Tag: Life

Trusting, even when our energy is low

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There seems to be an expectation today that we should always be in good mood, and unhappiness is taken as a sign that something is wrong. Therefore we are continually bombarded in advertising with images of smiling and cheerful people and families.  When we find that the reality of our day-to-day encounters with life involves occasional challenges or simply ordinary routine, we can be tempted to think that something is wrong. The prevailing model has no place for the dips in mood or even depressions that are a normal part of life and which can be seen in the cycles of nature. We have to learn not to fear those moments when we do not feel completely in control or lose our sense of direction for a while. Often our psyches are wise and know when they need to rest.  As Jung states here, the lack of energy is marking a period of transition as the energies needed for growth are stored for the future and  this is felt as a lack of energy in the present. This can happen over a weekend or over months or even years. What I have learned in listening to people on their journey is to hold a space and trust, even though the meaning of what they are going through is not clear just yet.

There are moments in human life when a new page is turned. New interests and tendencies appear which have hitherto received no attention, or there is a sudden change of personality. During the incubation period of such a change we can often observe a loss of conscious energy: the new development has drawn off the energy it needs from consciousness. This lowering of energy can be seen most clearly before the onset of certain psychoses and also in the empty stillness which precedes creative work.

Jung, The Psychology of the Transference, CW 16.

Letting go of the old moment

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In the Christian calendar,  this day is the last one of the liturgical year. With sunset this evening, Advent begins,  and the start of a new year.

With every breath, the old moment is lost, a new moment arrives. This is something meditators know. We breathe in and we breathe out.  In so doing we abide in the ever-changing moment. We learn to welcome and accept this entire process: we exhale, and we let go of the old moment. It is lost to us. In so doing, we let go of the person we used to be. We inhale and we breathe in the moment that is becoming: we repeat the process. This is meditation. This is renewal. It is also life

Lama Surya Das, Practicing with Loss

Seeing things differently

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Being lost is not at all a bad thing – if you know you’re lost and you know how to benefit from it spiritually. Most of us consider being lost a bummer, highly undesirable or even terrifying. We all have important things to do, there’s not enough time in the day as it is, thank you, and getting lost is a major fly in the ointment of success, a monkey wrench in the gearbox of progress. In the Western world, where “progress is our most important product,” we are encouraged from our earliest years to know exactly where we are at all times and precisely where we are going. Yes, such knowledge is often desirable if not necessary, but not knowing is of equal benefit. Indeed, the deepest form of wandering requires that we be lost.

Imagine yourself lost in your career or marriage, or in the middle of your life. You have goals, a place you want to be, but you don’t know how to reach that place. Maybe you don’t know exactly what you want, you just have a vague desire for a better place. Although it may not seem like it, you are on the threshold of a great opportunity. Begin to trust that place of not knowing. Surrender to it. You’re lost. There will be grief. A cherished outcome appears to be unobtainable or undefinable. In order to make the shift from being lost to being present, admit to yourself that your goal may never be reached. Though perhaps difficult, doing so will create entirely new possibilities for fulfillment.

Bill Plotkin, Being Lost

Staying with ourselves

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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. Even longterm practitioners sometime find themselves trying to use meditation as a way of escaping difficult emotions. But transformation only comes when we remember to move towards, rather than away from, our emotional distress. …In meditation we learn to stay with the non-conceptual energy of the emotion, experience it fully, then leave it as it is, without adding fuel to the fire.

Pema Chodron, Preface to Commit to Sit

Difficult moments in our lives

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In the difficult are the friendly forces, the hands that work on us.  Rilke

Every shift in our life comes courtesy of the friendly forces; every catastrophe can offer us exactly what we need to awaken into who we really are. It’s difficult, though, when you are in the middle of a painful transition to mine the experience for inner growth.  And when your life falls apart,  it’s a lot easier to blame someone,  or to rail against fate, or to shut down to the hopeful message carried by the winds of change. Sometimes when friends try to help by saying “There’s a reason for everything” or “It’s a blessing in disguise”, you just want to run away or you  want to say” Yeah, if it’s such a blessing, then why does it hurt so much?” So forgive me when I say that everything in life is a blessing – whether it comes as a gift wrapped in happy times or as a heartbreak, a loss, or a tragedy…. It helps me to remember that everyone is confused when the friendly forces come knocking; there is no one alive who did not want to go back asleep instead of making a big change; and the journey from Once-Born innocence to Twice-Born wisdom is never easy.

Elizabeth Lesser, Broken Open

Bowing to our experience today

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Mindfulness is a kind of attention. It is a non-judging, receptive awareness, a kind of respectful awareness. Unfortunately most of the time we don’t attend in this way. Instead we react, judging whether we like, dislike or can ignore this what is happening. Or we measure our experience against our expectation. we evaluate ourselves and others with a constant stream of commentary or criticism. But …we can put aside these weapons of judgment. When we are mindful it is as if we can bow to our experience, without judgment or expectation. In Suzuki Roshi’s words: “We pay attention with respect and interest, not in order to manipulate, but to understand what is true. And seeing what is true, the heart becomes free”

Jack Kornfield, Bringing home the Dharma