Open Embrace Meditations

Age -- What's in a Number?

2012-01-13T09:08:00.000-08:00

In the last class until late February we followed up on how this idea of linear time impacts our perceptions of who we are and the nature of life.

We talked about birthdays, especially those big threshold birthdays that seem ever more daunting. I have a friend who is turning 75 and is terrified of the age. She didn’t know why until she realized that a good friend had died at the age of 75. This is one of the ways we latch on to numbers and turn them into bogeymen.

My beloved aunt was sure she would die at the age of 73. After all her mother and sister both died at that age. Therefore, she would too. It made no difference when we would mention that both of them had been lifelong smokers with emphysema and related issues and she had never smoked. No, to die at 73 was her destiny.

So my phone call to her on her 74th birthday was sweet indeed. It was as if she had been given a whole new life. She is now in her mid-80’s and happier than she was in her 60’s when she foretold her own death.

The husband of a meditator in our group is quite certain he will die this year. He says he has always known that this is the age he will die. He may well do so. Any of us might die this year. Who knows? Like my aunt, nothing anyone says can dissuade him from this belief. So I told his wife that if this was the last year of his life, perhaps he could follow Stephen Levine’s book A Year to Live: How to Live this Year as if It Were Your Last. That way whether he dies this year or not, it will have been a rich skillful experience of living fully.

If we were not so attached to this imaginary time line, if we could sense into the spaciousness and compassionate nature of simply being alive in this moment, at one with the cycles and seasons of the natural world, we would be less inclined to vest an imaginary number or date with so much significance. We would be able to release set ideas about what it is to be a certain age, stop hemming ourselves in about what we are able or not able to do, based on a number rather than our sense of being in this moment.

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This is the last dharma talk until the end of February as our class is on hiatus. In the interim I encourage you to look over the topics on the right side of this blog and find ones of interest to you. Combine the reading of one post with a meditation before or after. This could be your daily practice, or you could set aside time once a week to read. There are 170 posts. Even for those of you who have read them all, you will find something new now, because you are in a different state of mind and facing different challenges than when you read it before. So explore the blog freely. And please comment at the bottom of any post you read. Just click on ‘QUESTIONS & COMMENTS.’ I would love to read what you have to share or have the opportunity to answer any questions you may have.

If you are new to meditating or feel the need of refreshment instruction, please notice that at the top of this blog there is a tab for a separate page that offers basic meditation instruction. The development of a daily practice of meditation is the greatest gift any of us can give ourselves, for through it we access wisdom, compassion and appreciation for this gift of life in all its seasons.

Happy Ever-New Moment!

2011-12-31T08:07:00.000-08:00

Here we are on the eve of the year 2012, and we come up against all our concepts around time. Some years we may get ourselves a little more fraught. Remember the year 2000 and the Y2K phenomenon where some people believed the whole world would electronically shut down at the stroke of midnight due to some early programmers lack of foresight? And now here we are again on the eve of another year that at least in some circles has a hint of ‘The End’ about it. 2012 marks ‘the end’ on the Mayan calendar. Modern day Mayans say it means the end of an era not the end of the world. Of course, we just went through a year when at least one much publicized soothsayer said the end would happen in 2011, and the predicted date passed by unnoticed, not once but twice!

I looked up how many end of the world predictions there have been, and came up with over 150, a third of them in my life time. So end time predictions are as old as time itself.

But when you think about it, time isn’t all that old. Calendars indicate no more than 6000 years of marking a linear passage of days, months and years. Before that there were undoubtedly periods in civilizations where time was kept, but it was all relative to their particular culture. It’s human nature to track sunrises and moon transitions. A person alone in a cell will mark each morning on the wall. It’s a way of orienting ourselves in the world, a particular pattern we humans are prone to. But time -- the idea that it is now 11:00 AM, Thursday December 29, 2011, is not, and never has been a real thing. It is a concept that was not discovered, but invented!

Our linear clock time, where we account for hours, minutes and seconds is a much more recent invention. The minute hand was reportedly invented less than 500 years ago. Pause for a moment and imagine a world without minutes in it. Can you notice any change in the body? A release of tension? A sense of spaciousness? I do.

We need no better example of time being pure invention than the fact that Samoa is eliminating a whole day on their calendar. They are skipping Friday, December 30, 2011 all together in order to put themselves into the same time zone as Australia, their main business partner. What better proof that time is an agreement for convenience. It just wasn’t convenient to always be on a different day. It probably caused incredible confusion.

It was another business decision to avoid confusion that formalized our agreement of time’s measure. When trains came into common use, traveling from town to town, the railroad company managers recognized that it wasn’t working with each town having their own idea of what time it was. Whose time would be used to determine arrivals and departures? All those missed trains, frustrated passengers and ticket sellers made them decide to come to an agreement about time. So time is a made up agreement between people for the convenience of being able to meet, travel and conduct our business together in a workable fashion. It’s a wonderful invention! It’s made so much of what we do possible. But it’s important to remember that it truly is just an invention.

There are plenty of places even today where clock time does not dictate behavior. In small communities, especially where life is lived primarily out of doors, people don’t need a clock. They can see when everyone is congregating around the campfire. They use the sun or moon’s positions, and their own internal body clocks to decide what’s next. There’s a communal synchronicity that arises akin to how a whole flock of geese know to take off from a pond at the same moment.

For the rest of us living in urban settings, connected by technology, we may be more attuned to the universal atomic clock where the pulsating atoms held at a stable temperature keep a regular measurable beat, and visible on our cell phones. Our current technology is so precise in its ability to measure that we begin to believe this form of measuring is more than just an invented convenience for meeting, a handy tool for scientific exploration and documentation, a useful mental construct upon which to place our collective and individual memories and plans. We believe it to be real.

Time & Identity
When we get entangled in time as if it were real, it becomes very embedded in our sense of self, individually and collectively. At some point in our early childhood we become attached to the idea of being a certain age. My little granddaughter doesn’t know she is almost 22 months old. That is not a part of who she knows herself to be...yet. She takes the little clock I keep by my chair and uses it as a cell phone to chat with imaginary friends. The clock has no meaning yet.

But soon the clock will start having significance to her. The year she was born, 2010, will have meaning to her. In some as yet undetermined way it will be a part of how she perceives herself, how she defines who she is. This is one of the ways we develop a sense of identity.

Take the baby boom for example -- those born between 1946 and 1964. What is really just a statistic, the marked post WWII increase in births, early on became an identity. Generations are identified not just within the family unit -- great grandparents, grandparents, parents, children, etc -- but whole same-age groupings are lumped together in schools and develop a unique cultural signature and identity that is sometimes stronger than their familial identity. Does being born into a generation lock us in to certain traits?

In the Chinese calendar, everyone born in the same year is said to have the same characteristics. And of course western astrology divides people into groups based on what time of year they were born. It is challenging to escape certain identity associations rooted in when we were born, if only because others react to us based upon it.

All this formalizing of time’s measure, as well as the identifying with specific dates such as the celebration of our birthdays, makes time seem very real indeed, as if it were a law of physics. But it’s still just a convenient convention created by humans, and it behooves us to remind ourselves of that. The best way to remind ourselves is to go out in nature.

In nature our linear measure of time disappears. Instead we experience a tuning in to cycles and seasons. But what about the tree that grows from a sapling, then lives hundreds maybe thousands of years? That is the passage of time, is it not? But is it on a timeline? Or is it still in the rhythm of cycles and seasons -- the birth, growth, death, decay, birth cycle of regeneration, just a bigger cycle on a grander scale? The earth itself is in a constant state of rotation around the sun. There is no straight line! Only circles, cycles.

Among other species there is a season for every activity, and a role to play in relation to the season. For humans, the female menses is one aspect of our being tuned to cycles and seasons, but now even that can be engineered, if inconvenient. But if we stay present with our own bodies and our own experience, we can begin to notice the cyclical nature of our being, how we cycle between active and passive, outgoing and inward turning, working and playing, intake and output. We can attune ourselves to our own natural rhythms, if we are present to pay attention. If we are asked, “Are you hungry?” do we consult our stomachs or the clock?

Our relationship with food is a good example of how so many of us lost our sense of natural cycles and seasons. Our ancestors relied on the natural world completely, and by necessity had to be in tune with the rhythms of the wild. The advent of agriculture, and the shift to being attuned to planting and harvesting seasons made a major change in what we ate and when we ate it. For those of us who grow our own food or purchase the bulk of our foods from farmers’ markets, this is still true to varying degrees. But for most of the modern day population, especially those living in densely populated areas, eating is not a seasonal activity. Whatever is not in season here is still available at the supermarket, shipped from somewhere else in the world. And those who rely primarily on processed, frozen or factory-canned foods may feel no connection at all between food and seasons.This creates a certain sense of sameness that is out of sync with the rest of nature. It dulls our senses and makes us more reliant on the clock and the linear idea of time ‘passing.’

So we mark this passage of time with celebrations of specific dates in history when certain things occurred -- the birthday of a historic or religious figure, the winning of a battle, the start of a revolution, etc. And for many people the passage into a calendar new year is high on the list of celebrations. Any excuse for a party, I say! And by the way, how cool was that on New Year’s Eve 2000 tuning in every hour on the hour to watch each time zone aglow with celebration as the new year rolled towards us here on the west coast of North America? Very cool indeed! Our little blue marble of a planet at its communal celebratory pinnacle of interactive rejoicing that the world did not shut down even though a new millennium had begun.

But aside from surviving, what are we really celebrating on New Year’s Eve? It is the penultimate moment of being perched on the edge of the ‘future’ in this strangely linear construct of time we collectively use as the primary organizing principle of our lives.

For many of us this marking of the passage of one year into the next is very powerful. We package up the year that’s passed, judge it as good or bad, and the worse it is the more ready we are to get past it. So we are often celebrating in a sense of good riddance, and a hopefulness that somehow this coming year will be different, better. We make resolutions to be different, to change a habit, and feel that we have been given a clean slate. I know this can be very powerful because I quit smoking almost 40 years ago at the stroke of midnight at the beginning of a new year, and have never smoked again.

The only problem with this is that if we falter in our resolution, and so often we do, we may feel like we have to wait for a whole year to try again! Wouldn’t it be more powerful to be attuned to our own inner rhythms and to sense when we have the strength of intention to make a change, rather than letting some collaborative concept such as New Year’s be the determinant? When I quit smoking I did it with a friend. After a few days she gave up and is smoking still. What was the difference? I had a stronger motivation because I had decided I wanted to get pregnant, and while it was very difficult for me to quit for myself, it was quite easy to give it up for my future baby. So it didn’t have all that much to do with it being New Year’s after all, and that’s something that’s important to remember.

As meditators, our practice is to stay in the moment. This moment has an eternal quality, the eternal now. We are ever and always right here right now, where everything is alive, activated by our senses, vibrant and potent. When our awareness wanders into the past or the future, we know that those are just mental constructs that do not exist. The past is a complex web of memories that is subject to interpretation, and the future is a complex web of hopes and fears that try to define as yet unlived experience. None of the senses exist in either the past or the future. And when we try to live our lives in the past or the future we are dis-empowered, for only in this moment do we have the power to co-create the world into being. As we live more fully in the moment, we recognize the value of being able to learn from the past and to plan for the future, but we also know how seductive and sometimes destructive it can be to attempt to dwell in either place that exists only in our minds.

Clock time is useful, there’s no doubt about it! But we want to see it clearly, as the convenient conceptual construct that it is, and not succumb to the belief that it is real. When we believe our lives to be on a time-line, rather than a part of the ongoing cycles of nature, we are always entering ‘the future,’ a blank slate filled with predictions, hopes and fears, and never is the future more intimidating or promising than when we are perched on the edge of a coming year.

Most of us see 2012 as an entity unto itself. It already has quite a personality, what with the diire predictions based on some ancient Mayan calendar maker’s mathematics. In the US, it’s a presidential election year, with all that that entails in the way of news, ads, mailers, speeches, conventions, discussions, volunteering, voting, celebrating or commiserating. But the year also has a personality for each of us in our own lives. Perhaps we have planned trips or are expecting babies in the family. This gives the year a certain anticipated shape.

But it is all just plans and anticipations at this point, isn’t it? There’s no point in living it in our minds. That only leaves us with a comparing mind when the actuality occurs. We are stuck measuring the difference between what we had expected and the moment lived. And living in anticipation has a quality of using up the year before it’s even begun, especially if we have made a number of trips around the sun. The coming year can feel already spent, with little promise of spontaneity or surprises, except for feared mishaps, health challenges and deaths. How dreary! How much sweeter and richer it is to give ourselves a chance to discover each moment of our lives anew, by resting our awareness fully in the here and now, relaxing and releasing the tension that is the way our body holds the past and the future.

We can redefine our relationship with the concept of time, by recognizing it for the convenient concept it is, and not defining ourselves by it.

Putting time in proper perspective, we can live deeply, richly, fully in this moment -- aware of the pivotal personal power of every moment to determine the direction we take, the decisions we make -- and let the future, that pretense of linear timeline, rest lightly in our awareness.

So I wish you a Happy New Year, but even more so, I wish you 'Happy ever-new moment!'

Happy Solstice!

2011-12-22T13:17:00.001-08:00

Winter Solstice

The following is a poem I wrote nineteen years ago. At that time I was frustrated because every celebration of winter solstice, a natural phenomenon that has great meaning to many people, was focused on the return of the light. As a Buddhist practitioner, learning how to be present with what is here and now, I could see that was is present right now is darkness. This is the shortest day and the longest night in the northern hemisphere. (Happy Summer Solstice to you in the southern hemisphere!)
Since then this poem has been shared at many a winter solstice celebration. Feel free to share it, keeping in mind that in the spirit of taking only what is freely given we always include the poet’s name on any poem we share with others.

In Celebration of the Winter Solstice

Do not be afraid of the darkness.
Dark is the rich fertile earth
that cradles the seed, nourishing growth.
Dark is the soft night that cradles us to rest.
Only in darkness
can stars shine across the vastness of space.
Only in darkness
is the moon’s dance so clear.
There is mystery woven in the dark quiet hours,
There is magic in the darkness.
Do not be afraid.
We are born of this magic.
It fills our dreams
that root, unravel and reweave themselves
in the shelter of the deep dark night.
The dark has its own hue,
its own resonance, its own breath.
It fills our soul,
not with despair, but with promise.
Dark is the gestation of our deep and knowing self.
Dark is the cave where we rest and renew our soul.
We are born of the darkness,
and each night we return
to the deep moist womb of our beginnings.
Do not be afraid of the darkness,
for in the depth of that very darkness
comes a first glimpse of our own light,
the pure inner light of love and knowing.
As it glows and grows, the darkness recedes.
As we shed our light, we shed our fear,
and revel in the wonder of all that is revealed.
So, do not rush the coming of the sun.
Do not crave the lengthening of the day.
Celebrate the darkness.
Here and now. A time of richness. A time of joy.

- Stephanie Noble
stephanienoble.com

This time of year the darkness provides an opportunity to slow down, but do we?
If we take a slower pace, if we give ourselves our meditation practice and then extend that sense of timeless awareness that arises from it into our experience of this season, it does indeed become merry, joyous and filled with an inner light.

The poem talks about ‘our own inner light’ -- what does this mean?
We often talk in class about our inner wisdom, our Buddha nature, our most authentic self -- well this inner light is the same. Our inner wisdom has the quality of light. First metta, loving-kindness, has the infinite quality of light, shedding light everywhere, not picking and choosing who is worthy of the light of our loving kindness. This kindness and it’s companion compassion (karuna) arise naturally as light and spreads without effort. So light is very much a quality of metta.

Awareness also has the quality of light. When we develop awareness we are casting light in the darkness of our habitual thoughts and patterns. This is both a floodlight of awareness, when we understand our interconnection with all that is; and a spotlight, when we are able to focus on a particular aspect of something and discern what is going on more clearly, seeing previously hidden connections and associations, seeing how assumptions we have relied on don’t hold up when we are really paying attention and noticing. We can see more clearly and more deeply with this light of awareness.

One morning this week, I awoke at 5 AM and, thinking it was later, I got up and opened the curtains so that the sunrise would lighten the room as I meditated. But what I discovered was the stars shining so brilliantly in the western sky, stars that I am not used to seeing there. I am no astronomer, but I could see that the constellations were in a very different position, and also that the sky was very far from sunrise. Even as dark as mornings are this time of year, I could tell it was very very early. But I was drawn to throw on some warm things and go outside and stand in the deep darkness with those brilliant stars. And they were so bright that even the neighbors’ bright security lights across the street could not dim their brilliance. And I really felt the truth of the poem, how ‘Only in darkness can stars shine across the vastness of space.’

This is a very special season, both a season of sharing and celebration, and a season of quiet. In this season of darkness the faintest light of awareness can be more noticeable, more amplified.

In this season the sense of joyous loving kindness can bubble forth and express itself in such good will and generosity, reminding us of our truest nature. We can find our true selves under the tree of being! The greatest gift of all.

So I wish you all a very Happy Solstice! May the awareness of your inner light bring joy to all the holidays you celebrate -- Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, New Years Eve -- and all the moments in between the celebrations, when you are a celebration unto yourself.

Releasing Tension

2011-12-18T08:13:00.000-08:00

In last Thursday’s class we explored the tension we hold in our bodies. During meditation we practiced relaxing and releasing any tension we found, just as we normally do as we enter our meditation. But this time we purposely made note of any places we find that chronically hold tension so that it will be easy to revisit at any time, especially in a stressful moment.

We can pause when we’re feeling overwhelmed or stressed and notice how scrunched up our shoulders have become, for example. Releasing physical tension releases our grasping onto whatever fear-based thoughts or emotions are adding suffering to our experience. But the places we chronically hold tension are usually somewhat tight even in relatively relaxed moments.

Exercise:
Close your eyes and sense into your body to see where there is tightness -- not post-exercise muscular tightness, but chronic tension. It could be in your furrowed brow, your squinting eyes, your pursed lips or clinched teeth. It could be in your locked jaw, your stiff neck or your shoulders hovering up around your ears. It could be in your fisted hands or your tumultuous stomach. What is true for you in this moment?

Having noted one or two places that are holding tension now, set the intention to check in several times during the day, especially at moments of stress, to notice the area(s) again. Developing a habit of noticing physical sensation is a key to bringing ourselves into the present moment, and noticing tension is particularly useful, because we can skillfully let go of the tension to the best of our ability. We can also use the tension as a gateway for self-discovery, which I’ll talk more about later.

RELEASING TENSION
Many of us feel that in order to release tension we need to eliminate those things in our lives that are causing the tension. This is skillful to the degree that we understand we have the power to change our lives, to take different turns that are more attuned to our deepest values so that we are not conflicted. That internal conflict causes stress and therefore tension. But believing that there is some external cause and some external cure for tension -- a massage, a yoga class, a tropical vacation -- is dis-empowering. We have the capacity to cope with the tension that arises in our bodies!

Noticing
Becoming aware of the tension in our body is one of the most skillful things we can do to change up the energy, to come fully into the present moment and to develop clarity and compassion. Why? Because tension is restriction. It is a pattern of reactivity that is mirrored in our mental and emotional activity. The tight knots of tension we hold in our body are in direct correlation to the tight knots of circular, fear-based convoluted thinking that we have going on in our minds. Both are ways we hold onto thoughts and feelings about the past and the future, using them as fuel for our current decisions and activities. But this is fossil fuel! It’s very polluting! Besides, the mileage is pitiful and this fear-based fossil fuel causes frequent breakdowns. So instead we want to access our infinitely more powerful and life-affirming, joy-affirming energy to fuel our lives. Access to this energy is always here, now and relaxed.

So we take a moment to sense in to our body. This could be a moment standing in the elevator, standing in the grocery store checkout line, or waiting on hold on the phone. We don’t lack for opportune moments in this busy modern life! We just don’t recognize them as the opportunities they are!

When we recognize we are in this opportune moment, we then tune in to the overall sensation of the body. Perhaps this is a neutral or pleasant sensation of all systems fully functioning, a sense of well-being -- not hyper-caffeinated nor sluggish, but healthy, perhaps even radiant with life flow. In this state it is easy to be present, easy to smile, easy to take pleasure in the smallest things we notice in our experience.

But perhaps instead, as will often happen, we notice that the energy level is more to one extreme or the other. This is important noticing. This is not a fault-finding mission. It is not a directive to get out of the grocery store line and go get an energy-boosting beverage to change the situation. Instead we focus on the inhalation of our natural breath to raise our energy, feeling the incoming air oxygenating our system; or if our energy is frenzied, we focus on the exhalation, letting the outgoing breath release the excess energy, leaving us feeling calmer and more balanced.

Then we notice any specific area(s) where we are holding tension, the way we just did in the exercise. We don’t have to close our eyes to do this if that isn’t convenient. We can simply turn our awareness inward. Again if there is no tension, just the overall sense of well being, that’s fine. We can go on about our day taking pleasure in this sense of well being. But if we notice a sensation of tightness, we can take a moment -- literally a few seconds to skillfully release some or all of that tension. With practice we develop the positive habit of noticing, relaxing and releasing tension in the body.

RELEASING
When I lead meditation, I usually guide the group in an overall body scan, using a variety of words to encourage relaxing and releasing tension. I suggest my students notice which of these words is the most powerful and effective. For example, those of us who took Lamaze childbirth classes may still be cued to respond well the word ‘relax!’ However, we were trained to respond to our mate-coach saying the word. I am sure if my husband said that word today, I would respond with full relaxation. But it’s not skillful in our practice to depend on someone else to provide the key for our release!

Here are some of the words I use.
Relax.....Release....Let go....Soften....Melt

This last word, melt, has an image associated with it. I will sometimes tell my students, especially in the summer, to imagine the spine as a popsicle stick and the muscles as the ice cream melting on the stick.

Try these words out for yourself and see which one(s) are most effective in releasing tension. There may be others that you think of that are even more effective. Whatever you find that works for you, remember to use it! Each of us is developing our own set of valuable skills, our toolbox of meditative techniques, that through our own experience, we know serve us. The word that most effectively releases built-up tension is indeed a valuable tool.

COMPASSION
As we quiet down through meditative practice, we can begin to notice all the sensations that compose this thing we call tension. We can find that each area of sensation is a whole series of smaller, subtler sensations that we begin to notice if we simply sit with the experience. This level of refined noticing is skillful, but even more important than the degree to which we notice is the compassion we are able to bring to our noticing.

Sometimes we may think of tension as the enemy and we just want to get rid of it. But tension is just the way our body holds unprocessed painful memories and anxious thoughts about the future. When we are doing self-inquiry, this is a gateway to insight and understanding. Compassion allows us to relax, release, soften and let go. It isn’t about pushing away or getting rid of anything.

One student brought up the challenge of being both compassionate with ourselves and still fulfill obligations, like the commitment of getting to work on time. A sense of needing to meet others’ expectations, is a common source of tension in our lives, so let’s look at it more closely.

The tension that arises is rooted in the fear that we will be judged and found wanting, and that this judgment will render us unacceptable. If we are unacceptable, we will be set out on the proverbial ice floe and left to die. That may sound like a crazy extreme, but this is what we believe in some form or another, even though we would word it very differently. That is why this area is all so dire and why we are willing to sacrifice our health and well being for the sake of meeting commitments. We are afraid of being separate. We are afraid of disappearing. Fears seem to come in all shapes and sizes but they all have that common denominator. We don’t want to be cast out. Even if ‘ve vant to be alone,’ it is on our own terms, and may to a certain degree be rooted in our discomfort with the tension we feel around others, based in this fear of being labeled unacceptable. Even if our voluntary solitude arises out of a sense of being comfortable in our own skin, a sense of connection with the natural world, or a rich inner creative life that needs solitude to work, we can get so out of the habit of being with people that we are uncomfortable with them. Or we may be used to working on our own and when we are working with people or for people, suddenly the tension comes in, even though we are doing exactly the same kind of work we were doing before. It something interesting to explore.

Through noticing and being present, it is quite possible to realize that we are inherently an intrinsic expression of all being, that we can never be separate, and that our ultimate disappearance from this form, just like all of nature, is simply energy transferring to another form. Think of a drop of water flying above a cascade. We each are that drop of water! We each believe ourselves to be separate, but in fact we are and always will be an inseparable part of being, just as the water drop is part of the river, the ocean, the clouds and the rain. We are not separate ever, so we can let go of the fear of any cause or condition making us so.

When we understand our connection to all of life, when we feel the life force flowing through us, then when we make commitments we fulfill them naturally as an infinite connected conduit of open-hearted spacious loving energy. We do not become undependable, blissed-out or flaky, so self-involved we forget our commitments! We instead fulfill our commitments out of this connected sense of infinite love, out of mutual respect and a sense of honoring the time and feelings of others with whom we are co-creating life and experience. Out of love, we arrive where we say we will be at the time we said we would be there. From that sense of connection, we honor other people’s time as we do our own, so we show up on time, and when that’s not possible we let them know as soon as we know that we won’t be able to do so. We can fulfill commitments without drudgery or dread, simply by shifting into the more authentic core of caring and compassion from which we made the commitment in the first place.

(When in class I suggested that we can fulfill our commitments compassionately, allowing our intuitive sense of connection with others to guide us, the way birds fly in unison, just at that moment a bird landed on the deck rail, and hung around as if to hear more about it!)

How do we know if we are operating from love or fear? Easy! Sense in to the body and notice if there is a tight knot of tension somewhere. That’s the first clue to operating out of fear. It is so habituated that even advanced meditators will still hold residual patterns of tension that need to be noticed and released. If we judge the tension as a sign of our unskillfulness as meditators, then we are missing the concept. Let the tension be a teacher! Instead of finding fault with it, let it be a guide to the opportunity to sense in, relax, release -- or whatever word is most powerful for you -- and be grateful to be so instantly ushered into the present moment, where we have the power of our intrinsic interconnection to create space for all experience to exist within our open embrace.

TENSION & SELF-INQUIRY
Developing the ability to sense into physical sensation and to notice tension is skillful not just in order to release it. We can use the tension we notice as a springboard for self-inquiry. Why? Because tension is the way our body holds painful memories and anxious thoughts of what could happen in the future. If that sounds strange, try it for yourself to see if it’s true.

Exercise:
If possible have something to take notes with in case you want to have a record of your experience for future reference. Now close your eyes and notice tension in your body. Once you have located tension, then continue reading. (If you don’t notice any tension, try this at another time.)

Once you’ve located an area of tension, stay aware of the tension while allowing your mind to roam freely. Notice what images, memories or other thoughts arise. Make note of them -- a word, a phrase, a short sentence will do.

Your thoughts and emotions will go to the very source of your tension. Sometimes it’s very clear, especially after a period of meditation, and sometimes it’s more challenging, especially if some aspect of self is investing in this ‘woo-woo stuff’ being wrong. But if you have come this far, you are more powerful than that little nay-saying aspect, so continue to explore. (Note to inner nay-sayer: Biologically speaking, this all makes sense -- ask a neurologist or brain research scientist.)

Okay, back to the exercise: You might ask yourself, ‘What fear is present in this thought or emotion?’
Notice the wording. We could say ‘What am I afraid of?’ and that’s okay, but this wording can activate identity-based concerns (‘I’m no scaredy-cat!’) that can be distracting. So we can more accurately recognize fear as a free-floating agent in our experience rather than something that is intrinsically us.

Remember that the fear might present as something that has a whole story wrapped around it. Notice the story, Maybe write down a brief note about the story for further exploration, but also be looking for that common denominator fear of disappearing that is at the root of all fears we have, no matter what our story is. The story is useful because it is full of clues about the way we have shaped that fear. We can ask questions of the story, such as “Is this true?” and “How do I know this is true?” We do this with compassion and respect. We are not pooh-poohing the story, but we are holding it up to the light and seeing it, maybe for the first time, with clarity. Most of us have never questioned our stories. We have instead built our identity around them.

For the purposes of this dharma talk, I am just showing how tension can be a teacher, giving us access to a treasure trove of tightly held answers to the questions we have about why we suffer so. There are many other dharma talks on this blog about self-inquiry and self-exploration and I encourage you to check them out from the list of labels in the column on the right.

Whether we are noticing tension to release it in order to come more fully into the present moment, or we are noticing it to do an exercise in self-inquiry, this kind of awareness practice is highly beneficial. It is only effective however when we experience it for ourselves, so I hope you haven’t just read this post, but have done the exercises, noticing your own areas of chronic tension, experimenting to find what words or images are most effective for you to release tension, and have tried out doing a little self-exploration using tension as a gateway to discovery. If not, you can right now go back and actually experience it.

These dharma talks are only adjuncts to the experiential practice of meditation and self-exploration. It is your own development of meditative skills that will make the difference in your life. To read without practice is said to be like fixating on the finger pointing at the moon rather than seeing the moon itself.

So dance in the moonlight of your own awakening! Though we all dance together in a beautiful pattern of life loving itself, no one else can dance your dance!

Inner Exploration with Awareness and Compassion

2011-12-11T10:31:00.000-08:00

This week in class we did an experiential exercise on compassion. After meditation practice, we sat in the resulting inner peacefulness and each explored our circular thinking around the holidays or anything else that might be causing stress right now. Meditation offers a timelessness, so that we can see in ‘slow-motion’ how the thoughts spiral from statement to associative image representing a past experience perhaps to an associative emotion to an associative sensation, etc. By creating a spacious field of awareness -- not pushing anything away but making an effort not to become entangled in them either -- we give ourselves truly valuable information -- the best gift of the season!

After the exploration reveals something of interest, we focus on holding what has been revealed in compassionate curiosity. Developing compassion and loving-kindness is the most important aspect of any self-exploration. Without it we are like bulls in the proverbial china shop. With spaciousness and compassion we can discover the ways we activate suffering in our lives and are able to hold it gently and see it clearly, from a spacious perspective that understands the universality of whatever we notice. In this way what appears is not threatening, nor is the idea of letting it go. It is simply a natural mental phenomena that arises and falls away. Even the tightest tangles, as uncomfortable as they are and as easily as we get lost in them, are still just natural mental phenomena -- in most cases leftover patterns that were created out of perceived need, but that no longer serve us, and in fact now keep tripping us up. This ability to see clearly with compassion is the greatest gift of meditation for self-exploration.

In our class discussion afterwards we explored the patterned reactions to situations, people, etc. in our lives that we noticed arising. This kind of discussion is quite different from sharing the ‘story’ -- the details, the ‘he said, she said’ -- that we might talk about with friends or family. Here we share the universal experience of our process of exploration and discovery rather than what can amount to gossip and too much distracting personal information. In this way we are all helped to recognize the common patterns we all experience rather than getting caught up in the personal particulars that vary from person to person, that might throw us into the pattern of wanting to offer advice to ‘solve’ a problem. We are practicing the development of a practice that brings about skillful long term insights. Solving a specific problem leads us to believe in the ‘if only’s of any situation. If only I could fix this, then I would be happy. Baloney. We are not about fixing situations. Another situation will arise that seems just as problematic. The skill we are developing is how to be in skillful relationship with all the situations that might arise in life.

No particular situation or person is the cause of our suffering. The cause is the pattern of reacting and the tangled circular thinking that create sticky cobwebs in our minds that are simply universal mental phenomena. It is for the most part fear-based reactivity developed when we were young that is no longer useful, as we now have more skillful compassion-based means to resolve challenging issues and dissolve suffering. It is not who we are, so we can look at it dispassionately, without feeling threatened, accused, or fearful of losing identity.

Here we are approaching the winter holidays that for so many of us add a whole additional layer of stress and expectation to an already busy life. One student noticed that she felt she had to give a ‘command performance.’ This resonated through the group, and perhaps it resonates with some of you as well. It prompted a whole discussion of the ways in which we demand perfection from ourselves. If this does resonate, either around the holidays or simply in life, bring to mind occasions when you have had a really great time at someone else’s home. Was it because the silverware was shiny or the guest soaps and towels perfectly aligned? Of course not. Often the best times are had in homes that feel less formally prepared. Energetically there is less tension, less special effort for us as ‘guests.’ The hosts are genuinely happy to see us, are fully present to enjoy being together, and this makes us feel more welcome than any special preparations.
We can also remember that we are always, even if we are completely unaware of it, modeling behavior for others. If we demand perfection of ourselves, are we not saying that this is the standard by which we will judge them? So letting go of this ‘command performance’ demand on ourselves releases it from others as well. Now that’s a real gift!

How do we become skillful during such periods without losing the joyful social nature of the season? This is something each of us can discover through noticing what aspects bring joy, what aspects bring anxiety, and where do we over-effort to little effect. It’s skillful to make notes about what worked and what didn’t, a message to ourselves ten months into the future. And it’s skillful to keep the conversation open and in flux about what traditions are working for our ever-changing families and other groups we may celebrate with. Tradition is heart-warming but may become oppressive, the way a cozy room can, at another time, seem suffocating. Notice what’s true for you and inquire what’s true for your loved ones!

Our meditation practice creates the space to quiet down and notice what is happening in our minds and in our lives. Once we see clearly, with infinite compassion, we are empowered to shift, enlighten and illuminate every season of our lives.

Three Aspects of Mindfulness Meditation Practice

2011-12-03T09:44:00.000-08:00

Last Thursday we spent more time than usual in class practicing, exploring and clarifying three aspects of meditation practice. (Blog readers should know that these dharma talks -- over 160 now -- are only one part of the class. The core of the class is experiential, the practice of meditation itself. I encourage anyone who has been finding value in reading the blog but hasn’t either developed a personal practice or joined a meditation group, to take that step now. I work with individuals and small groups to develop or refine a practice. Reading about it is not enough!!! )

The first aspect we discussed is our concentration practice, training our minds to stay focused on a specific experience, like the breath, for example. Even as beginning meditators we can follow our experience of this wise effort. We can notice when we have lost our focus and compassionately bring our attention back to the focus. If accessing a concentration point in the senses is difficult, I suggest focusing on the tongue or a foot and doing subtle movement -- running the tongue around the teeth, wiggling the toes, etc. -- to create a stronger sensation to focus on. Then reduce the movement and see if you can stay focused on the more subtle sensation. Then cease the movement and see if you can still notice sensation. In this way we build our ability to focus. Because the breath is for most of us a neutral, dominant and reliable sensation, it is the concentration focus most in this tradition choose for the main body of their meditation. But it is not the only one possible, and any sensation can be a focus for concentration practice.

The second aspect of the practice is a more generalized awareness of spacious infinite energy. Certain kinds of meditation practices can take us right to this ‘bliss state,’ as can various substances and activities. Vipassana meditation practice is not about attaining a state of bliss, as if it were a tropical vacation to escape from the world. Perhaps after such a ‘vacation’ the regular world feels more tolerable for a time, but then we need to escape again. Vipassana or mindfulness meditation is not about escape. It is actually the opposite. It is very useful for people whose minds are always escaping into daydreams, etc. because it is about being truly present here and now so that we find the joy in every moment of our lives. This is the wisdom of no escape. There is nothing to escape from when we discover how to be fully present with our experience, whatever it is.

So many people spend so much time finding a means to escape out of fear of being present with their experience. Younger meditation students complain that it is hard to find young people who are not drunk or stoned most of the time, meaning it is hard for them to find young people who are not afraid to face their lives sober. Those who take this route can blame the stresses of modern life, but at some point we need to remember that we are no longer children who have no control over our lives, who need to be able to escape in our minds. In fact we are very powerful. We can, through being fully present, shift the energy in the room, in an online thread, in our community and ultimately, because of the ripples even the smallest pebble makes, we can shift the energy of the world, simply by being present.

Think of how a minister, Martin Luther King Jr., shifted the energy of the civil rights movement and helped to begin a healing of a nation. Think how the man who inspired him, Mahatma Gandhi, a lawyer from South Africa, led India into a peaceful state of independence, just by his willingness to be present and compassionate. This kind of mindfulness is contagious, and we are in an amazing period of history able to see it in action as the peaceful assembly of the Occupy and 99% movement let their concerns be known with patience and consensus decision-making. We might say, well I’m no Martin Luther King or Mahatma Gandhi. Well, neither were they, in that famous powerful figure aspect, before someone helped them to shift their energy and discover the power of non-violent action. Perhaps we will never be famous, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t each of us incredibly powerful in our own way. We have the power to sour the energy, to incite anger, cat fights, nastiness, jealousy, violence. And we have the power, through anchoring into our senses and being fully present to bring peaceful collaborative exuberance, joie de vivre, a love of life, holding life not in a stranglehold of fear but in an open embrace.

Of course, if we get caught up in the goal of changing the world, then we are not living in the moment and that powerful energy is gone.

Just so, the naturally arising bliss state that may come through meditation or other means is not a goal nor an achievement. It is just another experience we hold with an open loving embrace. Whether the bliss state ever comes or whether it stays, that is not really our concern as meditators.

The bliss state does give valuable information, but even a hint or a brief experience of that timeless state can inform a lifetime. The valuable information is that all is one. There is no separate self. We are all expressions of life loving itself. We are like drops of water briefly experiencing soaring in a state of feeling separate, but in fact we are still the ocean.

For students who have never experienced this state and who feel the lack, I recommend watching science programs or reading about the current scientific understanding of reality with special attention to how much space there is, how structure, including ourselves, is mostly space. Think about skin, how we believe it to be the edge of who we are. But that is not true, is it? The more we know about biology and other sciences, the more we begin to understand the infinite nature of being. Now this kind of learning is not the same as experiencing the state of ‘knowing’ this to be true, feeling that interconnection. I wish English had two different verbs for ‘to know’ the way Spanish does, making a differentiation between something we have learned and something we have experienced.

But if we give the logical mind the opportunity to learn through watching or reading scientific information, it will help to unlock the door to the possibility of experiencing it. Then it’s just a matter of creating opportunity through meditation, chanting, retreats, being slow and silent in nature, dancing, creating or listening to inspirational music, etc. to experience abandoning the dead shell, to slough off the molting skin of these old limiting beliefs.

For the religious this experience grows the understanding and appreciation of the nature of God. You can see how God is all and everything, no part excluded from that infinite beingness, and how this consciousness can be so present in all things, able to experience all that is in each moment.

In our meditation practice we can go back and forth between a focused concentration practice and a spacious awareness state.

The third foundation makes all else possible. This is metta or loving-kindness practice. We end every class with the blessing “May all beings be well. May all beings be happy. May all beings be at ease. May all beings know peace.” But within each personal practice of meditation we set our intention to be compassionate with ourselves when we discover our mind has wandered. Without this kindness and compassion, we are doomed to get tangled in self-recrimination and blame. So this kindness, this compassion, is a fundamental part of our practice as well.

We always begin our practice of metta with ourselves. First, we often find ourselves to be the most difficult person to be kind to. And ultimately, because we are all one, sending true infinite loving kindness of this nature to ourselves is the same as sending it out into the world. Feeling that kindness, we express kindness in the world. We embody kindness, ease, generosity and peace. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the peace we seek.

So those are the three aspects of our practice in our class, in our personal daily practice of meditation and in each moment in our lives as we experience it, holding it in an open and loving embrace with full awareness and the resulting deep gratitude.

Gratitude - a gift, not an instruction

2011-11-23T09:18:00.000-08:00

Thursday morning my dharma talk was about gratitude. All week I had been noodling around about the concept of gratitude. At my Toastmasters club meeting,one club member gave a great short speech about research into the causes of true sustainable happiness. He said that one cause is meditation practice. Another is gratitude. Just two minutes a day of noting what we are grateful for can cause a shift into a state of happiness. Great news!

But the thing that kept coming back to me all during the week was how gratitude as most of us experience it has some challenging aspects. When we start listing things we are grateful for, we can see that they are almost always for things that may be taken away. In fact, because of the temporal nature of life itself, we can fairly say they will be taken away sooner or later.

Can we be grateful without tightening our grasp around what we are grateful for, fearful that we will lose it? Can we be grateful even when something precious has been taken away? When we lose a loved one, a relationship, a job, a home, our health, a physical ability -- how do we deal with this idea of gratitude?

Depending on the severity of our loss, we may be too angry, feel too betrayed, feel too lost to be grateful. There’s no room for it in our hearts now, not with this huge hole, this heaviness or this rage. And yet some part of us, or perhaps some person somewhere, says we should still be grateful. Well, screw gratitude! There! Doesn’t that feel better?

Yes it does. But look at that sentence again. There’s another word in there, the word ‘should.’
Should is really the culprit here. The feeling that we should feel something we don’t feel and don’t want to feel -- that’s what creates a falsity in anything, in this case gratitude.

In our ongoing discussion of the Buddha’s river analogy for exploring The Middle Way, what does this word ‘should’ do? Should shoves us into the shallows of one shore or the other. When this should attaches to any word, even the most lovely word gratitude, then it makes it shallow and meaningless.

Back in the middle of the river, the gratitude rises naturally and is felt without obligation or longing. It simply exists as a felt sense of appreciation for this moment, whatever it is, understanding that this moment is temporal, fleeting, a gift we can only enjoy now, then it’s gone.

After arriving at this realization about gratitude, I looked back at my Thanksgiving eve 2009 dharma talk and my Thanksgiving Eve 2008 dharma talk and found that I had come to the same place about gratitude again and again. That is, I guess, the nature of the dharma! The truth reveals itself again and again. So if you feel like reading more about gratitude, read those dharma talks.

I am truly grateful for all of you who read this blog. It was originally meant to be a way for students who missed a class to keep up with an ongoing dharma talk theme, so I wouldn’t have to bring anyone up to speed. But now it is read by thousands of people all over the globe! Great gratitude for your kind attention, comments and questions.

In the US in late November our one day for giving thanks prompts these dharma talks about gratitude, but gratitude can’t be contained in a day. The following suggestion can be applied to any moment.

For those of you who will be gathering with family and friends in this traditional harvest feast, pause over pie to look about you and give space to simply notice your emotions. Allow room for all the automatic reactions that certain people bring up in you. See this complex pattern of life being lived. Notice desires for things or people to be different. Notice the desire to please, to appease, to tape someone’s mouth shut, to bop someone over the head or any of a myriad of reactions! Then sit with the full force of life being lived and simply savor it.

Day Long Retreat

2011-11-14T07:57:00.000-08:00

Last Thursday, instead of a 90-minute class, I led a day-long silent retreat at the guest house and gardens of one of my students. In the development of a meditation practice, a retreat of any length is so helpful. Coming into a seated meditation six or more times in the course of a day really instills a sensory recognition of that ‘just right position’ -- a posture that relies on the spine and the sitz bones to support us, rather than on the muscles.

My poetry teacher recently began class by having us ‘sit and do nothing.’ She said this wasn’t meditation, that we didn’t have to breathe or sit in a special way or anything. Afterwards she asked what we noticed and mentioned that she noticed her sensations much more. Those few minutes of ‘doing nothing’ were very helpful to the students.

She may have thought that those few minutes were not meditation, but in fact they were. Meditation at its most basic is sitting and knowing you are sitting. Meditation is not about altering the breath. Noticing the breath -- resting our attention with the natural breath -- can be a useful way to anchor into a neutral, dependable sensation, but actively changing the breath is not necessary, and not desirable for the main body of the meditation.

For a few-minutes meditation it doesn’t matter too much how you sit, though even for short periods I find it useful to adjust to a balanced, unrestricted seated posture. The postural recommendations for sitting arise out of compassion for meditators so that they don’t end up with back aches, cramps and strained muscles after sitting for long periods of time. It is not a strict aspect of the practice, but a kind one! I think the poetry teacher was trying to overcome any resistance some of the students might have had to the idea of doing meditation, but she gave them misinformation that only reinforced their misconceptions. Still, offering a little meditation period before creative effort was very wise of her and I hope she does it again as we all felt much freer to simply write.

If those few minutes made such an impact, imagine how deeply felt an extended retreat is! We have first and foremost the opportunity to really remember to again and again set our paired intentions to be present and compassionate with ourselves. With each cycle of practice on a retreat, it becomes easier and more inviting to do. The awareness becomes both stronger and more subtle.

The alternating of sitting and walking meditation throughout the day allows our bodies to balance, but it also gives most of us more walking meditation than we would otherwise do. We develop a pattern of really being present as we walk. Out in nature, we attune to its rhythms and slow down our minds. We have lots of sensation as our body moves through space. And quite possibly when we return to our regular daily walks, we are able to become more present as well.

Greater opportunity for inquiry makes the retreat more than just a practice or a time out. The repeated sits have the effect of stilling the pond of our being, so that the patterns of thought stand out in contrast. In the silence we can hear all that thinking more clearly, and hopefully see it more dispassionately, with loving curiosity. We can ask “Is this true? How do I know this is true?” for any repeating statement or belief that arises. The insights that arise out of this process can stay with us and guide us in our lives in a meaningful way.

The tension that arises in the body -- shoulders working their way up towards our ears, jaws clenching, hands tightening into fists, etc. -- are our body’s way of holding on to the past or the future. When we notice a thought, we can pause and notice the related tension that has risen up to hold it. It is easier and potentially more productive to focus on releasing the tension than to talk ourselves out of thinking. When the tension goes, so goes the thought. It may creep back in five minutes later, but as long as we are able to be present with our experience, we can compassionately release it again and again. Eventually the pattern will soften and release to a greater degree.

The biggest gift of a retreat is silence. Letting go of the spoken word and eye contact is like a perfect bubble of release from the responsibility of perfecting our personality and all the decisions about how to skillfully interact with others. Entering this sacred silence is a delicious time out. The most important responsibility we have on a retreat is to honor each other’s space and silence. Imagine there is a buffer around each person at the retreat and we don’t invade the buffer zone. We may sit right next to each other in meditation or at a dining table, etc., but the buffer is there. On a longer retreat, the buffer is palpable like a force field of awareness. I have talked about this in sharing my experience of longer retreats, how we take refuge in the Buddha, the dharma and the sangha. We simply divest of that interacting aspect of our daily lives and go inward, sensing our connection in a much deeper way. We experience the compassionate support of the sangha, the retreat community, in the shared experience of the practice.

On retreat most meditators sink right into the silence with gratitude, sometimes surprising themselves. It is often the most talkative among us who find such relief in silence. Other retreatants may struggle with remembering their vow. Giving up spoken words is not something we are usually asked to do, or perhaps we were asked to do it as children and being asked as adults brings on a certain rebelliousness. But silence is a great gift to ourselves and a sign of respect and caring to those in our sangha on the retreat.

Because the weather predictions for last Thursday included rain, I developed an alternative indoor activity for some of the walking periods. As it turned out we had sunny weather, but all but one of the meditators chose to participate in the alternative activity as well.

Since we have been discussing balance for over eight weeks, and most recently have been focusing on the Buddha’s River analogy, I brought collage materials for the meditators to create their own versions of the river and the shores. Of course, they were free to collage anything they wanted, not just the analogy, but most of them actually did the river in one way or another.

My role was to provide supplies and to remind everyone to stay in the process and not think about the product. There was a fireplace in the meditation room and I told them to imagine that we would be burning our finished products at the end of the retreat. This was an attempt to free them from getting caught up in the fear-based ambition to make them ‘good.’ Of course, everyone took their pieces home at the end of the retreat. All the works were stunning, heartfelt and will most likely serve as valuable reminders of the insights that came forth in their making. Here is one student's collage she generously agreed to share. You can see the river running diagonally and the two shores.

The students were instructed to pack themselves lunches and snacks that would be taste treat offerings. Since we all ate in different locations on the grounds, I don’t know what anyone else brought, but everyone said at the end of the retreat that they had thoroughly tasted and enjoyed their food in mindfulness that surprised them. One student said she was reminded of a Zen retreat she attended 30 years ago where she was told to masticate thoroughly. We talked about how valuable it is to notice these messages we come upon in our thoughts, a much more valuable skill than actually being able to chew 32 times before swallowing!

The day ended with an opportunity for each student to come out of silence and briefly share highlights and challenges they experienced during the day, if they wanted to. The sharing was rich and, because all the collagers were willing to show their work, quite beautiful.

I feel so fortunate to be able to share the gifts of meditation with my students, and with those who read this blog. May all beings be able to take time for themselves to unplug and dwell in sacred silence.

If you are not part of my class but would like to experience a retreat, there are many opportunities to do so nowadays, depending on where you live and how able you are to travel. I highly recommend Spirit Rock Meditation Center here in Marin County, CA, USA for any length of retreat.

If you would like to put together a group of meditators or people who would like to learn to meditate, and if you have a place conducive for a day long retreat, feel free to contact me either to be a retreat leader or to offer guidance. (I work as always on a dana (donation) basis. If it includes travel it would be dana plus expenses.)

On this blog there are seven labels for ‘retreat.’ To find out more about the retreat experience check them out. To create your own retreat at home, consider following Sylvia Boostein’s book Don’t Just Do Something, Sit There.

If you have sat a day long, then it is quite reasonable to believe that you can sit a weekend or week long retreat. Don’t doubt your ability to practice. It is the naturally-arising activity of our nature!

Buddha's Eight Worldly Winds

2011-11-05T09:23:00.000-07:00

In exploring the Buddha’s teaching stories and analogies, I find myself elaborating and embellishing. It feels to me as if I am re-hydrating sharings that over the years had become single sentences or bare-bones concepts without sufficient details to make them juicy and alive for us today. It is up to each of you to decide whether these embellishments add or take away from the value of the teaching, but I want to be sure that it is clear what is received teaching and what is elaborated upon by me. I think the most important thing in learning and sharing teachings is that we each return to the well of our own inner wisdom, our own ability to question the veracity of any teaching. If it rings true, we draw from it; if not we let it go.

Having said that, I continue my exploration of the Buddha’s river analogy which students are telling me has been so helpful throughout the week. This time I am adding in another of the Buddha’s teachings, because I see within this river analogy an opportunity to discuss the Buddha’s Eight Worldly Winds.

The Winds are four pairs of opposites. They are: pleasure and pain; loss and gain; praise and blame; and ill-repute and fame. These paired opposites are worldly winds because the winds blow and we are all affected in some way.

We have often talked about how it is not the causes and conditions of life but our relationship to the causes and conditions, the things that happen to us, that we focus on and can skillfully affect. So here are these eight causes and conditions, these eight worldly winds. What is our relationship to them? How do they affect us? Or do we react to them?

Returning to the Buddha’s river analogy of the Middle Way, we can see that wind is definitely something one considers when one is on a boat. Understanding the nature of the winds is important for skillful navigation. So understanding the nature of these Eight Worldly Winds is skillful for our navigating along the Middle Way.

With these four paired opposites, we can see how they could easily blow us toward one shore or the other. (Remember that one shore is over-indulgence, the other self-denial. We are through our meditation practice, maintaining our course on the river, finding the rich nourishing infinite river that courses through our being.)

First there is the wind of pleasure. We experience pleasure and if we are skillful we accept it for what it is, appreciate it as one of the gifts of life, and let it go when it passes. As if a butterfly briefly alighted on our outstretched palms, we hold the pleasure in an open embrace, neither crushing it nor shooing it away.

But the World Wind of pleasure can blow us off course and leave us stuck aground on the shore of self-indulgence. How does this happen? Maybe the first thing we do is wonder why we don’t give ourselves this pleasure more often? And then we start planning just how we will do that, or beating ourselves up for never doing it. Thus we have fallen out of the moment and into the suffering on one shore or the other.

We can easily get habituated to pleasure, begin to feel that we deserve it, then can’t possibly live without it. Once we’ve slept on luxury sheets, maybe we say we’ll never go back to 200 thread count again! Thus we tighten the limits of our experience more and more, the borders of what we are willing to tolerate.

So what is skillful here? Pleasure comes, we are in the moment with the pleasure, appreciative, and then the pleasure passes and we are ready for whatever happens next. But even if we have missed the opportunity to have that straight-forward a response, we can, whenever we realize where we have gotten lost, come back again to the river, to the awareness of the present, with compassion for ourselves. We can also use our skillful questioning to explore our assumptions, thoughts and feelings that we notice arising. “Is this true? How do I know this is true?”

Pleasure’s counterpart is the wind of pain. Which shore does it blow us toward? Pain can feel deserved and thus blow us toward extremes of self-denial or we can fight to mask the pain with seeking the shore of self-indulgence, hiding out in that bottle, that pill, that comfort food or that mind-numbing activity.

As we practice, we learn that we can stay with the experience of pain and notice how what we believed to be one giant sensation is really a symphony of smaller sensations arising and falling away. This level of noticing makes it possible to be present, to let go of our thoughts that compound the pain, the ones that say ‘Oh no, not this pain again!’ or ‘How long will this last? I can’t stand it if it goes on like this forever!’ Thus staying present with it, we discover the joyful aspect of impermanence because we see that the sensation changes from moment to moment if we are being aware.

Someone says something devastating to us and we feel pain. Perhaps it blows us way off course, but once we are able to be present with the pain, we can use compassion to bring us back to the river. First compassion for ourselves as we hold ourselves in tenderness as we would a child who is in pain.Then we extend compassion to the other person, because in order for them to to inflict pain on someone, they must be operating out of fear and be in pain themselves. That fear has made them either mindless so they are unaware of the power of their words to harm, or it has made them feel they need to wield cruelty as a protective mechanism. Being able to find compassion for them softens the blow of our own experience. We understand that it is not all about us, any more than the wind is purposely trying to topple us.

Then skillful questioning is needed. We can certainly look to what role we may have played in provoking the hurt. We hear our thoughts and we can ask if they are true, without feeling the need to defend them. We can also question whether it is healthy for us to be near this person. Perhaps we are in a vulnerable state and need to put our own well-being as a priority. Compassion is not meant to enable other people to treat us badly. So there is a level of wise discernment necessary, and being fully in the moment, ‘on the river,’ helps us to see more clearly than when we are stuck deep inland, wandering lost.

Next there are the paired winds of gain and loss. When we gain something in life, does it throw us off course, like a wind pushing us to one shore or the other? Think of the lottery winner who goes on a spending spree of indulgence. But again, gain could cause one to feel uncomfortable, as if we don’t deserve what we’ve received, and cause us to go to excessive self-denial. I think of when I ‘gain’ a batch of cookies I have baked. For reasons I am still exploring for myself, I just can’t rest comfortably until they are all gone. For now, I don’t bake. If I want a cookie I go buy one cookie. This is sad because of course homemade cookies fresh from the oven are so much better than store-bought. But if I feel this way about cookies, I can imagine how a recipient of a great windfall might feel the same: that this money, 'undeserved,' must be squandered. That quality of undeserving is best explored from the vantage point of the river, the breath, the present moment, with compassion and a willingness to question in.

Gain’s counterpart is the wind of loss. Loss happens to us all. Loved ones die. We lose a relationship, a job, an ability, a home. And where does this wind blow us? Do we seek the shores of self-denial, blaming ourselves for the loss, beating ourselves up, denying ourselves comfort? Or do we seek mindless pleasures, addictions, something that can at least temporarily mute the loss through oblivion?
Again, once we are conscious enough to remember the river, we are back on it. We can be instantly present, anchored in physical sensation, feeling this moment in all its fullness.

The winds of praise and blame blow and what happens? Does praise roll off like water on a duck’s back but blame sink in deeply? Or does praise give us a big head so we get lost in self-indulgent thinking, hearing echos of the praise in our thoughts, becoming addicted to recreating conditions for more praise to come? Having done volunteer stints of teaching art to children, I know that comments, even praise, can throw a little (or big!) artist off track during the process of creation. The desire to please the teacher or the parent or the friend starts to change the simple joy of creation into a goal-oriented process, and the artist loses their way. This is true in any area where we are hoping to simply live our own lives as authentically as possible, to be the most honest expression of the gift of life in this form, as it has been given us. But if our parents have different ideas of what is a proper career for us, we may be thrown off course for years, maybe for our whole life, because we want to please them, we crave their praise and approval.

Conversely, rather than seeking praise, we can be so uncomfortable with praise that it can send us into self-denial, reminding ourselves of all the ways that the praise is undeserved.

And then there is blame, the opposite of praise. How to we relate to it? Are we able to stay present with the experience? Can we breathe and not feel under attack, as if our life was at stake? If the blame is justified, can we take it in as useful information, make the necessary apologies and amends, make note to self not to do that again, to be more mindful and wise in our behavior? Or do we race into mindlessness, on one shore or the other, seeking the oblivion of compensatory pleasure or the deserved pain of a bed of hot coals? How does our reaction change when the blaming is unjust? Say you get an email from the library that a book is overdue, a book that you returned weeks ago. What is your reaction? Do you simply call or go to the library and ask them to check the shelves, or do you go to some dark internal ranting place, expressing outrage at the ‘accusation?’ Which is more skillful? More mindful? More effective?

The last pair of opposite Worldly Winds is fame and ill-repute. Most of us feel this is not something that concerns us. We are not neither famous nor infamous, so we can just let this one go. But let’s see it on a more human scale. We all have a reputation for certain qualities in our community of neighbors, family, friends and coworkers. Are we known for being trustworthy, dependable, compassionate, etc. or have we got a rep for being always late, or not to be trusted to follow through on what we promise? And how do we relate to this reputation, whatever it is? Do we go mindless, getting lost in believing ourselves to ‘be’ this reputation, thus hang on tight to our labels, even if they seem bad to others, for without them, who would we be? Is our behavior blown by the wind of our reputation? Do we modify our behavior in order to be seen in a certain way? ‘What would the neighbors think?’ is a typical expression of this being blown by the wind of fame or ill-repute.

And yet of course we live in communities. Hopefully we can be present and compassionate enough to say and do what is wisest for ourselves and those in our community. Both through awareness practice and through Wise Intention we live mindful of our impact on the whole web of life, knowing that we do not live in isolation. Through the practice of meditation, generosity arises, as do other virtues. This is a natural part of the releasing of the tightness of operating out of fear. If we are practicing being in the moment, we will be less likely to live in a way that is adversely affected by these Worldly Winds.

Wind could be thought of as an element of communication, the media, the way information travels on the airwaves, sometimes emitting a lot of hot air. We are often buffeted to one shore or the other by the news we receive and our reactivity to it; the face-to-face comments, emails, phone calls; radio, internet or television news,;texts and twitters we receive and our reactivity to those as well. Notice how the next piece of news you read or hear affects you. What emotions arise? What defenses? It may help us to think of these received words as one of the Worldly Winds, capable of blowing us toward one shore or the other. With regular meditation practice, we develop this ability to stay or easily return to the center of the river, the calm center of our being. Meditation doesn’t make us impervious to anything, but it does help us to recognize where center is and how to get there.

Sometimes these winds are hurricanes, tornadoes or typhoons. It is not surprising that we then find ourselves deep inland on one shore or the other. Perhaps we have been unconscious for a time, but whenever we do become conscious, we are able to remember the river. Like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, who after being misguided to follow the yellow brick road discovered that by simply clicking her shoes she could return home, we can ‘click’ our paired intentions to anchor into physical sensation to bring ourselves into the present moment, and to be compassionate with ourselves so as not drag ourselves further inland. And just like that we are back on the river, back in the center of our being in this moment, whatever this moment holds. And when we are truly in it, not caught up in planning the future, regretting the past or worrying about something beyond our present control, we find that this moment is maybe not so bad, maybe even absolutely stunningly alive, rich, multi-layered; and we find ourselves feeling an incredible gratitude for the unique fleeting gift of this moment.

Buddha's River Analogy cont'd: Poetry & an Exercise

2011-10-29T10:06:00.000-07:00

In our exploration of the Buddha’s river analogy to talk about the Middle Way, we are looking and questioning what’s true for us, what is our experience of the shores, the boat and the river itself. Because we are so often lost on one shore or the other, it’s useful to see how we keep ending up over-indulging or adopting strict systems of self-denial.

Here are two poems to illustrate the two different shores. First, one about wanting run amok:

No End to Wanting

If truth be known, you want to be idolized,

to be set apart from the flock of ordinary beings

to be seen as separate and special.

You want a whole room of your mansion

for your many awards in specially lit glass cases

and the soundtrack of Rocky playing upon entrance.

You want your ghost-written biography

to fill a whole table at Borders with a

giant cardboard cutout of you and

a line round the block waiting since dawn

for you to sign your autograph and for them

tell you how much they love you.

You want to have a huge yacht with a crew

spiffy-clad in white shirts and shorts

lined up to greet you in exotic ports of call.

You want a small sleek jet done to your

taste by the world’s leading decorator

who answers your endless 2 am calls

happy to implement your latest desire

for say a chaise lounge in the loggia of

your villa on the shores of Lake Como

or your beachhouse in Bali, or perhaps

the estate in Provence or the penthouse in Paris --

each one of them staffed and stocked 24/7

in case you feel like a change of venue.

You want an entourage of sleek beauties or

hunks lounging at poolside, pouring you drinks,

laughing at your jokes, every steamy glance

telling you how much they long to touch you,

to say they have touched you,

to be enhanced by your magical powers.

You want every celebrity in the world to be thrilled

at an invitation to drop in at a moment’s notice

because whatever else they had planned for a

Saturday night pales in comparison to the chance

to dine at your table and bask in your reflected glow.

You want your name to be a household word

said with a shiver of awe and a shared hint of desire.

You want your face to be as familiar as the one

people see in the mirror every morning

when they take stock and wish they were you.

You want people diving into your dumpster

to have even the most disgusting indigestible

parts of you to put on display

or be sold for thousands of dollars on eBay.

You want to walk down the street

and be mobbed by paparazzi who push you

back so they can get a better shot of you

because you are the most valuable prize

of their pathetic little lives and you know it.

You want to stroll into a showroom of

luxury cars and drive out with whatever

suits your fancy the way you used to

go out for an ice cream cone on a Sunday

afternoon when life was simple

and the sun on your back and the taste

of the ice cream and the laughter of a friend

was enough to make you happy.

When happiness was enough.

- Stephanie Noble

And to illustrate the other shore:

The Desert of Just Desserts

This scorched sand, this unrelenting sun:

No more than I deserve.

Thick oozing lava pools and

a stack of buckets with instructions:

‘Fill and carry, don’t stop, don’t drop, don’t drink. Toxic.’

All around me others are loading up buckets, whispering,

‘This time I’ll do it, this time I’ll get it right.’

‘Please don’t let me fail again, please don’t let me fail.’

They don’t look up, so I drop my gaze, and set to the task at hand:

To carry these buckets across the vast arid sands,

to ignore those along the way whose

writhing bodies speak in tongues,

to set my sights, to keep my eyes on the horizon,

on the oasis shimmering golden in this hellish heat.

Oh, to be worthy of the illusive prize

to be worthy to set my lips upon the chalice

that holds that righteous sip

of sweet

pure

water.

- Stephanie Noble

To finish with our poetry sharing, here's one by Mary Oliver. It is perhaps her most beloved poem for the way it gives us permission to see the truth about this 'desert of just desserts.' It is titled Wild Geese. Because I don’t have permission to publish Mary Oliver’s poem, here is a Youtube video of the poet reading three poems, including Wild Geese, which she reads because she says,‘Sometimes people get mad when I don’t.’ Watch it now or later, but come back to this post because we'll be doing a valuable self-exploration exercise.

It’s important to recognize the quality of the river itself: Notice how it flows naturally, how it is connected in a great cycle of watery wholeness and life itself. Perhaps the image of a river feels claustrophobic. Imagine a wider river! Perhaps it seems boring. Imagine a livelier river, gurgling joyously! This is your experience of river. Let the river be an expression of freedom and life. Let the shores be less interesting than the river itself, so that your do not turn being on the river into another form of self-denial. And of course you don’t have to use the river analogy at all! It’s just an analogy and we have used many others that might better serve you. But it is one of the ways the Buddha made his teachings real to students, and so we have been exploring it thoroughly.

We did an exercise last week where we defined for ourselves what was luring us off the river of the Middle Way and onto the shore of over-indulgence or self-denial. I hope you had a chance to play with this, and that some lures came up.

Our exercise today is finding a lure on each shore that relates to one on other. These two lures are connected in some way. I will use a personal but pretty universal example to illustrate how this exercise works. Okay, so there is a hot fudge sundae sitting on the shore. No, wait, let me be more specific. There is a hot fudge BROWNIE sundae sitting on the shore. On the opposite shore there is a sign saying, ‘You’re a pig.’ Those two definitely have a relationship. I feel that if I eat the sundae, then I am a pig. And if I see that sign, I resonate with it and am reminded of the sundae I either ate or long to eat.

So now, find your two related lures. First, choose the thing that is sticky, that gets you caught up in craving, that makes you go mindless and sparks a lot of circular thinking and despair of ever being 'good enough.' The lure on the over-indulgence shore is not the occasional innocent treat. This is a mine field for you. It doesn’t have to be food, of course. It could be a craving for praise, fame, wealth, beauty, sex, security, or excitement.

If you have a lure on the over-indulgence shore that is ripe for exploring, there will definitely be some related lure on the opposite shore. It will chime in with some snide comment and draw your attention. The self-denial shore is full of rudeness, rules and regulations that don't arise out of a sense of natural virtue and good will that comes from our feeling connected to all beings. Instead it is a set of whips and chains to use on ourselves and sometimes others when we project our issues on them. This shore is full of harsh judgments that don't just deny us pleasure. They deny us our very right to be who we are.

Once you have found your two related lures, sit with the indulgence lure.
So I sit with the sundae. What does it offer me? What does it promise? A few minutes of pleasure, sweet taste, cool and creamy with hot and gooey, yum! A reward to myself. A sense of happiness. Oblivion, release.

Exploring further, what is the fear that drives the urge? What is the lure’s underlying fear-based message?

(Maybe you are saying, ‘Hey, why does there have to be fear? Why can’t it just be a hot fudge sundae. Well for some it would be, but I’ve got that ‘You’re a pig’ sign on the other shore, and a feeling that I would eat every hot fudge sundae if given the chance. So there is a fear message there. And if you've found lures that are equally or even more seductive, there is most definitely a fear-based message there. What is it?)
The message I hear is, ‘Life is short. What if I get to the end of my life and feel I missed out on enjoying indulgent simple pleasures?” So I fear the regret that I didn’t live fully and embrace all that life has to offer.

We then check the statements that have come up for veracity. We ask, ‘Is this true? How do I know this is true?’ for each of the statements we have made.

When that exploration feels done for now, we turn to the related lure on the other shore, in my case the sign saying “You’re a pig!”

Explore what this lure offers. In my case I’m noticing guilt, self-loathing and shame. I’m also noticing a call to exercise discipline and will power. I’m hearing a promise of a reward of good health and a slender figure to provide me with a protective shield of ‘attractiveness’ that may make me more acceptable.

Now we ask ‘What is the fear that drives this urge?’ When put into words sometimes the fear sounds outrageous, but that’s okay. Outrageous as it is, it feels real enough, so write it down. You aren't sharing this with anyone. It's your own exploration just for you.
For me what comes up are fears that I will eat all the hot fudge sundaes in the world given half the chance, that I will become grossly obese instead of what I hope is seen as ‘pleasantly plump,’ that people will be repulsed by me, that I will be whispered about behind my back.

Again, we check some of these things for veracity, asking, ‘Is this true? How do I know this is true?’ for each of the statements we have made. This could be a long or short conversation. This is your exercise, your exploration, your experience. Give it as much time as you need.

Having fully explored both these lures on the banks of the river, can we find the Middle Way between the two? Yes, the Middle Way begins with awareness, so our exercise in shining a light on what lures us onto the shores of over-indulgence or self-denial helps us to stay present. When we are present fully with our experience, we are on the river.

We’ve talked about the river as being awareness and compassion. Compassion is vital in this exercise and in life. Without discounting, negating or denying any of the feelings we have brought up, we notice them, acknowledge them, and then question them. Compassion allows us to return to the river. Without it we judge ourselves, our situation or the people we feel caused the situation, and thereby get stuck deeper and deeper in the muck and mire, the dark humid tangle of vines that choke us, or the quicksand of our thoughts and emotions.

So from our boat on the river we look at the two shores, thus reminding ourselves that this is the vantage point we choose, again and again, by setting the intention to be present and compassionate. Retraining our vantage point is part of the practice of meditation. With Wise Effort we are able to find this Wise View, this vantage point. We return again and again to the breath, whether we see it as simply the breath or as the river that runs through the center of our being.

If you are new to the practice, perhaps ‘the river’ is as illusive as the oasis or the golden mountain that looms deep inland on each shore, the horizon that never gets any closer. You may say,‘What river? I want the river! Where the heck is this river? Is it over that mountain? Maybe I better strive harder. Maybe I’m not worthy of the river.’

Don’t worry, the river is within you. The river is as close as the rising and falling of your breath. Only your ability to notice it is illusive, and it is that ability that we develop through meditation practice. So create for yourself a regular practice -- begin with five minutes and work up to 30 or 40; or, if you prefer, do two 20 minute meditations a day. Set the intention to stay present with whatever you experience. And set the intention to be compassionate with yourself when your mind wanders, as it will, as it was designed to do. Just this will be enough. Let go of all else as you sit. Anchor in sensation, whether focused on the breath, on sound, or on an openness to all sensation; or choose a simple word or phrase that brings you present like ‘here, now, relaxed’ or ‘om.’ For more information on getting started in meditation, see the Meditation Basics page.

Buddha's River Analogy continued: Why We Crave the Shores

2011-10-22T08:44:00.000-07:00

In a previous talk, I shared the Buddha’s analogy of a river to explore The Middle Way. We have looked ar various aspects of it, and today you will have the opportunity to explore for yourself what is on the shores of your own river and why it draws you.

Both the banks of the river, though they look so different -- one a lush jungle of opulence and indulgence, the other an arid desert of strict self-denial -- are really quite similar. They both lure us deeper and deeper inland with promises that if we just go a little further, we will find ultimate happiness. Whether it’s through acquisition or austerity, the message is still the same: Wherever we are right now is not okay. Change is necessary. The here and now is flawed. We are flawed and in need of changing.

Perhaps you say that message is not a bad one because none of us is perfect. We are each flawed, and therefore in need of changing. And then you add that the world we live in is not perfect and in need of fixing. Maybe yes, maybe no, as the farmer in the Taoist teaching story says. If you are not familiar with this story, it goes something like this:

A farmer had a plough horse to help him tend his fields. One day the horse ran away. His neighbors told him how sorry they were for him. How would he till his field? What a terrible misfortune had been laid upon him, and he didn’t deserve it, he was such a good man, such a hard worker. But the farmer surprised them when he said, ‘Maybe it’s a misfortune, maybe it’s not. Who knows?’

The next day the horse returned, and along with him came some other horses. Now the neighbors exclaimed, “What great fortune for you! You are the luckiest man! You deserve this good luck.” But the farmer surprised them again when he said, “Maybe yes, maybe no. Who knows?”

The next day the farmer’s son rode one of the new horses and fell off, breaking his leg. The neighbors said, “Oh my, this is a terrible stroke of bad luck!” And the farmer surprised them again when he said, “Maybe yes, maybe no. Who knows?”

The next day conscription officers came to the area to draft all able-bodied young men into the army. Since the farmer’s son’s leg was broken, he was allowed to stay home with his family. The neighbors, some of whom had tearfully seen their sons trudge off to war, exclaimed at the uncanny good fortune of the farmer. And this time they were not surprised when the farmer said, “Maybe yes, maybe no. Who knows?”

As you can see this story could go on and on. It’s useful to think of this story the next time we notice ourselves reacting as the neighbors did. We can pause and question the truth of our assumptions about a situation. We could withhold judgment and open to possibilities within any situation.

Nostalgic amnesia
It seems to be in our nature to see the world as it is right now as more flawed than it was in the past. People ask, ‘What period would you go back to if you could time travel?” as if there was some idyllic time when all was right in the world. This nostalgic amnesia really gets in our way of being present with what is. I just saw an interview on The Colbert Report with the author Stephen Pinker about his book, ‘The Better Angels of our Nature: A History of Violence.’ In it, he points out the statistical fact that we are living in the most peaceful time in history. Now of course this is per capita and there are way more people now, but even so this may seem contrary to our own sense of the way things are. This is nostalgic amnesia.

In class I brought up a decade that many people wax poetic about, a decade remembered as all soda fountains, felt poodle skirts, bobby socks, etc. But they choose to forget that the 1950’s and early 60’s was a time of ongoing degradation based on skin color, gender and sexual orientation. I remember children with downs syndrome either being hidden away in secret back rooms of homes or institutionalized, held in huge rooms naked. I saw this room with my own eyes when our school choir went to sing up at ‘Napa,’ the mental hospital for the San Francisco Bay Area. It was a decade full of fear of nuclear war. Many of us never expected to make it to adulthood, envisioned being evaporated en masse or dying slow painful radiation deaths. Some built fall out shelters to save themselves and their families and to keep out the hoards of neighbors who would want food. It was a time of paranoia, people seeing ‘a red under every bed.’ I could go on, but I think you get the idea. It’s a both/and situation. Yes, there were wonderful things about that decade too, but no era has ever been or will ever be perfect.

One student pointed out after class that things may seem worse now because we are more informed about everything that is going on around the world. She said that her experience of the 1950’s was very protected, not exposed to the things I mentioned above, but now she feels bombarded with a 24 hour a day influx of information. It’s challenging to know at what level to adjust our filters for all this input!

The technological advances of our age are a wonderful example of the ‘maybe yes/maybe no’ quality. On the one hand these technologies bring amazing abilities to stay connected over distances with family and friends. On the other, we can easily manage to never know our neighbors, as we come and go in cars, pushing a button to open our garage doors and closing ourselves into our contained spaces. Thus, we feel isolated and disconnected, even though we are carrying on text, twitter, email and phone conversations all day long. Of course we can easily remedy that situation by making a concerted effort to know our neighbors, to create real community, to participate in local government and organizations instead of only focusing on national and international situations. These technologies bring the ability to co-create a leaderless revolution. They bring the possibility of identity theft, of governmental invasion of privacy, of those with fear-based motives reaching our children with messages they are not able to defend against, of fear-based advertisements invading our homes and our minds before we realize we have been seduced or inducted.

This could well be the reason meditation has become so sought after now. It is needed so we can each find a way to be skillful in dealing with these challenges.

So the wise person doesn’t put on blinders but is able to hold all of what is occurring, recognizing the yin/yang quality of being, finding a state of equilibrium, understanding that these are and always will be ‘the best of times and the worst of times.’ Dickens claimed that in his opening line of ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ about the French revolution.

‘May you live in interesting times.’ Is that a Chinese blessing or curse? Both! And we certainly do live in interesting times. How grateful I am to be alive to witness and participate in this fascinating period.

The recognition that nothing is perfect and was never meant to be perfect is very liberating. The astro-physicist Stephen Hawking says the universe was created from two forces: gravity and imperfection. Watch the first few minutes of this program to see his explanation.

With only gravity there would be a static unchanging uniformity, but imperfection provokes gravity into a dance so that the planets orbit and cycles occur that would not otherwise have been necessary. So imperfection has been getting an awfully bad rap, considering its importance in the creation of life itself!

I belong to Toastmasters, an international club to help people overcome their fear of public speaking and develop leadership skills. For the past few years I have been able to see incredible transformations in people in the club. Almost every member joined in order to change, in order to improve ourselves and our skills. Our motivations were anchored in this discomfort with who we felt ourselves to be in relation to the world.

But the transformations that have occurred are not from the elimination of imperfections but from the release of the fear of letting those imperfections show. The speakers who are most enjoyable to watch, most able to convey their message and connect with the audience, have learned how to relax into their shared humanity. They are completely themselves at the podium. And because they are relaxed and sharing openly of their own experience and knowledge, their audience can relax and take in what the speakers are saying.

The more we hold back, the more we protect who we hold ourselves to be, the harder we try to be perfect, the less successful we are. True transformation is a process of relaxing, noticing and releasing tension (which when in front of an audience exhibits itself in a variety of distracting ways,) making eye contact with others that reminds of of our connection, realizing that this is a practice and failure is simply a way we learn, and then staying in the present moment as much as possible with what we have to share.

If this sounds a little bit like how we begin meditation, then that really isn’t very surprising. Coming home to ourselves, our true selves, is the key to letting go of the discomfort with who we feel ourselves to be in the world.

In Toastmasters, the most engaging and enjoyable speakers have in a way polished up their imperfections. The other day a club member talked about how unhandy he is in such an engaging and entertaining way that he won the spontaneous speaking award (Table Topics ribbon) that day. If he were to become handy around the house, maybe his wife would be happier because she wouldn’t have to hire someone to do those tasks my fellow Toastmaster cannot do, but the world would be poorer in a way I can’t explain, but I think you understand.

Think of someone you love who died. Isn’t it often the very quirks that drove you most crazy that you miss about them after a while? Isn’t it those very imperfections that make you smile?

There are Toastmasters who get caught up in a state of paralysis, afraid to get up and speak because they have not reached their goal of being perfect speakers and don’t want to embarrass themselves. Sometimes this paralysis keeps them from coming to meetings, even though they keep paying their dues because the intention is still there. But if they just keep showing up for meetings and taking roles that require them to speak in very non-threatening way (explaining their role at the beginning of the meeting and following up with a little report at the end of the meeting), and occasionally getting up for two minutes to answer a posed question, slowly but surely their confidence grows.

This is true in so many aspects of our lives, isn’t it? We don’t have to be Toastmasters to recognize the pattern we get into when we get inspired to improve ourselves in some area. Perhaps we join a gym to give ourselves the opportunity to get in better shape. The same pattern happens. If we go, we realize it’s a supportive atmosphere (hopefully!) and that we feel better for having done it, but if we don’t attend, we get stuck in that place where we feel disappointed in ourselves and stuck. We want that perfect muscle tone, that slimmer body now! We don’t want to have to see ourselves in the gym mirrors or compare ourselves to others who seem perfect. They’re not, of course. But some part of ourselves plays that game in our heads and we stay away, defeated and uncomfortable with how we perceive ourselves to appear in the world.
In the grueling ongoing effort to become more beings, are we hoping to trade in under-valued traits and attributes for ones that are more in demand? Or do we really just want to be more at home in our own skin?

It’s also true in developing a regular meditation practice. I honor my students for taking time out of their busy lives to come to class with such dedicated regularity. If they are in town, they are here. They carve this space out of their week and arrange their lives around it. Many of them have also managed to carve a half hour out of their day for a daily practice of meditation, as I hope all readers of this blog do. And just like the speech club and the gym, meditation practice is primarily a matter of showing up. What happens after we have set that intention to practice, that intention to be present and compassionate with ourselves, arises naturally. We don’t have to worry about the outcome. It is enough to be here.

For real transformation to occur, we need to be fully present and fully aware of what is occurring in this moment. Only then, anchored into sensation, can we recognize the mindlessness of habitual patterns that drag us ashore into jungles of desire or deserts of self-negation. Only then can we see that it is not our lack of uniformity that is causing us misery, but habit of striving for some distant vision of happiness where we or the world are different.

The river analogy applies to all of us, but each of us sees the banks differently. At times my indulgence bank is lined with hot fudge sundaes. Knowing this helps me to recognize it as the seductive jungle that it is. I am not clear what the sweet treat promises, what the allure is. That’s something I could explore and it would be very beneficial in order to be able to return the Middle Way river and not sink the boat with my over-indulgence! But would I only be comfortable in my skin if there was less of it? That’s another area for me to explore.

What line your shores? What inner aspects are jumping up and down, waving signs and calling out to you? Notice the expressions they use, how disrespectful they are, how they call you names to demean you.

What is so alluring on the banks of the river for you. What is the promised goal as you trudge through the jungle of over-indulgence or the desert of self-denial? There will be a tangible fear that draws you to each shore. Can you name the fear? At core all our fears are the fear of separation, the fear of isolation, of encapsulation, of rejection. But on the surface they have many different names and appearances.

In class we did an exercise of exploring our own experience of being on the river, first looking at one shore, then making notes or drawing what was there; then looking at the other bank and doing the same. We also made any notations or sketches about the boat, the river and what we saw ahead of us. This might be a self-exploration exercise you would like to do for yourself after meditation practice, when you are feeling calm and spacious.

You might picture the images that draw you as cardboard cutouts set up as a lure with nothing of substance behind them. See if that helps to remind you that there is no fulfillment possible on either shore.

When we are fully present on the river, this river that runs through the center of our being, this river of presence and compassion, we feel fully enlivened and at one with the universe, this universe formed by imperfection.

Or = Oar Along the Middle Way

2011-10-15T08:43:00.000-07:00

In the last post I shared an embellished version of the Buddha’s analogy of the Middle Way being our course as we boat on the river of life, steering clear of the seductions of either bank that represent overindulgence and self-denial. You can read that post if you have forgotten or didn’t see it.

In the analogy, we focused on both banks but didn’t really spend much time exploring the river or the boat. For example, how do we keep our boat in the middle of the river and not stuck on either side?

That’s right, we need an oar. This is a very powerful oar, and it’s spelled O-R. Or: Perhaps the most powerful word in the English language. Powerful enough to steer our vessel along the Middle Way. How?

At any moment, inserted into a sentence, the word ‘or’ creates a pivot point, full of possibility.
Whatever we are doing, however close we are coming to either shore of over-indulgence or extreme self-denial, we can use ‘or’ to remind ourselves that we have other options.

This has worked well for me when I’m on the way into the kitchen to look for a treat. My inner sweetie is all excited by the prospect of some tasty treat even though I’m not hungry, and then, if I’m paying attention, I can hear the strong, clear, calm wisdom of the word OR rising up: “OR I could go out to the garden,” “OR I could go for a hike,” “OR I could wash the dishes,” “OR I could call a friend I haven’t talked to in a while,” “OR I could sit and enjoy being in this moment.”

This same OR rises up in other situations as well:

I’m walking by a store that has something I want but can’t afford. I simply offer myself the word OR – as in ‘OR I could walk on by.’
‘I could keep channel surfing mindlessly, OR I could turn off the TV and do something more fun.’
‘I could keep stuffing food in my mouth even though I’m full, OR I could push away from the table.’

This word ‘or’ is very empowering. It gives us choice. Sometimes we have made a commitment to do something, and so our choices may seem gone. We’re in a committed relationship. ‘Or’ doesn’t give us the option to go home to someone different tonight! But even then we have the choice of how we approach our commitment, what attitude we take. ‘I could complain about this situation, or I could whole-heartedly take it on, remembering why I committed to it in the first place.’

Sometimes we find ourselves in situations that are not of our choosing. We find that we or someone we love has had an accident, is seriously ill or is dying. The ‘or’ is not a means of escape from the situation, but a means of finding a new relationship with it, finding how to be present with causes and conditions of life with compassionate attention rather than getting lost in the mire of regret or fear of the future. ‘Or’ is not an escape route out of a sticky situation. It’s an awakening to consciousness, a reminder to be alive and alert to the reality of the present moment.

In class a student mentioned that the oar is also used for getting unstuck, so it has a quality of mobility. True! That’s an important aspect to bring into the mix. The word ‘or’ creates options for any moment.

But again it’s important for us to use our ‘or’ skillfully. The skillful, wise ‘or’ always brings us back to the river, back to awareness, back to compassion. An unskillful ‘or’ would have us paddling back and forth from one shore to the other, trying to find balance by going to both extremes. An example would be gorging ourselves and then going on a strict minimal intake diet. Another example would be the person who works beyond the point of exhaustion all year long and has a flat on the back on the beach vacation to make up for it. This isn’t skillful paddling! This is taking the oar and paddling ourselves with it! The Middle Way is being fully present and compassionate, not going from one state of extreme mindlessness to another and believing we have found balance.

In French the word or means gold, but what fool would choose gold over the infinite possibilities of the English ‘or’ or the French ‘ou.’

In Spanish or translates into ‘o’ – How that sunny perfect circle captures the essence of the infinite rays of choice, all those potential pivotal turning points available in any given moment.

So next time you find yourself doing something mindless, see if you can empower yourself with the word OR.

We have talked about accessing our Buddha nature, our wise inner voice that is our access to universal wisdom. This word ‘or’ radiating options, keeping the world spacious and open, keeping us conscious, is a simple way to access that inner wisdom. Listen for it!

The word ‘or’ can also be used unskillfully to divide up the world, as in: ‘It’s either you or me, us or them, your way or my way, and it better be my way.’ The word ‘or’ can be very divisive. When we are wandering on either shore, away from the river, an oar is no longer a useful tool but a useless appendage, or worse a weapon. So notice how you are using the word ‘or’ to recognize if you are stuck on one of the shores or in the flow of the river, embarked on the Middle Way.

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Something else we didn’t discuss about the Buddha’s Middle Way analogy of a river is the river itself. What is the river? What is this that runs through the center of our being to which we return? This is the river of awareness and compassion. We return to it from states of unconscious habitual patterns that don’t serve us or the world.

Where does the river go? Is there some place we are getting to on this river?

Where does any river go? Yes, to the sea. And then what happens to the water in the sea? It evaporates and becomes clouds, which become rain, which eventually makes its way back to the river. This natural cycle of water, how it turns from liquid to gas (and sometimes to solid) is the easiest example we have to understand the nature of things, the nature of life and of our own part in it. For it isn’t just water that cycles through in infinite transformation, but all of life, including ourselves.

Once while attending a mountain camping retreat, I had the experience of observing a cascade with the drops of water flying above the creek, each drop fleetingly solitary. And I saw how that was true for each of us as well: This sense of solitary existence, of being in an isolated encapsulated body is indeed temporary and illusory. The drop of water is part of the ongoing cycle of life. It will momentarily return to the creek and then to the sea and then evaporate into a cloud, then rain in an ongoing cycle -- as will our fleeting moment of seemingly solitary existence that we call ‘life.’

The drop of water is held separate by surface tension. Interesting to think that we hold ourselves separate by tension as well. When through meditation we release bodily tension, we access our awareness of being an integral part of the whole, not an isolated drop. How refreshing! How much easier it becomes to live in this world when we feel our connection to all that is. How much easier it is to be compassionate when we understand the unitive nature of life. There is no ‘us or them,’ but the interconnected cycles of life and this wondrous gift of awareness.

The Middle Way: Buddha's River Analogy, Embellished

2011-10-02T09:09:00.000-07:00

The Buddha sometimes taught that the Middle Way is like boating on a river. I sat with it and wrote this embellished version:

From our boat on the river we can see both banks, the whole sky and the great expanse of water. One bank of the river is luxurious, dense with riches, a veritable jungle of eye candy and every sensory delight, comfort, entertainment, distraction, assurance of safety, financial security, recognition, fame, success and power. When our boat gets into the shallows by this bank, the siren sound draws us out of the boat and onto the shore, then into a jungle of opulence and indulgence. Luxuriant flowering vines wrap themselves around our limbs, and though they weigh us down we think we would feel naked without their beauty. A golden pyramid shimmers in the distance. The path leading to it is paved in glistening diamonds, and all along the way are champagne fountains and endless buffets of every sweet and savory taste we could ever want. Yet the pyramid never gets closer, the champagne never slacks our thirst and the food never fills our bellies. Instead we feel increasingly afraid of losing our way, losing the safety of the luxury we've come to depend on. How could we survive without all this? So we step carefully on the diamond path, hypnotized by the dazzling light that goes on and on, as the thirst and hunger become increasingly painful.

If we are lucky, we remember the river, the cool clear water, the nourishment and the clear expansive view the river gives us of life.

On the opposite bank of the river is a desert, a desolate landscape, arid, harsh, hot, and unyielding. When our boat gets into the shallows by this bank, we find ourselves stuck in the sand and have to disembark. We are grateful for all the clear instructive signs telling us the way to a distant oasis that glistens on the horizon. But as we travel this route, we see demands for more and more sacrifice. ‘Take off your shoes to better feel the burning sand,’ says one sign. ‘Take off your shirt to better feel the sun blistering your skin and the cold night air shivering you rigid and aching.’ Wherever there is food, there is also a sign saying ‘Don’t eat this.’ Wherever there is drink, there’s a sign saying ‘Poison.’ We are directed onto paths that are treacherous, layered with smoldering coals to toughen us up and test our resolve. We are directed to sleep, if sleep we must, on beds of nails. We are told to deny every urge, especially the urge to turn around, to give up our difficult journey to the oasis that never seems any closer. Along the way we see skeletons half buried in the sand. Other wanderers, some crawling with a crazed look in their eyes, challenge us to keep going. But, if we are lucky, we remember the river.

If we are lucky, we feel the pull of the open water, the easeful travel in a boat that supports our journey, and we turn around.

The Buddha says the Middle Way is the course of the river. He taught the importance of noticing when we are getting too close to either shore. Both shores can be seductive. Both shores promise fulfillment, one through having it all and one through denying it all. The Buddha lived the first two-plus decades of his life on one bank and then six years on the other before, at the age of 29, he realized there was a river running through the very center of his being, the very center of being itself.

This is the key message the Buddha felt compelled to share upon awakening: At any moment if we find ourselves stuck on one shore or the other, if we can just remember the river, then we find ourselves on the river again. For the river is within us. Our practice is being present enough to recognize the river and to chart our course along the Middle Way.

Autumnal Equinox

2011-09-23T08:35:00.000-07:00

We have been exploring the concept of balance, inspired by the coming of the autumnal equinox, when night and day are equal in length. We have looked at: how to be in balance in the midst of chaos and how to create balance in our lives. And here we are at the autumnal equinox (Happy Fall!), only to discover that balance is not any particular moment in time, but something that we can find in any moment, even in the midst of challenging, seemingly out of balance circumstances.

Yet hearing or reading about a concept such as balance is just the first of a series of ways we incorporate it into our lives so that it can be of value. After learning about it, we live with it as an interesting idea. If it holds our interest, we study it in greater depth. With each exposure to the concept, we pause to notice our own response, what it activates within us: curiosity, fear or greed, for example. Our process is to question the concept itself, our understanding of the concept, and our reaction to the concept. By testing it for veracity, opening to it, walking with it, sitting with it, we can ultimately awaken to the truth through our own insights. Through this process we may find that we have incorporated this concept into our own view and our own way of being in the world.

What has come up for you in this exploration? Is the concept of balance valuable for you at this time? Is there a sense of imbalance in your life? If so, what is causing that sense of imbalance? Is it the causes and conditions of life that feel askew and you are struggling to stay centered amidst them? Or are you out of balance in your own patterns, not getting sufficient sleep, exercise, nourishment, meditation, pleasure, social engagement, mental stimulation, peace and quiet, laughter, order, simplicity or space for contemplation?
Through the regular practice of meditation we find the still point of center, a sense of being present and compassionate with whatever arises. From this vantage point, we can accept circumstances beyond our control and be empowered to change what is within our control. This sounds like the AA Serenity Prayer, which is based in deep wisdom. Whether we are prone to addictive behavior or not, we can incorporate this saying into our lives when seeking balance, for it is when we get out of balance that we fall into unskillfulness in whatever form is our personal pattern.
The Serenity Prayer concludes by asking for the wisdom to know the difference between the things we can change and the things that are beyond our control. This kind of discernment, being able to see when we are creating the imbalance in our lives and when it is something that we need to find a way to make peace with, comes with the regular practice of meditation. Without this clarity, we may believe we have no power to change a situation that is destructive, disruptive or out of balance in some way. Conversely we may believe we have it all together and it is our business to ‘correct’ someone else’s situation. We may spend our time railing against the world rather than accepting our seat at the table to co-create the world.

What comes up for you as I say these things? Notice images and associations. Make notes or journal if that is useful. What is the story you have been telling yourself? How has that story prevented you from seeing the balance that exists or seeing the imbalance that exists in your life?
When we talk about balance it is easy to assume that happiness is somehow only attached to one state of being, that happiness will come when all our ducks are in a row, all the stars aligned and we have gotten our act together. If we think we can only find happiness under certain conditions, as if we were hot house flowers, then we are creating a false narrative, an overly narrow and virtually impossible standard for happiness to exist.
Seeking happiness in itself is a sure means of never attaining it. If happiness is always on the horizon, then it is always beyond our reach. We are in a constant state of waiting, of hoping and dreaming. Look at the horizon. Does it ever get closer? No matter how far you travel you will never reach it. Is that not so? So our practice isn’t about some moment days, weeks or years hence, when all will be perfect. Our practice is about this moment: Being present, being compassionate, being here for the only gift we are given, again and again, fresh in each moment. Balance is only possible in this moment.
This sense of presence brings us the gift of being in balance, aka Equilibrium or Upekka, one of the Four Bramaviharas, or divine abodes. The first three Bramaviharas are Metta, loving kindness; Karuna, compassion; and Mudita, sympathetic joy, when we are happy for the happiness of others.
These states of being arise naturally out of the practice of meditation, of being present. We don’t have to go on a trek to find them. They are here and now, always arising from our regular practice of meditation. As you practice with consistency you may notice a sense of lovingkindness arising in you, not just for people you like for a particular reason, but for all beings. That is Metta. May ALL beings be well.
You may notice as you continue to meditate regularly that compassion arises. Compassion for yourself as you let go of erroneous ideas of who you are; and compassion for others, not because you feel sorry for them, but because you feel connected to them – no longer ‘There but for the grace of God go I’ but ‘There go I.’ That is Karuna.
As you practice you may begin to notice that you feel true joy for the happiness of others where before you may have felt gnawing envy, as if their happiness was stolen from you. Now you see that joy creates joy and is contagious. It is an infinite rather than finite resource. That is Mudita.
And you may discover that thanks to your meditation practice you are developing the ability to be present fully even when two strong emotions are vying for your attention. For example, it is not unusual at some point in life to be attending the wedding of a child and at the same time mourning or worrying about the ill-health of a parent or other loved one. In such a situation without the gift of a regular meditation practice, we might feel incapable of holding these two experiences or some other complexities of life without being plowed under by them. With meditation we find emotions can be full, rich and powerful, but there is a spacious awareness that gives us the abiding strength to hold it all in a loving open embrace. That is Upekka.
These four states, these heavenly abodes, are the naturally arising gifts of the practice. And Upekka, the ability to live in a balanced way is indeed a great blessing.Explore this concept of balance in your own life and in your way of being in the world. Distinguish between what is within your control and what is not. If it is within your control, find the strength of love and gratitude within you to choose to create in each moment a balanced and harmonious life. If it is beyond your control, find within you that still point of center again and again, using the paired intentions: to be present and compassionate.

Lao Tsu, the Tao and Balance

2011-09-18T12:01:00.000-07:00

Even though our focus here is primarily Buddhist, no exploration of the subject of balance would be complete without looking at the Tao de Ching. Two weeks ago we looked at the gyroscope as an example of how we can find balance even amidst seeming chaos, by staying centered in the moment, sensing our connection through the paired intentions of being present and being compassionate. Then last week we looked at the Buddha’s Middle Way and the Eightfold Path to see that not only can we be balanced in the midst of whatever arises, but we can actively create through our conscious choices a more balanced life. The Tao looks at both of these aspects, using different language for the same concepts.

I am no expert on the Tao but I did study it quite intensely at one period in my life and I have a number of translations of the Tao de Ching to work with. I remember answering the perennial question about what book would you have with you on a desert island with ‘Tao de Ching.’ Why? Because in 81 succinct verses it encompasses so much wisdom, and each time I read a verse it is fresh for me. I learn something new from it because I am in a different place.

If you are unfamiliar with Taoism or the Tao de Ching, there is plenty of information online to explore, so I will give a very brief introduction here:
About the same time the Buddha was teaching in 500 BC, legend has it that an archive keeper in a kingdom in China named Lao Tsu, which translates ‘old master,’ saw that the kingdom was decaying and decided it was time for him to hit the road. On his way out the western gate of town on his oxcart, he was stopped by the gatekeeper who implored him not to leave without at least writing down some words of wisdom, for he was known as a sage. So Lao Tsu got down off his cart and spent a couple hours writing down these verses, then went on his way and was never seen again. This may be a true story or it may be a legend with symbolic seeds of wisdom in the story itself, and the Tao may be the compilation of many sages over the centuries.

The word ‘Tao’ means the whole or supreme reality, and ‘te’ is the way we put our understanding of the Tao into action for the benefit of all beings. Ching means book, so the Tao de Ching could be translated ‘the book of the Supreme Reality and its Skillful Manifestation.’ So you can see that this is indeed very much what we were talking about in our previous discussions of balance: We align with the oneness, and put that awareness to use in our interactions with the world.

There are many translations of the title and of the verses themselves, and it is very interesting to have a few translations available to explore the verses. Why so many? If you look at a verbatim translation with each Chinese symbol of each verse given all its possible meanings, you can see it would be impossible for any two translators to come up with identical wording. I have no need to choose one translator over another. I like to draw from them all to get a well-rounded feeling of each verse. But if you plan to only purchase one book and you have several to choose from, you might take the time to compare how each translator approaches a particular verse, and then choose the one that resonates with you.

CLICK HERE to see animated version

In class I began our exploration of balance and the Tao by showing the Yin/Yang symbol. Most of us are at least familiar with the sight of this symbol in all its various decorative uses, but what does it really mean? As a teacher I believe that the symbol was developed as a teaching tool to demonstrate balance in nature. Looking at it you can see that the black swirl and the white swirl are perfectly balanced, and that within the black swirl is a white dot and within the white swirl there is a black dot.

If you were able to click on the symbol and see the animated loop, then you can see how this static image represents a singular point in time that is ongoing ever-changing. The black and white dots started as mere specks, almost invisible, and are continuing to grow so that at some point the white swirl has turned black and the black swirl has turned white, and then specks of the opposite begin to grow within them. Studying this symbol, especially in its animated form, gives us insight into the way of the universe. Isn’t this our experience of nature as we traverse the seasons, from dark to light, from cold to hot, and from wet to dry? In this season of the ending of summer, isn’t the hint of fall here, making itself known more and more each day, like the growing speck of black or white in the Yin Yang symbol? Noticing the ongoing changes in nature and in ourselves with loving curiosity and appreciation for being present to experience this fleeting gift of life and frees us from clinging to one over the other.

One student in class said she felt that the animated gyroscope from last week was more helpful than looking at the Yin Yang symbol because it offered a stable place to be, and the Yin Yang is in a constant state of flux. But when we look at the Yin Yang we are observing it from a whole view, not getting caught up in any place within the circle but holding a sufficiently expansive view that we see the way of the 10,000 things. Understanding the constancy of change and the nature of impermanence is key to liberating ourselves from being dependent on specific causes and conditions to stay the same for us to find joy in living.
Yin and Yang are opposite energies that together form a whole. As you read the following list of yin and yang opposites, feel it like a poem rather than simple information to be understood. Yin is dark, yang is light; yin is moon, yang is sun; yin is night, yang is day; yin is winter, yang is summer; yin is soft, yang is hard; yin is interior, yang is exterior; yin is passive, yang is aggressive; yin is contracting, yang is expanding; yin is water, yang is stone; yin is valley, yang is mountain; yin is estrogen, yang is testosterone; yin is contemplative, yang is active; yin is feeling, yang is thinking; yin is subconscious, yang is conscious; yin is listening, yang is speaking; yin is nurturing, yang is achieving; yin is intuitive, yang is reasoning.
(If you are familiar with yin and yang, you may have noticed that I chose to use the hormones testosterone and estrogen rather than gender, which is traditional. All of us, men and women, know what it feels like to have testosterone coursing through us. We feel strong and able, ready to accomplish whatever we put our minds to. And maybe sometimes we feel it as anger, frustration, even an urge to be violent.

Likewise, we all know what it feels like when estrogen flows through us. Perhaps we tear up with empathy at a movie. We feel a sense of connection with others and the world around us, we feel open and curious. But perhaps at times we might feel vulnerable, sad and weepy.

So we understand that women are not all Yin and men are not all Yang, that we all feel the effects of both these hormones to varying degrees throughout our lives.)
Our awareness of yin and yang helps us to bring them into balance and become more skillful. Chinese medicine and martial arts are all about this balancing of the yin and yang within us, and skillfully using them in our interactions.
I hope that reading the above list of yin and yang qualities gives you a feeling of the difference between the two, and how they work together to create the whole of our experience of life. It is less important to be able to name them yin and yang, and more important to notice this ongoing play of opposites that together form a whole balanced system. Understanding this, there is nothing we want to eliminate. All aspects have their place in the scheme of things. Developing an awareness of the Tao, of the wholeness of life, brings us into balance.
Here are a few verses from the Tao te Ching just to give you a taste. I hope it will inspire you to peruse your bookshelf for that copy you’ve had since the sixties but never really bothered to read, or to enjoy discovering it for the very first time.

Be still
And discover your center of peace.
Throughout nature
Then ten thousand things move along,
But each returns to its source.
Returning the center is peace.
Find Tao by returning to source.
-- Tao 16 Trans. Diane Dreher

All beings support yin and embrace yang
and the interplay of these two forces
fills the universe
Yet only at the still-point,
between the breathing in and the breathing out.
can one capture these two in perfect harmony.
-- Excerpt from Tao 42, Trans. Jonathan Star

The Tao is infinite, eternal.
Why is it eternal?
It was never born;
Thus it can never die.
Why is it infinite?
It has no desires for itself;
thus it is present for all beings.
The Master stays behind;
that is why she is ahead.
She is detached from all things;
that is why she is one with them.
Because she has let go of herself,
she is perfectly fulfilled.
--Tao 7, trans Stephen Mitchell

Some say that my teaching is nonsense.
Others call it lofty but impractical.
But to those who have looked inside themselves,
This nonsense makes perfect sense.
And to those who put it into practice,
This loftiness has roots that go deep.
I have just three things to teach:
Simplicity, patience, compassion.
These three are your greatest treasures.
Simple in actions and in thoughts,
you return to the source of being.
Patient with both friends and enemies,
you accord with the way things are.
Compassionate toward yourself,
you reconcile all beings in the world.
--Tao 67, trans. Stephen Mitchell

The Buddha's Middle Way

2011-09-12T15:24:00.000-07:00

After last week’s exploration of finding balance in our lives amidst the inconsistent causes and conditions that abound, I wanted to bring the Buddha into the conversation because his first discourse after his awakening included an explanation of what he called the Middle Way, and what is the nature of the Middle Way if not balance?
Remember that the Buddha’s life had been marked by two extremes. Siddhartha Gautama was raised in opulence, luxury and sensory indulgence. When he left that life, he joined a group of wandering mendicants who practiced asceticism, denying not just the pleasures of the flesh but as much of the basic needs of the body as they possibly could without dying from their rigorous practice. Siddhartha was quite gifted at the various ascetic practices, mastering them quickly. But after six years he found that this extreme did not satisfy either. So he set off on his own, sat under the Bodhi tree with clear intention and a willingness to be present with whatever arose, and ultimately awakened.
After he awakened, thus becoming a buddha or awakened one, it is said that he sat by a river and listened to a lute being played. He noted that the strings of the lute needed to be neither too loose nor too taut in order to play beautiful music. Just so he realized that over-efforting and under-efforting both create discord, that only when tuned to what he came to call The Middle Way could true happiness be found.

This was an important insight for him and an important message for the ascetics to hear because their whole practice was imbued with extreme deprivation and self-mortification.
How important is this message to us? Is it a message only for people living at extremes? Can those of us who live moderate lives feel smug and move on to the next lesson? Is living at extremes a real problem for us?
The Buddha said we should neither force ourselves to do things we cannot do, nor lose ourselves in sensual pleasures. Those two words ‘force’ and ‘lose’ are key to this teaching.

Force. Hmmm. When have we ever forced ourselves to do something that it turned out well? How present can we be when we feel forced. What inner aspect is in charge of this forcing? Is it a wise inner aspect or a fear-based one? I think of some inner Gestapo with threatening words and weapons that will be used if I don’t tow the line. How whole-heartedly will I do whatever task is at hand under these conditions? How much of my mind is preoccupied with plotting escape routes?

But wait, sometimes I do have to just force myself to get out of bed in the morning, and the minute I do I am glad to have done so. So isn’t a little force necessary? When I stop to think about that moment, I can notice that my body wants to rise, wants to move, wants to greet the day. The inner Gestapo has nothing to do with it. What keeps me in bed is any of a number of emotions that have already scoped out what the day might bring and are pulling back in aversion. Or, there is simply a greedy self-indulgent aspect that finds the coziness of bed quite addictive. So there is a subtle but powerful difference between forcing myself to get out of bed, pushed by some name-calling inner drill sergeant, and being present with the natural call to rise.

The idea of losing ourselves in sensual pleasure actually sounds pretty good but in truth the more present we can be with any state, the more pleasurable it is. When we lose ourselves what are we losing? Our access to inner wisdom? Who is making the choices when we are lost? Some greedy aspect that wants to gobble up all the goodies before they are gone? Is the jagged edge of fear really adding to our experience or taking away from it? An interesting exploration for each of us.

Last week we studied the image of a gyroscope as an illustration of how our twin intentions of being present and compassionate keep us stable rather than subject to the extremes of the events that may happen in our lives. These two intentions are the mainstay of our practice. If they were the only things we learned, they would be enough to make an enormous difference in our lives. But the Buddha in his initial teaching spoke of The Four Noble Truths, and the fourth among them was The Eightfold Path, which provides us with actionable means to create the Middle Way in our own lives. By following the Eightfold Path we not only can survive and even thrive in adverse conditions, we can actively create conditions most beneficial for our welfare and the welfare of others.

If you are unfamiliar with or would like review, look up both explorations of the Four Noble Truths, including the Eightfold Path. Since this is the primary teaching of the Buddha -- the most important thing he wanted to share when he began teaching -- it is certainly going to be worth your time to find out about it.

The Eightfold Path supplies us with tools or guideposts to see when we veer off into extremes and get out of balance in our lives. Every day we are in a position to make conscious skillful choices that will create either happiness or havoc in our lives. So the Middle Way is not just being able to tolerate what arises, but developing the skillfulness to actively create balance in our lives. We develop behaviors that support health and well being, like eating a balanced diet, getting sufficient exercise, and working without over-efforting. We may recognize the way we speak or act out of fear and anger, and then have to live with the drama that unfolds. With awareness we recognize how we are often causing the events around us. Hopefully as we grow older, we grow wiser, and maybe we don’t need to Buddha to tell us how to be skillful, but the Buddha and his concepts help to make the process of being skillful so much more satisfying as we develop a sense of presence and compassion rather than a scolding tone that diminishes all life.

Sometimes when I work I think about the yogi jobs on retreat. A yogi job is what each retreatant voluntarily undertakes for about an hour each day for the benefit of the whole community of retreatants -- chopping vegetables, washing dishes, cleaning bathrooms, vacuuming a hallway, sweeping a terrace, etc. At the beginning of my first retreat, I wanted very much to do a great job, to be the best yogi possible. But it is difficult to sustain that kind of intention when you begin to feel the interconnection of all beings. The intention shifts to a joyful sense of participation. I found myself doing the job at hand in a whole-hearted way without any sense of needing to be the best at it, or looking for approval, or being afraid of not doing it well enough. While at first a job like scrubbing a shower might seem boring, ultimately it isn’t at all. And even if it were, the yogi job is for a set amount of time, no more than an hour and usually less. For most of the jobs, we simply do the best we can within that time frame allotted and then put our tools away and go back to our sitting practice. We accept that no one is going to break silence to exclaim what a shiny shower stall we’ve polished, and any need for praise has been replaced by something infinitely more satisfying, a sense of being present and interconnected.

After a retreat, I bring home that wholesome attitude toward working, but soon I am back to the habit of over-doing and being goal-oriented, forgetting that it doesn’t all have to be done right now. And sometimes I find I am full of thoughts that show me I am doing the work for approval and the fear of not being good enough in the eyes of the people I care about. But now when that happens, at least I notice it, and I can make the shift into a more wholesome relationship.

For further exploration of the Middle Way, you might review these three posts: Middle Way, Middle Way, Don't Tip the Boat! Pilgrimage: Sarnath

As we study the Middle Way we want to remember that it is not the mediocre way, not the straight and narrow path, not the bucker up, put up and shut up way. It is the wisdom way, the alive way, the present way, the treasure way, the juicy way, the rich way, the Way.

Finding Balance

2011-09-03T10:07:00.000-07:00

Here we are in September. Notice how that feels, what thoughts come up for you around the end of summer, the coming of fall.

We are coming into the time of the autumnal equinox, where day and night are equal in length, so I’m drawn to think about balance -- finding balance in our lives, noticing where we get out of balance.

Do you notice where you get out of balance in life? Where you over-indulge or over-effort? It’s often in certain specific areas -- in our relationship with food, work, family, friends, coworkers, entertainment, exercise or access to nature. Finding balance begins with noticing what’s true in our current experience.

If you have ever watched a gyroscope in motion, you can see that it is always in balance. This example of one shows how the center portion is stable while the rest circle in all directions. The two parts of the upright pole extending vertically from the level disk remind me of our paired intentions to stay present and compassionate. Where the pole intersects with the disk can be seen as the still point of center that we cultivate through meditation and these intentions.

One kind of gyroscope animation from Wikipedia

The three outer circles in constant motion represent the causes and conditions of life, the events that are unpredictable and beyond our control. With practice our attention stays more and more centered, able to be present with all that occurs without being thrown off by it.

Finding balance is not making sure that everything is even, equal and easy in our lives, but rather that however wildly the circles of life rotate, we are grounded through our sense of presence and sense of compassion to be able to be with it. In looking at this center level disk that represents awareness, I imagine it as having grown from a very small point, the point of a pin that I’ve mentioned before to describe how it may initially feel to be present for a brief moment or two. Now awareness has grown to be this stable ample disk where we can maintain awareness for longer periods without grabbing for one of those rings.

Looking at the gyroscope animated image above, can you imagine trying to hang on to one of the outer edges, the wild swings and loops, being tossed this way and that, and trying to hold on for dear life? Imagine how easy it would be to be thrown off.

When we ride the edges of our experience, allowing ourselves to be thrown by causes and conditions, we suffer and those around us suffer. But when through regular meditation practice we stay present and compassionate, we can find joy in simply being alive even in the most difficult circumstances, while still being fully present for whatever arises. We don’t have to find a ‘better ring’ to hang onto. We simply practice awareness.

If this gyroscope image is useful for you, you might gaze at it for awhile and incorporate that image into your practice.

In our lives, sometimes we may focus more in one area than another, but we can still stay in balance. When we get out of balance, it is because we have gone unconscious and grabbed one of the outer rings of our experience. Perhaps we’re spending too much time at the computer and we’re overriding our sense of presence with a sense of need to get things done. We get into future thinking, grinding through this time in order to get to the reward time when we can relax.

Pause for a moment and think of where in your life you might be out of balance now. If nothing comes up, that’s fine. You might think of a recent example, or an area of your life where you often get out of balance.

Once you have it in mind, think of ways you seek balance when you notice it. For example, when we find we are eating to extremes and growing by leaps and bounds, a typical reaction is to determine to go on a strict diet. Often because the diet is so devoid of joy we put it off until some future date, and then knowing it is coming we figure we better eat up while we can, thus getting ourselves further out of balance!

Then when we actually go on the diet, maybe we get really into it, maybe we enjoy the rigors of self-discipline as a fresh contrast to the over-indulgence we had been experiencing. Yes, but what else is happening? Are we so focused on this regime that we are making it our life? Are we talking about it with others to the exclusion of any potentially more interesting topic? Are we defining ourselves by our ability to stick to a diet and lose weight? Are we spending more time in front of the mirror? Are we living for a future date when we will be at our target weight, promising ourselves the perfect weight wardrobe?

And then what happens? Well, let’s just say there’s a reason that diet programs always say ‘Results not typical’ under the before and after photos of celebrities that followed their program.

It’s not that it’s impossible to lose weight and keep it off. It’s just that the above example, which IS typical, is how we try to balance and extreme with another extreme. This looks more like a teeter totter than a gyroscope, with us soaring and plunging and ultimately falling off.

So I am living with this in my own life: noticing where I am living at an extreme and noticing the reaction to counterbalance it with another extreme. And instead of following through with that plan, which I have seen over and over again doesn’t work, I am simply being as present as I can be and as compassionate as I can be. I am making note of little traps that I fall into and figuring out little work-arounds that help me avoid them. For example, lately at meetings I attend there have been tempting snack foods put out within arm’s reach. I am finding there is another option besides indulgence or denial, even for me. I deny myself the food until I am leaving, and then I take one piece and enjoy it. So this is an example of how each of us can find our own way around things that throw us out of balance and into unconscious behavior. Noticing what happens, and instead of over-reacting or making it someone else’s problem -- i.e. “Let’s make a rule that no treats can be brought to meetings.” -- simply finding ways to negotiate a workable solution that is balanced.

I’ve noticed that when I am over-efforting -- spending too much time on the computer working on a project or being focused on preparing for a future event that needs to be perfect in every way (an example brought up by a student that I think many of us can relate to!) -- that if I stop to think about it I realize I have gone into people-pleasing mode. This desire for perfection, for making everything right, is our fear of not being accepted, not being enough, and not being loved. It is a form of appeasement we may have developed in childhood to cope with parents whose critical faculties were in high gear, or some other such challenging situation. It’s the way we’ve dealt with it and we can’t find fault with it because working hard is a virtue, is it not?

I think we can agree there is nothing wrong with hard work, but when it begins to crowd everything out, then we know we are dealing with a matter of extremes. In the example of preparing for an event, the student mentioned that by party time she was wiped out and not present to enjoy it or to be available for others except to make sure they had what they needed. But what they needed was her! Her presence!

So that need to please and appease is something to look at when we find we are over-efforting. If that doesn’t exactly fit, we might think of it in even a broader term of needing to exist, and acknowledgement from others for a job well done is a way of knowing we exist. Of course it is only a temporary fix and doesn’t truly satisfy.

When we are under-efforting or over-indulging, as in the case of over-eating, we might look at what we are avoiding or denying ourselves. What is this indulgence a stand-in for? Where in our lives are we denying ourselves some aliveness, some joy?

When I’m looking for inner answers, I often turn to nature. When I think of balance in nature, one of the best examples for me is the tree.

A classic tree image is of roots reaching down and out in balance to the outreach of its branches. As I think about the tree with its branches reaching up to the sky, its leaves absorbing nourishment from the sun, its roots absorbing nourishment from the soil, and its whole being functioning in balance with all of life, as it takes sin carbon dioxide and releases oxygen for mobile life forms to breathe; as it provides shade, shelter and nourishment to woodland creatures; and its roots keep the earth together. Just by being, existing, a tree performs its balanced functions that benefit all of life.

Just by being, existing, attuned with our own inner wisdom, there is a distinct possibility that we too are fulfilling our natural function. Perhaps we don’t have to go to extremes! Perhaps we just need to stay present and compassionate to be fully alive and balanced.

Speaking of roots, we can revisit our exploration of shallow-rooted fear-based living versus deeply rooting in the spacious nourishing soil of life. Another way we get out of balance is between our creative non-linear impulses and our inner desire for structure and rules. In psychological terms these are the puer and the senex. I have been rereading ‘The Wisdom of Imperfection’ by Rob Preece, a Tibetan Buddhist teacher and Jungian psychotherapist, and he mentions these terms. So let me bring my own exploration of shallow and deep rooting to these two aspects. The puer when it is well-rooted, coming from a sense of love and wholeness, is a font of creativity and freshness. The senex when it is well-rooted is the ability to take that creativity to its fullest expression through supplying a grounded organization for it. Preece uses the example of a craftsperson who develops senex-based skills and systems to bring to fruition the puer-based creativity of their craft. But now let’s look at the shallow-rooted fear-based puer: infantile, childish, erratic, different just to be different, using imagination to create conspiracy theories, mischief and destruction. And the senex when it is shallowly rooted in fear becomes rigid, autocratic, bureaucratic, heavy-handed, punitive and authoritarian, squelching all creativity and fresh thinking as threatening to the systems it has established.

So when the puer and senex are deeply rooted, nourished and tapped into a loving inner wisdom, they are a powerhouse of combined creativity and the supportive structure and systems that build upon and maintain the fruits of that creativity. When they are shallow-rooted in fear, puer and senex fight each other because they feel threatened by each other.

We can see this when it happens in ourselves, and we can clearly see it happening in the world around us. So that gives us a way of looking at what happens that can be very helpful to remind ourselves to attune to the inner wisdom, to stay present and deeply-rooted, knowing ourselves to be a natural expression of the universe loving itself. Just like the tree! And in that alignment we find a natural way to find balance in our lives.

Inner Aspects are not real! and other things we need to remember

2011-08-28T09:04:00.000-07:00

We have been looking at our various inner aspects, the fear-based thoughts and emotions that form patterns so seemingly solid that most of us have taken them to be who we are. Through meditation we begin to see that we are not our thoughts, our emotions, our bodies, our quirky behaviors, beliefs, accomplishments or failures. Yet all of these are still part of our experience. We have simply shifted our relationship with them, shifted our vantage point to Wise View, as we discussed in the Buddha’s Eightfold Path. We see more clearly because we have given ourselves this quiet time to access the calm, loving, timeless inner voice.

By continually accessing, listening to and aligning with that loving font of universal wisdom, we come to a reliable place of insight and understanding about who we are. This alignment requires only our whole-hearted intention to be present and compassionate. To strive to do more than that is not only not required but would undermine our ability to be present and compassionate.

Meditation is called a practice because we repeatedly come back to our set intention each time we find we have gotten lost in past or future thinking. Being present – here, now, relaxed -- is the access point to universal wisdom, and being compassionate with ourselves and others creates the spaciousness for the wisdom to arise within us. Developing the ability to guide our attention back to the present moment again and again is all we need to do. At some point it becomes more natural. At first it may feel like dancing on the head of a pin to stay in the present moment, but as our practice continues we feel more stable and more present more of the time.

Once we are able to be present for extended periods, noticing what arises in each moment, we quite naturally become curious and find we can skillfully explore our discoveries. The interest we take in the inner workings of our own way of being in the world and in the world itself, is very different from the greedy mind that wants to acquire knowledge, to shore up a sense of self, to protect against someone calling us ignorant. Accessing inner wisdom stimulates beginner’s mind and activates our innate curiosity. Not knowing is no longer scary but delightful! We are invited to dance with life in all its mystery, and not a one of us was meant to be a wallflower.

If this idea of not being our thoughts and emotions doesn’t make sense, give it time and meditation. It is not something that is easily explained and everyone discovers it differently. Here is one ‘explanation’ that could offer some understanding.

Think of the child who takes a clock apart to see what makes it tick. Once all the pieces are laid upon the table, is it still a clock? Is a clock a bunch of small metal objects in various sizes and shapes, each of which could perhaps be used to make something totally different? No, I think we can agree the parts are not the clock.

In this same way, we can look at our thoughts, our body, our personality, our emotions, our skills, talents, achievements or preferences, and see that as valued as they are, they are not who we are. When we try to answer the question of who we are by holding up any of these and saying, “This is me” we are like the child holding up a small metal gear and saying this is a clock. The child knows this is not true. And we inherently know that we are not our passing thoughts, our behaviors or our physical features.

Meditative self-exploration is not a scheme to create a new self that will be more acceptable. This is extremely important to realize and remember. We often believe that if only we were different, everything would be better. Meditation is not a makeover! It is being present with what is. We are present to notice a recurring pattern of thought or emotion arising out of fear. We may notice a reaction to this discovery in the form of a desire to throw out, deny or remake what we have discovered. But this reaction is just another fear-based aspect trying to make things right. Each time we notice this desire, we simply renew our intention to be present and compassionate. There is nothing we can find here that we can replace with something better. There is no recycling center, dump, prison or graveyard for what we have discovered. What we discover is a facet of the is-ness of being. Doing battle with it only activates aggressive inner aspects that create further disruption. Instead, we stay steady with our deep-rooted awareness, and compassionately explore further.

Self-exploration is not for the faint of heart. Many people are terrified of the idea of really finding out who they are. I know I was! I was quite sure that whatever I would find would be so loathsome I would die of shame. Like many others, I came (in my case returned) to meditation out of desperation. I felt I had no choice because things had become so intolerable and I was in such pain.

However we come to this process, we learn to notice, be available for, and then align with universal wisdom, our Buddha nature. We develop a perspective that allows us to see our discoveries in a way that no longer threatens our existence. When we truly relax into the here and now, we feel supported by the infinite web of life into which we are intrinsically woven. Nothing we can find is alien to this is-ness of life, even patterns of thought, emotion and behavior that are steeped in fear, hoping to stay alive by the unskillful means of dividing, judging, name-calling, and trying to make what we encounter into something ‘other,’ in order to survive. None of us invented this pattern and all of us experience it. But by continually making sufficient quiet space to hear that quiet non-demanding voice of infinite wisdom each of us has access to, we find that we are less and less driven by these fear-based patterns.

The more we notice and come to recognize these aspects or patterns, the less powerful they become. Thus we are more willing to look closer still. Ultimately we find a joy and delight in the exploration. When we come upon something ‘awful’ we say ‘Aha!’ rather than ‘Oh no!’ We no longer feel we have discovered the ugly truth about ourselves, but that we have discovered a heretofore hidden fear-based aspect or pattern. As we have explored in past talks, we know that once it is recognized, we can skillfully dialog with this aspect, resulting in an improved life experience. With each exploratory insight, we find more spaciousness, more aliveness and more sense of connection.

Perhaps this explanation leaves you with many questions, such as:

How do I know when I am ready for self-exploration?
You are ready when you have developed a strong meditation practice that enables you to stay present and compassionate for extended periods of time. Without this alignment with inner wisdom, your inner dialogs will be conversations between two fear-based inner aspects. When fear meets fear any conversation becomes a duel or a battle. There will be a supposed winner and a loser, and that’s a lose-lose situation.

Another question I have heard expressed is ‘Why can’t I just kill off inner aspects I don’t like?’
The ‘killing’ is done by another inner aspect that is then empowered to do more harm. Aligned with infinite inner wisdom, we recognize that love is more powerful than violence because violence is just the expression of shallow-rooted fear. Love is deeply rooted and all-encompassing. There is no aspect or pattern that is not held in this loving web of life.

Also it’s important to remember that aspects can’t be killed off. They will just go underground and morph into something else, so to do battle with them is hopeless. Our reaction to that news might reasonably be, ‘Well then, there’s nothing I can do, I’ll just surrender and continue to let my life be dominated by these fear-based aspects. That’s just the way it is.’ What we are learning here is a skillful and successful way to deal with these aspects so that we will not be victimized by their behavior.

So are all aspects acceptable?
Yes, all are acceptable, just as all children are acceptable, even the bully, the whiner, the pouter, and the sour-puss. All are acceptable but all need love and guidance so that their fears are addressed and they feel safe. Only then will they have no need to cause harm to themselves or others. It isn’t their intention to harm anyone. It is their intention to protect us, but their means are unskillful and cause problems and damage.

What if I don’t have access to this inner wisdom?
The fear that you don’t have access is just an inner aspect trying to protect itself from disappearing. If it only knew how nonthreatening this access is, it would help you find it! But that’s not the nature of fear-based aspects. They are the dragons at the gate of enlightenment, the ones that we must acknowledge with awareness, kindness and patience. Just when we have given up the goal of gaining access, the dragon relaxes its stance and the gates are opened. So sit with the fear that arises within you with kindness and compassion. Anchor into physical sensation, release tension whenever you notice it, and bath yourself with loving kindness. This is what your wise inner voice would do for you, so do it for yourself.

Another question arises out of a concern that all this talk of inner aspects makes it sound like we’re schizophrenic. Why speak of it in this way?

It’s extremely important to understand that this is just a technique for inner exploration. It would be magical thinking to suggest that we actually have inner aspects with cute names! But it is a very effective way for many of us to recognize our patterns of thought, emotion and behavior.

This particular method I came up with on my own, loosely based on something my original non-Buddhist meditation teacher suggested. He was a believer in the value of creating natural easeful mindscapes to rest in during meditation. He taught that if a person or animal came into our natural setting, we would do well to ask it questions, because it would have a message for us. Soon after he said that, I came upon a figure in one of my meditation sits -- a woman with close-cropped hair and white Chinese-style pajamas was dancing in a glowing orb of light. She was so joyous I didn’t recognize her as having my features until later. But I asked her questions and she started talking with such deep-rooted wisdom that I took notes. When I shared my notes with the class the students said, ‘Oh it’s like she’s talking directly to me!” and my teacher insisted I publish the collected notes. The result was my book ‘Tapping the Wisdom Within, A Guide to Joyous Living.’ It was my wise inner voice, who introduced me to the fear-based cast of characters within me and taught me how to respectfully dialog with them in a way that all needs would be met.

A few years later, when I began to study Buddhism, I heard that this technique of naming inner aspects is done in some Buddhist traditions as well. These kind of techniques work with the natural tendency we humans have to personify, label and categorize. Biologically we are dealing with neurotransmitters, brain waves, hormones, etc. that together form the patterns of thought and emotion that fill our experience of being alive. But most of us are more comfortable with thinking in terms of a cast of characters in a novel or play than brushing up on scientific terms.

When we think about human culture throughout history, how we have told ourselves involved stories, often using iconic figures, such as the panoply of gods in Greek, Hindu, African and Native American mythology, what is this but our way of coming to understand ourselves better? So this inner exploration is much like that. We are getting to know an inner cast of characters, understanding that they are iconic in nature, not actual people living inside our heads. Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell and Clarissa Pinkola Estes made their life work noticing and working with these symbols, icons and personifications of these patterns and traits. This is rich exploration!

It would also be human nature to take these characters to be real, to get caught up in all their shenanigans, to root for one or the other. So we do this inner exploration only when we are aligned with our ability to see that it is just a play. Then we can have fun with it and learn what we need to know at the same time.

It is my belief that the shift from many gods to one god was brought about by enlightened beings throughout history who discovered for themselves and shared with others the realization that all is one, and joy can be found by aligning with that loving all-inclusive oneness rather than any single fear-based iconic character. But human nature being what it is, this enlightened information was received and celebrated and then over time degenerated into this ‘one’ god against others. Thus religions become dangerous rather than helpful. Meditation has the capacity to help us understand that all of this is just a way of exploring ourselves and the world more skillfully. Yet meditators are not immune to the tendency to be divisive, to declare one school of Buddhism, for example, better than another. If we remember that we are diverse in how we receive information, we can understand why there is a need for so many different ways for the access to universal wisdom to be taught. The key is whether the core wisdom is sustained or whether it is lost or diluted in the fray.

A very important question is how do we recognize our wise inner voice. After all there have been people throughout the ages that have believed themselves to be acting under the instructions of a wise inner voice. How can we know we are not delusional?

When you think about some of the things that have been done in the name of God, for example, that are ruthless and destructive, you can be sure this was not accessing universal inner wisdom. Here are some distinctions:

The wise voice will NEVER say words like should, must, have to, right now, hurry up, the only way, I’m warning you, you better watch out, do what I say, don’t question me, I’m right, you don’t need to understand why, urgent, immediately, don’t! do!

The wise inner voice is very quiet, never loud, urgent, or demanding.

The wise inner voice is very calm, never caffeinated or rushed.

The wise inner voice loves you now and always. If you say ‘What do you need me to know,’ the first thing this voice may tell you is ‘I love you, I have always loved you, I will always love you.’ And nothing else that it will say will ever be in contradiction to that.

The wise inner voice is patient. There is never a sense of urgency to it.

You don’t have to search for your wise inner voice. In fact the search itself may take you off course. Simply be present, here, now and relaxed, and like a pond clearing after a storm, access to inner wisdom will become available to you.

Is self-exploration self-indulgent?
Remember we are not talking about going on a search. We are talking about dealing with what arises in this moment. When something arises, it may be something we hadn’t ever noticed before because we were busy thinking about things in the past and future. All we are doing is looking more closely with curiosity at what is present in our experience, noticing associative thoughts, images, emotions and physical sensations. These are clues that are right here, but only apparent to the mind that is right here as well. We don’t need to pursue an aspect to dialog with it. Whatever aspect would be most valuable to dialog with is present right here and now. It is their disruptive presence that makes the dialog necessary!

By calling this process self-exploration, we bring to mind a search or a quest. Holding this view can be a distraction, a distortion and just another habituated pattern of future thinking, as if life does not really begin until we find the holy grail of who we are. A person on such a quest is not present, but is caught up in addictive or obsessive patterns that give them a myopic or astigmatic view of themselves and the world. This we could call self-indulgent, but why name it in this pejorative way, as if the person is having a great time at our expense? They are not! They are suffering because they are caught in a whirlwind that keeps taking them out of the present moment through unskillfulness.

What’s up with the cutesy names?
Just as this process of defining aspects works with our human tendency to like story and character, the naming of characters works with our tendency to label and organize information we come upon in order to retrieve it when we need it. We run into trouble with this tendency when we take our labels to be reality rather than a useful organizing tool.

It is useful when we come upon a fear-based thought or emotion to personify it. We are organically set up to notice human features and characteristics, so if we attribute features and characteristics to a pattern of behavior, based on what it seems to be concerned about, we will recognize it next time we see it much more easily than if we tried to assign it a dry scientific term that was difficult to remember and not very interesting to us. We are simply working with what we have: our natural tendencies! By creating an easy way to recognize them, we can first and foremost know that their suggestions or demands are not those arising out of love and wisdom but out of fear. At any given moment it’s important to know that so that the choices we make in life are skillful.

But as part of the process of exploration, this naming makes it easy to have a dialog. A ‘cutesy’ name reminds us to approach this aspect with compassion and respect. If we are not able to give it compassion or respect, then we are not aligned with our inner wisdom and need to sit quietly and come into the present, let the inner pond clarify a bit, before we dialog. If that’s not possible, then this isn’t a useful practice at this time as the results will be a dueling dialog between two aspects.

So there’s a good reason for the names. But it is extremely important to be clear that this is just a useful system because otherwise we run the risk of taking it all very literally. There are no little people running around inside our brains! I say this because it seems to be human nature to convert these kinds of systems into literal truth. We are susceptible to believing the cast of characters we create to be real! We may fall a little in love with them, become enchanted with their behavior and forget that this is simply a useful means for exploration. So don’t get attached to the adorable mischievous aspects within you! Instead stay present and attuned with inner wisdom so that you can see them with clarity and compassion.

So these are some of the questions I’ve received. I would be happy to hear any others and respond as best I can.

Excuses! Excuses! A Procrastination Exploration

2011-08-13T19:16:00.000-07:00

When we are really noticing our thoughts we can see where we shut down, where we find road blocks in our way. Maybe we say we want to do something or go somewhere, but we keep procrastinating. What is the message that sets up the block that keeps us from doing this thing we say we want to do?

Meditation practice creates a spacious mind where such noticing becomes possible. We can set aside time after meditation to ask in and see if there is some concern or issue that feels important to look at right now.

Perhaps there is some lifelong dream that we keep putting off. What is the story that gets spun every time we think of that dream? The story we tell ourselves may be spun in words, images, sensations or emotions. We may show ourselves examples of past failures in the area of the dream. We may be dredge up harsh judgments with rude labels that make us feel disempowered, unable to accomplish what it is we feel drawn to do. The story may not seem to have a direct correlation yet we see that it is automatically triggered by the thought of the dream, so we can explore the connection. We can develop curiosity about how that leap happens.

Energy Levels
We may notice a variation in levels of energy around the idea. At 4 AM if I am awake I am likely to have a whole series of interconnected creative ideas that culminate in grand schemes that seem totally do-able at the time. By 4 PM these ideas seem absolutely impossible to accomplish and leave me feeling weighted down with yet another creative idea I will not fulfill. So I have learned to write my ideas up in level-adjusted versions, starting with the grand scheme and ending with the key component or thrust of the basic idea, the thing I can definitely do. If there are aspects that are not something I can do on my own but it feels like a worthy idea, I make note of who would be the right person or community of people to do it. I sometimes have ideas that are simply not mine to fulfill. Apparently we all do because there’s a site called halfbakery.com where you can put up ideas that you will never use in case someone else who doesn’t have the idea but has the ability to run with it might find it.

Now I could just tell myself to go back to sleep at 4 AM, tell myself, ‘You know you’re never going to do any of this, why are you wasting this time?’ I have gone that route but have found that when I shut down the thought process, I am in effect capping the font of creativity that I seem to have more access to at certain times.

Noticing our energy cycles, when we are most alive, awake, cookin’ and when we are more likely to be tired, unable to concentrate or make a decision, is important and skillful awareness so that we can make use of our peak times and be compassionate with our low times. (Since my lowest time is four in the afternoon, it was a challenge when this class was for years at 4 pm. That’s how I got in the habit of reading my dharma talks rather than speaking them. I really couldn’t think on my feet very well at that time of day. Now the class is at 10 AM and I feel much fresher and more able to lead discussions and answer questions. But students are in the habit of listening to my written talk, and they say they feel it’s like being read a story. I realize I am more of a writer than a teacher, so I do read the talk, then we have a discussion. But when I give speeches to larger groups I don’t even rely on notes.)

If we can notice our patterns of energy we can schedule our lives more skillfully. If the dips are very low and disruptive, we might also adjust our eating patterns. But if the levels are not sending us into extremes, we can simply schedule high energy periods for creativity and low ones for rest and relaxation. Understanding our own rhythms and cycles is an important part of self-discovery and the ability to live skillfully. And seeing the levels of energy we can understand why at times we are inspired by a dream and at other times discouraged.

OPDs
Sometimes we are actually holding other people’s dreams and we feel the responsibility to act upon them. Self-exploration helps us to see the source of our dream. It’s not uncommon even at a late age to still be holding a parent’s expectation or dream for us, feeling guilty if we haven’t fulfilled it. Once we discover that it isn’t even our own dream, it is much easier to let it go.

Sometimes we are hanging on to dreams we once had that have gone stale and no longer have meaning for us. We hold on out of habit. Sometimes we really need to clean out our wardrobe of dreams that just aren’t working for us anymore!

To assess whether a dream is vibrant and alive or stale and in need of discarding, we sense in while holding the dream in our thoughts. Where do we feel it in our body? Is there greed or aversion involved? Is this something we want in order to be seen in a certain way by others? To gain approval? To exist? These dreams are born from a shallow-rooted fear-based place. For example, the desire to be fabulously rich, famous or adored as an object of desire is the fear of disappearing, not being seen. We can ask ourselves what amount of money would be enough to satisfy this need? What amount of recognition would satisfy this hunger? What amount of adoration would make the mirror any kinder? What amount of accomplishment would make us feel we deserved to take up space on the planet?

We can look to past longings in this area and find in many cases that we have fulfilled what we had thought would satisfy us. Yet here we are still hungry! There is an image in Buddhist teachings of the hungry ghost. It has a very small mouth and a huge belly, so it is constantly hungry but unable to satisfy its hunger. We can notice the hungry ghost within us --that fear-based desire that can never be satisfied no matter what we accomplish, no matter how much money we accumulate, no matter how many awards we receive and no matter how much we are loved.

We can see this in ourselves and we can see it in others, how little even major achievements or large bank deposits seems to satisfy the hunger for something that feels beyond naming. We can see how this hunger dulls our other senses, how little joy is possible when this longing is ever present. This is just the nature of a shallow-rooted fear-based dream. It can never be satisfied.

When we recognize this, it is cause for celebration. Celebration? Yes, because we are developing the skill of awareness to notice what is true. But often when we make this discovery, we don’t feel like celebrating. We are too embarrassed to discover we had such a shallow dream.

This is where our intention to be present and compassionate comes in to help us be with even something very ugly and uncomfortable, and to hold ourselves in a loving open embrace. We have made a great discovery and we need to be present to reap the rewards of the discovery, not rush away from it, afraid of what it says about us. The only thing it says about us is that we are human, and if that is new news, it can feel painful, but it is also a sense of communion. We are not alone in this. We are an expression of life in all its manifestations, and these convoluted fear-based thoughts and emotions arise in all of us. This understanding helps us to be courageous in staying present with our discoveries.

So sensing into the body, noticing what arises when we think of a dream we have been telling ourselves, gives us rich vital information, even when it’s painful.

If this dream we have been telling ourselves is born of love and generosity, sharing of our skills, experience and talents, or a desire to know the world in a deeper more meaningful way, we will have quite a different experience with it. We might feel a joyousness of inner sureness, a sense of absolute yes that fills us with a feeling of being in the right place at the right time and empowered to do whatever we need to do.

If we feel blocked, we can recognize the fear-based voice full of reasons why we shouldn’t undertake this dream, why we shouldn’t take a chance and why we would fail if we tried. Once known, the blockage may disappear or we may need to work with it, to negotiate a settlement that assuages the fears expressed. Or the block may be pointing out something that needs to happen before we can actualize our dream.

For example, I had a fear-based aspect that believed I would make myself sick if I did any public speaking. So I joined Toastmasters, an international organization that helps people overcome the fear of public speaking and develop speech and leadership skills. The practice of speaking in a supportive environment has helped me overcome the anxiety. This is an example of working in a very practical way with our blockages, developing the skills and acquiring the needed knowledge or experience to meet the dreams, rather than wasting our time telling ourselves we are not up to the task, if it’s something we truly want to do.

We need to know what are the messages, what are the excuses that keep us from doing what we want to do in this our precious gift of life. So take a few minutes now to quiet down inside. Then see if there is something in your life you want to do that you have put off again and again. It could be a small thing or a big thing.

Whatever it is write down what the dream is. Sometimes it is enough to just make the dream known. We can be so busy in our lives that we don’t even know we are feeling drawn to do something of value for our lives and perhaps the lives of others.

Now stay with this thought of the dream, and notice if anything gets in the way. This will be a reason why it is not possible. Maybe there will be a stream of reasons, but for now let’s stay with the first one that comes up. It may seem like a very practical reason and will be very convincing. After all, it has convinced you over and over again. But this time write it down. If there are other reasons that arise from it, write them all down.

Read over the dream and sense in to the body, noticing how it feels to envision this dream.

What did you notice? If you felt an opening or a sense of greater aliveness, this is an active dream, even if it is edged with a little tension because the fear-based aspect feels threatened at the very mention of this dream.

If there is no felt sense when you think of this dream, perhaps it is no longer true for you. Perhaps you are just used to saying this is something you want to do. Perhaps the dream has shifted in some way and you need to spend more time actively questioning and renaming it. Or perhaps you are already living your life in a way that is meaningful to you and the dream you have named is nothing that would significantly enhance your sense of aliveness.

If the senses feel deadened, then the dream has died. How does it feel when you think the dream has died? Is there regret? Denial? Anger? Relief? Acceptance? Resignation? Explore the reactions for valuable clues. Do they rise up around a lot of thoughts or just this one? If just this one, it may be time to take that dream to the Goodwill! Let it go! Let yourself love this moment and not be dragged constantly into some other potential moment. You are fine just as you are. Your life is just fine as it is. If that doesn't ring true for you, explore some more.

Notice physical sensation associated with any thought. The thoughts themselves might be challenging to address because fear-based aspects get activated and dominate the conversation, denying the quiet wise inner voice access. Addressing physical sensations that arise with a relaxing breath, some metta (loving kindness) and a willingness to be present and notice the sensation, helps us to be more skillful and less frantic, so that we can access that inner wisdom and have a valuable inner dialog.

Notice image, sound or smell memories that seem to arise out of nowhere. What is the association with the subject at hand? We often answer our own questions through these means but we rarely pay attention to the answers!

If through your noticing you have found that this life dream is very much alive, and yet you continually procrastinate, making excuses why you cannot do it, then a skillfully conducted inner dialog is useful to discover what is holding you back.

So listen to the messages you are receiving in whatever form they come. Listen, notice, respect and honor these messages. These are the skillful means to discovering what is blocking your way. Judging, accusing, denying, paving over, ignoring, pushing aside, killing, sympathizing, glorifying, justifying, feeling victimized, put upon, etc. are the unskillful means that most of us use all the time when we realize that we aren’t doing what we want to be doing.

The first most skillful thing to do is to question. Is this true? The insertion of a question opens a whole world of possibility that we were unaware of previous to paying this close attention. We thought we had it down. We knew the answers. We believed everything we thought because we are often so vested in being right, in knowing ourselves. The suggestion that we don’t know ourselves as well as we thought can feel threatening to the fear-based aspects within that have been ruling the roost. The wise inner voice is fearless in the face of a question. A question is like a wonderful breath of fresh air that makes possible clarity and understanding.

‘Is this true?’ Apply this to every excuse or judgment that arises. If an insistent inner aspect says ‘Yes, yes, of course it’s true, dummy.’ Then we ask, ‘How do I know this is true?’ The inner aspect has not done its homework and is not used to being questioned so doesn’t have a ready answer. You can feel the stumped quality that can stir up shame, anger, embarrassment, and other emotions. But this just helps to clarify that it is indeed a fear-based inner aspect that is voicing this excuse.

This can feel like an uncomfortable place to hang out, but in fact it’s very juicy and fruitful if we can stay with it and access our inner wisdom, our sense of kindness and compassion that isn’t threatened by all this acting out and stomping about going on inside our consciousness.

Throughout the process, we may need to continually re-access the wise inner voice, to remember the qualities we have discussed before that indicate this is deep-rooted inner wisdom and not shallow-rooted fear speaking. Remember the wise inner voice will be calm, patient, loving, kind and have a timeless sense, while the fear-based aspects will be urgent, caffeinated, opinionated, demanding using words like should, must and have to. They will be unkind and resort to name calling. It is pretty easy to tell the difference once you are really paying attention and creating a quiet space for the wise inner voice to be audible.

If you are afraid you don’t have a wise inner voice, relax. That’s just some fear-based aspect terrified of the consequences of your accessing your own inner wisdom. It is there, quietly waiting for your attention. It is an ever-present constant. It isn’t going anywhere! We just aren’t in the habit of listening in. That’s why we practice meditation, to develop the muscle of hearing our inner wisdom and being guided by it, instead of being ruled by a chaotic bunch of fearful inner aspects.

So if this has been a useful exercise for you, if you feel you have found a vein worth exploring, please take time throughout the week to do so.

The Art of Inner Conversation

2011-08-07T09:32:00.000-07:00

Over the past weeks we have been exploring the characteristics of the inner aspects or sub-personalities that we have for so long mistaken for who we are. We have looked at how they are based in fear so that their intentions to protect us are tight, finite, constrained, skewed and distorted. We have looked at the greed, aversion and delusion – the three poisons defined by the Buddha as the cause of suffering – and how these aspects of self are expressions of them. And last week we looked at how they combine fear with our natural power and turn it into something toxic and potentially dangerous.

I have mentioned before the energetic quality of these aspects. Their voices have urgency, a caffeinated hyper-drive that is insistent, using the words ‘should,’ ‘must’ and ‘have to’ instead of acknowledging that we have infinite choices and free will in every moment. These voices are very much time-based, thus the urgency, and goal-oriented, wearing blinders to anything but what they fear will or won’t happen.

Meditation gives us the quiet spaciousness and clarity to notice these aspects and to distinguish them from the voice of our inner wisdom with its vaster view of the infinite nature of being. Listening to this voice gives us wiser options, but always as options. It brings our attention to the habituated pattern nature of our behavior and lets us see the beauty and bounty of each moment.

When I first encountered this inner wisdom in my adult life, I was a little concerned with this seemingly ‘don’t worry, be happy’ lackadaisical view. It activated fear-based aspects that were terrified that this vaster view wasn’t looking out for my survival. After all, from the infinite view, I am simply energy transformed into matter in a state of impermanence. What does it matter what happens to me? And that’s absolutely true in the grand scheme of things. Yikes!

Yet I have learned that when I am really listening to inner wisdom, it is looking out for me. Just as it encourages the plant to grow to be its fullest expression, it wants me to be the fullest most natural and joyful expression of life. So if I am about to step off the curb into traffic, it wouldn’t say ‘Oh well, easy come easy go.’ It would say, ‘Pay attention, be here now.’ Being present in this moment is my greatest chance for survival in all situations. The fear-based aspects might scream at me to act quickly in a situation, but I may be so distracted by their yammering that I might do the very thing they are trying to warn me against. Think about a time when you’ve had an accident of some kind. Would being fully present have made a difference? When I tripped and fell last summer on a hike in the mountains, it happened right when I stopped being present, when I switched from focusing on where my foot was placing itself to looking forward to resting and having lunch. And down I went, face to face with hard granite. That’s a hard way to learn a lesson to be present! How many hard lessons do we need before we pay attention to our inner wisdom instead of the urgent voices that take us out of this moment with their greed, aversion and delusion?

Last week we talked about power: How these fear-based aspects can subvert, compress and misuse it, resulting in harmful actions, and how when acknowledged as an expression of our true nature, our Buddha nature, arising from the loving-kindness and compassionate nature of being, our power is a force of creativity, joy, clarity, honesty, and equality.

Since all the students in my class currently happen to be women brought up in a time when power was not something a woman was encouraged to express, to say the least, I feel it is important to bring up the discomfort that was felt in the room when I began to talk about power. The blog version is much shorter, so if you only read that, you probably didn’t feel it the same. That discomfort as I talked was a clue to how much in the shadow power lives in most of our lives. The discomfort was further illuminated in discussion, when one of the sangha members said that she had just been on a kindness retreat and had felt a surge of power within her, something that felt quite counter to what she thought she was there to experience, so she appreciated the timeliness of our talk.

Later in the week I was visiting with a friend, part of the Open Embrace Meditation blog-reading sangha. She had a challenge that called for her to use her innate creative power, but she was locked in an inner battle with the voice that said that to make her needs known would be selfish and that kindness is inherently passive. She said she thought the Buddha taught to always put everyone else’s needs before our own. This is such a deeply entrenched belief that she held it even though she has read and listened to all kinds of wisdom teachings telling her to ‘give from the overflow not from the well.’ How often we carry two conflicting beliefs at the same time. How do we do this? Well, if we can recognize that we have a number of inner aspects operating on different wave lengths with different fear-based concerns, it’s easier to understand how we can hold conflicting beliefs. The aspect that is most fearful and most urgent will dominate and win the arguments, and that’s what was happening in her case.

The Buddha spoke extensively of kindness and generosity. Those of us who were brought up to be not just courteous and considerate but subservient to men and devoted to meeting the needs of parents, children, friends and neighbors, have to be very careful how we hear this kindness teaching. Listen carefully! Hear deeply! The Buddha wasn’t suggesting we be doormats! If the Buddha didn’t talk that much about power, it’s because most of his students had no problem being forthright when it came to asking for what they wanted. While his students were not exclusively male, they were certainly predominantly male, and any teacher creates curriculum appropriate for their students’ needs. This is not to say that men are inherently unkind and self-serving! But culturally men are encouraged to use their power, while women historically have been discouraged from open displays of power. Younger women have a hard time believing the things we of earlier generations were taught in order to subvert our own natural power in order to make men feel strong, smart and powerful. Our mothers didn’t necessarily teach us we were powerless. They just told us our power had to be suppressed for the greater good. We were taught to be ‘the woman behind the man.’ It is much easier to see in retrospect how this was dishonest and disrespectful to both men and women.

Inspired by how the Buddha spoke to the specific needs of his students, I am addressing what I see as the needs expressed by my students and readers. Kindness is not passive! It is active and empowering! And when we have a voice telling us to put up with something that is unacceptable, that is harming us in some way, then it is not a kindness to ourselves to tolerate it. Remember that in all our kindness practice, the Buddha taught to send metta first to ourselves so that we can attune to that powerful force of love that is our Buddha nature. In this way we are giving infinite deeply-rooted kindness, not a finite grumpy fear-based so-you-like-me knock-off brand of kindness.

Being kind to ourselves first – true kindness and compassion, not shallow fear-based giving our greedy aspects everything they desire – is not selfish but wise. How can we serve the world if we are operating on empty? What are we really offering if we are coming from the finite fearful place that says we ‘should’ be kind? When we hear an inner aspect speaking, we need to notice it, get into dialog with it, understand its fears and work with its needs. But we don’t for a moment need to believe it to be right. It is shallow-rooted, tensed, clinging to its fear-based perceptions of the world. It doesn’t serve us, though it thinks it does. Because it is trying so hard to serve what it sees as our needs, we can find a way to be compassionate to these aspects without indulging them.

With this insight into the nature of these inner fear-based aspects and how their voices differ from that of our wise deeply-connected nature, we have many clues to begin to recognize when we are acting from our true nature and when we are following the ill-informed fear-based advice of inner voices that we may have always believed to be who we are.

I hope each of you will take the time, especially after your daily meditation practice when the energy is quieter and more spacious, to really listen in. I hope you will use these clues to notice the difference between your access to inner wisdom and your cast of fear-based characters. These habituated patterns of thought and emotion need noticing. They need harnessing. They need respect and appreciation for their intention, but they need to be herded by a wise shepherd, and that is you when you align with your true loving nature.

As an exercise in noticing, take a few minutes now to sit with your thoughts and emotions. When you find a thought that grabs your attention, write it down. Then look at it and see if your can tell where it is coming from. Is it fear-based? Is it speaking from greed, aversion or delusion? Is it time-based, expressing a sense of urgency? Is there an emotion it is displaying? Does it contain a threat of some kind? Is it full of judgment? Is there a tensing up in the body that you notice happening when it speaks? Breathing into the area in the body that tenses up can make this voice more approachable, calming its fears.

Or perhaps this thought grabbed your attention because it has a very different quality, and you can take this time to listen to that small still voice within, now that the other voices are still or at least less activated.

Perhaps you’ll notice both arising. Write them both down. Perhaps your inner wisdom says something, but then an inner aspect speaks up to slap it down. Your inner wisdom is not threatened by the fear-based heckling. Instead, it’s an opportunity for exploration.

In class the students said they were comfortable with simply sharing what fear-based voice they heard during our few minutes of quiet. They were given the opportunity to share the dialog they had with it, or to have me play the role of their wise inner voice in response to their sharing of what rude thing an inner aspect said to them. It was a very rich sharing.

It’s important to remember that our inner cast of characters may come and go but they are always available for cameos! It is just another fear-based aspect that believes that somehow awakening to being present will wipe the slate clean of all the habituated patterns of a life time. A powerful awakening will do that for a time, but even the Buddha had his cast of characters, his ongoing dealings with Maya, the tempter, in all its form.

But with the practice of awareness we are better able to see these aspects and recognize their true nature, just as the Buddha said, “Ah, Maya, I know you,” we say, “Ah, fearful aspect, I know you.” I have mentioned before that it is useful to give pet names to each aspect that we get to know. This is not to make them more real but to make them more easily recognizable when they crop up again so we don’t have to go through such a lengthy process each time. See an example of an inner dialog.

When we see and acknowledge them, imagine how wondrous it is for a frightened inner aspect to be known, to be acknowledged. Our inner aspects crave for us to awaken and take charge! They are like small children running amok because the babysitter wandered off with her boyfriend and the parents haven’t come home. You can feel their sense of thrill and terror. So we attune ourselves to the deep-rooted loving wisdom that is our true nature, and we come home to mind these inner aspects, to discover their concerns and to respectfully and responsibly negotiate solutions that have integrity.

Moderation is often the result of these inner dialogs. Needs get met but in a sustainable way. The Buddha talked so much about The Middle Way that finds a path between the extremes of austerity and over-indulgence. Finding of the Middle Way is an ongoing inner negotiation between the deeply rooted wise inner voice and the shallow rooted fear-based aspects. This is addressed in any discussion of Wise Effort. The fear-based inner aspect is trying so hard to do the right thing that it comes out all wrong. Why? Because it’s not about goals or how difficult it is or how much we sweat! It’s about sinking in to access the universal wisdom, and that’s a result of being here, now and relaxed, which requires intention but not tension. All the fear-based aspects are tense!! Uptight!! Freaked-out!! Attuned with inner wisdom we feel a compassionate affection for these voices, but we no longer let them lead us.

So, OUT OF KINDNESS, we lead our lives from that deep alignment, that sense of balance, empowerment, aliveness and joy.

Powerful Beyond Measure

2011-07-31T10:20:00.000-07:00

Many of us, especially women, are very uncomfortable with power. When we think of power, it is usually other people’s power. When we think of having power, we may think it’s an unattractive or unacceptable force that we must suppress, for it isn’t what we want, and it isn’t the way we want to be in the world, bullying others to get our way. Perhaps our life experience has taught us that power is brutal and dangerous. We want to be kind and compassionate.

That’s why we practice meditation, isn’t it? We want peace, tranquility, ease and kindness. So it may be surprising to learn that in Tibetan Buddhism there are three central deities that represent the desirable qualities of wisdom, compassion and power.

Power?

Yes, power. Even if we are too afraid or self-conscious to acknowledge our power, it is there. When we don’t acknowledge the power within us, it becomes subverted, perverted and unskillful. We stuff it down in the dungeon or try to kill it off, thus forcing it to become sneaky, underhanded and manipulative. We may develop passive-aggressive tendencies to get our needs met or become depressed, depleted from all the energy we are putting into tamping down and containing our innate power.

We are all experienced observers of human nature. We see how passive people get their needs met in convoluted ways, leaving them and all around them feeling worse. Think of someone you know who seems passive, perhaps even sweet, but whose life is a misery in one form or another – a constant whirlwind of problems, a bottomless pit of complaints or a fog of fading away, dependent on others to draw them out. We can notice how their behavior rises from past wounds. Their history is always present in the room when you are with them. They feel they have no power and are victims, but in fact they have the world cowed and suffering. Everyone who comes close gets sucked into the miasma of their misery or struggles to resist it. That is certainly a kind of power, to be able to make everyone suffer! But it’s not a beneficial power, to say the least.

This kind of power is shallow-rooted, based in fear. In relationship a person operating from such a fear-based shallow-rooted place, we do well to stay grounded in our own sense of presence and compassion, noticing our own emotions that arise in their presence.

If this description sounds like you, be compassionate without enabling these shallow-rooted habituated patterns. See if you can see the truth of the behavior that I’m talking about without feeling attacked as if this is who you are. This is not who you are! But neither are you a victim. Instead you are simply unaware of who you truly are. Your highest priority – no matter what is going on in your life and how pressing it seems -- needs to be to anchor yourself into the present moment through the body so that you can safely explore the inner conversation that validates your misuse of power. Guides on your journey in the form of therapists are available when needed and there is no shame in needing their help.

All of us at times see glimpses of our power, but when its in a compressed dungeon-esque state it isn’t something we want to have anything to do with, so we add yet another lock and pretend it isn’t there, creating a deeper denser shadow. (Remember from our discussion last week that the shadow is that part of ourselves that we find unacceptable so ignore or pretend it doesn’t exist.)

We align ourselves with the softer gentler side of life, choosing to notice nature’s sweet offerings of cute puppies, babies and bowers of flowers, while avoiding nature’s offerings of fiery volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, tornadoes and hurricanes. We feel we are aligning with life with these choices, but nature shows us life in its full cycle of birth, growth, aging, death, decay and renewal. We are afraid of the power of these naturally occurring events because we see the damage -- the cities flattened, the lives lost, the pain and grief of survivors and the challenge of getting back to normal. Where is the upside in all this? We see none, so we judge nature’s power as ruthless. If we personify God, we ask why he would allow such things to happen. And when we thrill at the sight of nature’s power, it may be accompanied by a sense of guilt or shame, knowing that for someone somewhere this awesome event is causing pain. This is just something to notice: How thoughts, judgments, fears come into our experience. We might also begin to notice that these thoughts, judgments and fears arise when we feel our own power wanting to be expressed, and how our fear rises up to push down the power, denying it expression.

When we push down the power, we create a compressed, dense and toxic power that is now dangerous in a way that our natural power, our unsuppressed power, is not. ‘Evil’ is not a word I use, and it’s not a word used in the Buddhist teachings I have studied. But since evil is a concept so intrinsically a part of our western culture and world view, it needs to be addressed. This suppressed power, compressed in fear that creates this inner rotten stink that has the capacity to act in convoluted destructive ways is certainly an accurate definition of evil.

We can see that by this definition, battling against evil is simply aligning ourselves with it, as our suppressed fear-based power gets tuned in and activated by coming into contact with the fear-based eruption of toxicity from others. Throughout history we see the misery that this has caused, more than any naturally occurring show of power in nature.

So, as alien and odd-feeling as it may seem, this toxic compressed fear, this ‘evil,’ needs to be met with awareness and compassion. Only the light of awareness and compassion can safely expose and release the tight fear-based core and dissipate its dense toxicity.

The Power of the Present Moment

When we can come fully into the present moment, the power that we feel is pure presence. This is the power that is the third admirable quality when added to awareness and compassion, and it is only through awareness and compassion that we can discover this power and acknowledge that it flows through us. It is universal energy that surges through all open channels equally. When we see we are intrinsically a part of all that is, then we can accept our natural place in the world, including our natural ability to be conductors of this bright loving energetic power that arises naturally through our intention to be present and compassionate.

Being present is the only access point to our natural power. This moment right here and now is the only point of power possible. We can’t affect the past. It’s history. We can rewrite it in our mind, but we can’t go back and change things. The future is a dream, a hope or a fear and, while what we do now will impact the present moment we experience later, the only real power we have is here and now in this place and time.

Be present and feel your power! We are always and forever in the exact right pivotal spot in life to make powerful choices. This very moment is full of doors leading in all directions, and in every moment we choose one door. Being fully present and aware of this powerful pivotal point, we are no longer mindlessly wandering about but actively choosing the door that opens us to wisdom, compassion and presence.

You chose that door this morning when you came to class, or when you decided to read this post. You listened to your most deeply-rooted powerful nature, your Buddha nature, and made this choice. You could have listened to more shallowly-rooted voices begging to stay a little longer in bed, a little longer over breakfast, or the one that says you have too many things to do today to fit meditation class or a quiet time of reading dharma into your schedule. At any point along the road to get here, you could have chosen to ignore your own inner wisdom. But you didn’t and you are here. You are powerful and acting from that power.

Now maybe you are thinking, ‘Well actually, I came because I knew I should. I don’t feel powerful at all.’ But that’s just your own discomfort with power speaking. If you are here, your inner wisdom brought you. Allow for the possibility that this is true. All the shallow-rooted thoughts habituated to denying power out of fear from having witnessed its abuse may be present and we make room for them in our awareness. But they are like wisps of fog that have been covering the mountain this morning off and on. The mountain is still there. And so is our inner wisdom, powerful beyond measure. This calls to mind the Marianne Williamson quote that is so inspiring that Nelson Mandela used it in his first inaugural speech. She says,

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

When Marianne Williamson talks about letting our own light shine, that brings to my mind one of my favorite songs: “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine!” which speaks to allowing the power of our true nature, our Buddha nature, to shine through us. If this song speaks to you too, let it be the tune in your head that reminds you to let your light, your own access to power, shine through and express itself in creative ways.

Feeling fully present, sensing our connection to all that is, we feel empowered. The power is fresh and full of life-force. It is illuminated by clear-seeing of being present and aware. It is fueled by compassion. It is the nature of life actively loving itself.

We have over the past weeks been using the metaphor of the plant with its roots clinging tight around a rock instead of spreading deep in the rich nourishing soil. Here we are again, seeing how clinging to that rock of false identity, believing ourselves to be victims and powerless, constricts us and subverts our ability to be fully alive. When we root deeply in the nourishing soil of being, we can feel the power of aliveness. We don’t have to exhaust ourselves repressing our power, being afraid of our power or being ashamed of our power. We don’t have to see power as belonging to someone else and our role to be the victim or the compliant one that always acquiesces to the wishes of others, who never says no to any request because to do so would seem unkind. We can say no respectfully but without apology, and our ability to say no with such kindness and clarity can inspire others. The limited convoluted idea of who we are in the scheme of things no longer fits, not when we have discovered our sense of presence and connection. Yes, we align with life, with ALL of life – the puppies and the volcanoes!

Now we begin to see that how in our misinterpretation of what it is to be a kind, caring and compassionate human in the world, we may have denied the value of acknowledging power. In our experiences of witnessing misused power, we may have a fear-based view of the nature of power. So we have been tamping it down when it arises within us, calling it nasty names and subverting it so that it becomes shadow-power, that dense toxicity that causes harm to everyone who encounters it, thus reinforcing our fear of it.

Now it is time to own up to the power that is inherent in our nature! It’s time to accept and celebrate our access to this universal energy that expresses itself through us and empowers us to be fully ourselves, open-hearted, strong and alive.

Naming Our Poisons

2011-07-25T07:47:00.000-07:00

The Buddha taught of the three poisons, the mental states that manifest in unskillful action and cause us and those around us to suffer. They are greed, aversion and delusion. As our minds become clearer through the practice of meditation, we begin to see these three states as they arise within us. We can notice how our actions are rooted in and fed by one or the other of these states.

Right now, for example, I am sitting here feeling greedy for the dharma as I write, hungering to learn more, and the desire to share it in the clearest way possible so that my students may benefit from knowing it. This doesn’t sound like a bad thing, and it isn’t. Especially noticing it as it arises is a good thing. But noticing also brings an awareness of a tinge of energetic urgency, panic and fear that are also present in this hunger. Fear of it not being enough, of me not being enough, of my being an imperfect vessel for this information.

At the same time I am noticing a strong aversion to a phone call I am expecting from someone I have never talked with before but who appears to have anger issues as shown in his email. He is not a direct client of mine but is someone my client has to deal with. Suddenly I am ‘having to deal with’ him too. I don’t want to! I’m afraid! I feel the tension in my body rising up. I have held this tension since yesterday when we made this appointment for him to call me. And to top it off, he is already 47 minutes late in calling, which leaves me in this purgatorial state of dread.

Noticing these states, there may be a tendency to work with them, as in ‘fix’ them. That is just another form of aversion arising. I feel aversion for this state of aversion. How does that help? It really doesn’t.

So instead I breathe. Admittedly the breath started out as a sigh, but that reminded me to breathe! I send myself a little compassion. Compassion releases some of the tightness, infusing a sense of expansiveness that allows me to see more clearly. Already my shoulders have dropped an inch. However, I notice my jaw is tight. The buzz in my body is present.

I look out the window, the green and grey morning is calming. The tree outside my window doesn’t see my challenge and yet lives in this world. I don’t want to be the tree, but I am not unlike the tree. I don’t know what the tree experiences, but I can be pretty sure it is not currently dreading a phone call.

The tree is rooted in the earth. I sense my rootedness in the earth. The tree relies on its roots to weather high winds and powerful storms. I am anticipating some high wind this morning, so I sink into my roots, my connection. Thanks tree! Good advice!

The phone call went very well, by the way. A friendly constructive exchange with full agreement and goals achieved all around. Was that just a fluke? Or did my grounding myself help me to remember the humanness of the caller?

Having had a positive experience when anticipating a negative one is something I try to notice, adding it to my learned experiences. I am surprised that with attention, I actually do find I can reason with myself, saying, “Chances are, based on past experience, this will be fine. I will see how I wasted my time dreading an experience that much more often than not is a positive one.”

Noticing when we are operating out of greed or aversion is easier than noticing when we are operating out of delusion. What is delusion anyway? It’s like walking around in a fog and being constantly surprised when things happen. It can be operating as if we are an object being acted upon rather than the subject of our own lives, able to make decisions.

If we are in a state of delusion, how can we notice it? We can’t! At the moment of delusion the mind is enveloped in a cloud or fog, drifting, lost and unaware. But if we have set our intention to be present, then we can notice when it clears a bit. Just noticing that begins the development of awareness of delusion, and that awareness thins the fog. When the fog is thin, we have more options. We can drift or we can stay present. We can notice when the clarity begins to fade and we can take that as a reminder to reset our intention to be present with compassion, to notice the cloud of delusion as it comes and goes. Delusion has a very different felt sense than aversion or greed, but all three take practice to notice.

How do we work with these Three Poisons of greed, aversion and delusion? I remember when I first started studying Buddhism at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, there was a good deal of talk about how we are generally more inclined to one or the other of these mental states. People would say things like, “I am a greedy personality.” For me this seemed like just another way to label ourselves. We are often attracted to self-labeling, even if it’s an unattractive label.

Defining who we are seems to give us a place in the world, but it locks us in to a false sense of self. While we each do physically fill a finite place in this earthly life, defining it with limiting labels does not satisfy the deeper longing for a sense of understanding our infinite connection, the true nature of our existence.
We have talked before about the shift from the finite to the infinite view. For purposes of convenience in functioning in the world, we see ourselves as finite, singular and separate. But we discover through meditation, or perhaps through spontaneous insight, the infinite view that is always available to us, wherein we recognize that we are not separate at all, that we are a vibrant expression of life loving itself, like a drop of water flying through the sky knowing that it is a part of the sea-evaporation-cloud-rain-river-sea cycle of being which is a part of an even larger circle of life, and that all is one. With this infinite view, more fully discussed in previous discussions in the Eightfold Path, we are able to live more fully and joyfully in the world, even while being able to maintain our seemingly finite path with its various responsibilities, relationships and choices.

In the past few weeks, when discussing our clinging to the rock with our roots believing it to be our identity instead of releasing into the rich nourishing soil and allowing ourselves to grow to the fullness of our being, what we are talking about is letting go of the finite and releasing into the infinite. That shift from finite to infinite comes with our ability to be present and relaxed, releasing the tension that is our body’s way of holding the past and the future. This present moment fully experienced is the portal to understanding our interconnection, our being a part of and being supported by the infinite web of life.

While it may be tempting to label ourselves, it is more skillful to notice greed, aversion and delusion arising in our experience, and not get tangled up in saying, ‘I am an aversive personality type.’ Observing and judging ourselves to be more inclined to one of these three states may seem like it helps but it runs the risk of blinding us to the arising of the other two poisons, for we are tuning ourselves to notice the one above the others. All of us have all three poisons, even if not in equal measure.

The habit of self-labeling can make us passive, as if we have been indelibly stamped with this tendency and there’s nothing we can do. In truth, there’s nothing we NEED to do except be present and compassionate with all that arises in our experience, but that’s very different from a sense of helplessness that there’s nothing to be done about it, as if we are stuck. We are not stuck, we simply perceive ourselves to be stuck. In fact we are quite free, but we choose to pick out new wallpaper for our prison cell, remaking ourselves, rather than simply be present and watch the bars dissolve. We explored the whole concept of freedom in dharma talks quite a while ago. If that word resonates, perhaps you’ll want to read them. If freedom scares you, then that’s important to notice as well. Question in: “What am I afraid of?”

We can fall a little bit in love with even negative labels for at least they give us a sense of definition to cling to. But clinging to the hard rock of who we believe ourselves to be is the essence of what keeps us from opening to our true nature.

In a talk last year on ‘Holding the World in an Open Embrace’ I presented greed and aversion in the form of photos of two little girls, one holding tight to all her toys representing greed; the other with crossed arms and a pouty face representing aversion.

My sixteen month old granddaughter Lucy for the first time in my presence yesterday crossed her arms and pouted! Ah, aversion! This is the first manifestation in this form, though of course she has shown her preferences and dissatisfactions in a myriad of ways. But to actually see her cross her tiny chubby arms and pout with her little cupid bow mouth was quite something!

Where did she learn this particular manifestation? Lucy is my current teacher. I have been learning what is inherently human. When she wakes she does a natural yogi full body stretch, and she has done this since she was just a few months old. Now I try to remember to do that when I wake too. Where did I lose my natural inclination to do so?

And now seeing her pouting and crossing her arms I have to wonder how she developed this classic aversion pose? She doesn’t watch television, and has no older sibling to imitate. Where does she get this little Shirley Temple imitation? It’s a wonder. And it’s adorable and yes a little frightening. Aversion arises in Lucy and displays itself. We could easily go uh-oh and label her an aversive personality and be afraid, very afraid, of what the future holds with this crossed-armed pouty force to be reckoned with. But all that does is fuel our fear, lock her in a box of our labels, a box she will either stay in or break out of unless she can wear these labels lightly, knowing they do not define her true self.

In the past few weeks we have been discussing the inner aspects, what in psychological terms are also called sub-personalities, especially those we keep most hidden from our awareness that make up the shadow. When we are having a skillful inner conversation with an aspect, we might benefit from noticing whether it seems to be fueled by greed, aversion or delusion. I had mentioned Striver and Underminer, two aspects that have resurfaced in my awareness. Clearly Striver operates more from greed and Underminer from aversion, and both are delusional. (As some people might think I am to name inner aspects!! But it is a valuable exercise for the orderly exploration of a very complex lacy-patterned infrastructure of thoughts, emotions and beliefs that form a part of our experience that most influence, and sometime sabotage, our ability to live with awareness and a love of life.)

As a tool for self-exploration, knowledge of the three poisons of greed, aversion and delusion provide insight and clarity. We can use them as clues to see the fear at the root of the aspect we are exploring. These fears -- the fear of separation, of exclusion, of not being acceptable, of disappearing, of being overwhelmed and washed away, of being judged, or of failing -- are just a few of the ways we forget our connection to all that is and the universal oneness of being.

Discovering the Shadow & the Inner Light

2011-07-17T12:01:00.000-07:00

We’ve been talking about this inner cast of negatively-charged emotions that each of us has within us. This is really just another way to talk about what Jung called the shadow. The shadow is the part of our nature that we deny. It is unacceptable to us and must be hidden from others. We hide the shadow so well that we are usually unaware of it, but we may have an uneasy sense of its presence lurking somewhere. This intentional unawareness combined with unease causes us to contract in fear and fuels the subversive behavior of the shadowy aspects within. We do things we are then ashamed of, unable to explain what came over us, because we don’t see the shadowy aspects with their fear-based hidden agendas and secret intentions.

Then through the practice of meditation in a supportive atmosphere we are encouraged to notice our thoughts and emotions as they arise and fall away. Especially if we spend an extended period of time doing so, as on a silent retreat, we begin to see what we had been hiding from view. This can be scary and it can be thrilling. It is scary to the shadow aspects that feel threatened with discovery. And it is thrilling to the deepest part of our nature, our Buddha nature, to illuminate the darkness and thus dissipate the shadow.

Now here’s a very interesting thing about shadow: Think about a physical shadow caused by our standing in the light of the sun. If we rely on the cast light of another being, whether a particular human, a deity or a set of cultural norms, then that light will cast a shadow. There will be a part of us that must be hidden as unacceptable because it doesn’t meet the other’s expectations, or what we speculate to be the expectations of the other. We revolve around this external light and like the moon, always carry a dark side, that unacceptable side that doesn’t meet external expectation.

Feeling the density of the shadow like a weight, a person might turn away from the light altogether. They may feel the darkness is more honest and comfortable. They feel safer in the darkness because it seems to accept all of who they are. Think of the muted and almost blind camaraderie of the all-forgiving bar, opium den, casino or bordello, whether actual places or just the dark unwholesome places within our mind that can feel safer, relieved of having to try to be so good. In this place goodness looks very shallow and ineffectual, full of itself, self-righteous, hypocritical, treacle-y sweet and unsatisfying.

From the darkness external light is often suspect and accusatory, like a searchlight tracking us down to drag us off for questioning. Thus the darkness dweller turns away further and further from the externally cast light.

From the darkness the shadows of others, who are trying to live up to the light cast by external sources, are very easy to see, exposing the falseness of their endless efforts to be good. This further justifies the darkness dwellers belief that darkness is the only honest place, and they become further entrenched in darkness.

But at its core a yearning to succumb to darkness is truly a yearning for gestation, for rebirth. When someone wandering in the darkness undertakes to awaken through setting the intention to be fully present with what is, they experience a ‘dark night of the soul’ of wrenching proportions but if they stay with it, can find that being in the darkness has enhanced their ability to recognize their own inner light. We all know how in the middle of the night all the little electronic lights in the house suddenly glow brightly when during the day they weren’t even noticeable.

This is not to recommend hanging out in the unwholesome and unsavory nooks and crannies of shadow to find the inner light, for awareness is required and awareness is hugely lacking in the dark shadows of our existence. That’s how it got so damn dark! Most darkness dwellers prefer to stay trapped where they are, feeling they don’t deserve better and they see no value in self-exploration or meditative practices.

But for anyone who has been wandering in the darkness and has begun to see glimpses of an inner glow, this is a strong reminder to encourage that inner light to glow and grow. It will shed light on the darkness, bring understanding and illuminate life, no matter who we are, where we have been or what we have done or not done.

If we are not wandering in the darkness, we may not be noticing that inner light because there is so much other light around and nothing in our upbringing or culture has encouraged us to look for it. We see light as external and we long to stand in it as long as we can, treating it like a much-needed vacation. The practice of meditation is often treated this way, as a getaway. If this is how it feels for you, remember that our practice is to develop awareness in every moment, awareness of the gift of life, awareness of the light that is ever present, radiating from within.

Jesus said, ‘Be a lamp unto yourself.’ He recognized that we each have access to the source of light, not by standing in the light cast by others but by being aware of our own light nature, our connection to the infinite light of being.

We can honor the cast light of others as a celebration of life. But we need to also recognize the shadow cast when we stand only in that cast light. This is the danger of submitting to the will of a master or powerful teacher, who is casting false light and false hopes while dwelling in the darkness and trying to suck the inner light out of their followers. With insight through meditation we begin to understand that we are each expressions of infinite light that is the interconnected web of life. If we use the name of God for this infinite light, then feel God as beingness itself, world without end, not some finite external being that picks and chooses who is worthy of its love and light. Feel the joy of being an expression of God’s infinite love and light.

And think: When we are radiating light, when we are an expression of the infinite light of being, we cast no shadow.

Since we are humans living in a human society with all that entails, it’s all too easy to get lost, to forget we are lamps unto ourselves, to forget that we have access to inner wisdom, so our practice to deepen and maintain that awareness is ongoing. We set our intention to be present with our experience, to notice our thoughts, our judgments, our tendencies to grasp and cling to the past and the future; to anchor awareness in physical sensation to keep us present and to notice and release habituated tension in the body, noticing associative memories, images, thoughts and emotions that the tension is holding. This noticing sets the stage for noticing the shadow. And when the shadow is seen and not further banished, then it begins to dissipate. As we identify more and more with the radiant light within us, knowing ourselves to be a part of the infinite expression of life, we can become much less defensive for we have nothing to defend against. As we begin to see the shadow we cast when standing in the bright externalized light, we recognize that shadow is just fear, compressed and hidden in darkness. Releasing tension, shedding our inner light of awareness on the fear-based emotions, we are able to gently and steadily awaken.

This process of shedding light and acknowledging the shadow, or the negatively-charged aspects we have suppressed so long that they have become dense and toxic, is part of our ongoing exploration through awareness or insight meditation. In the process of letting go of the belief that we are the emotions and thoughts that pass through our experience, we are more able to hold ourselves in an open loving embrace. We see the shadowy aspects for what they are. We align with the infinite light of our being to unravel the tight fearful tangle, shedding loving light, metta, upon all that we find. Noticing the judgments, noticing the expectations, and even sending metta to those fearful aspects that must criticize lest someone criticize them, to the ones that find fault with the way things are, comparing them to the way they were or the way we had hoped they would be, we make room for all of these expressions in the spaciousness of our being. And by making room for them to be seen, we loosen their tight hold on us, and are no longer blindly vulnerable to their subversion of our intentions to be kind and compassionate. Our willingness to acknowledge that at times we experience thoughts, urges and emotions that would be harmful if acted upon, frees us from the need to act upon them! We can simply acknowledge them, or if they are urgent, we can take the time to sit with them and explore what their need is, and respectfully negotiate a truce as discussed in previous posts.

To the degree that we access and align with the infinite light of being, this deep understanding of our interconnection and the infinite nature of being, then the more joyful we are able to be. We needn’t be afraid of our shadow! But if we are aware of it we can recognize that we need to spend some time looking in to see that inner light glowing in the darkness.

We can even sing to ourselves that wonderful tune: “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine….Let it shine! Let it shine! Let it shine!”

Asking in = Wising Up, How to Discover our Buddha Nature

2011-07-10T08:08:00.000-07:00

Last week we talked about difficult emotions and how we often suppress them, turning ourselves into jailers. I read my article Emotions as Honored Guests that gives us a way to cope with uncomfortable emotions, reminding us that we are in charge but we need to be good hosts.

The key to all of this is noticing. That’s the basis of insight meditation, this learning to become aware of our emotions, as well as the nature of our thoughts and of our physical sensations.

A strong emotion is rich with clues that we don’t want to waste. Experiencing a strong emotion, we are encouraged to pause and take a meditative moment to notice all that is going on. For example: Where in our body do we feel that strong emotion? What associative images or memories come to mind? We can look to see what triggered the strong emotion. Perhaps it was an odor, sight or sound that on its own seems neutral, but fueled by our associative memory, becomes powerful and disturbing. This is not a time to turn away and tell ourselves ‘Don’t be silly!’ or any other dismissive phrase.

As I suggested in the article, and as the poet Rumi suggested so long ago, we can be the welcoming host of any emotion that arrives at our door. But our main goal is to find out what the emotion has to tell us. So we are kind, caring and compassionate but we are also inquisitive.

The other day here at our house we had a visit from a Sherpa mountain guide! And I’ll tell you, we were welcoming but also intensely curious about Pasan, his life in Nepal, why he came here and how he’s finding it, etc. What an exciting surprise to have a visitor from a whole other world come in the form of a plumber! As we talked we were following the other plumber who was training Pasan on his new job and educating us about how to flush our tankless water heater. We didn’t expect such a memorable experience from a plumbing appointment, just as we don’t expect anything of real value to come from a run-in with a strong emotion. We think of it as one of life’s things to be gotten through.

Now usually I don’t ask personal questions of people who come to our house as part of their jobs, but Pasan offered up the first information, giving us the clue that he was quite willing to talk. That’s true with our strong emotions as well. In fact they are ‘talking’ already. But we need to listen, and to then ask questions that give us answers we can use. But many times the emotion stirs up other emotions of embarrassment or shame that try to shut that emotion up before it has a chance to tell us anything of value.

So how do you have a fruitful conversation with a strong emotion? The most important thing is to speak from your wisest inner self, your Buddha nature, and not from some other needy, demanding aspect that is perfectly happy to get into a shouting match, judging and condemning.

That’s why inquiry is best done after meditation to assure that we have given ourselves a chance to find that calm, loving voice within. Now if this sends you into a panic because you feel you haven’t found that voice, then let’s explore how to discern that wise inner voice from the rest of our cast of inner characters.

Our wise inner voice has certain distinctive qualities that you can notice if you are really paying attention. First, it is patient. It never makes demands, never uses the words ‘should’ or ‘must.’ It comes from a sense of timelessness, so there is no urgency. Its ease is somewhat disarming, putting all those things we thought were so important into perspective. It is the voice of life itself, aware of its intrinsic connection to all that is. From this vantage point we relax because we are aware we are life, not separate from it. There is nothing we could do or say that would expel us from the is-ness of being. But there is plenty we can do that can make us unaware of our connection, and through that lack of awareness we can do things that are incredibly unskillful, causing pain to ourselves, to those we come in contact with, and the earth itself.

But this wise inner voice, this Buddha nature, has no agenda except to remind us of our connection. So if we ask it, ‘What do you want me to know?’ it will first and foremost say, “I love you, I have always loved you, I will always love you.” Well, that’s a lot to know! Suddenly we don’t feel so needy. How much of what we fear and what we try to accomplish is in response to a feeling of being unloved and unlovable? How often are we simply trying to prove that we are deserving of a love that it turns out is already ours, without our having to do a thing?

Does this mean the wise inner voice is saying “Don’t bother!” about everything we are doing in our lives? Not necessarily. It depends on our intention. If we are trying to gain love and respect, then yes, don’t bother. If we are tapping into our innate capacity to love life in all its myriad expressions, then our inner wisdom heartily concurs.

Another question that is useful to ask is, ‘Why do I feel this way? Why do I feel so tense? Why do I feel threatened? Why do I feel so bad about myself?’ These kinds of questions may bring answers from fear-based aspects, but with patience and careful listening, we will also hear that quiet still voice within answering our question either in words or images. Once in my 20’s I asked a ‘why’ question about an area of my life that felt especially dysfunctional, just out of despair, not knowing anything about this wise inner voice and not about to have a conversation with God as we hadn’t been on speaking terms in quite a while. And although no words arose, within the next few minutes as I sat there three powerful image memories rose up, and I sat and waited until I understood what those combined three memories were telling me. And they gave me a powerful answer to my question that I had assumed was unanswerable. The answer that came up changed my life and empowered me in a way that I could never have imagined. That was my first experience with understanding the power we have to inquire within and receive transformative answers.

This inner wisdom, this Buddha Nature, is not an aspect of us, the way all the other voices that create our thoughts and emotions are. We could instead think of ourselves as an aspect of it, as the temporal earthly life-experiencing sensors of this infinite wise loving energy. This is such a wonderful way to think of our interaction with life. Feeling this to be our role in life, we can easily access 'Beginner’s Mind.' Every sensation, every experience whether we judge it good or bad is still in this sense a gift of earthly life. When we come from that sense of wonder, that sense of oneness and connection, we are truly expressions of life loving itself. Whatever we do for each other from that place will be truly generous and kind.

If you have never noticed this inner wisdom, you might find inquiry to be your gateway as I did. You can also simply practice relaxing and being present, anchoring into all the senses that give us the opportunity to experience this gift of life.

Sometimes we only listen to wisdom that comes from outside ourselves because we don’t trust anything that comes from within. We may have very low self-esteem, and/or we may have been taught that to think that the answers come from within is turning ourselves into a god; that God is to be honored and set apart from our lowly selves and this mundane life. (Of course, if God created us doesn't that make us and all of life sacred? Isn't the profanity the unwillingness to recognize the sacredness of all God's creation, even the tight and twisted terrified places that most need awareness of God's infinite love? When we see ourselves as connected to God, as expressions of God, we are seeing God in all that is, not setting ourselves above. The personification of God as something apart from ourselves is a so pervasive that I have long since given up using the term, even though as you see, I can easily describe my understanding of God. I am not at odds with God. God and I are good. And Buddhist meditation and concepts are not at odds with God either. Believers from all faiths find that meditation and the study of Buddhist concepts enhance their understanding of their religion and deepens their faith.)

But whether we call this inner wisdom God or we call it the infinite energy of life loving itself, our resistance to trusting it comes from thinking that we could be the source of true wisdom. We still separate ourselves out, we still see ourselves as this amalgam of these whiny voices, our thoughts and emotions. But even if we hold that to be who we are, we can still access this inner wisdom. This inner access is like a well, but the well is not the source if the water, is it? The well is an access point to the water that travels under the ground. Through meditation and self-exploration we are bringing our attention to the existence of this well, this inner access to universal wisdom. Eventually we may see that the well is also a part of the infinite beingness of life, not separate, neither less nor more sacred.

When we deny the existence of inner access to wisdom, we are more receptive to it when offered up through outer sources: counselors, teachers, leaders, books, movies, magazines. So notice when something you see, hear or read resonates with its authenticity, clarity, compassion and feeling of calm. That’s your inner wisdom saying ‘Yes!’

If when you are watching or reading something, it’s activating the emotional inner aspects that are saying things like, “Yeah! The bastard deserved it!” or some such emotionally charged response, then by your viewing and reading habits you are giving your rowdier inner aspects confirmation that their world view is justified. The Buddha taught the importance of inclining the mind toward what is wholesome, so if you are activating anger, shame, revenge, etc. by your choice of entertainment, you are choosing to align with the rowdy aspects within, the ones that feed on fear and promote unskillful choices. But even in this setting, the wise inner voice is not the one that's saying, "This is terrible! This is bad for me! I've got to get out of here!" That's just another fear-based aspect.

When you sit quietly, listening in, noticing the various vociferous emotions spouting this thought and that, pay close attention to the quality of the voice. Is it urgent, demanding or caffeinated? Is it cynical, judgmental or hateful? Then it’s an aspect with a fear-based agenda that you will want to have a respectful inquiring conversation with. But if it is quiet, calm, loving, and offers love and when asked sincerely gives valuable guidance, without any sense of urgency, then you know that this is your deepest connected access. Whenever possible keep listening, keep asking in. You have found your teacher and your guiding light. Practice aligning with that wisdom, letting go of any sense of duality.

When you align with this inner wisdom you can then be the welcoming host to whatever guest emotion arrives at your door. Otherwise it is just a shouting match between two urgent aspects that both need to be heard and neither want to listen. Our inner wisdom is a great listener because it is the love of life itself.

So how does such a conversation with an inner aspect begin?
First we recognize an emotion that has come up. Naming it helps us to recognize it more quickly the next time it arises, and giving it a pet name not only locks it into our awareness but reminds us to be kind and respectful.

Once we have given it a name, we can greet this emotion as we would any guest who arrives at our door. Our emotions are so rarely acknowledged that this alone can meet needs.

What do we do next with any guest? We ask them to come in and sit down. This indicates that we want them to feel comfortable, and also that we have time for them. When it comes to a visiting emotion, our willingness to be present and to spend whatever amount of time is required needs to be clearly indicated. We physically sit down if we are not already seated. We turn off our cell phones and other distractions. We give this conversation whatever time is needed. This is another reason it is good to have these conversations following meditation where we have already set up a quiet zone for ourselves.

Then we can ask questions of our guest.
These questions need to be compassionate not accusatory. And the questions are better if they go deep to the achy source rather than encourage the emotion to get caught up in story. When I say story, I am talking about the experiential examples that such a voice will use to justify their existence. ‘I’m angry because she said this about that, or he did this and he’s evil, etc.’ This is all story and is just masking the core of this voice’s true concerns. Without being disrespectful, we can cut to the chase. Each time we are offered story, we can go deeper, we can take charge and the aspect will be grateful to surrender their suffering up.

‘What are you afraid of?’ is one of the most powerful questions we can ask. At the core of every negative emotion is fear. And the intention of every negative emotion is self-protection. We can see that their means of protecting us are unskillful and even unnecessary. Often they are trying to protect us from another part of ourselves that seems hell-bent on putting us in danger. For example we may have an aspect of self that seek external approval so doggedly that another aspect of self arises to undermine its efforts.

This has happened to me many times in my life, so I can see the pattern of it and when it arises I at some point recognize it and can go deeper into conversation. One of my patterns goes something like this: I am enjoying the process of some creative effort, then the aspect I’ve named Striver gets worried that I will be judged on the product of my creative effort, so that aspect takes charge to make sure that everything is perfect. Striver takes most of the fun out of the project and I begin to feel stressed. Even if there is no deadline for the project, Striver will create one. Then just when the product of Striver’s efforts is about to go out into the world, another aspect begins to make itself heard, one I’ve named Underminer. It too is terrified of public judgment, but it doesn’t trust perfection to be a solution, as it is judged just even more harshly than imperfection, so Underminer chooses instead to sabotage the whole enterprise. ‘A completed novel? Toss it in the drawer! Don’t put it out there in the world to be judged! Are you crazy?’

I don’t know why I was surprised recently to see that Striver and Underminer can still be activated if I’m not paying attention. In fact it was only upon rereading a section of my book Tapping the Wisdom Within in order to clarify the process of self-inquiry for this dharma talk that I came upon them and recognized how the past few weeks I have been increasingly stressed about producing an audio CD of my poems to have available at the poetry reading this Tuesday. Striver is frantically trying to produce perfection, when this is my first ever attempt to create a recording, and Underminer at the last minute jumped in and said, ‘Why bother? Just tell people you can’t do it.’

But my feelers have been tuned to tales of self-sabotage lately as it has come up in books and in conversations with family and friends. At every turn I get the message not to succumb to a life-long pattern of giving up at this critical stage, and also not to be so terrified that the product may not be perfect.

Also during this period I recognized how valuable an encouraging word from someone can be. I received several words of encouragement from friends and family that came at a moment where I was ready to abandon all hope that the project would get done. Those few words resonated with my own inner wisdom, ignored of late in the flurry of over-zealous activity, and also helped me get in touch with the negative aspects that were sabotaging me.

So since they are so present and available to hold up as examples of inner negative fear-based aspects, let’s use Striver and Underminer as the basis of our discussion. They are saying they are afraid of my being judged by others and found wanting. They have two different ways of dealing with that fear, both unskillful. So what do I do? I acknowledge their fear. I thank them for bringing that fear to my attention. I send metta to them and to myself. I rekindle my sense of connection with all that is. I remind myself that being human it is quite natural that these emotions will arise within me, that fear of disapproval is fear of separation, but that I can never truly be separate from the oneness of life. And in fact, awareness and acceptance of the existence of these emotions carves out more compassion within me for myself and for others, who also act out their fear of separation through unskillful means.

I also remind myself of that little note of insight I pinned on my bulletin board: I have nothing to prove, I have nothing to hide, I have nothing to fear, I have something to give. Certainly the CD of me reading my poetry is something I have to give, something that has been requested even. All the negative judgments about ‘Who am I to..’ do something are acknowledged but not fed. Instead I attune to my interconnection. Let me be a conduit for life loving itself, not a tight shut down place in the flow of energy.

If there is a way to meet the guest emotion's needs without succumbing to their fears, then we do what we can. I have talked before about the deal I made with my inner aspect named Slug who doesn’t want to exercise but just wants to stay in bed because he misses his mommy and bed is a big mommy hug. I found a yoga teacher that tucks her students under blankets at the end of class for the final resting pose. Slug was in heaven and I was able to become more and more active.

When the inner conversation seems to be at an end, it’s important to remember to say thank you to the guest emotion, to make sure it knows that its concerns have been heard and will be incorporated into the greater awareness. It needs to know that we, the welcoming, patient and compassionate host, are in charge of our households and our lives, aligned with our Buddha nature, our access to universal inner wisdom.

One final caveat: In aligning with infinite inner wisdom, there will be a fear-based aspect that gets very attached to this idea of being wise and will cling to that image of self. This aspect can be more challenging to recognize than the rowdier ones, but it is just as destructive. What helps is to continually relax, stay anchored in the senses and send metta (loving kindness) even to this needy aspect that so longs for approval. When we find it, we may feel shame, sending it down to dungeon. But that's not necessary. Simply recognizing its hunger for love and approval reminds us to be compassionate. Refining our ability to distinguish between the infinite wisdom that flows throughout all and the finite 'see how wise I am?' hungering for the respect of others, is just another part of the practice of inquiry and deepening awareness.

The Dungeon of Difficult Emotions

2011-07-01T07:37:00.000-07:00

We’ve seen how holding tight to our established identity creates contraction as we grasp and cling to that hard rock of who we believe ourselves to be. This contraction can also be an aversion to who we believe ourselves to be. We’ve talked about how when we let go of that contracted state by relaxing, releasing, letting go in a mindful way, we create the space to see things more clearly and compassionately, including our emotions.

The emotions themselves are free agents. None of us can claim emotions as our identity though we often try to do so. Emotions float through our present experience like the weather, as natural as fog, rain, snow, heat, clouds, storms and rainbows. Emotions simply exist. Understanding this frees us from believing that we are the emotions we experience or that the emotions reflect on us. We can simply notice them as they pass through our experience with compassionate curiosity.

We are certainly responsible for how we behave in response or reaction to the emotions we experience. We all have habituated ways of dealing with them. We may feel the helpless victim of emotions, letting them dictate our behavior. We may feel ashamed of certain emotions and shield them from sight, sometimes so effectively that we shield them from ourselves.

It’s very likely we were taught to put forth acceptable emotions and hide, deny or push down unacceptable ones. Our parents and teachers may have been uncomfortable with their own negative emotions, and so were unwilling to acknowledge ours. In my case if I said, “I feel (a particular emotion), I was told “Well, you shouldn’t.” At other times my fears were dismissed. “Don’t be silly,” was a phrase that came up a lot in my upbringing. I’m sure this or some variation on it was pretty much the norm for mid-twentieth century. But it leaves us as adults with a habit of suppressing these ‘unacceptable’ emotions. So how does that fit with the weather analogy, where all kinds of emotions simply pass through our experience? Well, it’s as if we’ve been corralling thunderbolts and locking them up in an airtight vacuum packed dungeon somewhere inside ourselves.

I remember when I first started meditating I had some fear that what I would find in this process of self-discovery would be that my true self, my true nature, would be hideous and unacceptable. There was this sense of bottled up toxicity that I was terrified of unlocking. Now I can recognize that I was not completely wrong, that there was indeed a bottled up toxicity within me, but it wasn’t my ‘true nature’ but simply the imprisoned storms of many years of habituated emotional suppression.

This process of pushing down or suppressing seems to successfully contain the emotion. It can no longer just pass through, but is locked up and it’s sitting in a cell deep in the dungeon of our subconscious, plotting revenge, digging tunnels and rattling the bars from time to time to remind us it is still there. We are all emotional jailers to some degree, and it’s not a role we really relish. Even if we get into the whole jangling keys, gun toting, star on our chest swagger of it, in truth there are so many other things we’d rather be doing than minding the jail that contains our suppressed emotions. And the perception of ourselves as toxic at the core, when we believe those suppressed emotions to be our true selves, is a great cause of suffering that affects us and those around us day in and day out.

When it comes to jailing emotions, anger is the easiest target to round up and toss in the clinker because it makes such a ruckus. We know if we don’t lock it up it will smash everything in its path. So anger is easy to spot and uncomfortable to be around -- not an emotion we want to find in our personal experience. It doesn’t suit our sense of who we are, this anger, and its existence can make us angrier, so that we find we are the kind of jailer that roughs up the inmate on the way to tossing it in its cell. We are embarrassed by this anger, so we keep jailing it up every time we come across it and hope that nobody notices.

In our weather analogy anger is not the town trouble-maker but a thunder storm passing through. We would never think of locking up a thunderstorm. We know how to behave responsibly around it. What’s the difference between a real thunderstorm and anger? We think anger is a reflection on us, so we compound its intensity by fueling it with other emotions like shame. When we react to anger with fear of exposure and try to suppress it, we are compressing the anger into something densely toxic that begins to poison our life and the lives around us.

Suppression of emotion is a dangerous, even deadly game. It plays havoc on all aspects of our lives, including our physical health. These suppressed emotions feed on challenging situations, difficult personalities, scary events and high pressure deadlines, so that we may find ourselves addicted to disaster in our lives. We can get hooked on horrendous news, terrifying movies and drama in our own lives to feed those suppressed emotions.

Conversely we might feel unable to deal with any exposure to news, violence in movies or drama in our lives, feeling sapped by them, and afraid of their power to harm us. We see ourselves as weak and vulnerable, prone to illness.

The Buddha taught his followers to incline the mind toward what is wholesome, because that supports our ability to walk the Eightfold Path that frees us from suffering. But he was not suggesting that we are somehow so weak and vulnerable that we can’t face any difficulty that comes along. We are to be present and notice its qualities and our reactions to it all with an open spaciousness of compassionate mind. Our fear of what is unwholesome throws us in its path, for unwholesomeness feeds on fear.

Addiction to or aversion of anything are really two sides of the same coin. Both provide valuable clues to our relationship with the emotional weather that has been passing through our lives. If we learned to suppress emotion as children, then we may feel we are betraying our parents or family by going down in the dungeon and unlocking the cells. But if our parents taught us how to suppress, it’s only because they didn’t know any better. They did the best they could with what they had available. They taught what they knew to be true from their perception of themselves and the world around them. As unskillful as it may have been, they did what they felt would best protect us in the world. And for their intention we can be grateful. But we don’t honor them by staying true to the false beliefs they thought at the time to be true.

When we finally go down into the dungeon, we find that the emotions we have needed to muster in order to keep the old ones jailed are more dangerous than the prisoner-emotions themselves. When we are able to look at them with an open spacious mind we can see that the prisoners are in fact weak and helpless. How can this be? Because when we are willing to look and be present with them, we have stopped fueling them with our fear. We have stopped empowering them. We see them clearly and recognize, as the Buddha recognized when repeatedly confronted by Mara the tempter as he sat under the Bodhi tree with the intention to awaken, that they are illusions created by the interaction of our fears, our aversions and our overwhelming desires, with the emotional weather that is part of the experience of being human.

Meditation provides us with a sense of dispassionate self-acceptance that makes it safe to visit the dungeon of our suppressed emotions. If we don’t feel it is safe, we can seek the help of a therapist to walk beside us as descend into the dungeon.

Why is it so important to visit these emotional prisoners? Doing so liberates not just them but us. As long as we are suppressing emotion, we are constricted in a way that inhibits our ability to love ourselves and others, to find a way to be joyful and useful, and to be healthy.

We hear about how meditation benefits physical health, and we can easily demonstrate the direct connection between the mind and the rest of the body by doing this simple experiment: Close your eyes and bring to mind something that upsets you, some person, situation, event, deadline, etc. that irks you, gets your goat, angers you, or scares you. Then when that thought is fixed in the mind, notice where in they body you have contracted. Check out the brow, the jaw, the temples, the neck, the shoulders, the chest, the hands, and the gut. Notice it, then let the thought go, and relax, release and shake out any accumulated tension.

If you noticed tension in any area of the body, then the mind-body connection is made perfectly clear. Here we were, perfectly comfortable, and then an emotionally charged thought is brought up, and our body contracts in some habituated way. If anyone ever doubts the truth of the mind-body connection, that’s the simplest way to demonstrate it.

If you didn’t notice it, try it some time when you are upset about something and really pay attention to sensations in the body.

Dr. John Sarno, orthopedic surgeon and author of a number of books about the mind-body connection, is an excellent resource to check out if you have any physical ailments, especially chronic ones or ones that the doctor can’t explain. Reading one of his books has made a great difference in the lives of many, including my own, I’m happy to say.

Just seeing the mind-body connection for ourselves and understanding some of how it works can free us of pain, whether we are meditators or not. But a Vipassana meditator trained to be present and compassionate with the arising and falling away of phenomena, including emotion and physical sensation, is more readily noticing what’s going on in both the body and the mind.

But being a meditator doesn’t make us clairvoyant. Like anyone else we can be blind to what’s right in front of us if some aspect of ourselves feels too threatened by it. As meditators when we do discover it, we have the training to deal with it in a way that is effective. Facing what scares us most is an important part of meditation practice.
Instead of feeling failure at such a discovery about ourselves and acquiescing to the urge to push our discovery down into a deeper dungeon, we are more likely to feel like investigators having found an important clue. We approach the discovery with curiosity and maybe even excitement. Aha! We feel we are at the beginning of a rich journey.

So this is the process, this making space and then noticing. If it feels self-indulgent, then it is probably a clue to habituated suppression. We discount and discard feelings that make us uncomfortable. We tell ourselves we’re being silly, that we should bucker up, grin and bear it, have a stiff upper lip, etc. But this is just our discomfort talking, our fear of what we’ll find if we visit the dungeon. But when we use our keys – our meditative tools of self-discovery – to liberate those suppressed emotions, we find we have liberated ourselves from suffering.

I ended this week's class by reading an article I wrote many years ago, titled Emotions as Honored Guests. It was published in The Emotional Intelligence Newsletter, and I still on occasion get requests for its excerption or reproduction, so it clearly resonates with people. It is always available on openembracemeditations.com along with other downloads of useful information about meditation. Some of you may recognize similarities in concept between this piece and a poem by Rumi. I wrote it before I ever read Rumi so I was surprised, delighted and a little unsettled by discovering his poem. The coincidence shows that while each of us may draw our understanding from different wells, the wells tap into a deep river of universal wisdom. Our goal in meditation-based self-discovery is to keep dipping in the well.