Life can be overwhelming. Especially when we look at it. I used to love horror movies, but these days its enough to watch the news. Sometimes it seems we’re living in the apocolypse, as written by Steven King.
At this writing we are heading toward a pivotal, some say existential, national election. The two primary presidential candidates have come under fire. One fending attacks against their age and mental acuity. The other, quite literally, in a narrowly missed assassination attempt. Both of these situations have caused us to stop and reconsider solid paradigmatic points of view.
Maybe it’s not a bad thing to be forced to look at what we convey and what we see. Are we being clear? Are we looking with an objective awareness at how things work? Or, are we only selling our point of view to ourselves and our world? I have been guilty of the latter. More egregiously, I have felt justified in doing so. If we feel we are right, we might feel justified in piling on, exaggerating or satirizing to substantiate our point of view. I am more inclined to this when speaking to my choir. I pontificate as the heads nod. But where will this lead? Justification feels so right, but in reality, it often leads to disordance and misunderstanding. The stronger we hold to our point of view, the less we understand alternative reasoning. This creates a false permanence, which is counter to the natural laws of the universe. Becoming stuck on our point of view is an invitation for the universe to dislodge us. Often this forced shift leads to a period of chaos where our values and perceptions come into question. When firmly held perceptions shift, we go through a period when things are out of phase producing a dissonant static that is challenging to navigate.
Along with change, chaos is a primary law of the universe. Although unsettling, it’s a natural part of our lives. Applying “functional awareness” chaos can be seen as a gateway from a familiar paradigm to a new vantage point. “Objective awareness” is seeing what is actually happening, rather than how we feel or what it all means, which is more of a subjective awareness. It’s good to acknowledge how we feel. But it doesn’t mean that is how others feel. And it doesn’t mean that it is easy to see beyond ourselves. That shift from our precious point of view into another space is often preceded by a moment of ego death, which is chaotic and unsettling.
If we look objectively at how chaotic moments in our life have played out, we’ll see that we have made it through these unsettling passages each time. Perhaps we have stepped into more fortunate circumstances. And maybe we have developed greater awareness from being dislodged from our zone of familiarity. If we look at how it works, chaos sometimes feels bad, but is a very necessary step in our growth process. So, waking up in this turmoil requires us to accept that the unknowing of chaos is sometimes necessary. It is also important to see that resisting change is a primary condition of suffering. But does this mean we blindly go along with an alternative? No. In fact, the alternative is also subject to change. A true paradigm shift is not shifting from one leg to the other. It is accepting that at this moment, we have no legs at all to stand on. As we are not having to become something, there is no reason to resist anything.
Binaries are fictions we create to better understand chaos. There is a good, and there is a bad. We have right and we have wrong. We feel comfort in fending off chaos with these solid beliefs. All of us have something we feel is real. But clinging to those beliefs create suffering as readily as clinging to material things or other people. This is called materialism of view. We believe our ideas are real. Well, good luck with that. I’ve actually come to see that binaries are by their nature never real. They are crude designations, the first step in the mental triage in trying to address the unsettling unknowing of chaos. The remedy? Hahaha. Relax. We are struggling through a natural process of rebirth. There is no reason to struggle. Our disquiet is urging us to discomfort. Our discomfort tells the part of ourselves charged with being in control that we are under siege. And so we prove our mettle by digging in. We turn false binaries in rhetoric and rhetoric into violence. At this point, the chaos in our mind becomes chaos in our life.
However, Meditation Master Chogyam Trungpa was fond of saying “chaos should be regarded as extremely good news.” It seems despite our discomfort, this natural process might lead to a deeper, more nuanced connection to life. It may be that life itself is a series of birthing. Maybe instead of projecting where we wish it will all lead, we might pray to end up where we least intend. If we close our eyes right now and visualize what we want from life we are creating a fiction that will never happen as we project it will. And it is possible that we are selling ourselves short. Perhaps life can be so much more than our conditioned thinking would indicate. We can only project from what we know. If our knowing changes, our projections may change accordingly. Who knows what we’ll want tomorrow, and, by extension, where that may lead us?
Of course, we can’t abandon all principles. That would be like abandoning all our clothing. We need clothing. However, we may no longer be comfortable in bell bottoms. Yet, if our principles change with the seasons we are just adding to the chaos. In our last class, Erik With a K suggested that we can find a seat that might offer ballast in order to navigate turbulence in our journey. Daily Meditation gives us the connection to the now that breeds the confidence to be here despite the chaos. WE. ARE. HERE. And knowing that “here” has no obligation to us, our work is to open our hearts and see what is actually happening. And just as life has no obligation to conform to us, we have no obligation to do anything but remain here, navigating our way with our eyes open.
Trungpa would say, life is like falling out a window. But, the good news is there is no ground. So how do we find our balance through chaos if there is no ground? Perhaps we find a navigation point in finding comfort in where we are. Perhaps a balance point is deep within ourselves. All we can change is ourselves. All we are responsible to is our mind. Protect your mind and you will see your way through.
Waking up in chaos: Accept the turmoil. Avoid judgements. Find our seat in that. Open our eyes. And enjoy the ride.
As this brain grew, it gained the processing ability to go beyond the defensive reaction of its dark beginnings and, learning to see a bigger picture, strategize its way past danger and toward sustenance. This remarkable ascension is still happening and that’s a wonderful thing. Yet, that growth happened so quickly, our minds are developing new skills while our brain is still holding to old processes. This creates a dissonance between a view of what may be possible and what we fear could happen.
I sadly never got out of my head long enough to let my heart into the equation but maybe it happened at some point. It wasn’t until years later when meditation gave me the courage to allow vulnerability. But, whether it was groping on a high school dance floor, fumbling in the back seat, or sitting on the meditation cushion, the moment of frailty when we “fall” is an important step in our spiritual journey.
What if instead of paying endless lip service to love, we just deeply kiss the world? What if our politics and our nations were organized around faith in the power of love? I guess the process is to conceive it and then believe it and then let that go and simply be it. Thich Nhat Hanh said, “BE love.” Believe it and be it.
So, how can we make this large picture practical for us? We can begin by loooking at ourselves, as we are. How can compassion make my life a better place? What can I do today to make my life easier and more productive so that I may better serve? This is not selfish, it’s practical. However, trying to make my life better than someone else’s, or a better place for only me and mine, is selfish because it’s narrow minded and myopic. Compassion is developing the tools to care for ourselves so that we can care for other beings. But, we are one of those beings. In fact, until we learn to effectively care for ourselves we will be unable to care for others.
Yet, if we accept that we are a work-in-progress then we can learn to gain confidence in ourselves. Self-aggrandizement, like the arrogance it engenders, covers leads to a lack of belief in ourselves. We know inside that we are not the ideal, and so believe we are less than the ideal. But that truth is if we can accept ourselves and vow to discover what we become, we are committing to a path of supporting ourselves. As we develop self-awareness, we naturally gain regard for ourselves. And though this regard for ourselves we begin to see others more clearly. Freed of the veils of defensive self interest we begin to see that we are not as estranged from our world as we had imagined.
Contacting love in our life is possible if we are free of the turmoil that often occupies our mind. Sometimes this happens accidentally, as when something startles us and stops our mind. Sometimes it happens when our mind naturally notices a flower or bird that opens our mind. 
Compassion is natural to all life. But so is danger. Much of life does what it can to sustain itself and focuses its cellular attention on living, growing and providing, serene in its unknowing. Most life is a natural and necessary part of the dance of the planet. But, the greatest danger to the balance of life comes from the only part of the planet that sees itself. The one who’s acidic stomach is gurgling as it watches the rabbit hop merrily into the wooded shadows. The greatest danger lies within. This is as true of ourselves and our societies. This is the greatest danger because it is the one unseen. We are so attuned to the danger around us, we lie in vulnerable ignorance of the aggression we cause ourselves and others. It is the work of compassion practice to help us reprogram the mind to balance the openness of loving moments with the truth of the dangers in life. We do this by de-emphasizing the importance of ourselves to ourselves that is clouding the picture. THis is not to say that we are not important. We are just not as important enough to suck the air out of life. Humans are a little like drunken blowhards going on about their workout routine at a party. SIr Harold Pinter wrote a play called “The Party” in which a group of haute society people revelled in their intrigues and drama while occasionally, we have seemingly inconsequential references to turmoil in the streets. By play’s end it is clear the turmoil is a violent revolution that will end everything they know.
Over 
direction is too loose. Sometimes we rail against the authority of form, and this stops the flow, but it may be necessary to reboot the process or add freshness to a routine. But once we reboot, finding the groove and waking up in the rhythm of life. Navigating between the extremes of too tight and too loose we find the balance point for optimal creativity in life. A dancer needs discipline, but the point of the discipline is to let go into the piece. No one wants to see anyone work. We want to see them dance. We want the fruit of their labor. So, form need never be seen. The hand of the director should never be seen. The dance should feel as natural as the river.
This post will introduce the idea of slowing down in order to establish or reestablish a flow that allows us to move more efficiently. Here we will use the analogy of the cat, relaxing in repose, so that it has the energy and calm to spring into action. We are talking about how to maintain synchronicity so that our flow is strong and even. This requires an aware meditation of our energy. If we move too quickly for our present circumstances, we lose connection to synchronicity. Such as when we’re moving so quickly, we fail to see where we are going. In the Tibetan Buddhist tradition it is said that speeding through life is an essential disregard for our humanity. Our personal dignity becomes subsumed by anxiety as we scurry like a hamster. The goal becomes more important than the journey. But, it is said, the journey is the goal. How we approach life is as important as anything else in life. Meditating our speed allows us to move with grace and dignity. It also allows us to move more efficiently. Sometimes we need to slow down in order to get things done. On the other hand, sometimes we need to encourage ourselves to move more quickly in order to maintain our energy. Sometimes we need encouragement to move at all.
With meditation practice we are training to notice subtler and more ordinary moments that stop the mind. And perhaps more importantly, we learn to accept these authentic moments, as they are, without commentary for longer periods of time. This serves to infiltrate the wall of separation that we fabricate to keep ourselves isolated from life. You might say, we are turning the lights on to our life. If our mind is supple enough, we can see all life as alive and interactive. In time, we see ourselves as a part of everything rather than struggling to overcome anything. In popular culture, this is known as being one with everything. In Meditation traditions this is known as non-dual experience. Nondual experiences are instances of clear perception when we are directly connected to the moment as opposed to dualistic experiences when we are separated out and looking in.