PATIENCE

The Majesty of Patience

Patience is the path of grace. A mountain rises over millions of years, but its power is in the waiting. In its time a mountain creates wind, directs weather, experiences deadly conditions and extreme energy, yet the mountain is seemingly still. It serves to inspire and guide us. It is not hurrying or competing. And should we be drawn to climb the mountain; haste would not be in our favor.

Tibetan Buddhist masters say that speeding through life is a fundamental disregard for our existence. Speed is anxiety based and causes us to rush forward damning anything that gets in our way.  And once something does get in our way, the collision happens too quickly for a sane response. We become incrementally more important to ourselves the more pressured we feel.  “Get out of my way! I’m late for my meditation class.” We become very important to ourselves when we feel pressured. We yell at the dog or tell the kids to leave us alone or otherwise react in ways that are not helpful.  We have this great responsibility, with very little time to process our actions. I have a job I have to get to; I am important dammit! This is not living with dignity. This is not only unkind to those hurt by our reactivity, but it is unkind to ourselves.

A kinder, and vastly more productive, approach would be to employ mindful awareness to relax into a flow state that  optimizes our experience and honors our existence. We are able to stand up and hold ourselves with dignity and grace. I had a teacher that suggested I slow down enough to move quickly. This is pausing just enough to synchronize with our mindfulness and awareness. Then when we are interrupted, we can respond intelligently with consideration. We say  considerate because we are considering a fuller situation before we react. When our mind is racing, we don’t have time for that we’re rushing down the street late for work and pushing people out of the way or cutting off cars on the road, without any regard for the basic human relationships that make us feel confident and strong. The more we push our life out of the way so we can force our agenda the more we are robbing ourselves from the fundamental sustenance of our life. That sustenance can only come from being grounded. It’s as if we’re pulling the nutrients up from the earth. But we can only do that if we’re synchronized with the earth. When we are synchronized, we are present, and the game slows down. We see that we have more options than the panicked reactions that come from speed would reveal. When we are grounded, we are able to consider more helpful approaches.

One thing that blocks the flow state for us is this feeling that we are pressured and have to make an immediate decision. We have to act immediately without pause, without thought, without consideration. When we’re running late, miss the train and we’re delayed another 8 minutes we stand on the platform looking up at the clock, tapping our feet.  The speed and constriction that we become addicted to slams us into survival mode. Our options are reduced to fight flight or freeze.  When something stops our momentum, we either lash out, run away, or freeze in a PTSD trance. The remedy is to boycott reaction, pause and breathe. Feel your feet on the ground. Come back. Then we can respond. 

Patience is not holding us in white knuckled tension waiting for the storm to pass but actually slowing down and opening our heart. In this way we create a loving space between thoughts and reaction. We enact a gentle pause for consideration. When we are here and now, breathing, with feet on the ground, the space opens up, the game slows down and options beyond reaction are naturally revealed. Looking at patience from a practical point of view we can see it less as a pejorative or limiting action and more of a forgiving and opening. Rather than shutting ourselves down into a reaction, we are opening up to space. If we relax and create a gap before our next action, we are able to bring awareness into the situation. We are doing something healthy for ourselves and helpful to the circumstances.

Patience is a pause that opens to the light of awareness. Rather than reacting from our base mind circuitry by becoming conscious of breathing, we’re able to redirect the energy to invoke our higher cognitive processing ability, accessing our executive reasoning.  We become considerate, or compassionate. We are able to look at the bigger picture and perhaps find a response different that our reaction. We are able to create a space for communication. Now I’m not saying we should become Gandhi. What I’m suggesting is that we pause long enough to be able to actually have a considered response. It might be offering some counterpoint, it might be walking away, or it might be simply waiting in space until the next right action becomes clear. Once we make an offering of our anxiety our fight flight freeze reactions are transformed. We’re using the same mechanism of reactive mind but because we’ve paused and synchronized, we’re able to use these impulses with executive reasoning. Fight turns into expressing our point of view, flight may be that we can walk away. Retreat is not surrender. Retreat is simply stepping back to regroup. And freeze might simply be resting here. This is not a  PTSD trance state where we can’t move but a loving pause where we have the option to do nothing but remain present.  Not to react, but just simply to wait. And that waiting is the essence of patience. If we learn to pause when we’re triggered, we might find that we’re more patient at stop signs, more patient in the subway and more patient with our life.

The fundamental work is recognizing, returning, and resting in our meditation so that we have built these tools in our life. In this way, awareness is the loving space  that allows us to see the appropriate response. All we need to do is train in this.  We don’t have to figure it out on the spot. It’s not on us. We don’t have to prove we’re right. We can just recognize the flashpoint and then remove the pressure. We can  offer our anxiety, panic, and aggression. We can offer the assumed mental pressure of disempowerment and receive the natural patience of a mountain.

We can rest on the earth where we belong.

A Very Dharmajunkies Thanksgiving

Join Dharmajunkies tonight 7pm for a Very Dharmajunkies Thanksgiving. Sarah will lead an Ancestral Healing Meditation. Joe will offer a talk on abundance and offering. And we will have an open discussion for all who attend.
https://tinyurl.com/DharmaJunkies
While Thanksgiving is often a time of gratitude spent with loved ones, it is at the same time a day of grief for many seen and unseen beings. Tonight’s meditation will bring us into the infinite space of the heart, where we can find the good medicines of love and compassion, which we will offer to those beings who may be lost and suffering, including ourselves.

IT’S A WORRISOME LIFE

IT’S A WORRISOME LIFEWorking with Negativity

Our human psychologies are nuanced and complex. One foundational affect, or deeply embedded physio/emotional belief, is that we need to store negative experience in order to learn how to protect ourselves and our species. This gives way to an experiential prejudice toward negativity, commonly referred to as “negativity bias“, or the “negativity effect”. As a protective measure, humans value negative experience above positive. Deep within we believe that positive experience is inessential and negative experience is instructional.

During our ascension up our planet’s fauna-chain humans developed higher cognitive functioning. This came to replace, or become superimposed upon, earlier rudimentary defenses. We traded fangs, claws and venom for memory and reason. This is why, when threatened, many of us get locked into compulsive thinking.  This greater RAM space allows us the processing ability to strategize our way out of danger and toward sustenance. We employ memories of past experience toward reasoning solutions in the present. However, while our present reasoning ability is contemporaneous, it is based on older, more ingrained experience. In order to secure our survival, our systems developed negativity awareness which is driven by past painful experience, or handed down genetically from past experience. This creates a cognitive dissonance because while our social mind pretends to search for pleasure or actualization while our deeper tendencies are driven by survival. Remembering Maslow’s pyramid, the foundation of our actualization lies upon supplying our basic needs. Survival is our most foundational need.

Our higher spiritual development seems to be what is needed for us to us to feel fully actualized. In order to realize that potential, we need to incorporate fun, relaxation, meditation, art, exercise, and social interaction into our lives. However, often in life those experiences become hijacked by the urgency of “more important” negative fixations. In some cases, we are so fixated on negativity we fail to see opportunities for enrichment in our life. This is interesting because while negativity is driven by survival, our reduced awareness actually makes us less secure.  This “ostrich syndrome” is, in humans, more like an eagle placing its head in the sand. We have the potential for tremendous awareness that is all too often conflated into a survival binary. We have the ability to see the whole picture, but nonetheless focus on the negative in a misguided attempt to secure our survival. In this way, we overvalue the negative, and even exaggerate it. We create a culture around it, competing with each other over whose life is worse. Jon Kabat-Zinn called this “Full Catastrophe Living”.

But, being locked into negativity is not satisfying. There is so much goodness in our lives that we discount or undervalue. At some point we become depressed. There is only so much we can push away in our lives before we start to close down to ourselves. Our negatively oriented life becomes itself fully negative. When this happens a natural – though unhelpful – strategy is to find blame. In order to ease our suffering we find an object on which to pin our pain. This object of blame may be our lover, a co-worker, or an element of society. But it is often driven by older, more deeply ingrained fears. Our mind is like a periscope searching for danger even when no danger is apparent.

If we are interested in living an actualized life, gaining some agency over our thinking is essential. Meditation master Chogyam Trungpa encouraged students to look at their minds with acceptance and accept their thoughts.  He felt it important that meditation be devoid of judgement. In his view, all thoughts had equal value. Our mind can be seen as basically good rather than an instrument of torture. In this way we can see our mind as fundamentally workable. By not dismissing thoughts we are offering our mind the room to discover itself. However, by applying the techniques of meditation and returning to the breath, we are accepting but not indulging our thoughts. All thoughts are equal but present moment experience is the point. So we come to be familiar with our thoughts and the games our mind plays.  Then we can determine if we want to follow along in action.  Rather than reacting to everything our mind tells us, meditation offers us the executive functioning to see our mind and decide how, if and when to act. The process of meditation allows us to “pause before send”, creating a buffer between thought and action. This is also very much true on the micro levels. Even if our action is tightening in the body, we are supporting negativity. We have the choice to notice and release the tension.

This subtle somatic negativity is important to recognize and accept. We may walk down the street nominaly enjoying our day, but internally clenching our stomach in fear of what may happen next. Even when everything is going right, is our body waiting for the other shoe to drop? It is essential to see this subtle negativity and feel the feelings otherwise they provoke unless they build within us and influence our mind in ways we cannot see.

If Trungpa recommended we accept our thoughts without judgement, there is one category of thinking he deemed unacceptable. “Negative negativity” are the judgements we have about ourselves, including those we have toward our own negativity. Negativity is naturally inherited behaviour. Blaming our negativity is counterproductive. It’s essentially blaming ourselves. Whenever we feel the tightness associated with self-affliction, we can come to see that we are punishing ourselves, which is self-flagellation. We can just let any self-judgement go.WE don’t have to pretend we are a buddha, or Mother Theresa or Kendrick Lamar. We can be ourselves and accept negativity as small minded and self-defeating but entirely common and natural.  We can allow ourselves to feel our negativity without judgement – but also without action.  We can become aware of our underlying behaviors without acting on them. We have every right to feel however we feel, but no right to inflict those feelings upon ourselves or anyone else. If we act out our negativity we are training the mind to continue negativity. On the other hand, as we are socialized not to act out, “acting in” builds internal pressure until we explode, or fall into depression.  Both of these actions build the propensity for us to see the world negatively making it easier to act out/in.

Negativity is the cause and condition of psychological trauma. Trauma may refer to a specific wound, but also to its embedded experience. As experiencing trauma is reliving past experience, acting on trauma is living in the past. When we relive the past, we are performing the same experiments which garner the same results. Acting on negativity and seeing the world negatively wounds us deeply. Walking down a street bitching internally at everyone is not an indicator of spiritual actualization. It is programming us to be victims of our own hatred. Victims? Yes. While negativity masquerades as a logical response to the buttheads of the universe, in truth, when we percolate ill feelings inside us, that churning will manifest in ourselves and our world. It’s the I’m rubber you’re glue syndrome in reverse. Whatever we churn inside manifests in the world, which sends back in kind. Instant Karma, it was said. But we can work with karma and make it less instant. We can slow it down with a tool called mindfulness. When you feel negativity, uncouple from fixating on an other, pause and feel inward. Don’t expect answers. When you fondle a lover you dont expect immediate gratification. You’re touching in to let them know you care. Feel in to your body and let yourself know you care.

Whenever we feel that negativity we can use it as a red flag to pause and check in with ourselves. In this way, life becomes lighter and less burdensome. When I find myself bitching I ask: is this real? What am I actually feeling? Am I defending my existence right now? And eventually the inner grip lessens and I begin to see the world around me.

Life need not be continuously worrisome. It can sometimes be enjoyed, appreciated, and valued.

 

 

Our Life’s Work

When I developed my meditation instruction into a practical life path I chose the name LIFEWORK for my new business. This felt apt because, in a very practical sense, our work is to live our life. Our jobs and any financial security we’ve earned would, ideally, support our life. While many of us have pressing financial and professional issues, I believe Right Livelihood is the creative development of our essential being. Simply said, living is our life’s work. And perhaps that work can be a work of art. A truism in the field of motivational development is that money is not an effective motivator. While a few may be genuinely motivated by acquiring wealth, the majority of us fear not having wealth. Or, perhaps we fear wealth itself 

My work is to remind people that life is the point. Our jobs are only one of life’s pillars. Some others are health, play and spiritual wellness. A “Life” Coach would help illuminate all of the aspects of life, not just help with employment.  If our job supports our life we are fortunate. And if our job is eroding our health and spiritual wellness, we are also fortunate. We have been gifted an opportunity to rediscover ourselves and reorient our path. All roads led us here, and so here we are.

Now, where would we like to go?

The healthiest life orientation is one in accord with our true nature and placing this in alignment with, and service to, the world around us. Some traditions talk about turning their path and our life decisions over to God. Some talk about working with the universe. THe important point is that we don’t have to muscle through on our own if we orient ourselves toward a greater purpose. Yet, we cannot lose ourselves in the process. My belief is that we have to honor what Martha Beck calls our “Essential Being,” which she posits as distinct from our “Social Being”.  Our Essential Being is informed by other’s needs but is not defined by anyone’s expectations. It is self-existing and yet open to communication and change. Our essential nature seems to understand verbs over nouns. What is our action? If our action is fearful, then this action programs us to believe that that life is to be feared. When our action is confident we are guiding ourselves toward openness. In terms of our livelihood, many of us have a complicated relationship with money. We fixate on money, we discuss money, we may even study money, but we are actually quite frightened of money. Hence, money doesn’t excite us and wealth feels unattainable. And so, our lives become obligatory rather than creative. Lennon suggested that we break our backs to earn our day of leisure. And yet, Lennon was wildly successful in life because he “broke his back” for his passions. Whether it was perfecting the three-minute song, affecting progressive politics, falling in great love, or finally caring his family, he was an example of dedicating life to the things that matter.

And what matters will change as we develop. When we have this co-creative relationship  we are living life imperfectly, as a work of art. Art is never perfect. Or maybe its imperfections make it perfect.

In 1989 Marsha Sinetar released “Do What You Love and the Money Will Follow” which was something of a manual on what the Buddha called “Right Livelihood.”  Rather than motivate our life journey by our fear, if we identify the essential element of our being, we will access a wellspring of energy that will effectively drive our life. I think of it as a crystal river that runs through the essence of our life. Everything becomes clear when we remember to return to that flow. This is what we are training toward in our daily meditation. Shambhala Buddhism refers to “Basic Goodness.” This is not good versus bad, but a description of our human essence. It is the basis of human being. We are good. We have every right to be here. If we can learn to believe in ourselves, we will believe we are worth whatever goodness life can offer. So “Right Livelihood” is dependent on connection to our spirit.

Do gold rings and bling really satisfy us? Maybe. If we can access our essential goodness then the accoutrements of the world will be, as Chogyam Trungpa said, “ornaments which are pleasant to wear.” But when we forget to remember our basic goodness, acquiring any goodness of the world is,  Sakyong Mipham says, “like putting elegant clothes over an unwashed body.”  If we don’t recognize our own goodness and believe we are worthy, the goodness of the world will not be sustainable. Many of the things in life that we so desperately seek will only lead us from ourselves if we think these things will complete us. This actually erodes our wellbeing. On the other hand, there are things in life that directly feed our soul. When we are in tune with ourselves, we can feel this in our body. So, there are things we do that close us down and things in life that genuinely light us up. If these are the things that money can help acquire it might do better to focus on that which genuinely excites us and then allow the accumulation of wealth to be a practical means to that end.

In my coaching, I have my clients envision what they want from life. This is a maddening exercise at first. We are  trained to regard our own wishes as selfish. But how do we have the ability to help anyone if we’re depleted and unhappy?  And I tell them “lets just toss some ideas and see what the universe sends back.” Nothing is written in stone. Stones are for laws. Laws are an important support, but only to guide the creative. Creativity is an imperfect process. We let go and relax into the flow of life and allow the universe to co-create that life with us. This means we allow God, our teachers, or our higher power into the equation. The way we access the goodness of life is to dedicate that life to enriching all life. Nothing engenders confidence like caring for others. When we do this, we are accessing our higher spirit. We are in line with spirit, source, God, or Basic Goodness.  That spiritual alignment is an amazing feeling. When we have the capacity to extend to others, we are aligned with goodness and the goodness we need from life will come. This is Ruling Our world with dignity and grace. Conversely, when out of fear we live life only for ourselves, we live scurrying and frightened. Thinking about our livelihood, our health, or our life at all seems overwhelming.  Perhaps this is because these thoughts are manifestations of fear and not expressions of confidence.

 

For some, the money that drives our social economy is a cruel master that causes us to barter our passion for societal progress. Societal progress is not evil, but it doesn’t light us up. And motivating toward financial security is an obligation at best. But what is important is that we remember the essential cause of our motivation. We are humans, not machines. Caring for humanity is a way of transferring our anxiety into meaningful action. This makes us feel better about ourselves which allows us the confidence to recognize and accept goodness from the world. This reconnection to our basic goodness has to be maintained with the daily effort of coming back. We get lost and we come back. Over and over. There is no other way to progress. We train daily by simply coming back to the breath in our practice. Eventually, we gain the confidence to remember to recognize and return to the present in daily life. Then we can turn our life over to our higher power, which is always at the service of helping others. We can go from anxious self-centeredness, which is self-limiting, to the confidence to allow our life to unfold as it should. When we are selfish, we are walling ourselves away from goodness and so will struggle in fear. When we see this, our daily work, our good work, is to return.

It is the biological imperative to protect life on our planet. When we are in alignment with that, we are part of the goodness of creation. With this view, all the goodness in life is dedicated to giving us the means to protect life.

 

LEARNING TO LET GO

LEARNING TO LET GO. Letting go is a topic I can’t seem to let go of. An essential tool in the meditator’s kit, it is said that it is always appropriate to let go. But, as I keep hearing it from different perspectives, letting go seems to mean different things with many applications. As the meditator seeks to train mind toward serenity and wisdom, it may be helpful to first look at what interpretations of letting go are not helpful to that end. For instance, it is easy to misunderstand letting go to mean we are “getting rid of,” “pushing away” or “ignoring something”. Acts of aggression create struggle in the mind and are therefore not effective ways to develop awareness.

Nerdy background: The primary antagonist to our mental well-being is attachment. When we are experiencing pain the problem lies not in the object of our ire, but in our attachment to ridding ourselves from the discomfort we are experiencing. Whe

n we have a pain in our stomach it is not the fault of the stomach. Pain is often a necessary wake up call to an issue that needs our attention, and even our love. The problem lies when we feel anger, depression or aggression toward the wound. Wounds need love and caring to heal. But aggression of any sort comes from clinging to our anger and hatred. Life is often uncomfortable. That discomfort becomes painful when we refuse to accept what is actually happening. If clinging to our pain is problematic, the antidote to attachment lies in acceptance.

Letting go is acceptance. Acceptance is an act of love.

In many cases, pushing something away only makes attachment stronger. When we let go of worrying about paying bills we may find a momentary respite, but the bills are still there, perhaps with added interest. From a meditator’s perspective, letting go is not pushing away, nor is it denial. It is definitely not the struggle that ensues when we try and rid an idea from our mind or the bills from our table.  We can’t change the world by letting go of our obligations. But we can let go of the attachment to wanting tigs to be different than they are. We can change our relationship to causing pain for ourselves and others by recognizing and releasing attachment and accepting what is happening. Attachments are one thing we can change. We do this by literally releasing our grip. Releasing our attachment is a visceral / somatic experience and can take some effort. While the pressures of the world or an argument with a loved one may feel unt

enable, releasing our attachment is very practical if we train our mind to do so.

Practice: Training the mind to be able to recognize and release attachment takes time and effort. The primary function is an almost mechanical releasing of our grip. This is why the simple, repetitive and, yes, boring, action of returning to the breathing in our meditation is the cornerstone of our healing. By doing the practice, we are re-training our minds to recognize mental attachments and release them back to the breath. This is the practical template for  letting go.

Application: Now, if that is the practice, let’s look at the ac

 

tion. Letting go is releasing our grip on attachment. But the grip of clinging is panic based. It is not easy to dislodge ourselves from the struggle. It is important to know that this attachment is not our fault. However, it is an opportunity to learn to let go. Learning to let go is a tool we can use often in our life and practice. Whenever we are stuck in a thought or feeling an emotion we can’t be rid of, we actually can just stop. We can pause. Once we’ve allowed a gap we might be able to step back and recognize that this experience is not about the object of our pain. It is about the action of gripping. I am holding on. The all-important next step is acceptance.

I accept that I am triggered and only I can release this.

Acceptance is not agreeing. Its understanding. I’m struggling, but everybody does this. No matter what anyone has done or said, I am the one gripping, grasping and causing myself pain. And when we accept

 

that, we can accept that we can change the situation by physically letting go and regaining our emotional balance. Then we understand the pain is not about us, or them, or anything external. It’s about basic human fear of things we cannot change and creating tension in mind and body in reaction. This is non-acceptance.

 

So, how do we accept something we don’t want? We acknowledge it’s not our fault and in fact, boycott any fault. Finding fault keeps us from letting go. The story may be true, but retelling the story keeps us locked in turmoil. So, let go of the stories, and stop hurting yourself. Release your grip on the struggle. Rather than pushing anything away we can release our grp with (self)love. Like Banksy’s image of letting go of a heart balloon. We simply open our heart and our mind and offer our anger, disappointment or insult into space. Our emotions are not

 

the issue but they are complicating the issue. Once we release our grip we can see the issue clearly with understanding eyes.

The 12-step systems say “let go and let God.” I think you also could say “let go with love” and allow that kindness to open into positive possibilities.  When I am able to let go in love I’m sometimes left with a flash of insight. This feels divine. It’s like touching in to  heaven’s grace. When we let go with love, we might feel held in the arms of love. Then we might see the issue for a grander perspective. We might see as our higher power sees. That grander perspective is compassion. Letting go into the space of love we realize none of this is about us. Then the next question is how can I not add to the pain. When someone needs to hear our feedback, then can we let go, step back and address the issue in a way that’s actually effective. 

When there is anything in life that we need to addre

 

ss, we can renounce re-acting in aggression, come back into balance and take whatever time we need to return to serenity before we respond. From there we can look at the issue from the loving eyes of wisdom. We can see things as our higher power sees them.

 

A guiding rule is when we are anxious, angry, tense or out of balance we would do well to pause. When we are composed, open and untriggered we can react creatively and more effectively. This is compassion. Compassion is not about being nice. Its about offering our self interest and our triggers away and acting from understanding.

Process:

Beforehand, train the mind in meditation to be AWARE of our triggers.

In the moment,

 

  • recognize that we are in pain and the pain comes from clinging to attachment.
  • Pause.
  • Accept all feelings as our own. Drop the fault. 
  • Turn the attention from the barrage of words in the brain.
  • Calm the feelings within you. These are only a reaction. There is nothing helpful that can come of this turmoil.
  • Let the feelings dissipate.
  • Let go into a sense of self-love. Clear the mind. Calm the heart. Release the body.
  • Respond as is helpful to you and all concerned when it is time to do so.

 

Falling leaves:  This idea of letting go can be releasing into the natural flow of life. Like trees falling in space. It’s a natural and gentle expression of passing. It might make us sad, or fearful but these feelings are temporary. They are colors in the changing of times. Letting go, in its grandest sense, is accepting impermanence. Accepting impermanence is being part of the world in which we live.

Letting go is an act of openness and kindness.

 

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THE LONELINESS OF THE BODHISATTVA

Many beliefs we hold are taken for granted without investigation. They remain hidden motivators that influence our life journey. Yet, as these belief systems stem from reactions to difficulties in life, they are defensive and don’t offer access to a larger world with more options and deeper understanding of each other’s beliefs. We just assume that we are right and write off those who disagree as misguided.

Like fish that don’t recognize the water they swim in, we remain protectively out of touch with the larger context of life. There is some justification for this as much of the life on our planet goes along with unconscious programming that insures its best chance at survival. It may not be helpful, or even necessary, for a lion to have awareness of the suffering of its prey. They are acting out a program for their survival and the survival of their clan. Humans might be different, at least in potential, if not always in action.

We have the possibility to access a larger picture and operate on a greater plane of awareness if we are willing to look beyond our self interest.  This leaves us torn between acting out programmed survival instincts and being able to see the larger context of how our actions affect our world. The ability to access the larger context is the result of our evolutionary or spiritual development. Whenever we do this, we are waking up, from the womb of unknowing into the full understanding of our inter-connectedness with all life.

Buddha was a student of life who woke up and became a guide for the beings caught cycles of suffering. Buddha was able to bridge awareness of our sense of self and the interconnectedness of the life around us. Buddha means “awake” and so THE Buddha means the awakened one, although I’m not sure Buddha would have made that designation.   One day the prince woke up to the understanding that their life was interconnected to all life around them. They renounced station and status and simplified their journey to the elemental, existential aspects of being. They sat beneath a tree in exhaustion and surrendered the inner wars waging within. Then Buddha simply awakened. When asked what brought about their deep serenity, they simply said, “I am awake.”  I am Buddha.  And from that vantage, Buddha was able to understand the complexity of human suffering. He despaired of being able to convey that. Buddha’s loneliness became aloneness, as their confidence grew. Buddha was willing to be alone in the company of humans in order to connect to them. This aloneness and deep understanding was shared by great profits. Jesus and St. Francis were guides who lead humans from shadows in a cave to a life of service in the world.

In the Buddhist tradition, we speak of “enlightened beings” or “Bodhisattvas” who dedicated their lives to leading others from the suffering of ignorance to the great understanding of awakenment. And the greater their understanding, the more alone they were. It is interesting that connecting to all life puts us on a plane that we are less accessible to the programmed lives of those around us. If we surrendered our personal greed, we may wake up and see that we are part of everything else. It seems a fair trade off. Yet, that awakening might be another trap if we don’t surrender our personal space and dedicate our understanding to others. This evokes a conundrum. Caring for others is dependent on caring for ourselves. Kindness to others is dependent on kindness to ourselves. So, it becomes integral to our path that we begin to see when we are making ourselves strong in order to care for others, and when we are self centralizing and agranding ourselves.  I think of the Buddha eating rice and milk before awakening, or Christ searching his spirit and confronting the antagonist in the desert, as a necessary precursor to helping the world. The great Bodhisattvas of our human age at some point were ready to dedicate themselves to leading others away from the conditioned dungeons of our projected lives into the wakeful sanity that is our potential.

By understanding that much of what we believe -and take for granted us truth- has been programmed by nature and nurture. The basic survival instincts of maintaining our life in a dangerous world, might be seen as a tool that when we become conscious and conscientious we can see as a language we might employ to communicate with others. If we speak Russian, we are more able to understand a Russian person,we might better fall in love with them and feel their pain, but we don’t become Russian and lose ourselves. A guide has one foot on the shore and the other with those being guided to safety.

Helping ourselves we are more able to develop the clarity and strength to help others. Should we fall into self aggrandizing self importance we lose balance and fall into the river. THen if we surrender we can allow someone else to help us along. This seems to be the process. When we awaken into compassionate interconnection to life, we naturally care for the life around us. And that connection supports us as well. Of course we falter and sometimes fall. But we can learn that our ego is the part of ourselves that needs more and compares itself to everything else. We can recognize that ego is a defensive state that has been programmed to hide in the darkness. Try to make ourselves strong in order to best someone else feels good for a moment, but it is never enough and will never last. When we manifest strength by caring for others we gain a confidence that nurtures a part of us that lies deeper than our programming. With kindness to ourselves and others we nurture our basic goodness that has been there always. We have always had everything.

When we give up placing ourselves at the center of life, we are, in turn, gifted with all of that life. When we let go of our self-importance we are part of everything else. But that is a lonely road different from the ways netflix and our society encourages us.  Being a Bodhisattva does not exempt us from suffering.  Chris Bell was a sad and misunderstood soul who before his death wrote a song with the heartbreaking line “every night I sell myself I am the cosmos, I am the wind. But that don’t get you back again.” The bodhisattva never outruns suffering. They simply learn to not cause more suffering.  The Bodhisattva helps others to learn the importance of not causing harm.

Not causing harm is a powerful action. The earth is incredibly regenerative. If we can stop waging war, life will regrow. And if we cannot, we may not survive. But I believe life will still be there. Some other form may arise to take the mantle. So we should be kind to all beings. They are supporting us whether they know it or not.

EMBODIED AWARENESS

My personal meditation practice is based on two principles, mindfulness and awareness. Mindfulness is the grounding element that brings us back to the present. Awareness is the environment around mindfulness that lets me know when I should return, or when to let go. Awareness is seeing the trees and hills, it is feeling the wind, and noticing my thoughts like clouds drifting and reconfiguring in the space around me. If I get lost, distracted, or caught up in thinking, my meditation training reminds me to return to my feet on the ground, or my breath in my practice.

 

Of all the distractions in my life, my mind is the most seductive. I am perpetually engrossed in my thinking to the extent that if I was not a meditator, I likely would reside full-time in my head. While our minds are amazing tools, being lost there keeps us from accessing its power and potential. When I am lost anywhere, I am sucked into a part of my mind that cannot see beyond itself. This is to say I lose awareness. When I am unaware I am missing the beauty of my mind and my life. By cultivating UNawareness, I am putting my head in the sand, making myself vulnerable to danger. When I am not aware, a deep inner part of me becomes frightened. My reveries take on a paranoid hue as I succumb to anxiety about the future and regrets of the past.

 

The remedy, of course, is to return to the present. This is hard to remember when my mind is lost in its internal momentum, so the practice of mindfulness awareness reminds me that I can be aware of distraction and return to mindfulness in the present. This is a great gift.  In the present I am less anxious and more capable of dealing with challenges in my life. Awareness creates the present space that reminds me when I’m stuck somewhere that is not here. Mindfulness is the ground to which I return.  In meditation I return specifically to the breath, as the breath is reliably in the present. Awareness of breathing also grounds me in my body. While my mind is plotting, scheming and imagining my life, my body is actually experiencing that life. Becoming aware and willing to return to my body breathing is grounding my practice in the present. The body, like the breath it holds, is happening now.

 

However, in everyday life, it is very easy to ignore reality and become seduced by the world we create in the mind. Walking down the street it may be helpful to remember my feet on the ground so I can be part of the world that is actually happening. This return to my feet as I walk on the sidewalk is grounding. While it is impractical to concentrate solely on the sidewalk, it is helpful to remember to return now and again. This keeps the mind grounded enough to be aware of life around us without becoming distracted. We can use any object in the present as an object of mindfulness so long as we are not imagining it, but we are feeling it.  Rather than concentrate or focus on the present, I think it is more helpful to rest my mind on the present. LIke placing a loving hand on my body, I am coming into gentle contact with now. The body offers an experiential base to ground me in the present. Coming back to the breath, I am resting in the body.

 

Becoming aware of our body in practice allows us to further ground our experience. Embodied practice is more sustainable and secure than simply playing ping-pong between my thoughts and the breath. When I return to the breath, I have trained myself to feel the breathing and to make it a full body experience. Embodied practice is the ground for an embodied life. In our everyday life, we can return to the body as a full resonant container to ground our experience. When I coach folks on public speaking or performance I teach them to ground themselves on the earth and center their energy in the abdomen.  Diaphragmatic breathing is deeper and more efficient than our casual shallow breath. And speaking from the belly is more grounded and resonant than our superficial head voice. Speaking fro m the gut, we can be heard more clearly and we don’t need to shout. When people are unmindful of the body, stuck in the head they will shout to make a point, acting on anxiety. The voice becomes strangled and shrill. It is not resonant and is emotionally hard for others to trust. We are being spoken at. But, when I remember to come into the body, I naturally remember to realign my posture and open my channels. I speak from the body with authority. And when I am in authority in my body, I am less inclined to be hijacked by my brain. I remember my lines. I know where I am heading because I know where I am. I am here. I am here in my body now.

 

This is also practical off stage and off the cushion. When I am in my body I am home.  I feel safe and secure. My life has more resonance. And the body has many experiences happening now as reminders to return. I can return to the breath, or my feet on the ground, or my belly. I can become aware of holding tension in places and use that as a reminder to let on and come home. While I am experiencing my world, I am also in conversation with my embodied experience. This keeps me present and keeps me sane. My body is happening now. It is the earth I return to. My body is my home.

 

Mindfulness of body is resting on the foundation of mindfulness. From there we radiate out in awareness to our life with confidence and authority. Embodied awareness is knowing life as a fully present experience.

 

OUR FRACTURED WORLD

The warrior feels sadness for the suffering of beings, as well as the delight in the possibility of their awakening. 

    –  Sakyong Mipham. 

 

We are living with the heartbreak and outrage of the war in the Middle East. This refrain has repeated many times throughout my lifetime. As things change, they say, the more they stay the same. This time may be different.

 

This was the worst attack upon the Jewish people since the 2nd world war. It will precipitate an intense retaliation which will rock the foundations of world security. All this is happening in the shadow of the invasion of Ukraine that had shaken the world. AIt is also a time when technology has created more awareness and nuance than ever before. The world is either waking up or falling fast asleep. Or perhaps both. We have the setting sun approach turning toward darkness counterposed with the rising sun view of opening to possibility. We can take either position. We can take the easy approach of blaming a group and wishing for their eradication or we step back and try to see more clearly with eyes of healing and compassion. And just like any of us waking up on a spiritual journey, we will see harsh realities along with positive development. It is important not to latch onto solid propositions. As we develop spiritually, one of the things we are waking up to is the horror we are capable of inflicting.

 

This is not about the Middle East, or Eastern Europe. A murdered child was stabbed 26 times outside of Chicago ina misguided response to the crisis. People throughout the U.S. are arguing positions for one side or the other. There may likely be more violence throughout the world. This is who we are. Violence to one wounds us all. Sometimes violence is necessary. But only when it is clear sighted and free of hatred. When we are filled with anger and range acting is our first impulse. But it may be the last thing we should do.

 

Past trauma will fester ingrained beliefs that often ripen as a basis for a next generation’s identity.  Clashes between race, nationality, creed, economic and social stratification have been common to societies throughout history. The development of human societies is a violent confluence of currents that crash, conflict, and sometimes meld into each other. The turbulence of water flowing into water. Through this mixing we try to maintain the uneasy balance of protecting identities while engaging with a larger world.

 

It is becoming clear that anyone left out of engagement with their world, without the comfort and security and having less than those around them become angered.  Whenever we are gauging our life by others, we are losing.  So anger may seem like strength. But anger makes us ripe for manipulation. Whether a loner in their basement gathering information from the web, or a child in poverty throwing rocks at tanks in Gaza, those who believe they are powerless will hold to a belief, a flag, a slogan, or a group with which to identify. This identification brings a temporary sense of security and power. But we are giving away ourselves and our higher power. Abdication of personal strength never makes us secure. Nor is there any power when we are being manipulated.  We are merely swept along, lost in the rush of momentum. The child strapping munitions to their vest or carrying an automatic weapon into their school is not evil. They are not insane. They are broken and have allowed themselves to be swept away. Whether from the internet or a megaphone, they have been steered by rhetoric. They are chasing the illusion of power.

 

People chasing an illusion of power must do so because they feel they have none. Yet no one is truly powerless. As long as we’re alive we have the strength of our own spirit. We have the strength of our soul. We have the strength of our basic goodness and a higher power that is our human birthright. We can develop ourselves on a path of wisdom in order to foster the great strength of awareness and compassion. Granted, this might seem pollyanna-ish or inaccessible to those whose lives are in turmoil or danger. And each of us are in danger sometimes. Each of us has our thinking obscured by the wrong view from time to time. Each of us becomes manipulated by misinformation, for a great source of misinformation is our own mind. We give up our freedom and our power every time we latch on to easy slogans or pat answers.  We give up our power when we let anyone or anything else decide our fate. We give up our power when we talk ourselves into defeat.

 

For meditators it is important to learn the distinction between our wisdom mind and its dependent blah-blah sibling. With meditation, we develop the stability to have the clarity to see what is. We gain access to our higher mind and this engenders a strength of mind that in time will be our true power. This is the power to remain true to ourselves and open to others. And like a Buddha, the onus on those waking up is to care for those less awakened. Compassion is not an elitist system. We are each trying to help another up the mountain. If one fails, it is a failure for all. Not everyone is in a position to develop themselves spiritually. And there are those who will use their awareness to manipulate others. This is awareness with an egregious blind spot, and it is very dangerous. It is manipulation masquerading as compassion. Manipulating others or being manipulated by others is not freedom. Freedom comes when we have the humbleness to know that we have much to learn and the willingness to remain open in order to do so. And along the way, we develop real respect for ourselves and grow into the leader the world needs. Awareness is not an assumption of power or stature. Awareness is a responsibility.

 

As we journey up the mountain our view changes. We begin to value possibility.  Instead of defensive protectives, we start to see the commonality in all humanity. We see that we are part of a greater whole. We are part of an experiment by the cosmos to develop wisdom and begin to see itself.  But in order to do this we have to understand a very simplistic binary: acknowledge the mind that keeps us locked in suffering, but follow the higher mind that leads to clarity and strength. While the shadows of our past are still an influence, we can develop the power to look ahead toward a bigger view.  No one looks out from the top of the mountain and says, “this sucks”.  Sure, we may see all the refineries and junkyards but the view from above is nonetheless beautiful. In time, we will see more of the war and hatred people still rage upon themselves. But we will also see trees growing and life blooming. All of life needs to defend itself, and all life yearns to grow. This higher mind cares naturally for the world.  And even as it hurts deeply for its suffering it rejoices in its liberation. We are evolving.

 

And as we evolve, it is up to those who have the good fortune to be able to foster awareness to develop the compassion to help others develop wakefulness. The opposite, of course, is always possible. Like a shadow following behind as we travel toward the sun our defensive mind is ever there, ready to pounce. We can fall backward. In our confusion we might choose the setting sun of slogans and simple answers. We might choose death. And, if we do this often enough the earth, who gave us life, will take the hint and rescind our lease. Then she will move on to her next experiment.

 

But should we choose to follow a path beyond our self-interest, we might become stewards of the world. We can be shepherds of her people. And when that is too grand for our personal circumstances, we can turn to ourselves and work to develop our own personal freedom. There is no fault in this. Personal liberation (so so tharpa) is the basis of compassion. Compassion is the supreme thought of healing this fractured world. We may not be able to do this ourselves, but by raising our sights to its possibility, we are learning to understand more of ourselves. And if we can add some positivity to the profusion of negativity we may influence the course of our evolution as a species.

THE HEALING CIRCLE

This post is dedicated to two women who were the seminal influences for the Dharmajunkies community. Michelle Killoran and Dr. Jamie Zimmerman were amazing beings who passed from this world instantaneously and unexpectedly, leaving a hole in the circle of my heart. A hole I choose to not fill. A hole they let their light in. A space I will cherish.

In the 90’s I lived in a meditation center in the Rocky Mountains. What was then known as The Rocky Mountain Dharma Center, was based on the Shambhala Buddhist Tradition and catered to a variety of communities. Each year a group of college students from Chapman University in California came for a 10 day immersion in the healing arts we called “Ancient Wisdom, Modern Madness.”Or program introduced a variety of ancient traditions from Buddhist teachings of Trungpa Rinpoche and Sakyong Mipham to the African tradition of Malidoma Some’. The director of the program was Michele Killoran, who was to become a major influence on my life. She had been leading the “Chapman Program” for a decade, when she picked me to be her successor. I was very new to teaching but my youth gave me entry into the students’ trust and heart. I immediately felt a kinship with them. And this was the first principle in the healing circle: trust born of heart connection.

MIchelle introduced me to the wisdom of the self-healing circle. Community circles are employed in many traditional cultures, including the Native American, First Nations, African Shaman  and Tibetan Buddhist traditions. These were introduced to the students both academically and experientially through ritual, meditation and study.  It was our goal to not only impart knowledge, but to allow the wisdom of these traditions to fundamentally affect the students. I first met hearts with Michelle as I sat across her kitchen table. I was very agitated and had come to her for what I thought would be good advice, herbal tea and hippie healing.  I sat there bundled stubbornly in my pain unable to listen with my heart. I tried to impress and compete with her, which was all I knew of how creating a human connection. I was getting more and more tense. Finally, she took a persimmon from a bowl of fruit on the table between us and told me to hold it. She told me to be quiet. Close your eyes, she said. Eventually she removed her hands. I sat holding that soft yet firm fruit that felt so alive, like the heart of a child. I don’t remember when I began to cry, I just seemed to awaken in tears with the feeling of being firmly, yet lovingly embraced by the earth.  Her eyes were open and clear, radiating warmth and acceptance. Her silver woven hair billowed like smoke as the afternoon light came through her kitchen window. Her husband Eamon was a sailor who followed her calling far from his port. But, he was home with her, as was all who knew her. She was his ocean. She was my earth.

Essential elements compliment and balance each other. The next idea of the Healing Circle is returning to balance. Healing is coming back to balance. Earth balances fire. Water balances wind. The Healing Circle is balancing the elements in nature. Most Asian healing systems refer to the elements and to balance.

MIchelle showed me the notion of the self-healing, self balancing community. Buddhists call this a mandala. Many indigenous traditions employ this principle, or their version of it. The mandala denotes a community or an environment that organizes around a primary principle. That principle may be a fire, a mountain, a lineage, a teaching, or an idea. In the Chapman program we used Wisdom as our organizing principle. Whatever tradition we introduced, we were looking to use it to develop wisdom. Wisdom is not knowledge. Knowledge is the map. Maps are important but they are the not the and they represent. The Buddhists talk about fingers pointing to the moon. The finger is not the Moon. Truly seeing the moon, as we would at the RMDC on high alpine nights, is an experience. It is contact with something we can never own. Wisdom is knowledge married to experience. It is knowledge that happens within us. Wisdom changes us. In the Tibetan Buddhist tradition we refer to transmission as an instantaneous download of wisdom that affects our body, spirit and mind. A given student might experience transformation in a moment or over time. The ones who were open might experience a transmission from launching a bow in Kudo – a ceremonial Japanese archery, or from a rebirthing ceremony with Meledoma, in the sweat lodge or a fire ceremony. The transmission might occur in meditation, when we come back to the breath. If we are open enough transmission may happen as we notice a falling leaf or hear a bird sing.

My job in the community was to guide the students to openness. I would employ Tonglen and other heart opening – Bodhicitta – practices and try to allow everyone access to the energy via vulnerability and openness. Trungpa Rinpoche was an example of a master teacher who turned no one away and could speak to the wild and crazy as well as the cultured and sophisticated.  In this way, MIchelle accepted everyone into our circle. Yet she defended her students with a lioness’ strength keeping away all elements of distraction. The next point in a self-healing mandala is that while all who are within the circle are accepted fully and completely, yet in order to allow the community to feel safe enough to open their hearts, there are elements that would have to be kept out. Thus the balanced mandala has openings to communicate with the outer world, but also to restrict access. This is described by the iconic “enzo”or Zen circle, which is not a closed circle, but has an opening. The community needs connection to the world around it, but also needs to be safe within. And within that magical enclave, the open hearts connect to each other and by holding space, they allow each other to be seen and accepted. Being seen or heard without judgement or coercion is elemental to healing. Healing is community and connection. Madness, on the other hand, is bred in isolation. Isolation can be mental. We can isolate within learned logics that remain closed with no gate into larger reality. Many of us experience growth when we are forced into a larger frame by tragedy or discomfort. We are fired from a job or break up from a relationship that nonetheless leads to an entirely new iife once we heal enough to step beyond our patterns. Intermittent openness is essential to healing. Yet, too much openness creates too much chaos and erodes that sense of safety.

As important as a sense of safety is to healing, we can never completely seal ourselves from the world. Hence, we are never completely safe. Reality is ever-changing. We cannot escape that. Michelle died in her kitchen from a massive stroke. This eternal force of being was gone in an instant. Yet, echoes of her wisdom remain because the wisdom was not hers alone. She was the gateway to a universal humanness.

Years later, in New York City I met a woman named Jaime. She seemed a younger version of  Michelle, with flowing gold-woven hair and piercing bright eyes. She was a student of mine, who quickly became a colleague and finally my teacher. She was a shooting star that illuminated my life and then touched down in darkness, leaving waves of her benign effect on the world. She was our original co-teacher in Dharmajunkies, a group we founded on the idea of the sacred community circle. Jaimie and I taught together weekly on Monday nights and her heart touched everyone who came into that circle. Jaimie instructed us on how to speak with each other in ways that opened hearts and fostered heartfelt communication. Like Michelle, Jaimie was gentle and tough. She ushered our group away from competition and comparison. She taught us to support each other by maintaining an awake, loving space. She taught us deep listening.  She gave us the strength to be a community based on individuals who, like her, were entirely, completely, unapologetically themselves.

Jaimie left to lead meditation at ABC studios and to her own developing career. I never knew anyone who engendered so much good will everywhere she went. And she did this without ever being full of shit. She could talk shit with the worst of us, drink whiskey with the roughest, and fiercely protect her clan wherever she was.Jaimie was on vacation in Hawaii when she slipped on rocks overlooking the ocean, fell to her death, and was swept to her grave by Namaka, goddess of the sea. The hole she left in my heart will never be filled. Perhaps another key to the healing circle is that wounds need not be healed. That space need not be filled. That all is blessed just as it is. I suppose it is our work to remember that. Who are we bending ourselves to be? Who are we apologizing to? To whom are we explaining ourselves? And why?

The ultimate fruit of the self healing community is when we can step back into the world with remembrance of our natural human dignity and grace. LIke sitting before a campfire. Like watching a leaf fall. Like hearing the birds signal life all around us. Like holding a persimmon. Like resting in the arms of a good friend.

Like coming back to earth and opening to the vast sky.