Facets

Praise love for this moment in its perfection.

Attention in the heart.

Thank love for my human experience in its perfection.

Attention in the heart.

Love creates me in my perfection.

Attention in the heart.

OM unity.

Attention at the top of the spine, base of the head.

Pain

it can wake us up
it can put us to sleep
it can make us more compassionate and wise
it can make us more selfish and afraid

Opening our minds and hearts. Letting the pain in and letting it change things. Doing the same, old habitual thing will only get the same old habitual results. 

Things won't change without shaking them up. You want something to change and be different, do something different. Shake up the way you look at, interact, and view the world. This won't be comfortable and it won't be easy, but the courage to shake things up is the only way to truly make a change.

We are habitual creatures who ingrain our habits deeper and deeper as time goes on. We seek pleasure and escape in the same old ways and run from the same old fears. Unless we slow down and take the time to look what we're seeking and running from.

It's so easy to see where another person is stuck. To see where they seek pleasure and escape to, yet seeing our own escapism is much more difficult. And yet, we are the only ones who have the power to change these habitual actions. We must seek out our ways of grasping, seeking, and escaping and take the action to break the habits.

Love has Wings

I stumbled across a new book this last week that has been really inspiring to me. It's  a woman named Isha who has taken a lot of buddhist philosophies and named it something else and sells it as a method for freedom, enlightenment, etc. She does do a great job of discussing many of the false beliefs that keep us stuck. It's also really simple language and easy to relate to.

Her big theme is that unconditional love for yourself is all you need to be free. The idea is by cultivating unconditional love for oneself, you see that you are complete just as you are and are in need of nothing. This then allows you to approach the world from that perspective without seeking, needing, desiring, striving. It is basically the idea of starting with getting in touch with your buddha nature first and foremost.

I can relate to many of her statements about false thinking and the actions that come from that. It is inspiring to me to see and she also provides antidotes, which I think are invaluable. For example, I see in myself the need to control things, possess things and I see that this comes from fear and an inner lacking. Not seeing myself as complete and needing x, y or z to complete me. Her idea with working with this "lacking" is to see it and choose to go inward and get in touch with my buddha nature and underlying completeness, experience the love that resides there.

I know that this sense of lacking is at the core of much of my discontent and possessiveness. I see it often and am finally choosing to seek out an antidote. I know that with this inner lacking, no external circumstances will fulfill me. Only through healing and seeing my inner completeness will I find inner peace, happiness and serenity.

A similar idea is that we are what we give, not what we receive. We are only dependent on our internal workings for happiness and peace, not external circumstances. So I can love everyone around me and give it away freely without concern as to whether or not it is returned. I am the love that I give and I have an endless supply. There is no need to be needy for love, as I am complete and filled with love myself.

Inspiration all Around

So we all know the practice, being with whatever it is that arises, so how will we practice with this? Where can we put our attention that will benefit everyone involved? How do we practice with the discomfort & impermanence?
Personally it’s been a time of serious reflection regarding my relationship with praise & blame, knowing both come with their own trap and their own form of suffering.

I feel confident that this is all unfolding as it should, and just wanted to let y’all know what’s happening with us.
May all beings be free from suffering,
May all beings be happy,
May all beings know liberation.

 

Vinny Ferraro wrote this at the end of a letter from urban dharma. It touched me. He was talking about urban dharma and changes that coming to it but it obviously applies to any event in life. For me, I've been feel a strong connection with the dharma in my life. I guess it comes with change and struggle. I fluctuate between the feeling of sadness and lose, letting go, impermanence and also the excitement of potential, hope, new beginnings and freedom. Like Vinny says, these both come with their own trap and their own form of suffering.

 

I find it difficult not to just pinball back and forth between the two finding suffering on both ends.

 

Luckily, there are also moments of acceptance and settling into a completeness and wholeness that feels so right. Yesterday walking home for work, I felt a strong okayness settle over me. Just being in the moment, knowing all was as it should be. It felt so good and yet was so fleeting. I had a thought of wishing I could stay there forever, then realized I was just forming attachment to it and causing myself suffering. So let it go by the wayside and felt it be swept away.

Lessons to be Learned

The Buddhist idea that everything is exactly as it should be and everything happens exactly as it should. This should allow us all to relax and get out of the drivers seat for awhile. If we remember that we aren't actually driving at all. We're actually in the back of the bus being horrible backseat drivers and causing ourselves a lot of undo stress by thinking we're driving.

I like to think that every event, person, and incidence in my life is here for a reason. To teach me some lesson and help me grow and change into more my true self and being. Some of the lessons are hard and I need to have them again and again before I truly learn from them. While others are easy and are quickly accepted.

The bottom line is that I am exactly where I am supposed to be, doing what I need to be doing with whom I should be doing it. Even if these are all horrific mistakes, they are the mistakes I currently need to be making.

How can I not find comfort in this? Everything is as it should be.

Self-appreciation

Although self-appreciation is just what it sounds like, appreciation of one's self, it is amazing how it can be affected by your interactions with other people. I think a lot of people don't realize how much our interactions with others reflect and affect our opinion and value for ourselves. I'm realizing this more and more as my relationships change and how that affects the way I feel about myself. I know for me it is difficult when relationships change as it seems to disturb my sense of self. The way I related to someone before is different now and that brings in to question things I thought to be true that maybe were wrong or wrongly perceived.

I am realizing that I need to put more value into myself. I am an amazing person. Smart, caring, beautiful, sexy, insightful, and loving. I deserve relationships with people who see that in me and respect it. People who are willing to respect me in the way I want and need to be. People who appreciate my value.

I think women especially tend to undervalue themselves and sell themselves short. By accepting less than we deserve, we make it acceptable to treat us this way. It isn't acceptable. Every human being deserves love, compassion and respect. We deserve to be treated as intelligent, independent, strong beings, not as objects to be used and discarded.

I feel like society promotes the treatment of women like objects more and more in such subtle ways that we don't notice it creep in. I know that I catch myself judging myself by my beauty, femininity, and love of a man. I don't know when that happened, but I'm sad to see it and see it as a huge issue to combat. I'm valuable as a person, on my own, whether or not I'm in high heels and on the arm of a man.

On the other hand, I know that I too have treated people without the respect that I should. I've taken advantage and used people to my advantage without considering their feelings or emotions. But the older I get, the more I see that the way we interact with one another is what truly shapes the world. It's our daily relationships with people that dictate the larger energy and world we live in. So I feel like it's worth stepping back and taking care with relationships, even insignificant ones or ones that we don't see as being significant.

Emotions

The last couple days have been an emotional rollercoaster and the funny thing is that it's all in my head. It is all self-contrived. There is nothing going on externally that would lead to these rollercoaster emotions. I definitely have not been free of following them and have had a range of highs and lows but at least I'm seeing it for what it is.

I try to make things solid and final, definitive so to speak. That results in me feeling overwhelmed by the solidity of it, even though I know nothing is solid and everything changes.

I then become hopeful and optimistic and feel free temporarily of pain and suffering. I see it as just a movie I'm watching and this is the part where things get rough for awhile. Things will invariably change and swing back to the positive side again. That's the way life is.

So I'm trying to see this for what it is. Accept it and find my space within it. Letting go of blame, resistance, and fear. Just being and allowing.

It's all just one big movie show that I've been swept away in too long. This is a wake up call for me to see where I've been and where I need to go now. It's a time to work on myself and live in this hard time to prepare myself for a better time in the future. Not rushing this change, growth and suffering, just allowing it and embracing it, just as I did the happy, loving times.

I'm also trying to remind myself that nothing is all good or all bad. Everything is both. Accepting and embracing these parts is essential to life. Even in people.

People will love you and people will hurt you. No person is all good or all bad. No relationship is all good or all bad. It's about learning to embrace it all with a smile and a hug.

Trying to smile and hug!

Disbelief

It's funny to see my mind flat out try to deny things that I know are true. I can literally feel myself failing to accept and acknowledge a truth. It must be a way for my body to try and protect me from something hurtful. If I don't accept it than it's not true. Silly mind.

Why does my mind think it has that kind of control? Why does it think it can affect "what is" through shear will?

If only I could sit down into the truth and accept it for what it is and then get my mind to leave it behind as a fact. I feel like that is the only solution. Accept this undesirable thing and leave it where it is. No reason to drag it along, feeling it kick me in the butt repeatedly and wondering where that kick is coming from.

I know where the kick is coming from. I know I'm dragging it along, asking "please sir, may I have another" and yet I can't get my mind to give up. Drop it, leave it behind. I don't need the extra weight, pain or stress.

I'm trying to snuggle my silly, confused mind with some loving-kindness and an open heart but it just keeps running around in circles desperately looking for an escape from what is.

It's okay mind. There's no way out. This is what is. That's all. No imminent danger, just this. Allow it and sit with it and be set free.

Present Moment

If I could only live in this very moment, I would be fine. I am safe, warm, and completely content in this immediate moment. Every time my mind takes me away, I find suffering arise.

Come back to now and you are free. Leave into your thoughts and you're lost and often in pain, especially at this point in my life. Pain is here. Pain is okay. Suffering need not be. I do not need to feed this pain and amplify it anymore than it already is.

Stop the habituation. Stop the self-pity. Stop the fear. Stop the hurtful thoughts.

I am healthy and safe. Live in this moment.

The Shit Hits the Fan

Pema Chodron talks about how times of great pain can be moments of great opportunity because it gets serious real quick. I feel like I am here. My shit is hitting the fan in a very large way and I'm hunkering down for the long haul. The dharma feels like a life raft right now, and I'm hanging on for dear life. If I thought I was exploring the dharma before, I was only grazing the surface. Yes, I've made changes and had some great insights but where I'm at now, the need for some freedom has gotten very real very fast. Learning to stay. Learning to stay with my naseousness, with my thoughts that this pain will never end, that there is no possible way I can survive this. Learning to stay. Every moment, again and again. Accepting what is in every new moments. Accepting my loss, accepting my fear, letting go of all that I cling to.
My heart is breaking open in a very real way. All over again. I know I will survive and move forward and grow and change and be happier and stronger in the end. I know this, in every cell in my body. Yet, the naseous is unwavering, the pain unrelenting and here I sit, on the razors edge. Trying to keep my mind from expounding on the dilemma, causing more pain and suffering. Knowing that this is as it should be. That this needs to happen to free myself. This pain is necessary and is the otherside of love and attachment. Withdrawals, fear and pain will break me open and prepare me for a new future and a new life.
Focusing on myself, my life, my pain, how to take care of and love myself. Letting go of seeking love and support externally. Knowing that I am all I have and knowing the greatest gift I can give myself is staying with this pain and suffering and letting it transform me. Leading to a better, stronger me.

Giving Love

I've read it multiple times and yet somehow it never sank in. Giving love is what makes you feel loved. I have an infinite resource of love within me and by giving it away and sharing it openly with everyone, I can experience that love. Somehow, we are all taught that love is something someone else gives you, but that just isn't true. It's nice to be in love and there are lots of amazing chemicals released in your brain when you "fall in love" but truly loving and experiencing love comes form yourself. I can choose to feel the abundance of my love or I can choose to seek it desperately and feel empty and wanting. Which do I choose?

I can love people who don't act lovingly toward me. I can love people who hurt me or don't even know I exist. I can choose to love all people for the sake that we are all human and just trying to find our way. I can appreciate my own love and know that this love will cultivate and grow in my relationships and the people I choose to have in my life. I don't need anyone to bring love into my life, it's already here, all over the place just wanting to be acknowledged.

Love can not be taken from me or lost because it comes from within me. The feeling of losing love is false. Love is not to be lost or found, only ignored or acknowledged.

Loving kindness for myself and for the world. Choosing love rather than fear.

Relief

It's interesting how complicated emotions around certain situations can be. Relationships especially. Feeling torn and pulled in a million different directions is hard. I've just been experiencing a sense of release in letting go of old hope and desires. Obviously, that sense of relief is tied to other more difficult emotions, like sadness, loss, heartache, and at times, hopelessness. There is a certain degree of release at accepting lack of control and accepting what is, regardless of how painful. Letting love go is extremely hard for me. I think it comes from losing  my mom's love at such a young age. It left a sense of need for external sources of love and it's hard to see one of those sources disappear. There is a fear that another source will never come. Of course, if I look inward, all the love I need is already right there.  But it's also liberating in that it allows me to let go of seeking love from that source. It allows me to give up hope. Which, while it sounds bad, is actually part of the Buddhist philosophy. Giving up hope of fruition. Letting the goal go and just enjoying the journey. There is a fine line between despair and acceptance. I'm walking that line and falling off repeatedly. But I guess that's all you can do.

Growing Pains

This last year has been one of the hardest of my life. I've suffered more this last year than I can remember ever before. I guess that reflects the minds way of moving forward and letting old hurts grow dim with time. I know that a large amount of my suffering is self-induced. I know that much of it is helpful in breaking open my heart, breaking old harmful habits and putting me on a better course for my life in general. But it's been a hard, long process and often during it I've seen how nearly every person in the world has been or will be in a similar position, feeling similar pain. In fact, I feel worse for those people who never allow themselves to be where I currently am. Who build walls and maintain distance to keep from being broken open and feeling fully the pain of love and loss.

I have learned a lot through my suffering, and it's changed me in ways I probably can't yet grasp. It's daunting to know that it isn't yet over and will likely come again into my life in another shape or form. But I'm trying to be grateful for the silver lining. For changing and growing and breaking out of old habits rather than continuing and further engraining them.

Some days I don't know where I will find the strength to make it through and those days are tough, very tough. But other days I feel my own strength and wonder how I could ever question it. Like all growth and change, it hasn't been easy and that in itself is a lesson and a memory to keep.

Fear

I think fear drives much more human behavior than we choose to acknowledge. I know that for me, I often don't see the fear. I see some other emotion or drive, a desire for something or aversion to something. But upon closer examination it is often rooted in fear. Fear of pain, fear of loss, fear of a lost opportunity, fear of being seen or portrayed a certain way, or fear of the unknown future.

I think we all deal with our fear differently. Some people avoid it, avoid decisions, avoid looking into the future. Others like myself try to solidify things, collect information, and plan to alleviate the fear of the future. I guess maybe those are the differences between trying to control things or trying to avoid them. Both are driven by similar motives but approach it differently. I guess optimally you can just see the fear and make decisions and plans while maintaining some dettachment and space around outcomes and fruition. Taking action but once taken, allowing it the space to unfold as it will.

I guess it's the compromise and that idea of changing the things we can, accepting the things we can't and the wisdom to know the difference. One type of people tries to change everything and the other doesn't change anything. It's only in the balance that peace and freedom from fear is found.

I need to work on resting there. I tend to fluctuate between controlling and plannings, then seeing that impulse and throwing my hands up and pretending to not care. Can I just rest in allowing?

Seeking self

I see myself constantly judging other people. Comparing myself to them. Assessing my own beauty, intelligence, desirability, strength compared to others. I feel like I have always done this to a certain extent but being rejected seems to have amplified this insecurity in who I am. An insecurity in my value and worth. It's not so much thoughts that tell me I'm not worthy or lovable but rather just a background unease and perhaps even fear. It's hard to confront because it isn't negative thoughts that I can see and turn around or acknowledge as being untrue or unfounded. I think it's common to want to date people to boost your ego by being desired by the opposite sex and I do see myself having these urges. But I also know that what I truly need is to be secure in my own worth without a partner or without seeking reassurance from men. I feel like this is a wound that needs to be healed before examining the option of another relationship. Rushing into another relationship would likely just keep me from growing and changing and lose the opportunity that heartbreak brings. Seeking solace in another just further impedes my ability to self-comfort and inhibits learning about my true self and how to take care of that self.

Loving kindness

It's been scientifically shown that whatever habits we follow and repeat are the ones that become stronger. So with that in mind. The habit of loving kindness and acceptance are two I hope to cultivate. Optimism instead of pessimism and love instead berating myself for past mistakes or failures. Definitely easier said than done. But it is amazing to see how much meditation and mindfulness can influence you in just a short time. I'm already better at seeing my emotions when they arise and allowing them without being consumed. It truly is all about working with where you currently are, starting there and working with what is. It's never too late.

I am seeing my habitual thinking more and more. It isn't necessarily lessening but at least I'm seeing it for what it is and am less prone to going down the path. It's encouraging to see results and feel like my work is positively influencing my life, even if it's only little by little. Every now and again I get a glimpse of the freedom that exists with this kind of work and change in one's life. It's inspiring and seems to help keep me motivated on the path.

Second Half of Life

I've been reading a book called Falling Upward, that is supposed to be about the second half of one's life. The idea is that the first half of your life is spent building up your ego. Investing in who you are. Creating the image you present to the world, buying things, having relationships, having a family, creating all that your ego can take credit for. Then, if you're lucky some kind of suffering occurs which causes you to see the fallacy in this way of doing, achieving, striving and you stop. You let this go and focus more on giving and direct your energies outward.

It's interesting to me because I see the value in the second half of life as the author says and I see that it would be useful for me currently, right now, this very moment. Yet when I consider the idea of letting go this idea of constructing a life for myself. Establishing my career, meeting a partner, raising children.....I can't help but desire it and see myself driven to seek it.

The question is, is it possible to do both? To live the second half of your life earlier which still building, seeking, etc. It's the age old idea of wanting your cake and eating it to. I want the freedom that letting my ego and little go would grant me, but I don't want to have to let go of the desires of my little self. I feel like I do a good job of reigning in those desires to things I see as being "good" or "healthy" but they're still desires that bring me suffering when things stand in the way or don't come out as planned.

I feel like I could pay lip service to not wanting these things, but it would be false. I would lying to try and protect myself from the suffering that will come if my desires go unfulfilled. I guess seeing these desires is the first step and I do have moments of letting the strong ache go, and moments of peace of accepting whatever comes to pass. I do truly know that I will be fine if I don't have a partner and family ever. I can accept that it isn't in the cards for me, but it wouldn't be easy or enjoyable.

I guess the author's idea is that you do the Buddhist letting go of attachments later in life after you've had the family, love, work, etc. and realized it isn't the source of happiness. Maybe it's just been driven into us so strongly to believe that this will bring joy. I know it won't be a magic bullet and that if I am not happy without these things, I will unlikely be happy with them. Maybe that's the ticket. Finding the joy that is not reliant upon circumstances, even if you still strive for certain circumstances. That seems more manageable then letting go of my egoic desires...or at least, just yet.

Conditioned thinking

Funny how our minds work. The way they learn the patterns they do and how they imprint them deeper and deeper as time goes on. We all have our own ways of being. Our ways of perceiving the world. Our goods and bads, likes and dislikes. It amazes me that something I enjoy and love can cause another suffering, stress and anxiety and vice versa. We humans are so strange.

I've been working lately on trying to question my habits and ways of being. Questioning my aversion to things and trying to approach things with a more open mind without preset thoughts and perceptions. Not an easy thing to do but it seems so valuable. I so often just perpetuate my already entrenched believes, thoughts, and ways of being without questioning them or looking at the emotions they bring up. Where did these believes and reactions come from? How did they start and why are they perpetuated? Why do certain things bring up anxiety and fear for me?

It's interesting in that the more I do this, the more I can see the patterns and even see there origin. Some are more recent, newly developed ways of feeling that have come about over the past few years, while others feel like they have been there forever. So even in a new country, with new people, and new situations, I have unwarranted believes, feelings, and impulses that are obviously conditioned.

It's amazing to see this and then reflect on the fact that everyone in the world is this way. We all have a certain degree of auto pilot (some more than others) that dictates how we interact with the world and the people around us. Makes me more compassionate of the way people are and the things they can do that can harm me or cause me suffering. Things that could very well not even relate to me, so much as be a result of their conditioning and past.

An Unconditional Yes

Why is accepting reality so hard? Why is having an unconditional yes to the world so very difficult?

When I remind myself that it is my struggle against what is that causes suffering, I feel a sense of release. An allowing that lets down the resistance of opposition. But all too often, I don't see the resistance until the suffering is in full effect. My unconditional yes comes slow and late, if at all.

Deep down, I know that I control very little and that taking an attitude of acceptance will save me hours upon hours of strife. Yet, my ego so desperately wants to manipulate and oppose things.

I wonder if making a conscious effort to meet the day with an unconditional yes will improve my ability to accept what is. It's seems that it would. It might even become habit to accept things quietly and without a trantrum and hissyfit from my ego and mind.

I unconditionally accept what it. I say yes to life and all that it brings. Letting down the resistance and allowing life to flow as it naturally will.