impermanence, change), dukkha (unsatisfactoriness, suffering) and anatta (not-self).
More accurately, you are tuning into the 3Cs, as they are always already the case. This is not a philosophical exercise – the practice is to stay at the immediate sensate level of your experience, with a degree of mental calm that allows you to observe manifesting reality without getting caught up in it.