Category: not abandoning

Don’t Hit the Fast-forward Button

November 2, 2020

4 Noble Truths, Equanimity, Everyday practices, fearlessness, impermanence, not abandoning, Self-care, self-compassion, The Eight Worldly Winds, The End of craving, Thich Nhat Hanh

Buddha with cranes, photo by Celia

“And the Blessed One addressed the bhikkhus, saying: “Behold now, bhikkhus, I exhort you: All compounded things are subject to vanish. Strive with earnestness!”[58]
This was the last word of the Tathagata.”
~”Maha-parinibbana Sutta: Last Days of the Buddha” (DN 16), translated from the Pali by Sister Vajira & Francis Story

For everything there is a season,
and a time for every matter under heaven:
a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.
~Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
(English Standard Version Bible)

Dear friends,

Last week, I honestly looked at my desires and saw how much I wanted to fast forward life, to be past this election, past the pandemic. I wanted it over and was not looking forward to living through the process of having these things unfold moment by moment. I had real resistance to this pain of uncertainty and the not knowing. When I was able to stay present with the discomfort with compassion, something shifted. I don’t know exactly the catalyst. I do know that there was a moment of joy when I recognized that I have been taught how to hold my suffering. I know what to do and I am doing it.

There is a joy that comes when we do not abandon ourselves, when we have the confidence to stay present and to say, “I got you. I am here for you, no matter what.” I come back to this self-compassion over and over. It is the most transformative and powerful medicine I have received from my practice. Showing up and knowing that no matter how good or how bad, I have the resources to stay.

The Buddha’s teaching on the Eight Worldly Winds, also called the vicissitudes, has helped me put my experience into perspective. 2,600 years ago, the Buddha said, “Monks, these eight worldly conditions spin after the world, and the world spins after these eight worldly conditions. Which eight? Gain, loss, status, disgrace, censure, praise, pleasure, & pain. These are the eight worldly conditions that spin after the world, and the world spins after these eight worldly conditions. (Lokavipatti Sutta: The Failings of the World, T. Bhikkhu, trans.)”

In this ancient teaching, we can see the universality of loss and pain. We encounter this in the first Noble Truth, that suffering, or stress exists. We also know that there are causes and reasons for suffering. This is the second Noble Truth. When we see the causes for suffering and discomfort in our lives, this gives us understanding and clarity. Recognizing these conditions leads us to the Third Noble Truth, that there is the opposite of suffering. The law of impermanence teaches that nothing can exist forever, this too will change. It cannot stay the same.

I can feel lots of compassion for us as a country and a world, longing for this pandemic to end, longing for racial justice, for change, for hope. And I remember a teaching by Buddhist nun Pema Chodron who was caught in distress. Her teacher asked her to notice the years of habits it took to for her to get into that state and to know it would take a while to get out. As a country, we have been planting the painful and violent seeds of racial inequality for more than 400 years. It takes time to uproot those dangerous vines long interwoven in the culture of America. This requires staying with the frustration, the discomfort, and the exhaustion. If we know how to show up when we are in pain, we will have more ability to be the hand that risks discomfort by pulling out the creeping thorns by the roots.

When we leave our experience, we lose the opportunity to develop trust in ourselves. As we learn to stay with the difficult and painful with compassion, we also learn how to titrate—not to exceed our capacity—to have a touch and go relationship with suffering that can help us to stay in self-trust. This is already the Fourth Noble Truth, stepping onto the path of practice ascribed by the Buddha. This path is powerful medicine to strengthen us against the forces that can overwhelm and destabilize our minds and hearts.

In 2013, Thich Nhat Hanh gave a series of retreats titled, The Art of Suffering. I remember him saying that he would never want his children to go to heaven if there were no suffering there. They needed suffering—a little bit, not too much—to grow and to stretch. They also needed to experience suffering to know what the end of suffering feels like. There could be no heaven if there was no opposite of heaven. This is the law of non-duality. Nothing can exist by itself alone. It needs a counterbalance or opposite to allow it to be known.

In the retreat, Thay spoke about staying present with our suffering, owning it, being available for it. When I want to fast forward through my life and wish it all away, I deny that I have competency and the presence to take care of myself. I forget my own resilience and strength and dodge whatever I see coming out of fear and reactivity instead of taking a breath, feeling my feet on the ground and connecting with my deepest intention, the realization of cessation, freedom, or nibbana. When I know suffering, and also know my own ability to accompany myself, I know the end of suffering.

Liberation is the act of non-abandoning is a way I show myself kindness and trust. I trust that I can be there for me. I trust that my presence liberates myself from the prison of helplessness, from rushing through. I can call upon my supports, my ancestors and those I admire who have lived through wars, through oppression, through situations that I have not experienced in my life time and they still found their freedom. Freedom is a way to reclaim our power.

The more our culture is infiltrated by algorithms that direct us towards what to feel, what to believe, who to trust, the more we are manipulated by what is outside of us. Returning to ourselves, to reclaim our freedom and our innate goodness is a radical act of self-accompaniment. We are truly free when we know that we have our own support no matter what comes, and we are ready, excited even to meet that challenges of accompanying ourselves.

When we have touched the benefits of practice, of meditation, stillness, and centering, we are able to return to the place in us. We learn over time that this is not dependent upon conditions. It is determined by our commitment to our own liberation, our own enlightenment. Enlightenment is the promise that we are born with the ability to live in the classroom of our lives and to learn what is necessary for us. Enlightenment is the stilling and the end of our desire to make this moment any different. We do this practice, not by giving up, but by straightening up.

May we all trust our light,

Celia

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I was so Mad…

October 28, 2019

Addiction, Anger#, Awareness, Buddhism, Changing habit patterns, Choice, compassion, Control, Mindfulness of feelings, not abandoning, Uncategorized

Montana hayfield. Photo by Sofie Kirk

“When someone does not know how to handle his own suffering, he allows it to spill all over the people around him. When you suffer, you make the people around you suffer. That’s very natural. This is why we have to learn how to handle our suffering, so we won’t spread it everywhere.”

~Thich Nhat Hanh, from Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames

“A person overwhelmed with anger destroys his wealth.

Maddened with anger, he destroys his status.

Relatives, friends, & colleagues avoid him.

Anger brings loss. Anger inflames the mind.

He doesn’t realize that his danger is born from within.” ~Excerpt from

“Kodhana Sutta: An Angry Person” (AN 7.60), translated from the Pali by Thanissaro Bhikkhu.

“Anger is a zone of energy in us. It is part of us. It is a suffering baby we have to take care of. The best way to do this is to generate another zone of energy that can embrace and take care of our anger. The second zone of energy is the energy of mindfulness.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh, from Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames

Dear Friends,

Two weeks ago, I got mad. Not regular mad, but extra-mad, boiling. Getting mad is not extraordinary, nor is it worth mentioning except for the fact that I have been practicing with my anger for the past 14 years. I had enough experience with anger to believe I knew how to handle this strong emotion, but given the right conditions, anger can be like a riptide and drag us under.

Anger is a secondary emotion. This means that although we attribute the cause of our anger to external conditions—anger is a response to emotions that may be so fleeting or shadowed by the powerful quality of anger, we aren’t aware of them. The “Anger Iceberg” from the Gottman Institute shows some of the feelings below the surface of anger. As practitioners, we understand we are responsible for our creations of body, speech, and mind. This includes how we handle our anger.

Anger serves an important function for the biological survival of our species. Anger arises as a response to the signal of threat and lets us know something is wrong and lets us know when a situation is not ok for us. Anger, with its accompanying adrenalin and norepinephrine, moves us from passivity to action and can propel us to leave an abusive situation, to make changes, to stand up for injustice. We do not want to suppress, ignore, or get rid of anger. It is a crucial part of our ability to take care of ourselves.

Unfortunately, when we are in anger, our nervous system is flooded with stress hormones and the part of our brain that understands about consequence, kindness, and wisdom doesn’t get the oxygen and glucose it needs to function properly. We are operating from the emotional center, the limbic region of the brain. You may notice that in anger, we are very limited and focused—on what is going wrong. We lose the ability to see a bigger picture and to see we have choices. We become reactive and depending upon our conditioning we may yell, fight, both physically or verbally, or escape without understanding the consequences of our actions. In anger as the Dalai Lama says, “we lose the best part of our brain.”

Another aspect of anger I can speak to is the addictive quality of anger. The opioid receptors in the neuropeptide system link the behavior—the action of anger with the reward of pleasure and relief. We get a spike of dopamine when we act or speak in anger, the same high that accompanies narcotics, sugar, or sex. In anger, we are flooded with adrenalin which gives us purpose and provokes action. We can enjoy this feeling of importance and derive pleasure from the righteousness of being wronged. We can get swept out to sea by our anger and the resulting pleasure from the neurochemical cascade and wonder how our mindfulness evaporated so quickly.

I’ve learned over the past years that anger gives plenty of warnings, so I have the opportunity to stop and attend to the feelings that are present before it gets to boiling. As Tara Brach tells us, “everything belongs,” even our emotional responses. We don’t have to shame ourselves or get rid of our angry reactions but recognize that we are called to witness our anger with the same compassion and curiosity we bring to all other aspects of our experience. We can acknowledge that we are fully responsible for the creation of our emotions and what we choose to do with them. This is karma, the literal consequences that result from our actions.

So how do we engage with anger skillfully? When I was so angry, I found myself struggling with the energy of the anger itself—which brought me into the forever humbling experience of being a human being who is subject to stress and overwhelm. I have learned that despite years of practice, anger is one of the strongest biological and habitual snares I’ve encountered. Although I didn’t discharge my anger at anyone—it certainly made my life a hell realm for a while. I found myself shaking my head at how small I had let my world become. When I looked at the situation from a cooler perspective, I saw that my feelings of being trapped, overwhelmed, and helpless could have been resolved with two phone calls and the magic word, “no.”

Dharma teacher Joanne Friday asks us to consider if we are a victim or a student in this lifetime. When I acted from a place where I forgot I had a choice, I was a victim and my anger reflected the injustice and powerlessness of that perception. When I looked at my response as a student—I saw that old habits made me consider other’s needs and happiness above my own. When I agreed to do more than I could, I sacrificed my ease and physical wellbeing. My anger was the cry of my own body and mind that wanted to be considered and to matter.

What I forget and learn over and over, is that I need to matter to myself. When I matter to myself, I understand the limits of my abilities. I don’t overload my schedule. I get support for the heavy lifting—both physically and metaphorically in my life. This takes real mindfulness of the body and mind and recognition of our moment by moment experience. Mattering to myself isn’t narcissistic flattery or propping up my ego with importance. It means that I extend the same care and concern for myself as I do for the other people in my life.

This week I invite you to take some time out to see how you are mattering to yourself. Are you responding from habit and doing what you always do—feelings of irritation, frustration, and wanting things to be different are a hint that we are not considering our own wellbeing. What are some actions we can take to let ourselves know we matter? Time for play and relaxation, getting help, adequate sleep, time to eat without rushing, respecting ourselves enough to arrange travel time so we arrive refreshed and calm—all these strategies can help undo the conditioning that tells us to hurry and to abandon ourselves. When we value the quality of our own consciousness and we demonstrate it with our words, deeds, and thoughts, we are learning to entrust ourselves into our own care. Looking with wisdom at how we support our practice and our own capacity for peace and resilience creates the framework that strengthens our commitment to living in awareness with compassion for all beings—including ourselves.

May we all trust our light,

Celia

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Home to Ourselves for the Holidays

December 23, 2018

Listening to Ourselves, Mindfulness of feelings, not abandoning, present moment, Renunciation, Self-care, Uncategorized

Paperwhites, photo by Celia

“Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet confinement of your aloneness to learn anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you.” ~David Whyte

“I have gone forth,

but not in search of sensual pleasures.

Seeing the danger in sensual pleasures

— and renunciation as rest —

I go to strive.

That’s where my heart delights.”

~ The Buddha, “Pabbaja Sutta: The Going Forth”, Thanissaro Bhikkhu (trans.)

“The more difficulties you have, in fact, the greater opportunity there is to let them transform you. The difficult things provoke all your irritations and bring your habitual patterns to the surface. And that becomes the moment of truth. You have the choice to launch into the lousy habitual patterns you already have, or to stay with the rawness and discomfort of the situation and let it transform you, on the spot.” ~ Pema Chödrön

Dear Friends,

It’s busy out there. We are shopping, hosting, checking Amazon Wishlists, buying Secret Santa gifts for the office, traveling to be with relatives, making New Year’s plans, and let us not forget there’s always some last minute shopping. There’s overwhelm and preparations for the hosts and tremendous longing for those who are unable to be with their families. There’s also isolation and sadness for those who are not part of the dominant Christian culture or are alone on holidays. December is both the busiest and loneliest time of the year.

More than a dozen years ago, I read about a simple holiday practice of making gifts for the wild animals. The author made peanut butter pinecone bird feeders for the chickadees and the squirrels and scattered dried corn for the deer in his yard on Christmas day. These simple gifts for those whose opinions won’t get us a promotion or be able to reciprocate in kind really touched me. This man was able to detach from the loud voices of the commercial world, to listen to the quieter voice of his own deepest intentions and honor his own kindness, inclusivity, and unrequited giving. That is my message today, a heartfelt encouragement for us all to take some time to stop and listen deeply to what our lives are calling out for.

This was the choice the Buddha made. Born into a life of privilege and power, he recognized that pleasures and comfort were not enough. His life needed to become simpler to find the truth. So he left. The Buddha must have been deeply discontent and unable to participate in a life that was so unsatisfactory. Instead of burying his heartsickness and living out his life comfortably as the pampered son of a tribal leader, he listened deeply to his own sense of responsibility for his own salvation and wellbeing. We know his journey ended with enlightenment and his teachings on the end of suffering have set free countless numbers of humans. For most of us, taking off from our lives, leaving our children and spouses to begin our spiritual quest raises issues about honoring our agreements and our compassion for others, not to mention our financial responsibilities and subsistence. As lay people with families and jobs, we can remember that there are many ways to come back to ourselves, to our true intentions and stay in our role as parent, partner, and householder.

We can start small and take a five-minute break to listen. Listening to ourselves is a way to remember who we are and what is going to set us free. We can begin with mindfulness of the body/mind. How are we feeling today? What’s the territory of my mind—what emotions are visiting and how am I really? We can ask if we are aligned with our heart’s intentions. How are we living our deepest desires today? Have we dropped our aspirations to spend today in the present moment and unconsciously consented to exchange our peace and ease for irritation and exhaustion in the form of a completed shopping list and a clean house? We can ask the poet David Whyte’s question, “What brings me alive right now?” What do we want our lives to be made of?

At this time of year, we can remember that all moments contain choice. We can pause and consider what we consenting to in each encounter and each moment. Remembering that returning to our inner wisdom and stillness is available for us even in this season of doing and getting. That’s my wish for us all as we turn towards a new year, that we may deepen our trust in our own goodness and learn to listen to our truest desires.

Wishing you joy and happiness for the new year.

May we all trust our light,

Celia

1 comment on Home to Ourselves for the Holidays
I Choose Both

December 3, 2018

Generosity, Happiness, not abandoning, Uncategorized

Snow falling in Bethel, ME. Photo by Karen Swanson

“Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

“When we are no longer able to change a situation – we are challenged to change ourselves.”

“A human being is a deciding being.”

~All quotes Viktor E. Frankl

Dear Friends,

Have you ever experienced a feeling of dissonance despite the fact that you are doing what you should, taking the best course of action for your job or as a parent, and yet, there was a scratchy feeling of unrest and anxiety? I am paying attention to this feeling and what I am unearthing is the effect of hidden mixed motivation. Often there are more than one motivators at play in our lives. We usually go with the ones that show us in the best light, make us look unselfish or generous. Our choices often stem from our conditioning and wanting to be seen as good. This evaluation of good and bad motivations can keep our deeper desires and needs hiding from ourselves and result in subtle and not so subtle feelings of distraction and anxiety.

One of the biggest and most concealed drivers of our actions is to be seen in a certain way. We want to do the right thing—to be the generous one, the saintly one. We certainly don’t want to be the selfish lazy one, the one who just wants pleasure and their own comfort. This desire to be seen in a certain way is one of the three hungers the Buddha spoke about, the hunger of becoming. We want to become something specific in a conditioned setting. This hidden desire for a way of being can cause great conflict when we do not have the honesty to confront our desires directly.

In Buddhist forums, I’ve heard folks confess that they really want ease, recognition, or comfort and are surprised how that desire is driving them. There is an unspoken evaluation of “bad” attached to wanting a life free from suffering, with ease, and enjoyment. It’s much more acceptable to speak about service and the Bodhisattva ideal of liberating all beings instead of disclosing the truth of feeling irritated when caring for sick parents or acknowledging how much research and upheaval it creates cooking for a child with a gluten allergy. We may carefully attend to the sick parent and create delicious gluten-free meals for our kid, but when we have an unacknowledged conflict in our intentions, it blocks our spacious generous heart and creates resentment and a limited capacity.

The first step in opening to allow true generosity is removing the dualistic and discriminative label of good and bad to our motivations. Visiting our ill parents, or moving in to care for an elderly parent can conflict with our need for autonomy, for spaciousness, ease, and enjoyment. When we label these desires as selfish and bad, we don’t want to own them or be associated with them. Dropping the conditioned judgment and looking beyond the labels we can give ourselves the understanding that, of course—we, just like all beings, desire to create our own lives. All beings long to be in charge of themselves. At the same time we desire our freedom, we may want to honor our commitments and care for the people we love. However, when our ability to create our own lives is not supported, that lack of understanding blocks the ability to open-heartedly attend to another intention.

When we are able to regard all of our desires and motivators as benevolent—even the ones that in the past have incorporated the unskillful tactics of greed or anger, we can acknowledge them without shame or turning away. Recognizing and allowing all of our motivations takes the first steps towards accepting the whole of our humanity with compassion. If we allow all of our desires to be seen with the same valuation we step into a new way of relating to our choices—they become conscious and the methods for caring for ourselves and others become more creative and varied.

When I know I desire some rest and fun after a hectic week AND I also want to help my friend with the herniated disc pack up her kitchen because I value her friendship and want to make life better for her, allowing both those things to have equal weight gives me relief. If I believe that helping my friend is more holy, generous, and pure than caring for myself, I will create conflict through an involuntary act of self-abandonment. If I do not see the whole of my motivations and I chose to stay home and take a nap and watch a movie, I will have guilt at my choice because I continue to see one as more evolved and better than the other.

The simple practice of looking deeply and honestly gives us the freedom to choose. Knowing what we are needing and legalizing our humanity gives great relief. Recognizing the validity of wanting ease, joy, and to be seen in a certain way is already a freedom that gives us more choice. When we accept our mixed motivations without judgment we can make choices that nourish all of our desires, clearly, without punishing others for needing help and without becoming martyrs. When we act from a place of clarity, we choose the seeds we want to water and how we want to live, authentically, and with equal compassion for self and others.

This week you may want to use the guidance of the emotions to alert you to when you are operating from conflict. Looking honestly without judgment can give you the freedom to choose to follow one path of action because that value creates a more beautiful life. Recognizing our choice point that gets buried beneath the “should’ and the “have to” creates a life that includes both autonomy and compassion. When we wake up to the choices we make in each moment we are no longer a passive victim. We can recognize our responsibility and our capacity to create lives in accord with our deepest intentions.

May we all trust our light,

Celia

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Putting an End to Hatred

October 28, 2018

Activism, Buddhism, Changing habit patterns, compassion, Ending hatred, Ignorance, non-violence, not abandoning, not punishing, Uncategorized

Ginko and denim. Photo by Celia

“I entrust myself to earth,

Earth entrusts herself to me.

I entrust myself to Buddha,

Buddha entrusts herself to me.”

~Thich Nhat Hanh, from Being Peace.

“Without being

peace, we cannot do anything for peace. If we cannot smile, we

cannot help other people to smile. If we are not peaceful, then

we cannot contribute to the peace movement.”

~Thich Nhat Hanh, from Being Peace.

“Hatreds never cease through hatred in this world; through love alone they cease. This is an eternal law.”

~Dhammapada, Verse 5, Narada Thera trans.

“We are committed not to kill and not to let others kill. We will not support any act of killing in the world, in our thinking, or in our way of life.”

~The Twelfth Mindfulness Training. The nuns and monks of Plum Village.

Dear Friends,

Yesterday I took refuge in the three jewels, the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha sharing a day of mindfulness with the Greater Hartford Sangha. I left with deep gratitude for the gift of sharing my day with a community dedicated to alleviating suffering in the world. I was so glad that I had the nourishment of the three refuges yesterday as I learned about the shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Squirrel Hill. I felt huge sadness and grief for the families and victims of the shooting. As I sat with these feelings, I was aware of the rage in me fed by the desire for all beings to be safe and valued. I saw my thoughts go into blame and judgment and turns towards punishment. I’ve grown up in a society that believes punishment equals justice and that punishment is a useful strategy for getting people to change their behavior. If we are a parent we know what punishment does; it teaches our children to be afraid or to be sneaky. Punishment, isolation, and shame are enculturated ways we believe we can effect social change. But how effective is punishment? The U. S. Bureau of Justice in a 2018 update reports that 5 out of 6 state prisoners were rearrested within 9 years of release. It seems that punishment is an expensive and misguided attempt to create change that ignores the basis of violence and hatred.

Buddhist scholar and monk Bhikkhu Bhodi writes that it is the root of ignorance or delusion (avijja/ Pali, avidya/ Sanskrit) that leads to suffering. Ignorance is not a pathological condition. It is not evil or bad; it is simply a misperception. This is the ignorance that creates the mental confusion or blindness leading to separation and hatred and forgets we inter-are. It is the ignorance that creates in-group and out-group distinctions. It’s the “I making and my making” that leads us to grab hold of the disastrous strategies of greed, hatred, and violence with the mistaken belief they will keep us safe. Writing this I am grateful that I know the usefulness of anger AND extremely grateful I have entrusted myself to the care of the Dhamma which teaches me what to do with my anger so it does not need to become hatred. Anger is a powerful message that something needs our attention. Anger, just like pain, is signal to us that there is something harmful and hurtful going on and we need to take wise action to alleviate suffering in ourselves and others.

The Buddha had a profound understanding of human nature and the innate desire to protect oneself and one’s clan. He gave a teaching on five ways to put an end to hatred that tells us when someone is acting and speaking with violence and out of the delusion in a separated protected self, it is as if they have fallen severely ill, are alone in a strange place without food or medicine and shunned by all others. “And as for a person who is impure in his bodily behavior & verbal behavior, and who does not periodically experience mental clarity & calm, how should one subdue hatred for him? Just as when there is a sick man — in pain, seriously ill — traveling along a road, far from the next village & far from the last, unable to get the food he needs, unable to get the medicine he needs, unable to get a suitable assistant, unable to get anyone to take him to human habitation.…” (Aghatavinaya Sutta: Subduing Hatred). The Buddha tells us that viewing those who act with hatred and delusion through our veil of ignorance and condemnation will only enforce the belief in separation and fuel the cycle of hatred and violence. He tells us it is our task as practitioners is to pick up this ill and isolated person, provide food and medicine to help restore them to health and wholeness of body and mind and most importantly to put down our ignorance and do what feels so counter-culture—to understand that violence is a sign that someone is sick and suffering and care for the person who does harm.

This is a life-altering practice and requires some deep and honest looking at how we create a dangerous “other” and feed the cycle of violence and hatred in our own lives. Ask yourself who is it ok to hate? The KKK? Nazis? White nationalists? Terrorists? Joining together in our communities, who do we hate? When we practice hating, just like any skill, we get better at it. This week please look to see the usefulness in your anger, the beautiful desires for equality and justice that lie beneath anger and judgment and then, go deeper. See how we can act to remove what is the real danger—ignorance. On Tuesday, please take your compassion to the polls and do your best to elect those who can transcend the delusion of separation, those who remember that we all belong to each other.

May we all trust our light,

Celia

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Not Abandoning Ourselves

July 30, 2018

compassion, Dharma, Friendship, Healing Ourselves, inclusiveness, Mindfulness of feelings, not abandoning, Relationship, Self-care, Thich Nhat Hanh, Uncategorized, Zen

James’ feet. X-ray by Dr. McHugh.

“It is important to expect nothing, to take every experience, including the negative ones, as merely steps on the path, and to proceed.”

“I would like my life to be a statement of love and compassion–and where it isn’t, that’s where my work lies.”

“The heart surrenders everything to the moment. The mind judges and holds back.”

~ All quotes by Ram Dass

Dear Friends,

What if right now, reading this, wherever you are, life is as good as it will ever be? And it is. That moment is already past and whatever level of satisfaction or discomfort was there is already flowing into the next moment and the next. We live in a culture devoted to half of life’s experiences and we strategize to keep our sadness and loneliness away with events and achievements. We design campaigns and create boundaries of responsibility so we will never know how it feels to be ashamed, afraid, or helpless. We make room in our hearts for what is welcome and flattering, while edging out the unwanted, believing if we just try a little harder, we can have this life a little sweeter, a little less stressful and lots easier. There was an advertising slogan a few years back that declared, “You can have it all.” The publicists were talking about light beer, but in life, we don’t want it all. We want only what we want.

Thich Nhat Hanh reminds us, “This is it.” Life is not a dress rehearsal that we repeat until we get it just right; it’s happening now. And what if we are never kinder, wiser, healthier, smarter, or wealthier than we are in this moment? Are we enough as we are right now to make this moment count and meet it as we want to be? Can we stop trying to manipulate this moment and rest in our own capacity to meet the edges of what is unpleasant and unwanted? The more we can get comfortable with the range of our mind, the more we can make space to include everything and allow it to be.

Raindrops in a puddle. Photo by Celia

This allowing can stop the push and pull of wanting the half of the whole and surprisingly lessen the power of the unwanted. When we don’t push back we can give the unwanted the freedom it needs to rise and fall without the struggle of dislike that makes it so painful. Another way to frame this is, “it’s ok to not be ok.” Pain is part of each life. Even at the best times, we may find a shading of sadness or fear. It’s ok to see the darkness or unwanted in ourselves and let it come and go without feeding it with opposition.

Including everything with the knowledge that our purpose is to meet ourselves where we stand just as we are is what I call the practice of non-abandoning, or inclusivity, leaving nothing out. When we set our intention to stay connected and present to all of our emotional life, we can meet each interaction with kindness and understanding. This week, you may like to try setting an intention of non-abandoning and put your acceptance of whatever is arising in you, as your first priority. This diligence to stand beside ourselves creates a framework of care for ourselves. When we can hold ourselves with this kind attention, we naturally bring our capacity for care to the world. When we stay present and do not abandon ourselves we can make this moment count. Developing the capacity to show up for ourselves means we don’t have to wait for a perfect future to be here now, fully present, engaged, and grounded in unshakeable love.

May we all trust our light,

Celia

2 comments on Not Abandoning Ourselves

Category: not abandoning

Don’t Hit the Fast-forward Button

I was so Mad…

Home to Ourselves for the Holidays

I Choose Both

Putting an End to Hatred

Not Abandoning Ourselves