Month: August 2024

Posted on by joseph mauricio

HOME IS WHERE THE HURT IS

And Home is Where the Heart is

From the moment life emerged in that first warm pond, it has been on a continuous quest for safety and growth. While life seeks a safe place to rest, it also repeatedly ventures beyond its comfort zone to explore and evolve. Life has always been challenging, yet resilience is less about brute force and more about channeling energy into a sustainable flow. The idea of overcoming life’s obstacles through sheer grit and determination may sound heroic, but in reality, our journey through life is much more nuanced.

We move forward with bravery, only to retreat to our safe haven for rest and replenishment. Along the way, we conquer some obstacles, avoid others, and inevitably fall to those that outmatch us. There’s little value in keeping score. Life does its best, evolving continuously, regardless of the challenges it faces.

The Human Tendency to Complicate Life

Yet, we humans have an extraordinary ability to complicate even the simplest processes. This tendency arises from our belief that we know better—that there’s always a nicer place, a better relationship, or a more lucrative position awaiting us. We cling to grand ideas that often bear little connection to reality. In our pursuit of fantasies, we end up stepping on each other’s toes, competing for ever-narrowing spaces. Siblings compete with each other, children with their parents, and families with their neighbors. This relentless competition drives our children to Yale, whether or not they even wanted to attend college.

Home: The Seat of Our Wounds

Ideally, home should be a sanctuary—a place to rest and recover. However, in many cases, the wounds we carry within our families prevent us from truly settling into ourselves. Home, where our deepest wounds reside, becomes a reflection of the heart, the core of our body-mind system. These wounds of the heart, in turn, project onto every aspect of our lives.

Personal Boundaries and Connection

Each of us carries an internal “hula hoop” that creates space around the tender parts of our being—those areas shaped during our vulnerable, early years. For some, especially those who have faced significant trauma, this protective boundary becomes rigid, making it difficult to connect with others. Yet, despite these defenses, we all long to connect on a deep, human level.

As we open our hearts to others, we risk re-experiencing past pain. The process of pulling inward for self-care and then extending outward to connect with others is essential for growth. Reaching out is vital because it allows us to learn about the world around us. However, those who experienced significant trauma in childhood may struggle to form connections and attachments.

The Role of Intimacy in Breaking Boundaries

Intimate experiences, such as orgasms, allow us to move beyond our personal boundaries and connect deeply with another person. Although these moments may seem complex or elusive, they serve a biological purpose: bonding couples for more effective child-rearing. The connection felt during such intimate moments transcends ordinary life, allowing someone to bypass our defenses and access our innermost selves. This deep bond makes separation particularly painful, as the intimacy once shared becomes public, leaving us exposed.

The Importance of Early Attachment

Childbirth and early child-rearing are other profound examples of moving past boundaries. If a child is not nurtured correctly in the early stages, they may face lifelong attachment issues. When the bond between parent and child is weak or strained by external pressures, the child may struggle to form attachments later in life. While some philosophies view attachment as problematic altogether, I feel it more practical to accept and examine our attachments to understand how they may be limiting our growth and how we might move beyond those limitations.

Challenges in Settling and Relaxing

When there are problems at the root level of our being, it’s like living in a building with a chipped cornerstone—settling and relaxing into life becomes challenging. These “cracks” in our root chakra can keep us energetically unsettled, always searching and shifting. However, by repeatedly returning to the present moment, we can become more familiar and even friendly with our difficulties, eventually finding the means to relax into ourselves.

Family Relationships: A Special Challenge

Family relationships are particularly challenging because they are unavoidable and deeply rooted in our circumstances. If we choose to maintain these profound connections, we must be willing to confront individuals who can bypass our defenses before we even realize it. This sensitivity can make us feel judged, threatened, or even loved before any words or gestures are exchanged. For instance, after a conflict, walking into a room with that person can feel like stepping into a minefield, as we are already on guard, ready to defend ourselves.

Deepening Self-Understanding

These situations offer an opportunity to explore our defensive mechanisms and begin to unpack our reflexive ways of dealing with the world. Lashing out before understanding the situation is not mindful. A wise friend once said, “What other people think is none of my business.” The point is that we often speculate about others’ thoughts and judgments, which may not even be accurate. Instead, it might be simpler and more effective to keep interactions civil and surface-level, allowing our deeper emotional connections to change naturally.

The Power of Non-Verbal Communication

A lot can be communicated through a smile, a touch on the shoulder, or simply being present with another person. Receptive presence is a technique used in animal care. The attendant simply sits near the frightened animal until shows signs of relaxation and receptivity. It works for people animals as well. Simple gestures of contact can open the energy between people, restoring intimacy without the need for words.

Retaining Connection in the Face of Challenges

With the many challenges to intimacy, it is of major importance to retain our connection to those with whom we are deeply bound. It is often said that our family is our spiritual path. Some believe there is no accident that we find ourselves in the specific family to which we are bound. These karmic connections are challenging, because we grew up with family members that have had access to our  most intimate being. This opens many flashpoints that can be challenging to navigate. Once we are triggered, it is crucial to look at ourselves before we react.  We might ask what we can learn before we anticipate others judgement of us, or place blame on another. When it hurts we might look inward, because we are the working basis of our liberation and we are the only factor we can effectively change. “What do I need right now? How can I effectively express my needs?” This is how we learn about ourselves.

I love my family very deeply, although all of us have shared our woundedness, our reactions, and our difficulties as we have grown. There have been unskillful attempts at communication, and there have been breakthroughs into heart connection. The breakthroughs came as we were able to work past 0ur defenses. And I believe each of us has learned profound lessons through these connections.

The heart of our being lies within its protective layering.  Understanding the language of the heart requires the bravery to feel pain and to recognize that suffering as our own, and to own our own pain.

 

 

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Posted on by joseph mauricio

SPEAKING TO EACH OTHER

I would like to introduce the community council. The idea behind this gathering is to create a mindful approach to communication in our lives and within our community. This will also allow awareness of ourselves, which enables progress on our path.

The Power of a Dharma Community: One of the remarkable things about a Dharma community, which is a mindful and intentional community, is that our everyday actions can be guided by our mindfulness practice. In turn, our mindfulness practice deepens when applied to our daily lives.

The Role of Communication: Communication is a fundamental aspect of everyday life. It’s the bridge to understanding each other. However, poor communication often creates barriers rather than bridges. While boundaries are necessary to maintain clarity and focus, they need not be barriers to communication. If the true purpose is communication, then understanding one another is our purpose. It is important to mentally restate that intention at the outset, as well as remind ourselves throughout.

Communication is not a speech, it is a dual process of speaking and listening.

Intentions Shape Communication: Our intentions set the tone for communication. If our goal is to belittle or attack, we close off the possibility of true dialogue. Effective communication is not about winning or dominating; it’s about reaching out to another’s heart and engaging with their basic human dignity. By doing so, we create the highest potential for a meaningful exchange. When we attack, we are forced to deal with the worst in another. When we treat the other with dignity, we are working with their best.

So, what is your intention? Is it to force another into your corner? Or, is it to open to a changeable creative exchange? Which of these possibilities teaches us more about ourselves and each other?

Openness in Communication: Openness is the second key aspect of communication. It implies changeability and creativity. True openness means allowing space for reflection, listening to our own words, and genuinely hearing the other person without judgment or interruption. It’s about giving others the authority to speak their truth without needing our approval.

The Council’s Purpose: The purpose of our community council is not to force conformity but to create a space where everyone feels they are heard. In moments of disagreement, it’s vital to retain our openness and respond thoughtfully, without aggression or coercion. Speaking from a place of truth allows us to communicate effectively, even when our views differ.

The Role of Council Members: As council members, we are entrusted with holding this space. We must empower ourselves and others to engage in mindful, open, and compassionate communication. Even when we’re triggered or uncomfortable, it’s important to stay grounded, remember our role, and guide newer members toward less aggressive communication.

Conclusion: In summary, open communication involves three key points:

  1. Boundaries: Holding to our own truth without attacking others.
  2. Openness: Speaking clearly and listening genuinely.
  3. Empowerment: Holding our seat with confidence and guiding others toward mindful communication.

When we are empowered  with confidence, we are cognizant of our own dignity, and not obligated to anyone’s approval.  Then we can hold the space to allow a flow of ideas, some supporting and some challenging. Yet, if we hold our set and hold space we can enact out intention to create a community where everyone feels heard, respected, and valued.

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Posted on by joseph mauricio

THE FEMININE

Understanding our Mother, Sister and Maiden

 

When exploring the feminine principle in human experience, we’re not specifically referring to women, but rather using the image of women as a gateway to understanding this essential energy. Everyone possesses both feminine and masculine energies, which together make up the whole integrated human experience.

Although masculine and feminine are inseparable, we can separate them to examine the distinct qualities each energy entails. The Tao Te Ching posits that the receptive complements and completes the creative. By considering this provisional binary, we can recognize that each of us has both assertive and receptive qualities. As we become more aware of these energies, we can learn to balance them.

Today, we focus on the receptive qualities of feminine energy. Receptive does not mean submissive; it is, in fact, a very powerful energy. In classical Tibetan Buddhism, the feminine is represented by the mother, sister, and maiden. These stages provide entry points to understanding this powerful energy. The mother symbolizes birth and nurturing. Space itself can be seen as feminine, as it contains and gives rise to all things. In some instances, assertive energy is required for creation, but it is always the feminine that nurtures that creation. The creative, assertive energy tends to proclaim itself, often competing with other masculine energies. Consequently, our temporal understanding is often skewed, viewing things predominantly from the masculine perspective.

We have recently lived in a time dominated by masculine energy. However, the masculine is ultimately at the service of the feminine, its mother. This interlocking energy dynamic shows the masculine creative energy dominating other masculine energies to serve the feminine. This has been misunderstood as the masculine choosing, with the feminine in service to it. In our materialistic society, we value things based on monetary concerns. Thus, the male providing money for the family’s safety has been misinterpreted as an act of dominance rather than service. The most important aspect, from a spiritual point of view, is the sacred bond of the family. The feminine gives birth to the family and should be protected by the creative energies within herself, her partner, and society.

Feminine energy cannot be owned; it is the very nature of the universe. Recent explorations of “dark matter” may be investigating this ancient energy, which existed before light. As all things—past, present, and future—exist in space and the universe, that ancient energy still holds and drives the expansion of the universe. The suggestion is that feminine energy is dark energy, predating creation and birth. Light, as a masculine energy, illuminates the dark, allowing us to perceive it, but the preceding, self-existing condition is feminine. Therefore, light is crucial to the creation of our universe and consciousness, but the darkness of the womb is the primordial state.

From a Tibetan Buddhist perspective, feminine receptive energy should be protected. In our contemporary society, this protection could come from the society, culture, laws, and the world itself, rather than a single male figure. The saying “It takes a village” reflects the importance of a communal nurturing and protection for the creation birthed by the receptive.

The mother cares for and protects the child on the most intimate level. We can extend this concept to include the creation of any kind—such as art, spirituality, or poetry. Personally, I write my creative work with a feminine voice, as it connects me to the sensitive, delicate part of myself essential for writing. The mother upholds our creative being, giving birth to the creator and nurturing the maturation of that creation. Regardless of societal or personal dynamics, every aspect of reality is connected to the feminine. The mother holds, nurtures, and creates us.

The sister represents the feminine energy that is connected to us at all times, an equal and vital part of our experience. Although we live in a time that favors masculine energy—due to a preference for survival over thriving—feminine energy remains equally important. Acknowledging, accepting, and bonding with the feminine can be seen as a supportive element. When we think of protection, procreation, and health, we might initially evoke strong masculine energy, but often the nurturing, friendly aspect of sisterly feminine energy is more appropriate. While men tend to create linear structures and hierarchies, women often foster horizontal communal energies. Soldiers referring to themselves as a “band of brothers” are describing the essence of sisterhood. This sisterhood involves an egalitarian, communicative, and connective quality. When we bond emotionally with our world, environment, or each other, we express this feminine energy.

The maiden represents the youthful, attractive, and capricious quality of sexual energy. The maiden entices, challenges, and playfully engages the creative. It’s important to stress that we are discussing essential energies, not men and women. The maiden can be represented by the partner in a sexual union who embodies the playful, receptive, and challenging aspect of the relationship. While many relationships have a blend of masculine and feminine qualities, each of us can connect with and invoke this youthful sexuality within us. The mother, sister, and maiden exist concurrently as well as consecutively, both within us and in the energies we invoke in others. Gender fluidity recognizes that regardless of one’s identification, all of us exist on a spectrum of gender possibilities.

The maiden is symbolized by the dakini, often depicted in her late teens or early maturity. The dakini’s energy is linked to sexual awakening and discovery, which can sometimes lack compassion. While the dakini entices and softens the creative energy to approach her, she follows a deeper wisdom. Though often depicted as naked, in flames, and dancing in the sky, her connection is to the sacred feminine space of the universe, an energy predating all things. Her energy might seem capricious because she is linked to a higher order or her own feminine clan or community, making her actions incomprehensible to a more rigid, linear, masculine perspective. Thus, the maiden is always one step ahead of comprehension, dancing in flames in space. Though youthful and sexually appealing, the maiden exists within all of us. You can see her in the eyes of an older person in love or feel her in the embrace of someone who pushes you away for no discernible reason. In our male-dominated society, there has been an attempt to dominate and control this capricious energy, but the dakini cannot be controlled or possessed. She can be held, calmed, or tamed, but only provisionally. Like fire, with which she is associated, she warms, enlightens, reveals darker truths, but can also burn and move from one source of fuel to the next.

In Tibetan culture, men were part of a nomadic hunting-gathering system in a harsh environment where vegetation and sustenance were scarce. These communities, particularly in medieval times, were ruled by feminine structures. Sexual bonding between men and women was not permanent; as men often left and didn’t return, the community needed to continue procreating. Mothers ruled the roost and were not obligated to the monogamous structures that contemporary society demands. While the mother and sister energies may bond for life, the early stage energy of the maiden is not intended for such structure. She is an energy of capriciousness, embodying the trickster. This is the transformative energy of falling in love. The word “falling” is crucial here. When we fall in love, we leave behind our hardened positions and embark on a journey of transformation. We become something beyond what we have known and fiercely defended. In this process, we are reborn or recreated.

At that point, the dakini may leave us, her purpose fulfilled. Alternatively, this energy may transform into a more sustainable form, like the nurturing energy of the sister, akin to ducks that mate for life, swimming together in balanced harmony. Or it may evolve into the protective energy of the mother, who guides and shelters her brood.

These energies are present everywhere—in the trees, the plants, the wind, and the earth. There is the Goddess of Fire, the Goddess of the Wind, the Goddess of Earth, and the Goddess of the Mind. Most essential is the Goddess of Space, for she is the womb of all creation. Though space can be vast beyond comprehension and even deadly, it is also nurturing, friendly, and inviting. The way to connect with this energy is through gentleness, kindness, patience, and respect. These qualities are accessible to us all, as they are the energies of the goddess within each of us.

 

 

Posted on by joseph mauricio

THE UNBEARABLE WEIGHT OF BEING

I met one of my favorite authors at his book signing. I asked if he was happy with the book. He said he would have completed it much sooner had he been less important to himself. He offered a wry smile. It felt like he was telling me something about myself.

I have always been important to myself. I carry self significance around like a weight. It precedes me everywhere. I remember seeing Sam Kinison on stage. The crowd erupted in anticipation before he even walked out. I wanted that power, the kind that announces itself and demands its place. The kind that seems overbearing to others, yet feels like a minimum level of self-protection to me.

Once, I was hired to tell jokes at a party.  The host, our benefactor, nodded and smiled but never laughed. At the end of the night, when he paid me, I asked him why he never laughed at my jokes. He said, “Because I feel like you’re forcing me to.” It hit me. My need to coerce people for my validation was pretty narcissistic. We all have ego. We place ourselves at the center. Some of us close ourselves off completely to feedback, creating an impenetrable wall. We protect ourselves from a safe distance, all the while suffering crushing doubt and loneliness inside the performative fortress.

This is a description of my style of ego. Your mileage may vary. But we all try and control our lives from an insulated booth removed from everything else. We all have our style and we are all generally trapped there. It is said that ego is like a general that becomes more powerful than the king.  In an ironic reversal, the king now serves the general. Ego is a like defensive blister on the self that becomes inflamed anger or is threatened. The self is semi-permeable, allowing communication. Ego, however, tries to control everything to protect the self.  Some people bruise their environment, like I did. Others pull inward, making everyone come to them. Some are late, making others wait. Some are generous, marking their good deeds. These are styles of imprisonment. The tools we use to defend ourselves become our prison guards.

We diminish our hearts. We cut ourselves off from sustenance. We compete with everything, seeking protection and power. We become like a government under martial law, curtailing information, stopping openness, becoming vicious little creatures who see what they believe. Each of us has a style, but all are controlling and because of that ego is limiting. The surest way to control life is to reduce life to a manageable size.

Ego is ignorant of itself. It protects our self-awareness by demanding control. This sets up massive expectations without us even knowing what or why.  Sometimes, I can’t get out of bed. Many have felt that. My version was embarrassment for not living up to the outsized expectations my ego set. I was too important to myself to be myself. I had to be larger or smaller than life.

The antidote to this neurosis is awareness. With meditation practice we grow our awareness and begin to see the defensive patterns that limit us. We live in extremes to avoid seeing ourselves. Like a black hole, we can’t see the ego directly, but we see its effects. Hurt people hurt people. We inflate when hurt, trying to become bigger. Or deflate when threatened, trying to be invisible

But ego isn’t the problem; cherishing the self is. Protecting, building, and cherishing the self creates pain. Meditation helps us see clearly, without judgment. We see how we hurt others and ourselves, how we limit ourselves. We develop mindfulness—awareness of body, life force, life itself, and emotions. We start to unpack the ego net that has ensnared us, making us it’s puppet.

If we give up all the things that make us “me,” we might find ourselves connected to everything else. This is a much richer and more sustainable place to be than living in our projections, which is a lot of work.

Carrying around the weight of all of the expectations of having to live up to the idea of “me” is exhausting. Carrying around the baggage of our defensive habitual patterns is exhausting. Looking at other people only as a means to substantiate ourselves also cuts us off from the sustenance we get from connecting spiritually to other people and to the world around us. We are starving ourselves spiritually as we try to gorge ourselves materially.  We work so hard to substantiate this fiction of “me.”

This makes our life incredibly heavy and incredibly sad, because we are cutting ourselves off from true connection to each other and cutting ourselves off from connection to the environment. We are cutting ourselves off from leading healthy, lives connected to all of the life around us.

And we create this idea that we are so special that we deserve everything we could possibly get in the world, and yet our ego is never satisfied. So we need more and more things to make it feel as though it’s protecting us. So, in order to protect us, the ego is demanding that we do all of this work and put all of this effort into its own self-substantiation. It’s as though the country’s entire economy is being subsumed into a military that’s nominally there to protect them but actually is parasitically feeding off them. And that’s what begins to happen with ego when it’s unchecked. It parasitically feeds off us. It’s supposed to protect us, but we end up having living up to it.

And ego does not disengage easily. That’s why we resist meditation. That’s why we are threatened in relationships. That’s why we are too tight to orgasm. Because these are all moments when the “me” thing falls apart. We don’t like that because we absolutely need to control the world. We end up grabbing and clinging and carrying and expecting – living with this incredible, unbearable weight of being “me.”

Trungpa Rinpoche likened walking around with an ego to our wearing a clown suit carrying a teaspoon filled with water. We are trying so hard to not spill a drop.

Meanwhile we’re wearing a clown suit.