Category: Teaching

I am a teacher in the Shambhala Buddhist tradition with over twenty years experience. I teach classes and lecture in New York City and Baltimore Maryland at the local Shambhala Centers and elsewhere, including the Interdependence Project on the Bowery in NYC, The Shambhala Meditation Center of New York, The Three Jewels Outreach Center and most recently, Warrior bridge Aikido.

It is my life purpose to take the wisdom of my teachers Sakyong Mipham, CHogyam Trungpa and Pema Chodron and offer their wisdom for everyday people.  I truly believe in the power of meditation to help anyone understand their mind, giving them a better understanding of themselves and hence, a better relationship with their world. I have taught and lectured at schools, and in businesses and have lectured at various places including The Ethical Society of New York, The New School, for Google in New York City and the Zen Center of Brooklyn.

Some of my recent lectures:

Waking up In Chaos: Navigating the Sea Change
Across a Night So wide: Working With Sadness and Depression
What A Long Strange Trip Its Been: Understanding Karma in Everyday Life
Yes And: developing Creative Responses to an Unpredicatble Universe
When Rock Hits Bone: Starting From Square Zero
Stumbling Through Gates of Change
Crying to the Sky: The Art of Prayer in a Material World
Fight, Flight, Freeze or Just Freaking Relax: Reconfiguring Conditioned Reaction

And recent workshops:

Our body of Knowledge: Transcending Physical Imprisonment
Yes, And: Developing Our Creative Voice
The Actor’s True Voice
Standing in the Shadows of love: Loving Kindness in Difficult Times
And the series “Meditation And…”
      Meditation and Yoga
      Meditation and the Psychology of Change
      Meditation and Improvisation
      Meditation and Finance

Posted on by joseph mauricio

WAKING UP

It’s like the song says, “waking up is hard to do.” Or maybe that was breaking up. In either case, the process is as painful as it is necessary. It’s about change. And who doesn’t love to hate change?

Growing hurts. This is why the teachings of the Buddha begin with the Truth of Suffering. Because until we see how prevalent pain is in our lives, we keep our eyes closed to life otherwise. If we avoid hurt, we avoid love. If we attach to comfort too much, we avoid growth. Waking up implies the possibility of change. And change is painful. But it is also necessary for our mental, physical and spiritual health. When we are willing to change, we are willing to grow, to learn and to listen. And, if we are unwilling to change? Well, ask a dinosaur. Or, an Edsel.

The idea of waking up is that having committed to listening, learning and changing, we can look beyond our limited parochial viewpoint, and begin to see a greater expanse to life. It hurts to let go of the ties that bind us, and blind us, but if we begin to open to our experience we might begin to see vistas that had heretofore been secondhand. The more we awaken, the more we see feel taste touch and hurt. The more we awaken, the greater our capacity for love.

Meditation Master Chogyam Trungpa was asked by a student if the Buddha felt pain. His answer was “Oh, yes. Much more than we do.” You see, the more we awaken, the more we see. The more we see the greater we feel. The deeper we feel the more we know pain. When the Buddha left his life and began his journey to awakenment, he gave up all attachment to the comfort of his well appointed life. He had been a prince who grew up in his father’s estate. The king had kept him captive in golden chains, so to speak. The young prince wanted for nothing in that rarified life. He had all the things many of us are living our lives to have. One might say, giving our lives to have. We throw ourselves away in pursuit of the very trappings he felt imprisoned by. The Buddha had what many of us long for. And yet he still suffered. He looked beyond the walls of his life at people freer and more spiritually realized than he, and yet they suffered as well. There was more he yearned to understand about his life. When the teenage prince snuck out his window and escaped the castle walls, he began to see life as it really was. He saw suffering, fear, poverty, sickness and death. What the Buddha saw was life on life’s terms.

Once bitten by the bug of truth, it wasn’t long before he left altogether and set out on a journey to find truth and an honest relationship to life. His story, was one of walking through veils, of meeting and parting until he finally abandoned every crutch, and in exhaustion, simply sat. He just sat. His exhaustion stemmed perhaps from a series of disappointments that finally led to this state of noble hopelessness. Chogyam TRungpa suggested that we are very fortunate that the Buddha turned out to be a bad yogi. He tried everything, but nothing worked. Finally, he surrendered.

For many of us, this journey to now will not be about discarding our lives, w0rk or families. Romantic gestures reap further attachments. It’s easy to let go of a job we don’t want anyway. But, more to the point is letting go of systems of belief that keep us lulled into delusional states we feel we can control. The difference between the delusional states we normally inhabit and the awakened state is that the delusional life is a dream. The experiences we have are analogous to life, but they are not life, directly. They are archetypes, metaphors and symbols, a translation informed by mind’s prejudice. But they are not the direct contact to reality as it is. When the 12-step traditions refer to “life on life’s terms” they mean that becoming truly sober is letting go of all the ways we manipulate what we see feel taste and touch in order to distance ourselves from the sharp edges and possible disappointments in life. So often we squint and begin to see a version of the world that suits our own point of view and supports ego comfort. Yet, what is comfortable to the ego is sadly inadequate to our spiritual growth and survival.

Ego is ignorance. It is a version – or a series of versions – of reality that support our points of view, by limiting our access to what is actually there. It is like marshal law. Often enacted when we are triggered (and ironically in need an honest assessment), the ego takes over and monitors the system by limiting access to information, replacing news with propaganda. It also imprisons the creative force within us, shutting down arts, magic and poetry because we need to hunker down and protect ourselves. Nose to the grindstone. I never got how that protects anyone.

We live in a police state of mind and our only recourse is to do the same set of things again and again in a misguided attempt at finding freedom through limiting ourselves to these sets of circumstances we think we can control. The fact that it ends badly again and again doesn’t seem to dissuade us. We are so change-averse, we choose the devil we know again and again. That is why it is said that “disappointment is the chariot of the path.” Once we are forced to face life not going our way, we eventually have little recourse but to let go. And letting go, as painful as it is, is key to waking up.

The young prince sat beneath the tree. He was exhausted from his journey, but also from intense fasting. It was the latest in a series of spiritual things he had tried to find enlightenment. But, even spiritual things, though well intended, are just “things”. So even our methods of attainment, must be let go. Maybe especially our spiritual ambitions. Ego absolutely loves using its own destruction as the purpose of its aggrandizement.

Finally, he accepted a small bit of gruel and milk. AAS the story goes, that that was when, seated beneath the Bodhi tree, he attained the awakened state.

It is possible that it was not a glorious event. It is very possible that his enlightenment occurred when he simply stopped looking for answers and simply saw what was there. It must have been quite sad, heart broken and lonely. There was this amazing moment of grand synchronicity, but, who could he tell? Who would understand? Nonetheless, people began to notice. A woman passing by stopped and asked who he was. He looked to her, but had no need for his name, his title, his position. He said simply “I am awake.”

“How do you know?” she asked.

He touched the ground. “The earth is my witness,” he said.

All he had at that moment was his connection to now. Right now. He touched the earth, his home and destiny, but all importantly his present moment. Now.

We will NOT wake up someday. We can only wake up now. And it might not be an awesome event. It might be lonely and empty. But in that emptiness lies the greatest richness of all. Once we give up everything, we gain a great synchronicity with all of life. We own what the trees and rocks and flowers own. We are life itself. Once we own nothing, we owe nothing. And we are free. Awakened and free.

I’m making this sound quite regal and dramatic, which would have been a cool way to end a post. But, maybe that misses the point. Waking up, like breaking up, is very hard and painful. And the journey is so exhausting, there will likely be no one there at the end to applaud. There may be no one there at all. Only the earth. And the singular moment we call now.

Posted on by joseph mauricio

O B S E S S I O N

 We are not always healthy.  We are sometimes broken and easily triggered.  We are sometimes depleted and feel we need to fix something, add something, change something or devour anything. What is actually devoured is our capacity to satisfy our needs. The more our wants cannibalize our needs, the more our wanting becomes an obsession.

 

Humans are funny. To a great extent we have everything we need. Yet, there always seems room for us to want more. In our healthiest moments, that ‘room for more’ can be left as is. A space where ‘more’ can come to us, rather than reaching for the same old tropes, to which we seem hopelessly attached. It’s odd, but actually waiting a beat, can help us connect to spontaneity.  We think leaping into the pit blindly is living in the moment, when actually it may be escaping the moment. When we pause – even for an instant – we allow the space to see what comes next. Then we have the power to step into our next moment and the lateral space to see alternatives. Then we can let life come to us, rather than grasp blindly at the same old patterns.

 

Naturally, this creative space is dependent on feeling balanced and content. This is where a daily meditation practice comes in. We learn to become aware of ourselves and our tendencies. We see the moment of our panicked gripping – eventually before it comes – and we can relax into space, rather than react in programmed panic. Then, rather than needing to fill the open space with our wanting, we can simply appreciate what is already there.

 

With space we see more clearly. Intriguingly, this allows things beyond our contextual frame to dawn. For instance, the phenomenon we call an “a-ha moment” usually comes from open space.  It’s not that these moments appear out of nothingness so much as when the mind is released from its obligation to look for answers, it has the capacity to see what is already there.

 

Maybe these “ah-ha moments” are everywhere, just waiting to be recognized.  Maybe the same can be said of all of life’s genuine moments. These are the fresh takes that bring a sense of awake to the mind. We can’t figure out these moments, nor can we strategize our way to them.  They simply come as gifts to an open mind and vibrance to life.  And though these moments are often a result of having trained the mind toward an objective, it is not in the tension of training, but in the release that follows, that authentic contact comes. In our healthiest times, we can allow ourselves the room to open to authentic experience. In order for that to happen we need to not fill every space by compressing our life around objective “things.” When we are healthy and balanced we are not gripped with need and we can wait for the game to slow down and come to us.

 

But we are not always all that healthy, are we?

 

When we lose balance and become lost in the mind, we loose awareness and, now blinded in the carnival swirl, have no recourse but to rely on familiar memory patterns. We fall for the same reflections in the mind’s hall of mirrors again and again. As they are not real, these images provide little sustenance. This only increases our neediness. It’s as if the universe only understands verbs. We pray to a higher power “I want this, I want that.” But, all we get back is WANT.  So we grab harder to what we want. Only there is no substance to what we get. We have bartered our needs for what we think we want. In this way, we become ever more depleted as we reach out in panicked loneliness and cling to baseless imaginings that return us only further wanting.

 

When we are healthy, our awareness rides within us.  We are not split apart and we are able to rest in the flow.  In this way, our life force moves evenly within us and we are able to see into the creative space and touch genuine moments of life.  But, we are not always healthy.  We are sometimes broken and easily triggered.  We are sometimes depleted and feel we need to fix something, add something, change something or devour something. The more we actually need, the more our wants become an obsession. The feeling of obsession is initially soothing. Rather than fall into the dark corners of mind we reach for straws until we’ve constructed a strawperson savior.  We teach for the junk, chase that dragon and swoon into a sense of false euphoria. We become enveloped in a protective batting that promises to save us from the sadness of life. In this way, we fill all the space and leave room for little beyond our obsession. At some point, we turn ourselves over to the power of our desire, lose our present, and so doing, loose our mind and our life.

 

And all the while life is going on nonetheless. Bills are piling, friends are leaving, life is calling but we are too obsessed to listen.

 

I call the opposite of “ah-ha moments our  “aw-shit” moments.  Aw-sit is when we CHOOSE – knowingly or not – to abandon ourselves, abdicate authority over our life and hand ourselves over to obsession. Obsession can be a momentary thing, as when we stuff the pain in our heart full of chocolate.  It can be a bowl of shut-the-fuck-up, it can be a mind-set we cannot shake, or it can be an addiction that controls our body spirit and mind. But, whether it be large or small the obsession is gripping to a false image that eclipses the rest our life.  The reality is never what we think. But in that moment of clinging we shut out the lights, lose the space to see and choose the fantasy of escape over the reality of what is actually there. Its like squinting our eyes shut and jumping off a cliff in order to save ourselves. In the words of the guru Bugs Bunny, “that trick never works.”

 

Whether our obsession has become the raison d’etre of life, a recurrent escape or a toxic philosophy that lies sleeping in the shadows of mind, we have taken a simple experience in life and fetishized it into an object of disproportionate importance.  We loose context and completely blind ourselves in a misguided attempt to save ourselves.

 

Save ourselves? From what? Our life? Is it that bad? Or has it simply become bad because we’ve mistaken the rush of dopamine for the value of actually commanding our life?  And, of course, the great irony is that the more we escape our life, the harder it becomes.

 

The alternative is to wake up into the flow of our life. By training in mindfulness of body we can feel the moment of gripping. By developing mindfulness of spirit we begin to gain contact to our emotional world, understanding wants and needs. Mindfulness of mind is the awareness of our thinking, the past layers of programming to the momentary blips that refocus – or unfocus – reality. Once we understand the difference between projection and reality, we can relax the body past grabbing onto projections and into the space of choice.

 

With synchronicity of body, spirit and mind we can relax into a healthy and productive connection to our life.

Posted on by joseph mauricio

SUFFERING

The cessation of suffering is a possibility on the path of awakening.  It is a continuously occurring experience that indicated that suffering is not permanent or solid.  A classically western application is to take any statement to its extreme, as though the cessation of suffering indicated a permanent solution, a rainbow at the end of our journey.  Many theistic systems posit their version of an end to suffering as a reward for compliance to their system.  The Buddhist path is non-theistic.  Rather than salvation it suggests that we have to do the work ourselves, learning each step of the way how to free ourselves from suffering.  It relies on a path to liberation and is, hence, process oriented.  The path shies away from blanket statements of finality.  Even it’s base premise, that suffering exists, is posited against the fact that it also does not exist.  

 

This cessation of suffering is possible at any time.  We experience this in glimpses we refer to as gaps.  There are gaps in the constant pressure of suffering that are cracks in the walls of imprisonment where sunlight shines through.  In these gaps, we see beyond the suffering to the world beyond.  These moments do not imply a finality to the end of suffering but simply a changeability that denies the finality of suffering altogether. Pain and the cessation of suffering are not mutually exclusive.  In fact, they are bound into a counter reactive interplay.    The cessation of suffering happens concurrent to pain and difficult situations.  Pain is a natural experience in life.    Suffering is caused by a reaction to the natural experience of pain.

 

To be free of suffering we might look directly at the pain in its center.  Suffering is caused by a reaction to the natural experience of pain.  It is said that the experience of sentience is an experience of pain.  Like it or not, pain is part of life.  It marks the passage of time, as well as the important moments within.  Whether it be birth, old age, sickness or death pain is a constant reminder that we are alive.  Once we acknowledge this truth, we might develop an appropriate respect for our life and all of its experiences.  Perhaps we will slow down and stop disregarding our existence by rushing past it like a drunk driver speeding to outrun accidents and police.  Acknowledging pain and learning to love ourselves we are brought back to the present and are released from the suffering we generate trying to hide from our life. 

 

THE MECHANICS OF SUFFERING

Desire can lead us into the vastness of the natural world, or it can boomerang back into the mind in a spinning compulsive prison.  If we open to beauty we can connect to the present free of regret and speculation.  But, we’d expose ourselves to the heartbreak of that naked moment.  So we might try and hedge our bet by appropriating the moment in a psychological selfie. This moment is mine.  However, if we are truly open, the world we are seeing is bigger than we.   This is frightening.  So, we will frequently choose to flee this discomfort by trying to cling to some part of our experience.  As soon as we say this part is mine, the whole thing feels more manageable.  However, nothing could be farther from the truth.  In fact, we are off to the races on the wild carnival ride of samsara.  And then, the more tightly we cling, the less we actually see.  It’s as though, in the panic to be free of pain, we squeeze our eyes shut, grab the bar of the cart and hope for the best.  

 

If pain is the necessary discomfort of life, suffering is the impacted environment around that pain.  Whether physical, societal or psychological, suffering is caused by a panic-fueled gripping to the things in life.   Our panic causes us to blindly adhere to things in order to avoid the pain of existence.  One characteristic of clinging is lack of sight.  We cling so tightly to things outside of ourselves, that we lose ourselves to them.  Clinging is a process of gripping that turns fluidity into density throwing us out of step with a universe characterized by movement and change.  The fiction of the self created by this clinging creates friction between ourselves and the natural movement of the universe.  We become alien to our actual experience and a pathogen to the natural order.  With great hubris, we pretend to the gods and believe the strength of our clinging can create permanence.  Yet, no matter how strongly we grip, this clinging is not strength.  It is desperation.  This gripping makes us feel solid, dense and protected.  In fact, we are all the more vulnerable, ignorant and adrift.  Cut off from our fundamental goodness and connection to all, we find ourselves needlessly desperate and alone. 

 

Yet, rather than stopping this wheel of confusion, and finding strength within, we redouble our efforts and sell ourselves to the nearest prophet that promises to alleviate our pain.  The more we run, the greater our suffering.  We grasp at projections of the external world for salvation and sustenance and fall into subservience becoming defined by that to which we cling.  Our identity becomes a zip code, wardrobe, car or job.  Rather than serving us, the things of life have become our masters.  And like American slaves of the 18th century, we take on the names and identities of our masters.   We’re a Bud drinking, Democrat who wears Nike, Levis and a Giants T-shirt who drinks Coke, but never Pepsi.  Perhaps, we have also become a thing.  And, we cling to this thing we call me with the most tenacity of all. 

 

 

THE WEIGHT OF SAMSARA

Strangely, we try and escape pain by clinging to it.  The fact that this doesn’t make sense doesn’t seem to deter us.  I mean, why make sense when your already bucking the universe? 

We cling to our pain by clinging to our desire to be rid of pain.  All this binds us further into servitude and suffering.  When we fight pain, or run from its possibility, we create an unnecessary suffering around the pain.  Like muscles clenching around a wound, the reaction to pain can actually cause more damage and long term suffering than the initial wound.  While that initial layering is protection, only by eventually exposing the wound can it heal.  And while we know this instinctively with regard to physical pain, we don’t seem to understand this psychologically very well.  We rarely think to expose the trauma beneath the layers of psychological obfuscation and touch the actual pain.  And so this pain never really heals.  In fact, it becomes more and more inflamed like an emotional sore toe, causing more pain each time it’s touched.  In time, this clenching reaction not only fails to heal the wound, it becomes systematized in body and mind and is triggered by the most innocuous circumstances. Therefore, through fear of pain we cling for dear life, and squeeze the life out of living.  This is the ground by which the pain of living becomes a life of suffering.  The vicious cycle of our mental suffering is a fractal of a larger global experience referred to as samsara, or as Kerouac so coined, “the wheel of quivering meat conception.”  

 

Samsara has the weight of the entire line of sentient existence, it’s patterns deeply rooted in cosmological, personal and societal experience.  It would be daunting to try to undo this karmic momentum.  But, rather than turn this heavy wheel backwards, suppose we supplant the erroneous view at the very root within ourselves?   We can begin the process of unraveling by admitting that we are human.  This admission implies that we are not perfect, that we fail and are frail and broken experience much pain in our lives.  But, we can learn to own our pain by eschewing judgement and aggression and looking directly into ourselves with kindness and love.  We can leave useless judgments at the door, and enter into the inner sanctum of our fear with care and caution.  Instead of panic fueled by ignorance and past injury, perhaps we can train the mind to awaken and experience the confidence to redirect, that karmic stream at the very outset?

 

LIBERATION WITHIN

In order to do this,  we need to proceed carefully.  An overly assertive incursion would be 

knee without hitting the walls around the incision?  Its like that.  Slowly, with great love, so we learn to trust.   Then we can see, feel, taste and touch the wounds that are generating so much confusion and perhaps empower them the strength of our compassion.   Maybe, this would give that frightened part of ourselves enough of a sense of confidence that it might let go of the wound and open.  And what will we find there?  Maybe the process itself is the answer.  Perhaps there is nothing to find, nothing to be and no problems to solve.  Perhaps, by caring, enough to look and developing awareness into the darkest places, we find strength.  Maybe we are enough as we are.  Enough at our core.  Enough in our very being. 

 

When we connect to our basic sense of goodness, we develop a wholesome attitude toward life.  Pain is not a punishment and pleasure is not a reward.  Our existence becomes a blessing and our desires are not a needs but rather compliments.  Without the intensity of need, we’d have no reason to cling as though our life depended on it.  And, generally our life does not depend on the things to which we cling.  In fact, our life might depend on letting some of them go.  By acknowledging our ill-ease or discomfort, we can release the clinging and find thespace around pain, allowing it to change and become a learning experience.  When we let go, we allow experience to supercede the object.  When we enjoy something, the enjoyment is enough, the object only an avatar.   When we get in touch with our basic goodness, we know, quite naturally, that we are enough.  Therefore, we could enjoy that dress if we don’t have to have it.  We could love that car if it didn’t define us.  We could appreciate our job if we knew that it was there to serve us and not the reverse.  We are more important than the job, or the money or the things that serve us.  We can sit back and enjoy our food because we aren’t starving.  We might even look around and regard the company at dinner with appreciation and something of a smile. 

 

CESSATION 

We become liberated from the bondage of suffering when we release our grip on that which we feel will alleviate our pain, accept the pain as it is.  And then we can look outward to the rest of the world.  This happens intermittently throughout our life.  In fact, it happens intermittently throughout our day as little gaps of silence within the suffering.  By opening our heart to the pain, we can begin to see the space around it, and the gaps within the density.  These gaps have no weight, and so cannot compare to the tremendous intensity of suffering.  But, they represent the way beyond suffering nonetheless.  It is about training the mind to the gentle subtleties of life.  The moments we can feel beyond the panic into the fullness of the truth of existence.  In time, we begin to trust this silence more than the screaming.  We begin to know that we are enough right from the outset and don’t need to change a thing. Even pain.

 

Pain is our entry into life.  The work is to convince ourselves that it is not a punishment and rather than check out, we can check in.  Pain is the gateway. I have a supplication I use for my internal work. 

 

I am blessed by this pain.  I feel because I am alive.  May this moment connect me to my own life and to the lives of all who are experiencing pain.  May I not run from this moment, but use this opportunity to become more deeply connected to my life. 

 

Or, as a friend of mine suggested “Damn yo’ bring it on!”

Posted on by joseph mauricio

PERSONALIZED MEDITATION INSTRUCTION

MEDITATION? REALLY?

Meditation means many things, even if some definitions seem contradictory. We might ‘meditate’ on a decision, which would imply deep thinking. Or, we might let go of thoughts in meditation, which implies a clear state free of mental constructs. And there are just as many reasons why we might do this. Some people are searching for a meditative state, some are seeking a religious experience, some are making a social or fashion statement. To some it’s de-stressing and wellness. And, to many, meditation is something we vaguely believe will help, but find hard to keep up. The idea that meditation can help is very true. But, it would be easier to keep up if it was less vague and more practical. What might make it sustainable is to know not only how to do it, but what it is and why we are actually doing it. Meditation need not be difficult. But, it does require understanding.

 

MEDITATION FROM A WISDOM TRADITION

 

If our meditation is about feeling good, then the moment we don’t feel so good, we are ready to call it a bust. If, on the other hand, our meditation is aimed at developing the wisdom to see our minds, we are actually handed the tools of our liberation.

 

I have experience teaching and guiding meditation in many orientations from wellness companies, to yoga and meditation studios, to meditation centers and, now more and more, with personal one on one instruction. I have guided sessions that lead people on mental excursions through jungles, over cliffs, and across the starlit sky. All of this is interesting and possibly helpful. But, the question of why still arises. Why do you want to be guided into an Hawaiian waterfall or past life living room?  If the answer is as an escape from the pressures of the world, then that is fine. But escape is not necessarily sustainable as an ongoing practice. If our meditation is about feeling good, then the moment we don’t feel so good, we are ready to call it a bust. If, on the other hand, our meditation is aimed at developing the wisdom to see our minds, we are actually handed the tools of our liberation. And, we will be motivated whether or not we feel good. In fact, we might be motivated to look beyond our personal discomfort and really learn something. If meditation, in whatever form it takes, is aimed to gain more wisdom about ourselves and our human existence, then we have a powerful “why” to motivate us. “I have difficulties in my life, and am not in control of my actions”, “I have to face myself and grow up”, “I want to be free of depression.” We can either use meditation to escape from, or turn directly into these afflictive mental states. One is a temporary balm, but the latter leads to a path of greater understanding.

 

There are traditions that are path oriented and promote personal knowing and empowerment over doctrinal acquiescence and academic understanding. We call these wisdom traditions and they have an onus on direct personal experience. Whether they be Buddhist, Native American, Muslim, Christian or otherwise, meditation from a wisdom perspective is a mind training that leads to practical and transcendent wisdom. The point is not to achieve a religious experience or salvation of any sort, but to simply become more sane and balanced in order to discover, develop and deploy our innate wisdom. And, while there are exceptions, Wisdom Traditions are often aligned with established lineages that rely on the daily practice of mind training as a developmental path.

 

The development of wisdom in daily life implies a practical involvement with meditation. The general recommendation would be to develop a daily practice of repeated placement of mental attention on the present moment. We do this in order to train the mind  progressively toward deeper and more stable relaxation and awareness. Many disciplines employ an object of meditation (such as a mantra, the breath, a visual stimulus, or a phrase) to facilitate a return to the present. So, commonly, one would return to the mantra or the breath again and again to stabilize the mind, and allow its awareness to develop more and more deeply into the present.

 

THE POWER OF PRACTICE

 

Sometimes the object of meditation takes on a tutulary function, acting as an agent of protection. Mantra, in particular, is traditionally considered mind protection. The practice of Mantra has its basis in ancient Indian yogic practice as the recitation of magical incantations to ward off evil. However, any tool aiding the mind to return to the present is acting as a protecting agent. Contemporaneously stated, the object of meditation is not protecting us from evil forces so much as our vulnerability to danger when we are not paying attention. The object of meditation protects us by returning us to awareness of present moment. In the present we are most aware and most capable of protecting ourselves. Life happens in the present. When we are not in the present we are entirely vulnerable to advantitions calamity and self-affliction. So, the breath or another object of meditation can be used to protect us, by bringing us back to our seat. Meditation trains the mind to return to the present, which in turn, returns self-agency to our life.

 

The true power of meditation is when the mind develops the capacity to recollect the discipline in everyday life. With training, we will remember to return to the present via the proxy of mantra or the breath every time we become distracted ot lost in our scheming, manipulating or daydreaming. In this way, we become less carried away with ourselves, and are able to retain balance and clarity in our lives. Of the various forms of meditation techniques I have studied, I prefer to begin with the breath, because the breath is reliably in the present. And, most importantly the breath is portable. It is always there with you. So, you can easily return to the present via the breath on a subway, in a car, on a date, in an interview or on the john. Mantra, contemplation and recitation can be used surreptitiously, but there is always a separation from the moment and a sense of doing something to correct the moment. The breath is elegantly brilliant as a tool because no one can fault you for breathing. Its fits right in to to the rhythm of living.  And, perhaps most importantly, the breath is an integral part of our somatic experience. The breath is not only happening in the present, it is happening in our body. So, it connects us to the body, and as we shall see offers us a very practical way of calming and soothing the nervous system to enhance mental clarity.

 

 

THE WISDOM TRADITION OF SHAMBHALA

The Wisdom Tradition of Shambhala is a western application of the traditional Tibetan Buddhist approach. The Tibetan Buddhist approach is very much aligned with its Northern Indian antecedents. In other words, like Indian Yoga, Tibetan Buddhist meditation is about synchronizing body, spirit and mind so the practitioner can have access to the present moment free of illusion, delusion or misapprehension. In Shambhala, however, the orientation is on the development of society into a compassionate and enlightened state. Therefore, rather than a spiritual ideal, it is a very practical way of manifesting ancient wisdom for the present time. Shambhala meditation is not sequestered to a cave, or darkened chamber. Instead, meditation is dedicated to the benefit of the planet and its attendant life. It is a very practical approach. Instead of removing the practice from the world, it is engaged in, and empowered by, our world.

 

I believe ancient wisdom once removed of its religious trappings is often based on very human, and as such, immensely practical, concerns. The Meditation from the Wisdom Tradition of Shambhala uses ancient wisdom to inform very present experiences.  At its core, is a belief in the fundamental goodness of humanity. It is a system based on developing the True Confidence which comes from training the mind. Simply said, if we develop belief in ourselves, and learn to trust ourselves, we can be a great benefit to ourselves and our world.  It is a manual, daily and practical approach that is empowering without ego building. In other words, its not flattering, or aligned with any competition. It does not offer any credentials. It is simply a way of connecting ourselves in order to connect to our life altogether. From that synchronicity, we are more in control of our lives. And, taking a warrior’s seat in meditation puts us directly in the center of that circumstance.

 

PERSONAL APPROACH AND SERVICES

My home school is Shambhala and this is the basis for which the other tools in the kit fit. Having a connection to a lineage offers the confidence to build a very customized approach to the student. I have also had extensive – and advanced – training in Vajrayana Buddhism, Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction, Mahayana Buddhist LovingKindness and Compassion Practices, as well as Somatic Experiencing, authentic movement and other therapeutic practices. I have a deep connection to Native American Shamanism and the study of Taoist philosophy and the iChing that informs my understanding of life and practice. It is my belief that ancient wisdom can be interpreted practically to treat modern disconnects, and that meditation is a primary tool for reconnecting to our basic human nature.

 

I am available to offer one time or ongoing support to your mediation practice. We can sculpt an approach that suits your needs and lifestyle. I also have a series of guided meditations that delve into embedded obstacles in our psychological, and somatic experience for those who would like that kind of support. Whatever your needs, feel free to contact me for a free session of basic meditation training. If the clouds part and we continue a deep dive into meditation instruction from there, that is wonderful. My fees for meditation work are donations based on whatever fits your circumstances at the time(s) of our meeting.

 

If we decide to continue with life coaching we can discuss a fee structure.

 

But, should you take the instruction and decide to move on to other support, you will have a basic practice toward a path of self-knowing. In all cases, I am available for phone and textual advice to support your practice, at no charge, as you continue your journey.

 

It is my L I F E W O R K to bring meditation to life. Let me help you find a practice that will remain all your life.

 

joe@josephmauricio.com

347.403.2066

 

Posted on by joseph mauricio

BE YOUR BEST NON-SELF

I wish you the best in this new year. Truly. Whether I know you or not. Whether I like you or not. Whoever you are, my best to you. The idea that happiness is a zero sum equation and that mine is dependent upon someone else’s lack, is a great fallacy. There is happiness enough for all.  And food, and clothing and money. Enough for everyone. Except that when we lack confidence, fear keeps us from enjoying our world. We feel we must take, segregate and manipulate to secure our position. We try and collect power, which is doubled when it comes at the expense of others. Then everyone is taking, scheming and, in plain fact, losing.  And this makes us very weak, indeed.

When we perceive our position to be weak, we become dangerous and the world becomes a dangerous place. There are many strategies to cope with our fear. Any that promise to remove the danger are selling us a bad bill of goods. Those easy ways out actually make us more vulnerable. We give ourselves away again and again, and this erodes our confidence over time.  There are many strategies for handing over the reigns of our self agency. Some of us seek a kind of provisional confidence in things that represent strength or safety. We become large with the largess of their vision. We lose ourselves jumping on bandwagons strewn with banners reading “make me great again”,”make me safe again”, “make me comfortable”, “help me find certainty in an uncertain world.”  But, how often do those wagons end up leading the blind to indentured servitude?   This might be a ‘yang’ approach to eroding our confidence. On the other hand, we might become very small. We might couch this as religious, holy even. We might adopt a false humility that is actually a defensive position.  While true confidence engenders humility and a willingness to be patient and kind with our world, there is danger in exaggerating humility into a self denigrating lack of ownership of our life. This abdication of our self-agency ultimately serves no one.  You might call this the ‘yin’ approach to lacking confidence.

 

In either the passive or assertive approach, we are giving ourselves away. Whether we are fighting, bowing or just getting high, all of a sudden we awaken to find we’re no longer in Kansas.  And Oz, it seems, is a place far from our imagining. In the movie, the wizard ended up changing all the characters lives by giving them nothing at all, but avatars of their own basic goodness.  “Where I come from we have folks that grow up strong in the fields, having been nurtured by their families and societies. We call them humans. And they have a basic goodness as their birthright.” As for Dorothy, she seemed to lack nothing but the ability to get back home. Her instruction? When you find yourself astray, simply feel your ruby slippers on the firm yellow brick earth and you’re home. In a practical sense, home is the present, free of projections. Home is our body. Home is our beautiful ruby shoes on the rich golden earth.

 

Now this doesn’t mean home is free of danger. It just happens to be the ONLY place you can work with danger. Life is simply safer if you’re there as an active participant. And a willingness to be there builds true confidence.

 

Yet, there are many ways in which we erode our confidence by denying ourselves in the garden. Many times we believed we needed something greater than ourselves to make it okay. This is addiction. Its is self-doubt. And in meditation circles it is based on theism. Theism is deeply ingrained in our society whether or not a god is involved. We can lose ourselves to our job, to our country, to our addictions, to anything that we determine is better than we are, or becomes more important than we are. Any time we decide something else is preferable to what our life is, or who we are, we are giving ourselves away. We will end up disappointed, and without hope. Once abandoned by our gods, when we find our idols have clay feet, we lash out and destroy them. And from their ashes will rise another idol for us to swoon over. This game continues on and on and gets no one anything but more servitude. And over time this erodes confidence. We can only shut ourselves out for so long before we will give up altogether.

 

The alternative to giving ourselves away is learning to develop true confidence. We do this when we build the fortitude to stay with discomfort and fear without checking out. We develop the strength to be alone with ourselves and our feelings for no reward except regaining OUR life. Sakyong Mipham talks about True Confidence. Unlike conventional confidence, which is dependent on external circumstances, True Confidence is a belief in yourself so deep and so naturally endowed no one can take it away. Only you can relinquish ownership of your heart. And, you will only do that when you are fooled into buying dross disguised as gold. Then, thinking there is an easy way out, we join the Pepsi generation and begin to follow someone else’s plan. The alternative is to stay the course by coming back to the breath over and over again, in order build the True Confidence to win our life back. This is the great power of meditation. It allows us to develop a strength that can never be weakened, as long as we believe in ourselves and our own goodness.  Believing in ourselves is the point. Whatever happens, it is our life. We can either participate, or capitulate. In truth, we will do both. We will rise to occasions as we can, and otherwise crawl under covers of one sort or another. However, the more we choose to stand in the fire of our own experience, the stronger and more independent we become.

 

So, with all this talk of confidence and self regard, what about this Buddhist business of egolessness?  Ugh! There’s that theism again. Our acculturated tendency toward extremes gives us a very impractical ‘all or nothing’ approach to our path.  Buddhism encourages the middle way free of extremes. It’s a very practical approach to traveling the meditation path. It’s not all or nothing. In fact, it’s everything. But, because it’s not limited to one thing, it’s often interpreted as nothing, or empty. However, the middle way speaks to all experience as having individual qualities of equal value. The practice is not to attach our identification to any of it. The less ownership we have in life, the more life we actually own. In this regard, the terms egolessness and nonself don’t imply self-denigration, abnegation or ignorance. They simply mean that we are much more than we think.

 

In our conventional (and less awake than could be) mind we hide ensconced in a discursive mental swarm that keeps us separated from the fresh possibilities of life. Our self confidence is based on what we can acquire and our self identity is largely based on what we perceive we lack. And all of it forged on reactions to other people’s input. We are reacting to our world in a way that will make that world feel safe for us. Ego structures work provisionally. They help grease the interface with the society it was created to serve. But, we are so much more than that.  The self is a small subset of the possibilities of who and what we are developed as a reference to navigate the storms of life.  Yet, to believe we are the self is to believe the sailor is the lifevest. Pema Chodron likes to say that some of us are only comfortable in a life vest over a wetsuit over thermal underwear. We are well protected from our life. Maybe a diving bell. But somewhere in there is a vulnerable flesh and blood entity that is subject to changing every moment. This is the being that needs to be brought out and given confidence.

 

Each time we flinch and contract ourselves into the panic and tension (that all too often feels comfortable to us), we squeeze ourselves into a small reactive entity. We hide in our wetsuit. But, we can’t stay there. That tension will kill us. Make no mistake. Squeezing ourselves into defensive postures will constrict us, and shut off our life force. We can only shut down so many times, before something in there gets the message. But, there is an alternative. Letting go. The practice of meditation is entirely forgiving. We can always come back. We can let go. We can simply feel our feet on the ground, and there we are.  Any system based in compassion and understanding would never deny the self. It might point beyond, but the only way beyond ego is to be confident enough to be able to let its gripping go. Ego structures gain power in our PHYSICAL GRIPPING. The antidote is simply to let go. Letting go does not mean getting rid of. It does not mean making an enemy of. Letting go means simply opening the grip and allowing the panic to subside and reveal the ground swell of fear beneath. Being frightened, and allowing yourself to be frightened without resorting to extraordinary external measures, is exactly what builds true confidence. We didn’t need a mommy, a boyfriend, a God or a president to pull us through. We were willing to sit there and feel our feelings without a bandaid. That is strength.

 

And if that sounds bleak, let me say that letting go of pleasure also opens to the true bliss beneath surface experience.  We learn to be alone with our feelings. This allows us to feel more fully. We have the confidence to open; open beyond our pain, and open beyond pleasure, open past the clinging to the surfaces of life to the raw human experience that is actually our life.  And, its okay if no one else knows, as long as we know. As long as we are willing to know more and more about what we are actually doing. Just us. And from that standpoint, we can naturally help others. Bleak? Well, maybe empty. Empty of all the stuff we encumber life with. But if we look into that emptiness, beyond our controlled presuppositions, life is full of possibility. Conversely, if we give in to our fear and reduce our mind to gripping and panic we become dangerous to ourselves and others. Yet, as all humans have basic goodness, if they have confidence in themselves, then if they can breathe, their actions will also be good. We will naturally help the world if we feel strong enough to do so. There is much energy devoted to making humanity feel unloved and unwanted, to keep us weak and at each other’s throats. But this is not the natural state of our being. And it is not the state we required to live in. The taxes are too high in that state. The natural state is a state of openness and grace for which the only tax is our own attention and confidence.

 

So, building confidence in yourself and your ability to deal with your pain, emotions and energy helps you to be your best non-self.  And then, you might discover all the yous out there waiting for you.

 

 

Posted on by joseph mauricio

CHANGING INTO OURSELVES

Its that time of year, again. Once again, the beginning. Beginning lists of new beginnings. This year will be different, of course. We will change. All of us want to change. Change change change. But, have we ever looked at what we’re changing?

 

Seeing what we want to change would seem a necessary first step. Otherwise, any change, or program, or new beginning will be based on the same old self distrust. And, as my buddy Mike says, ‘when you get on the wrong train – every stop is the wrong stop.’ Once we head down that path every resolution we make will be met with the great resistance of someone untrusted and untrustworthy. What if this year we do things differently?  Maybe we can change the way we look at change. And the first thing we could change is our approach to our self-development. Rather than a fix-it plan, self development could be seen as a journey from self-consciousness to self awareness. The premise being we are worthy. We are worth discovering. Rather than getting on the wrong train running AWAY from ourselves, why not just stop, turn back to ourselves and begin to make a practical and functional relationship with the one who matters most.

 

Yes, Virginia. It really IS all about you.

 

But, maybe you’re tired of you. Maybe you’ve really given up. That is so sad. That’s letting go of the deepest part of you in favor of what everyone else thinks you SHOULD be. Perhaps you are embarrassed by that part of you that is frail, scared, dresses badly and just doesn’t get it. But what if the parts we’re hiding are the most precious parts of our being? What if that’s the very part of us longing to be discovered, heard, seen and developed.  Giving up what could be in favor of what should be is a poor trade. And what could be is only possible if we are willing to accept – and even learn to love – what is.  So, why not do it differently this time? Give yourself that chance this year. Trade self consciousness for self-awareness.

 

While there are many ways to become self aware, this post deals with mindful awareness meditation. Perhaps the foremost power of meditation is its ability to help us see who we are. Settling down and listening in are necessary precursors to knowing what we have to work with in the first place. When we meditate we’re just sitting there, aren’t we?  With ourselves?  We’re not doing anything else, so why not spend that time getting to know ourselves? Paying attention and learning to become familiar with the working basis. Familiarity develops strength in time.  The way to that kind of strength is to be willing to pay attention to ourselves as if we were important enough to warrant that, as though we cared enough about ourselves to actually pay attention and listen. And to develop the discipline to look beyond the stories we weave into the frail and beautiful truth beneath. Really knowing ourselves can only happen if we learn to pay attention without getting lost. When we’re lost in our narratives we become as fish swimming through water it never recognizes. Hence, fish that never understand their own basically good fishyness. They are IN themselves, but as they cannot SEE themselves, they never really come to KNOW themselves. The same can be said of most of us. Because we are IN ourselves, we never KNOW ourselves and so there is a sad patina of unease and distrust shading our every experience. Therefore, it becomes essential that we stop and listen into our experience. In order to do that imagine you are someone you love. How would you approach them? How would you make them feel at ease with themselves? You would listen without judgement and great patience. You would expect nothing and instead move gently toward a pure connection. But, if you want to guide that person, and find out what’s really beneath the talk, then we have to look deeper than the cognitive narratives in which we are lost.

 

So, once we are settled enough to be able to listen, ironically, the next step is to INTERRUPT ourselves. This is because we are likely listening to the discursive, superficial, habitual mind and we have so much deeper to go. So the meditative tool is an arbitrary gap we consciously insert into the thinking process. By interrupting the patterns that lul us into fish-lost-in-water-it-never-knows syndrome, meditation separates the repetitive patterning of mind from the space beyond.  That space masquerades as emptiness to an ordinary mind seeking to control situations. This is why that mind remains small – it reduces itself to a subset of a subset of possibilities it has seen before and can attempt to control. In contrast, the mind of meditation sees space as the field of possibility. This allows a greater context from which we can begin see the whole person. Through loving acceptance of ourselves we gain awareness of our patterns. By interrupting their flow and returning back to ourselves in the present, we eventually see beyond those patterns to the possibilities ahead. But armed with confidence born of awareness, we can venture toward the unknown firmly implanted in the earth of the present moment.  So, when meditating we endeavor to stay connected to ourselves via the breath. We stay grounded in ourselves relaxing progressively into truer and truer experience. We try and relax the mind so as to connect to its most natural experience. When we lose contact by forgetting where we are, and abandoning our somatic connection and present experience through the power of familiarity, we simply remember. And then, employing the discipline, we STOP.

 

And then returning to the breathing body we are back to our earth. It’s an amazing process.  We have gotten lost, found ourselves, remembered what meditation is and come back to our breath – all in a heartbeat. Amazing. This moment in meditation, almost too brief to mention, is when we are touching a part of the great synchronicity of enlightenment itself. Only then, it’s gone. But that’s okay. We can’t hold on to any experience longer than the experience lasts. If we do, we’ll end up with a dead thing in our grip, or a haunting association that bares no relevance to actual circumstances. Whatever our experience, the way to know ourselves is to see, feel, taste and touch what is actually happening, as it is happening. Then as soon as the mind begins to judge, manipulate, hold on, we manually let the muscles of the head relax, redirect our attention to what is actually happening in the body, and reconnect to the breath.  IN this way, we come back home to our complete experience, not just an imagined interpretation. Then resting with the breath, allow the mind to relax until we become distracted, and once lost will then become magically next jerked into awareness.

 

Each moment we connect to our breath, we are connecting to the present.  Paying attention to ourselves in this way, we are following – and developing – meditative discipline.  This allows greater and greater moments of what I call “wordless synchronicity”. This sense of being in the present without narration.  This is discovering who we are NOW. And familiarity with that brings the confidence to return here to the center of our life.And that, can only lead to loving ourselves. It inevitable. We love that which we understand and can have a working relationship. As we learn to see a bigger – and more interactive – picture of ourselves we become more comfortable with us. And, you can see that is is all about you after all. Until we see the “working basis” as Lord Gampopa described our body, spirit, mind, qualities and actions, we cannot know how or whom to change. And until we have learned to love that being, we have no hope of its transformation.

 

Please, please, please choose active interest and engagement in your life. If you do, the discipline of meditation will give you the strength to sit and face yourself at home and return to balance and presence in life. Then instead of changing some entity that we don’t even know in some direction we’re unsure of, we can simply relax and allow the changes to happen as they inevitably will. Yes, everything changes, correct? So, why would we need to make any change happen any more than we would make water be wet? We simply need to stop ignoring the process, and through familiarity with the subject, become strong enough to let it happen.

 

How do we do that?

 

Well, you might just sit down, relax and think about it. Then when you get bored, instead of getting up, get down further into yourself.  Connect to your breathing and its body. Find what feels like you and let yourself go. And if we get lost? Simply remember. Then we’re back. And eventually, without being specifically aware, come to know ourselves. And because of that, change beyond ourselves into the next perfect moment.

 

So, this new year why not turn resolutions into a revolution. Instead of turning away, turn toward yourself and find a partnership you can develop the rest of your life.

Posted on by joseph mauricio

A TALE OF TWO WORLDS

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, … it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope…”  

 

In perhaps the greatest run on sentence in literary history, Dickens painted the picture of the modern epoch. This is a precariously magnificent time, a time of unfiltered hatred and burgeoning compassion. Humanity is waking up slowly, but the raging hangover of past indulgences is nonetheless clashing awkwardly with the beauty of a bright new day.

 

But, are we awake or asleep?

 

Buddhist texts refer to these times as the dark age; a time when good and bad rise to a head. It is not dark as in ‘dark obscuring the light’, but, dark illuminated by light. If we are able to leap into believing in the inherent goodness of humankind we can see this as a time when our resistsnce and neurosis become more apparent.  And, hence a time when healing and resolution are most accessible. Rather than leaving darkness sequestered in the night, we have an opportunity to bring this to the light and work with the defensive urges that have been motivating human behavior for so long.

 

Unlike Christian stories of Armageddon where good and evil square off in a movie directed by Michael Bay, the Buddhist version has more to do with a knitting of fabrics, a coming together of elements into a new compound. Maybe more like a film by Daron Aaronovsky. Which means a psychic blending of tendencies that never resolve into easy answers – or a simple movie.  On one hand, we have good and evil becoming more opposed until one – presumably good – wins out. Perhaps the modern definition of good is that which wins out. On the other hand, we have good and evil – light and dark – entwined in a dance fantastique that will spin until the pieces blend, the bubble pops, and a new agency is formed.

 

Tantric master Trungpa Rinpoche likened these times to a cosmic pimple popping – a heightening of neurosis and wisdom that leads to an opening from which new possibilities are formed. One doesn’t defeat the other so much as their clashing brings about greater awareness of pain and the suffering caused by an inapropriate relationship to pain.

 

It is my belief that we can navigate this confluence and take agency in the coming singularity. By training the mind in mindful awareness we gain control of impulses, by slowing down the point of impact and creating a buffer that allows us the time to RESPOND consciously rather than REACT reflexively. By learning to learning to guide ourselves from one trigger to the next without fistraction or reaction we can possibly learn to help  humanity through the turmoil into its next phase. Whether that phase is a greater sense of space and understanding leading to a flowering or its much predicted demise, may be in our hands. And the time to gain MANUAL control of the micro steps of our destiny may be right now.

 

In order to navigate this grand confluence we might have to slow down and begin to unpack the presumptive reasoning of being right. How do we see beyond our framed thinking into an acceptance of all that is coming toward us without losing ourselves? Well, maybe we can stand to loose some of ourselves. Or even a lot of ourselves. Maybe we can begin by recognizing all that keeps us from assimilation, and simply relax into the convergence, turn off our aggression and float into change WITH OUR EYES OPEN.

 

Working with synchronicity is a process of letting go and yet navigating the flow. Unlike other traditions that imply we can either resist or comply with a script, the Buddhist point of view  is that once we awaken – that is when we become conscious – we can navigate rather than aquiece or resist and in effect co-create the script of exustence with the universe. The universe, in this case, is the karmic web created by past actions moving in various vectors into future space. It is like an ocean of currents, each with thier own momentum. Navigating these currents means accepting thier existence and sitting up above the water line, being able to see where we are heading, and having the resolve to move away from the momentum of self interest into the undefined waters of discovery.

 

Navigating the white water confluence of past actions into future possibility takes letting go of our aggression, self-interest and resistance and allowing the natural change of things to take place. By keeping our eyes open during the change we can move into the open space of possibility, discovery and communication. Looking into the fear, darkness and aggression of our ancient pain, we can see our suffering in others. Understanding how misunderstanding our pain has caused us to act blindly, hurting ourselves and others, we can see how others have done the same to us. We are all fighting ancient demons snd blaming each other for our pain. We are all human and we are all suffering by our own hand. If we see this, pethaps the possibility of repairing that cycle of aggression is possible.

 

With our eyes open into the turmoil we can keep our balance and begin to pull each other from the roil. Or, with eyes and fists clenched against the current we will drown ourselves and each other. Maybe the duality isnt between good and evil, left and right or right and wrong. Its about seeing or ignoring. Either we wake up communicate and learn to stabilize the world of compassion, or shut down and solidify a world of hate, pain and aggression.

 

So, is this the best of worlds ir the worst?

 

Yes. It is both and because of that it is a magnificant time to be awake.

 

 

Posted on by joseph mauricio

PAYING ATTENTION TO TENSION

Stress is considered a detriment to health. Lowering stress is a commonly stated  motivator bringing people to meditation. There we escape into interior landscapes of calm. We have apps that guide us into internal relaxation free of stress. This is all well and good until we get out in the street and someone buried in their smart phone slams into us, spilling our chill all over our shirt.

 

While these various  forms of escapist meditation bring relief from stress, they dont address the actual problem: tension caused by stress.  We can go to a yoga retreat in Kuai, a medicinal a salt bath in Utah or a deep chakra cleansing in Oregon. Still, three days later that tenacious stress is there. Maybe we should move, get a new job or softer shoes. But, all of that is so stressful. So there’s Xanax. Xanax works, but pills are cheating. And we know they’re cheating so they’re not really working. There’s Zen. And thats better than pills, but soon that all that Zen makes us so bored we start getting stressed thinking of how to bring more stress into our life.

 

So, maybe stress gets a bad rap.  Its clear that some stress is important for us to learn and grow. And each of us respond differently to different stress points. One person is paralyzed at the thought of public speaking, while another may thrive on the opportunity. Some may love physical thrills and extreme sports while others freeze on the way up a diving board. So, maybe stress gets a harsh rap. I mean, if you didn’t value stress, even a little bit, what are you doing in New York City? Or, Baltimore? Or, anyplace in the current United States, for that matter?

 

I believe its not stress that does the harm, as much as the tension we create in relation to it. Tension is a refexive / reactive physical gripping within the body. Its like putting on imaginary breaks while sitting in the passenger seat. Things are not going as we want them to, and mistaking this as a threat, we clamp down and avoid the opportunity to work WITH the situation. Its this gripping in the body that creates discomfort and injury.

 

On the other hand when we thrive on stress its because we have learned not to fear the opportunity and we meet stress with relaxation instead of tension. Serena Williams or Aaron Rodgers navigate stress for a living. They do it through relaxation born of mind and body training. Its about training. Training the mind to see how the body feels and training the body to open to the experience. In this way, we navigate past stress by turning tension into attention by actually leaning in to the stress points.

 

This is so counter to our conditioning, which has programmed us to avoid suffering by a process of aquisitional bandaidery. We apply one “healing” modality atop the other until we are fitter, happier and healthier, pigs in a cage on antidepressants. (Appologies Mr. Yorke.) Societally, We are driven to buy, buy, buy until we are spinning so quickly, we no longer see how our life is robbed. This is stressful. So we clamp down on ourselves, stomping in a frenzied river dance trying to stop that wheel so we can breath.

 

But breath happens as we relax. And relaxation happns as we become aware. Awareness happens as we alliw ourselves the space and time to relax and tension, and pay attention to the life unfolding before us. Our life. What kind of blessing is that? Not only is stress instructional, it is elemental in creating enough tension in the body for us to wake up, release the tension, and relax into attention.

 

So, not only is stress not the problem, but even tension is not a problem if we use it as a reminder to release ourselves from its psycho/somatic imprisonment and open back into our life. It may not be as selfie-potent as that chakra cleansing in Kauai, but mindfulness training is a sustainable way to teach the body to bring itself back to balance in pressured times.

 

Posted on by joseph mauricio

CHOOSING SANITY

Its a difficult time in the world. And its an easy time to try and find surety in aggression. This is a kind of reaction blindness. And when we react against reaction, its like blind leading blind – on steroids. But, when the going gets tough, perhaps the strong might become sane.

We have that choice. The option to NOT react. The choice to respond to danger with sanity. This is not only a better option, its also is a good survival strategy. When we respond with clarity, we are in a position to see more accurately. And awareness is power.
Sanity is also a basic human right. We have the right to have the space to choose sanity. It is the right to find our own way. And it is the belief of the Shambhala teachings that when people are granted the right to be as they are, they are inclined to make the right choices. In truth, to limit another’s freedom simply to secure our own safety, makes slaves of us all.  Not very sane.
The definition of neurosis is applying ineffective strategies to meet perceived needs. Strangely, we are compelled to these strategies, despite that fact that they don’t work. Societal and political identity is feuled by a desire to find safety in certainty.  But, certainty rarely finds parrellels to reality.
Sanity, on the other hand, is the bravery to choose the fresh space of awareness. When we release clinging to articles of personal identity, we are able to open to an interactive relationship with our world. We begin to sense that what is best for all, is best for ourselves, as well. Conversely, pre-empively thinking “whats best for me” is, by nature, defensive. And defensive reactions are seldom wise decisions. I believe this is true even if we were directly threatened. For what better defense than knowing your enemy? What better defense than seeing through the surface aggression to the frustration, ignorance and fear that is driving it. There is no better defense than awareness.
In fact, unless we are aware, we are completely vulnerable. And, when we react out of blindness, hating this, attacking that, we are not only defenseless, we are easily led. The fearful are so often angry chattle, led from battle to battle, working, dying, killing and birthing in the fields of materislism.
But, its is not our battle, and it is not our war. Our battle is to overcome the small minded defensiveness that has kept us enslaved. Our battle is to awaken into our birthright as leaders and protectors of our world. This is sanity. It is compassion in action: being useful to the world, and valuing awareness above all else. Because when we are aware, we are in charge of ourselves and responsible for our world.
I am not a fan of the current US administration, nor the protectivist tendencies currently sneaking into fashion in the capital west. It all seems to be forcing a hand that has been forced again and again throughout history. The gap between those who have and those to get it for them widens. When it begins to become clear that governments are owned and increasingly controlled by material interests there necessarily comes a tipping point.
Perhaps the tipping point can flip in the direction of global sanity. But, whether it toggles toward sanity or destruction, the only path to awake is to trust our goodness and remain aware. When we remain awake, we are not so easily led. When we remain vigilant in awareness, we develop the bravery to hold our seat amidst the chaos. When we choose sanity, we become a natural resistance to prejudice and greed.
Posted on by joseph mauricio

Waking in Depression: The Way In

Our beautiful minds are imbued with great power and vast potential. This is an exciting thought when we’re up for it.  But, it is also a thought that could enable self-judgement on days when getting out of bed is challenging and vastness seems a out of reach. We all have those days.  Energetic low pressure systems are quite natural. Perhaps they serve as a renewal and as such are a necessary part of our human rhythm.

 

However, many of us suffer from wounds, chemical imbalances or other trauma that force us to return to this renewal all too often. And this powerful state becomes a source of sad solace from a fearful world. Hence, some of us get caught there. It seems each time we pull ourselves up, we fall back again. This heartbreaking cycle keeps us locked in fear and discouragement.

 

In some ways, depression is the logical outcome of shutting ourselves down again and again. We can only close ourselves off so often that we begin to take the hint, and shut down altogether. Its a slow near death, like psychological anesthesia. A part of us must feel abandoned. And this has to make us very disappointed in our selves, our life and our circumstance. This unhappy circumstance becomes compounded when we see everyone else living a life we imagine to be more full, more vital and more important than our own. Comparative mind is a killer. Everyone seems to be living a better life than we are because we only see their facebook game face.  Our self-embarrassment causes that dissonance to widen. The fantasies we have had about who we should become have become fantasies of the great life others are leading.

 

This dissonance causes many of us to turn the anger many of us hold inside toward whatever circumstances led us to despair into ourselves. We become a tightly wound ball of anxious tension that becomes so dense, we can only sink.

 

Depression is a common and even reasonable reaction to living a life on  everyone elses terms. The root of depression may not actually be fear, but the anger we feel from shortchanging our lives because of that fear. Trying to get away from pain, we actually cause more pain. By trying so hard to be good, we end up living a false life. We have been duped by a cosmic shell game bartering reality for an anxiety dream. We cling to external things to help us fix the mess and in so doing forget the one person who can actually help us. The only person who can help.  The one who has been there all along.  We forget ourselves. When we shunt part of us away out of embarrassment, we become cut off from our inherent power. We begin to believe there is something wrong with us, and that we should be disappointed with ourselves and embarrassed about our depression.

 

In this way, our depression becomes solid. Our confidence erodes as we feel we are losing a battle.  We fall inward and becoming so small the day itself  feels too big. From this point of view, the potential of the mind must appear dark and forboding. In reaction to this fear, we shrink our awareness in an ostrich like effort to avoid pain. But, as we are occluding awareness, our fearfulness actually begets more fear. This denial of life not only robs us of joy, it also leaves us very vulnerable to manipulation.

 

Ancient humans fought for survival, hunted and gathered food. They died easily and lived short lives. Yet those lives may have had more contentment, community and connection than ours. Perhaps being disconnected from pain we are disconnected from an essential part of ourselves. We relagate pain into the darkness and take refuge in the light. We take solace in being right, even as a part of us suspects the opposite.

 

Our lives move more and more quickly these days. However, the nature we come from, is very slow.  The earth moves at its own pace, in its own way. The same with the heart. The faster we move the less we are able to feel the earth beneath us. And this has to threaten a more ancient part of ourselves, a deeper and intuitive part of ourselves. Whether we are aware or not, this spiritual dissonance causes an internal friction. On one hand, we feel we should be doing so much more. On the other, we’re already working too hard. Caught in this zero-sum vice, our heart, art, compassion and the life part of living have become lost. Placing our hearts on hold, we barter creativity for security causing ourseves and others great pain.

 

This reduction of our life dampens something inside. We can choose to be mute only so long before we forget how to sing. We can stay hobbled only so long before we forget how to dance. We can shut down life only so often, before we lose our will to live. We have told ourselves no so often, we simply shut down in response. So we retreat in fear, collapse inward and, wrapped in the fabric of time and space, hide ourselves from ourselves by becoming consumed in ourselves.

 

Man, it’s actually quite brilliant.

 

Crushed beneath the weight of “me” our mind begins to compile a ledger of all the things left wanting, undone and unfulfilled in our life. Our life force turns inward and the mind turns vicious. The power and potential of our mind is turned against the only foe it feels it can defeat: itself.

 

But, there is a way out. And the way out begins with the way in. By sitting IN our pain, we can become comfortable enough with suffering to find the space within. There is always space. But, in our fear we cling to the familiar and play the same song with such volume we drown all alternatives. However, by training the mind to stay, simply stay, and hold space for our experience, we find we can sit with greater and greater challenges. Eventually, we find a profound stillness. It is within that stillness that we begin to see in the dark. In fact, we become so familiar with the terrain of turmoil, that we learn to walk in the dark. At some point, we may even learn to dance in the darkness finding grace in our simple tenacity.

 

You see, it will eventually occur to our wounded mind, that we are sill here. One we’ve abandoned hope and surrendered to the great despair, we see that being with ourselves is all we have. Ground zero. Right here, right now, just so.

 

Meditation practice will not cure depression. Nor should it. But, a consistent daily practice will strengthen the mind, giving us the bravery to enter the dark, the resilience to remain with ourselves and the wisdom to find the love we need.

 

The love we need.

 

The love we have been looking for all along. The love that no one else can give. The love we learn to give ourselves by simply being here. There is something supremely powerful about beginning to feel lovingkindness for our incomplete life, bruised heart and tattered mind.  We can do this without turning the lights on, forcing a smile or turning the volume down. We can do this simply by being here, and not changing a thing. We can forgo trying to be good and simply be human. And humans suffer. When we connect to our suffering, we are connected to all of life, for all of life experiences suffering.

 

When we find love in the depths of despair, we find an Unconditional Love that compares nothing and accepts everything. Then we have a gift forged in the flames that no one can take from us. Our gift of unconditional love.

 

In the Shambhala teachings we say that practicing lovingkindness is to “place the mind of fearfullness in the cradle of loving kindness.” Learning to open the heart to the sadness of our spirit and finding the strength to hold space for our pain is a profound statement. And that profound statement is an acknowledgement of life itself.

 

Learning to hold ourselves with open arms, reduce the harm and find a connection to all beings is the way of the Bodhisattva.  In the Mahayana Buddhist tradition a Bodhisattva is one who has vowed to forstall their own salvation until all beings are free of suffering. They have vowed to venture into hell to liberate all beings.  We can find strength in this. There have been such people. And there are such people. Those willing to face the darkness and stay there until they get it. And then, be willing to look outward and bring that strength to the world. That is the way out. Benefit for the world. And, if not the whole world, then our world, 0r community. Someone else. Benefit to others is the best way to value yourself.

 

And, it is the way out that comes from finding the way in.

 

 

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It is a common for us to reduce our options down to a manageable snippet of the possible. A favorite hidey hole for many is to ignore life’s potential in lieu of problems we feel need to be fixed. The problem is problems tend to birth problems until our identity is fixed on fixing things. Our attention becomes focused in tighter and tighter loops and our life reduces into simple iterations of routine.

 

In this spiral life we have locked our great human potential away in a junk drawer of to do lists and mundane messiness. This sad existential sleepwalk holds us in lock step. Imagine the power of the universe locked in our laundry closet. At some point something either breaks out or breaks down. But who has time to break down these days?  So we soldier on, ignoring the gnawing until we collapse.