Month: October 2012

Steadying our emotions

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Emotions are mixes of “felt senses” and activities. Witnessing them is helped by the simple fact that the body resonates with the moods and impulses that run through it.  (When we’re angry we tense up and the heartbeat changes; when we’re loving and joyful, the body feels vibrant and so on). This resonance gives us a way of addressing the heart by addressing the bodily aspect, of steadying or relaxing the emotion by grounding attention in the body and simply breathing. So this gives us a handle on emotions and mind-states (like anxiety..) that can otherwise bowl us over. Referring to the body sense is valuable, because the body can’t fake or mask the feeling. And furthermore, through widening, easing and finding balance in the bodily sense, we turn on a sympathetic system that can bring the heart into true focus. This goes a lot deeper and works more effectively than the process of ‘me trying to sort my self out’ – an approach that leads to complexity, righteousness, force, defence and denial.

Ajahn Succitto, Meditation, A Way of Awakening

Staying with what is

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Meditation strengthen our steadfastness to be with ourselves. Whatever arises – pain, boredom, sleepiness, wild thoughts or emotions – we learn to stay with it. We come to see that meditation isn’t about attaining some ideal state. It’s about being able to stay with ourselves, no matter what.

Pema Chodron

Working with difficult moments

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When pain or distress arises in our bodies, our conditioned reaction is to pin it down and solidify it with concepts. We say “my knee,” “my back,” “my illness,” and the floodgates of apprehension are opened. We predict a dire future for ourselves, fear the intensification of the pain, and at times dissolve into helplessness and despair. Our concepts serve both to make the pain more rigid and to undermine our capacity to respond to it skillfully. We are caught in the tension of wanting to divorce ourselves from a distressed body while the intensity of pain keeps drawing us back into our body. Meditation offers a very different way of responding to pain in our bodies. Instead of employing strategies to avoid it, we learn to investigate what is actually being experienced within our bodies calmly and curiously. We can bring a compassionate, accepting attention directly to the core of pain. This is the first step towards healing and releasing the agitation and dread that often intensify pain.

Christine Feldman, Suffering is Optional

Tune into what is happening in the body

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We experience our lives through our bodies, whether we are aware of it or not. Yet we are usually so mesmerized by our ideas about the world that we miss out on much of our direct sensory experience. Even when we are aware of feeling a strong breeze, the sound of rain on the roof, a fragrance in the air, we rarely remain with the experience long enough to inhabit it fully. In most moments, an overlay of inner dialogue comments on what is happening and plans what we might do next.…The basic meditation instructions …. were to be mindful of the changing stream of sensations without trying to hold on to them, change them, or resist them….Being mindful of sensations does not mean standing apart and observing like a distant witness. Rather, we directly experience what is happening in our bodies.

Tara Brach, Come to your Senses

A wholehearted relationship even with difficult emotions

Karl Duffy2 Comments

When you refrain from habitual thoughts and behavior, the uncomfortable feelings will still be there. They don’t magically disappear. Over the years, I’ve come to call resting with the discomfort “the detox period,” because when you don’t act on your habitual patterns, it’s like giving up an addiction. You’re left with the feelings you were trying to escape. The practice is to make a wholehearted relationship with that.

Pema Chodron, Living Beautifully with Uncertainty and Change

Happiness is an inside job

Karl Duffy1 Comment

No one can harm you , not even your own worst enemy, as much as your own mind untrained. 

And no one can help you, not even your most loving mother and father, as much as your own mind well-trained.

The Buddha