What this means is that we can find our own happiness and peace of mind
just as we are in this very moment, because it is within us. We don’t have to change our thoughts or change ourselves into someone else.
We don’t need to think that who we are, this “me,” is not good enough, smart enough, or lucky enough to be happy.
Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche, Resting the Busy Mind
In order for a secure sense of self to develop, caregivers need to be attuned to the child’s desires. They need to be able to set aside their own needs in order to have the space to respond to the child’s emotional and physical needs. On the one hand, this means that they address the child’s needs promptly, so that the child feels secure. Using modern means of communication as an analogy, at times they need to respond to the child as if they have received an Instant Message and not wait for an email.
However, as well as being able to respond to certain needs swiftly, they also have to be able to leave the child alone, without insisting that it be there for their needs. They have to provide a non-demanding presence during times of rest so the child can simply be and develop its sense of being, before any need to do anything or earn the parents’ attention. In this way the child learns to simply enjoy each moment, without any intrusive aims or fears.
Winnicott calls this state “going-on-being” and writes about the importance of this capacity to allow the child simply exist: The mother’s non-demanding presence makes the experience of formlessness and comfortable solitude possible, and this capacity becomes a central feature in the development of a stable and personal self. This makes it possible for the infant to experience …a state of going on being…out of which…spontaneous gestures emerge.
We can see here the importance of being before doing. If the parent is excessively working through its own needs then it can happen that he or she impinges on the child’s quiet time, and continually draws the child’s attention. One consequence is that the child has to attune too early to the needs of others, rather than having time just for itself. In later life as an adult he or she can repeat this dynamic in a number of ways. One is by repeating the parents’ pattern and continually create interruptions and dramas. So, for example, when a relationship is in danger of being reliable the person repeats the drama of the parents – because that is more familiar – thus preventing the other person getting too close. The parents’ dynamic means that only unhealthy relationships are maintained; sadly, ones that have the potential to grow are rejected. Or the adult compulsively neglects his or her own needs, looking after others in an excessive way. In both cases we can see that, in a sense, the child has never managed to leave home.
This is where meditation practice can help. As Jon Kabat Zinn stated again in a talk which I was present at recently, we are essentially human beings before we are human doings. Sitting practice recreates a period when we can just simply be, without having to acheive anything. We simply watch the mind and body without holding on to anything or pushing anything away. This has the capacity to recreate and heal our early life experiences. As Gil Fronsdal has said, mindfulness practice can act as an antidote to the hurt caused by parents who did not have the space to truly see their children. He says that by being mindful, by quietening the mind, by being simply present with our experience, we are loving and healing ourselves. We learn to sit with ourselves and our lives as they are, without having to be afraid of them and try continually to fix them.
The goal of attention practice is to become aware of awareness. Awareness is the basis, or what you might call the “support,” of the mind. It is steady and unchanging, like the pole to which the flag of ordinary consciousness is attached. When we recognize and become grounded in awareness, the “wind” of emotion may still blow. But instead of being carried away by the wind, we turn our attention inward, watching the shifts and changes with the intention of becoming familiar with that aspect of consciousness that recognizes “Oh, this is what I’m feeling, this is what I’m thinking”.
As we do so, a bit of space opens up within us. With practice, that space—which is the mind’s natural clarity—begins to expand and settle.
Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche
We are all looking to balance our lives. The key dimension is not really the work-life balance but more balancing our inner and our outer lives. Mindfulness practice focuses on developing our inner life – our clear seeing of who we are and what is going on in our lives each moment. Balancing these worlds – our being with our doing, our need for solitude and our need for connection, our energies that lead us outside ourselves and those which touch into our self-awareness and purpose – is what leads to real peace.
It is strange to be here. The mystery never leaves you alone. Behind your image, below your words, above your thoughts, the silence of another world waits. A world lives within you. No one else can bring you news of this inner world.
If we become addicted to the externals our interiority will haunt us. We will become hungry with a hunger no image, person or deed can still. To be wholesome, we must remain truthful to our vulnerable complexity. In order to keep our balance, we need to hold the interior and exterior, visible and invisible, known and unknown, temporal and eternal, ancient and new together. No one else can undertake this task for you. You are the one and only threshold of your inner world. This wholesomeness is natural; to befriend the worlds that come to balance in you.
John O’Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom
Today is the feastday of Teresa of Avila, another formidable nun, this time from the 16th Century. She lived in an age of great social change, somewhat like today, and was a strong leader, founding monasteries at a time when most preferred women to be relegated to the kitchen and the home. She was intensely practical and deeply human. However she combined her achievements with a very profound interior life. She reminds us not to neglect the dimension of the soul in this age with our focus on progress and speed.
Despite suffering ill health she had a great trust that a Higher Power was guiding her life and her work. Even if she could not see where things were leading she trusted. These handwritten words were found after her death. May they support all who struggle this evening. The musical version comes from the monastery at Taize, not too far away from here in Bourgogne.
Let nothing disturb you,
Let nothing frighten you,
Everything passes.
God does not go away.
Patience
can attain anything.
He who has God within,
does not lack anything.
Nada te turbe, nada te espante; quien a Dios tiene nada le falta.
All of us have a secret desire to be seen as heroes, saints, martyrs.
We are afraid to be children, to be ourselves.
Jean Vanier, Community and Growth
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