The quote by Campbell below reflects the burden that was lifted from me (and continues to lift as I accept and sit with and evolve in my practice), especially since I come from that “other worldly” focus of a fundamentalist Christian background. Nietzche’s ideas were one of the first to influence this change in thinking, way back in college. Movement towards being in the now and accepting. Not a preconceived expectation. Bringing compassion into that moment . . .
Nietzche was the one who did the job for me. At a certain moment in his life, the idea came to him of what he called “the love of your fate.” Whatever your fate is, whatever the hell happens, you say, “This is what I need.” It may look like a wreck, but go at it as though it were an opportunity, a challenge. If you bring love to that moment — not discouragement — you will find the strength is there. Any disaster you can survive is an improvement in your character, your stature, and your life. What a privilege! This is when the spontaneity of your own nature will have a chance to flow.
Archive for December, 2008
shit happens – teaching happens
Dukkha is our best teacher.
It will not be persuaded by any pleading of misery to let go of us.
If we may say to a human teacher, “I don’t feel well….,” the teacher may reply, “I am very sorry, but if you want to go home, then you must go. If we say to dukkha, “Look, I don’t feel well…. I want to go home,”
dukkha says, “That’s fine, but I am coming along.”
There is no way to say goodbye to it unless and until we have transcended our reactions. This means that we have looked dukkha squarely in the eye and seen it for what it is: a universal characteristic of existence and nothing else.
The reason we are fooled is that because this life contains so many pleasant occasions and sense contacts, we think if we could just keep this pleasantness going dukkha would never come again. We try over and over again to make this happen, until in the end we finally see that the pleasantness cannot continue because the law of impermanence intervenes….
So we continue our search for something new, because everybody else is doing it too.
— Ayya Khema, When the Iron Eagle Flies
(still changing diapers, washing bottles, looking into precious eyes, smelling the tops of heads and not sleeping – it’s all good)
This week’s enlightenment
Clean bottles: change diapers 🙂
Repeat
(visiting family for the holidays – one month old twins)
As good as it gets ?
Ego is like a room of your own, a room with a view with the temperature and the smells and the music that you like. You want it your own way. You’d just like to have a little peace, you’d like to have a little happiness, you know, just “gimme a break.”
But the more you think that way, the more you try to get life to come out so that it will always suit you, the more your fear of other people and what’s outside your room grows. Rather than becoming more relaxed, you start pulling down the shades and locking the door. When you do go out, you find the experience more and more unsettling and disagreeable. You become touchier, more fearful, more irritable than ever. The more you try to get it your way, the less you feel at home.
–Pema Chodron, Start Where You Are
I can get sentimental over the holidays (I suppose it’s better than bitter and/or depressed). I have an affinity to certain timeless and transcendent lessons in childhood stories, The Grinch, Charlie Brown, Pee Wee’s Christmas (HAH!) . . . but the video below is a clip of my all time favorite. No speaking (but for a bit of music and song) – there is no need for words. Beautiful renderings in pastels and what I feel is the most HONEST lesson about life – joy, hope, imagination, clinging, sorrow and Impermanence.
Shut the F up
Since in order to speak, one must first listen, learn to speak by listening.
~ Mevlana Rumi Quotes from Rumi Daylight: A Daybook of Spiritual Guidance
What do you do to still that screaming monkey in your head, so you can hear – before opening your mouth?
My greatest regrets have been opening my mouth before having listened. My greatest regrets will continue to be opening my mouth before I have listened. In order to listen I do not need to quiet others. I need to turn attention to what arises within . . . and let it go.
Deep Breathes
Dirty Dawg
From, –Jack Kornfield, A Path with Heart
(Jack basically says it all, no need for much comment, so throw me a bone – I’m a novice at sitting)
For some, [the] task of coming back a thousand or ten thousand times in meditation may seem boring or even of questionable importance. But how many times have we gone away from the reality of our life?–perhaps a million or ten million times! If we wish to awaken, we have to find our way back here with our full being, our full attention. . .
In this way, meditation is very much like training a puppy. You put the puppy down and say, “Stay.” Does the puppy listen? It gets up and runs away. You sit the puppy back down again. “Stay.” And the puppy runs away over and over again. Sometimes the puppy jumps up, runs over and pees in the corner, or makes some other mess. Our minds are much the same as the puppy, only they create even bigger messes. In training the mind, or the puppy, we have to start over and over again.
Rubbermaid or Tupperware?
Have you ever witnessed a toddler fall?
Often you’ll notice that they do not cry until they look around and find their mother. It is only when they see their mother (or guardian) that they go running into safe arms and let out their cry. Why?
An evolved parent is a a sturdy and safe container for the child’s unpleasant emotions.
As we evolve in our practice, we too become better containers for the unpleasant things that arise.
To parent oneself can mean facing and confronting the disowned self and embracing it.
I came across this quote by Jack Kornfield from “Buddha’s Little Instruction Book” that made me think about this developmental process:
Even our anger can be held in a heart of kindness
From Brian Johnson:
Got this one from a Tony Robbins seminar (I think it was Date with Destiny):
You have any movies you just absolutely hated? Yah? Me, too.
Quick question: Would you go watch it 10,000 times?
Um. Riiiiiiiiight.
That’d be pretty stupid, eh?
So, another quick question: Why do we replay that horrible scene from our lives over and over and over and over and over and over again?
Time to go to a new movie, wouldn’t you say?
On November 8th and 18th I had posted an eloquent saying I came across:
“Open your hand and let the dead wood drop”
It is still a wonderful picture. It is a wonderful Practice .
Just opening my hand and letting go relaxes my body (my shoulders drop), I breathe and usually I smile.
It’s addictive – just observing my hand opening and closing.
It’s like open hands = an opening of my heart. There is a befriending of the moment.
(Probably because there is much I hold on to ; I return to myself as I do this, this simple movement. I practice it from time to time in my office at work. It’s a great one minute meditation. My yellow sticky note on my computer reminding me, says “open your hand”)
In practicing Qigong this morning, I was noticing my open hands. Noticing how they follow the energy, how they don’t try. There is no try, just do.
Here are a few words that follow in this vein, written better than I could have:
–Amadeus Sole-Leris, Tranquility & Insight
Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it. Make it your friend and ally, not your enemy. This will miraculously transform your whole life.
–Eckhart Tolle , The Power of Now
Thanks to “Breathe” for posting a comment on my last blog, which has me remembering what a wonderful shadow expression this film was:
Owned!
Owning up to your “shadow” – not a bad idea, can be a difficult process though. It’s the Holiday Season so get ready to face it, cause it is going to be in your face screaming a big “Fuck You”, which for me can easily mean, turning around and projecting it onto someone else (I mean wtf, this is the shadow – I ain’t gonna own it – that’s its point).
Tis the season to be with “family” and there’s nothing like family to bring out a little bit of my repressed features. The bigger the jerk, the more likely I’ll project my disowned self (hell, you should see me at work recently – it’s all – “I’m rubber, you’re glue”). But family D-r-a-m-a makes the stunts pulled at drag shows seem tame (and trust me, those queens know drama).
If you head over to http://www.IntegralLife.com, Kelly Sosan Bearer has written some great 101 articles on the Shadow. Really worth taking a look – even if you’re like me and spent quite a bit of time examining this issue over the years. “Hot on the Shadow’s Trail” also includes an informative 10 minute video by Diane Musho Hamilton. Here is an excerpt:
“There are several benefits to recognizing and working with our shadow qualities. For one, we are usually more effective when we are not projecting all over everyone and everything we encounter. By reclaiming our projections, we unburden others from our projections about them, and allow them to just be themselves, rather than as how we see them. In that way we gain more objectivity.
But possibly the most important reason to work with our shadow is that hiding our shadow from ourselves requires an extraordinary amount of energy. What could we do with all that liberated energy? Enjoy life more? Enjoy others more? Accomplish more because we aren’t being constantly triggered into a familiar drama? Maybe even make a developmental stage transition?”
I think one of the greatest benefits of examining and owning the shadow for me is that I have a great desire to open – and part of what the above excerpt points to – is that we are able to be more objective when we own our shadow. Wouldn’t it be great to say, “I don’t ALREADY know how you’re gonna act”, because you’re making it about yourself (your shadow) rather than them?
So in the end whether they are a jerk or not doesn’t really matter.
(sure, easier said than done – but you gotta start somewhere. And you have to have a bit of healthy ego development and sense of self to begin to even look at your dark side, otherwise you’re gonna go neurotic or even psychotic – which probably explains why some of those family members will never try this process.)
I am often asked by friends and clients what the difference is between the “sacrifice” that comes with loving another and that line you can cross where it becomes codependent – Or when is the act of making a boundary not really self care at all but just plain selfishness.
I have no easy answer. I still struggle with this at times myself. I do know that the more mindful and centered I am, the better I am at self care and care for others. I have been called selfish when I was in fact just making a boundary and I have been called caring when I was in fact feeding my ego’s need for approval by helping someone (not true altruism). Bottom line for me is, if I decide to slow down and “pay attention” I can usually discern the difference, or at the very least be open to hearing feedback from trusted friends/teachers.
Sure there are days where I choose to not learn, stay overwhelmed and generally just not give a fuck. But at least I know that’s what I’m doing now. It’s not as unconscious a behavior as it has been in the past. Awareness has its benefits, even without immediate change in behavior.
Below is another Daily Dharma from Tricycle Magazine that puts caring and co-dependence into a good perspective and explains it way better than I can. See you on the Middle Way:
Supporting Right Livelihood
The most important step in building support for right livelihood is giving back more than you get. It’s not really a matter of keeping track in some kind of ledger book. It’s more a function of the attitude that you adopt in caring for yourself and those around you. People tend to mirror the way they are treated. If you show an interest in helping and sharing, those around you will start helping you and sharing more with you. If you empathize with other people’s situations, they tend to empathize more with yours. . . . The key is to be active about it. Look for opportunities to cooperate. With a proactive attitude of supporting others, you will seldom experience a shortage of support from others.
A simple caution is in order, however, when it comes to giving to others. . . . Give more than you get, but not more than you’ve got.
— Claude Whitmyer, Mindfulness and Meaningful Work
from Everyday Mind, edited by Jean Smith, a Tricycle book
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