Shenpa

Shenpa can show up in so many ways. It seems to present itself differently in different people. I wonder if my shenpa is as obvious to other people as theirs is to me? I guess it must be.

It's as if the shenpa is a cloth thrown over your head which is readily apparent to everyone who sees you wandering around with a cloth on your head but to you it just feels like the world has gone a little dark and fuzzy.

Pema talks about telling one another when you see their shempa and I think that's a great idea although difficult to do. It takes a lot of openness and willingness. It's easy to do with the light stuff but the heavier it gets, the harder it is to see through the shempa cloth, even when someone points it out to you.

The hard part is that shenpa usually appears in relation to someone or something and it's hard to ask for a moment to step away and work with the shenpa. And before you can even attempt that, you must be mindful enough to see the shenpa arise.

I do find that I am slowly becoming more mindful of my minds many stories it tells. The fictions it writes a million times a day and the stories it insists on putting on repeat. My gut reaction is always to tell it to shut up, but I'm working on just smiling and laughing at my silly imaginative monkey mind. I feel like my mind has written an entire wall of novels over my lifetime. Some of the good ones it likes to reread again and again. As if to remind me just how imaginative and crazy it can be.