We all have well-established habits of thought, emotion, reaction and judgement,
and without the keen awareness of practice, we’re just acting out these patterns.
When they arise, we’re not aware they’ve arisen.
We get lost in them, identify with them, act on them
— so much of our life is just acting out patterns.
Joseph Goldstein
For us to be free, we need to stop believing the thoughts that something is wrong. We need to stop running away from the very vulnerability that needs a profound type of self-compassion. Whatever we cannot embrace with love or with acceptance imprisons us. It keeps us in the trance of a bad self. So the path of emotional healing is really the path of stopping the war, of pausing, of not believing the judgments, of not continuing to punish ourself. Instead of running away and trying to escape the rawness that is here, really meeting it with a deep, deep compassion.
Tara Brach, Meditations for Emotional Healing
I go among trees and sit still.
All my stirring becomes quiet
around me like circles on water.
My tasks lie in their places
where I left them, asleep like cattle.
Then what is afraid of me comes
and lives a while in my sight.
What it fears in me leaves me,
and the fear of me leaves it.
It sings, and I hear its song.
Wendell Berry
photo chris reynolds
Even though the hawthorn trees are in full bloom here and the old proverb, – “ne’r cast a clout til May be out” – tells us that it is time to switch to summer clothing, one cannot do so yet. Frequent heavy showers are followed by calm and sunshine, which is good for growth in the fields and the garden, but not so good for being able to get out for a walk in them. A lot of mental energy is wasted in wishing that external circumstances were different and “suited” us better.
A monk said to Master Tozan, ” Cold and heat descend upon us. how can we avoid them?” Tozan said, “Why don’t you go where there is no cold or heat” The monk said, ” Where is the place where there is no cold or heat?” Tozan said, “When cold, let it be so cold that it kills you; when hot, let it be so hot that it kills you.”
In this teaching “kill you” means kill your ideas about how things have to be for you to be happy. It may sound odd but you can be practicing mindfulness with discomfort and pain and be quite happy. The happiness comes from the pleasure of just being present, and also from the confidence that you are gaining – a confidence that, with ongoing practice, you will be able to face whatever life brings you, even pain, aided by tools such as mindfulness.
Jan Chozen Bays, How to Train a Wild Elelhant.
Perhaps the biggest tragedy of our lives is that freedom is possible, yet we can pass our years trapped in the same old patterns…We may want to love other people without holding back, to feel authentic, to breathe in the beauty around us, to dance and sing. Yet each day we listen to inner voices that keep our life small.
Tara Brach, Radical Acceptance.
photo andre engles
