Tag: Gentleness

The freedom of not comparing to an ideal self

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We can always see ourselves in terms of what’s wrong with us as persons. There are always so many flaws and inadequacies. There is no perfect personality that I have ever noticed. Personality is all over the place. Some of it is all right and some of it is really wacky. There is no personality that you can take refuge in. You are never going to make yourself into a perfect personality. So when you judge yourself you find so many problems, inadequacies, flaws and weaknesses. Maybe you are comparing yourself to some ideal person, some unselfish and superlative personality. However, that which is aware of personality is not personal. These personality conditions arise and cease…. Your refuge is in this awareness rather than in trying to make yourself into an ideal man or woman – mature, responsible, capable, successful,  “normal”  and all the rest – these are ideals.

Ajahn Sumedho, The Sound of Silence

Allowing, not controlling

Karl Duffy1 Comment

There is a difference between watching the mind and controlling the mind. Watching the mind with a gentle, open attitude allows the mind to settle down and come to rest. Trying to control the mind, or trying to control the way one’s spiritual practice will unfold, just stirs up more agitation and suffering.

Bhante Henepola Gunaratana, Eight Mindful Steps to Happiness

The starting point for happiness

Karl Duffy2 Comments

Contemplating the goodness within ourselves is a classical meditation, done to bring light and joy to the mind. In contemporary times this practice might be considered rather embarrassing, because so often the emphasis is on all the unfortunate things we have done, all the disturbing mistakes we have made. Yet this classical reflection is not a way of increasing conceit. It is rather a commitment to our own happiness, seeing our happiness as the basis for intimacy with all of life. It fills us with joy and love for ourselves and a great deal of self-respect.

Significantly, when we do metta practice, we begin by directing metta toward ourselves. This is the essential foundation for being able to offer genuine love to others. When we truly love ourselves, we want to take care of others, because that is what is most enriching, or nourishing, for us. When we have a genuine inner life, we are intimate with ourselves and intimate with others. The insight into our inner world allows us to connect to everything around us, so that we can see quite clearly the oneness of all that lives. We see that all beings want to be happy, and that this impulse unites us. We can recognize the rightness and beauty of our common urge towards happiness, and realize intimacy in this shared urge.

Sharon Salzberg, Facets of Metta

Tuning in to ourselves

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Perhaps the most common and pernicious form of non-listening is our non-listening to ourselves. So much of what we actually feel and think is unacceptable to us. We have been actually conditioned over a lifetime to simply not hear all our own self-pity, anger, desire, jealousy, wonder. Most of what we take to be our adult response is no more than our unconscious decision not to listen to what goes on inside us. And as with any human relationship, not listening to ourselves damages our self-respect. To allow ourselves to feel what we actually do feel – not to be afraid or dismayed but to open up a space inside our hearts large enough to safely contain what we feel, with the faith that whatever comes up is workable and even necessary – this is what any healthy, mature human being needs to do and what we so often fail to do.

Norman Fischer, Taking Our Places

Befriending the wandering mind

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From a different tradition than yesterday – this time from a former Catholic monk and friend of Thomas Merton –   similar instructions on how to work with thoughts in meditation. He recommends a patient, gentle attitude towards ourselves, or toward the inevitable swings in thoughts and moods which we experience, not over-identifying with that which arises and passes away. This gentle, non-judgmental, befriending is the key to ongoing practice.

As we patiently learn to listen to the thoughts that arise, endure,  and pass away within us, we come to a deep experiential knowing of ourselves as we really are. We learn to befriend our own wandering mind, neither abandoning it through daydreaming or sleepiness nor invading it with more thoughts about the thoughts that are already there.  By quietly persevering in sustained nonthinking meditative awareness, we come to a new groundedness within ourselves. The meditative mind that neither thinks,  nor is reducible to any thought. grows stronger, calmer and more stable. In time we learn to listen with God’s ears to our wandering mind while at the same time passing beyond all that our wandering mind can comprehend

Admitting we all struggle from time to time

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Learn the alchemy true human beings know.  The moment you accept what troubles you’ve been given, the door will open. Rumi

The irony of hiding the dark side of our humanness is that our secret is not really a secret at all. How can it be when we’re all safeguarding the very same story? That’s why Rumi calls it an Open Secret. It’s almost a joke — a laughable admission that each one of us has a shadow self — a bumbling, bad-tempered twin. Big surprise! Just like you, I can be a jerk sometimes. I do unkind, cowardly things, harbor unmerciful thoughts, and mope around when I should be doing something constructive. Just like you, I wonder if life has meaning; I worry and fret over things I can’t control; and I often feel overcome with a longing for something that I cannot even name. For all of my strengths and gifts, I am also a vulnerable and insecure person, in need of connection and reassurance. This is the secret I try to keep from you, and you from me, and in doing so, we do each other a grave disservice.

Rumi tells us that moment we accept what troubles we’ve been given, “the door will open.” Sounds easy, sounds attractive, but it is difficult, and most of us pound on the door to freedom and happiness with every manipulative ploy save the one that actually works. If you’re interested in the door to the heavens opening, start with the door to your own secret self. See what happens when you offer to another a glimpse of who you really are. Start slowly. Without getting dramatic, share the simple dignity of yourself in each moment—your triumphs and your failures, your satisfaction and your sorrow. Face your embarrassment at being human, and you’ll uncover a deep well of passion and compassion. It’s a great power, your Open Secret. When your heart is undefended you make it safe for whomever you meet to put down his burden of hiding, and then you both can walk through the open door.

Elizabeth Lesser, The Open Secret