We become just by performing just actions,
temperate by performing temperate actions,
brave by performing brave actions.
Aristotle
Tag: growth
The meaning of the journey
The real goal of a depth therapy is not a “cure”, for the human condition is not a disease. Yes, real, resistant problems of daily life can and must be addressed and the resources of consciousness brought fully to bear on their resolution. But the real gift of a depth therapy, or of any truly considered life, is that one achieves a deepened conversation around the meaning of one’s journey – a conversation without which one lives a received life, not one’s own, a superficial life, or a life in service to complexes or ideologies.
James Hollis, What Matter most: Living a more considered Life
Not trying to get anywhere else
They harvested the field of barley beside our house yesterday. Planted last autumn, it has grown strongly even in the present drought. Another cycle of planting, caring and harvesting completed, each in its own rhythm. The energy in the seed comes to fruition in its own time and cannot be rushed.
If you cultivate patience, you almost can’t help cultivating mindfulness, and your meditation practice will become richer and more mature. After all if you really aren’t trying to get anywhere else in this moment, patience takes care of itself. It is a remembering that things unfold in their own time. The seasons cannot be hurried. Spring comes, the grass grows by itself. Being in a hurry usually doesn’t help and it can create a great deal of suffering – sometimes in us, sometimes in those who have to be around us. Patience is an ever-present alternative to the mind’s endemic restlessness and impatience. Scratch the surface of impatience and you will find lying beneath it, subtly or not so subtly is anger. It’s the strong energy of not wanting things to be the way they are and blaming someone (often yourself) or something for it.
Jon Kabat Zinn, Wherever you go, There you are
Emptying ourselves to leave space for wisdom
This beautiful quotation from French Philosopher, Simone Weil, could be describing the practice of mindfulness, with its emphasis on the need to move away from just thinking and opening to a wider attention. By paying atttention, even to the simplest details of each day, we create space for a deeper wisdom to grow.
As long as a person tolerates having his inner self full of his own thoughts, of his personal thoughts, he is entirely submitted – even in his most intimate thoughts – to the constraint of needs and the mechanical play of force. But everything changes when, by virtue of real attention, he empties his soul to let the thoughts of eternal wisdom pass through it. He then carries in himself the very thoughts to which force is submitted.
Simone Weil
Working with the stuck situations in our lives
How do I communicate to the heart so that a stuck situation can ventilate? 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? It starts with being willing to have a compassionate relationship with the parts of ourselves that we feel are not worthy of existing on the planet. If we are willing through meditation to be mindful not only of what feels comfortable, but also of what pain feels like, if we even aspire to stay awake and open to what we’re feeling, to recognize and acknowledge it as best we can in each moment, then something begins to change.
Pema Chodron
Staying safe or choosing to grow.
We can go back to sleep in order to resist the forces of change or we can stay awake and be broken open. Both ways are difficult, but one way brings with it the gift of a lifetime. If we can stay awake when our lives are changing, secrets will be revealed to us – secrets about ourselves, about the nature of life, and about the eternal source of happiness and peace that is always available, always renewable, already within us.
Driving home the other night I met a tiny baby fox on the road. Luckily I saw it on time and slowed the car down. It looked at the car briefly but was clearly frightened and quickly vanished into the field of wheat. It was a lovely glimpse of something I do not see too often.
It is a strange paradox that the heart needs to be afraid at times. It keeps us safe. It is certainly appropriate when we are young and getting to know the world and who can be trusted. The reality that some children experience as they are growing up obliges them to put up protective barriers within their hearts. And, to different extents, all of us carry around some of these wounds and some of the protections. However, sometimes the wise behaviours needed when young – the need to be very aware of other people’s emotions, the response to other’s ever shifting moods – can become maladaptive and a hindrance as time goes on. Some people continue to scan for danger or be hyper-vigilent even as they grow older and the original danger has passed. Trusting others becomes the defining question of their lives, and doubting people’s’ motives becomes an ongoing survival mechanism. Sometimes the lack of a secure base in childhood leads them to have so little confidence in themselves that it is hard to accept that they can be loved, and this leads them – paradoxically – to keep people at a distance and do everything possible to make people prove to them that they are reliable. They can never relax. Deep in their hearts they remain the frightened little animal, looking for the slightest thing to show that people were never reliable and thus prove that they were right all along. And in doing this they push people away, repeating the original pattern.
However, when we seek safety as our first strategy we fall into two traps: Firstly, we impoverish our life and limit our potential because we miss opportunities to grow. Secondly, we project our fear onto situations and people, thus giving them power to scare us and restrict what we do. It is true that healing these wounds in the heart is not easy. We do not like to admit this fear, to allow it out and be fully present with ourselves. It is easier to turn away from the situations that frighten us. However, it is precisely by taking a non-judgmental interest in what is going on inside rather than running away from it that we grow. By taking this risk our life becomes richer. It could mean reaching out to someone who we are estranged from or going to some activity that raises anxiety at the thought of it. We can only come to know our true capacity in the context of our struggles, and in how we face the challenges which life presents to us. So today we could look
Once there was a young warrior. Her teacher told her that she had to do battle with fear. She didn’t want to do that. It seemed too aggressive; it was scary; it seemed unfriendly. But the teacher said she had to do it and gave her the instructions for the battle. The day arrived. The student warrior stood on one side, and fear stood on the other. The warrior was feeling very small, and fear was looking big and wrathful. They both had their weapons. The young warrior roused herself and went toward fear, prostrated three times, and asked, “May I have permission to go into battle with you?” Fear said, “Thank you for showing me so much respect that you ask permission.” Then the young warrior said, “How can I defeat you?” Fear replied, “My weapons are that I talk fast, and I get very close to your face. Then you get completely unnerved, and you do whatever I say. If you don’t do what I tell you, I have no power. You can listen to me, and you can have respect for me. You can even be convinced by me. But if you don’t do what I say, I have no power.” In that way, the student warrior learned how to defeat fear.
Pema Chodron
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