Month: November 2011

Sunday Quote: When we do not appreciate what we have

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You cannot avoid paradise.

You can only avoid seeing it.

Charlotte Joko Beck

Seeing and holding the problem in awareness

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Meditation is about finding a centre, and carefully sweeping awareness out into the wilds of the mind, until there is a sense of space, relief, and subtle uplift. We can’t clear the whole wilderness in one go. But a little release is a precious thing; and every time we come out of being the problem to seeing and being with the problem, every time we come out of being entranced by a memory or fighting with it to know – ‘oh, it feels like this, and it’s there’ there’s a shift to a free centre. Every time we widen with kindness and awareness to see that the self-position I’m coming from, or the self I’m trying to get rid of or defend are objects over there and not a subject, something stops and there’s a touch of release. That’s the process. And it’s marked by happiness.

Ajahn Sucitto

Not a way to escape from ourselves

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When we come into therapy, instead of pursuing some ideal, we may be trying to escape some part of ourselves. Our anger. Our depression. Our sexuality. Then we think that therapy may be some kind fo mental surgery, cutting out all those disagreeable aspects of the mind and leaving behind only what is calm or compassionate. But neither therapy or… [meditation] practice works that way. The mind cannot escape itself – that would be like riding a donkey fleeing a donkey.

The only way out of that struggle is to leave our mind alone,   to fully accept the mind that we have, anger, delusions, and all. And when we no longer judge ourselves or try to emotionally neuter ourselves, the internal tensions and conflicts gradually begin to quiet down. We might say that this is the most basic psychological insight: I can’t escape myself, so I must come to terms with the mind that I have. I call this a “psychological” insight,  because the basic task of all …practice is re-owning the split-off and denied or dissociated aspects of the mind

Barry Magid, Ending the Pursuit of happiness

Weekend, winding down…when work is finished

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What in your life is calling you,
When all the noise is silenced,
The meetings adjourned…
The lists laid aside,
And the Wild Iris blooms
By itself
In the dark forest…
What still pulls on your soul?

Rumi

Not believing the propaganda of Moods

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Our moods can be strong at times, and may be so at times today, but they are not the most reliable place to look if we want to get a true picture of our own worth or of what to do. In the long-term they rarely give correct messages about our  lasting happiness.They frequently get in the way of us experiencing what is happening directly, and we lose a lot of the richness which is before us each day, as we are caught in these strong internal states.

Moods come with grand words and general ideas, but as intelligences they are less than we are, prone to think in terms of the best and the worst, and to make unnecessary comparisons that squeeze out life. At sunset there is no best or worst..….. A mood can only remove us from the evening’s sharpness. It is common to think of moods and despairs as genuinely earned and as part of our personality but that is their deception – they are propaganda from the Ministry of Despair and the Department of Grandiosity. When Psyche turns away from them, when the meditation continues to plod humbly along, these moods, like other old advertisements, wither and grow stale.

John Tarrant, The Light inside the Dark

How to begin to change what seems frozen or stuck

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How is there going to be less aggression on the planet rather than more? Only in an open space where we’re not all caught up in our own version of reality. Bring this question down to personal level: How do I communicate with someone who is hurting me or hurting others? How do I communicate so that the space opens up and both of us begin to touch in to some kind of basic intelligence that we all share? How do I communicate so that things that seem frozen, unworkable and eternally aggressive begin to soften up and some kind of compassionate exchange begins to happen?  Begin with being willing to feel what you are going through. Be willing to have a compassionate relationship with the parts of yourself that you feel are not worthy of existing. If you are willing through meditation to be mindful not only of what feels comfortable but also of what pain feels like, if you even aspire to stay awake and open to what you’re feeling, to acknowledge it as best you can in each moment, then something begins to change.

Pema Chodron, Comfortable with Uncertainty