Month: January 2024

Posted on by joseph mauricio

AWAKENING

AWAKENING TO EMOTIONS

Every moment we become aware is a new beginning. Each time we come back to ourselves and the moment we are inhabiting, we have a fresh start. Although, most of the time the “stains” or attachments of our previous moments linger. So we enter our new moment with some baggage. Have you ever awoken in a good mood, only to remember you were in a break up, or had just lost a job and so felt obligated to go back to suffering?

Acknowledging how we are actually feeling is an important step in our fresh start. “I’m still feeling guilty”, “I’m still angry”. Felt senses often remain, like a veil over our next moment. Wiping the sleep from our eyes, we sometimes wake in the morning with echoes of our night’s dreaming like a cloak around us. Sometimes we don’t remember the details of the dream, but the feeling remains. Maybe this points to something peculiar in our daily life. The story is often ephemeral, while the feelings are more tangible. This experience is the opposite of our conventional approach where we believe thoughts and ignore our feelings. We attach to our version of events while diminishing or ignoring how we feel.  But our version of events relies on thoughts. And thoughts are notoriously unreliable.

Feelings, on the other hand, are happening in real time, in our body.

Trauma is often long past, but residual feelings from that pain may be happening now. So, we believe if we investigate the story, we will find a way of resolving the feeling. And perhaps this is sometimes helpful, but the way we feel right now is the best way to release the turmoil our body is creating in the moment. Feel the feeling. Don’t define it, or judge it. Just feel and sense where your body is reacting.  Feelings keep generating and updating the trauma narrative, so the actual events have morphed into entirely new scenarios. Often we take these iterations as fact, and dismiss our feelings as fantasy. And sadly, we often transfer the past scenario onto the present or the future. We are regretful of the past and gunshy of the present as we plan for a catastrophic future.

Understanding emotions begins with a willingness to accept our feelings right here, right now. It develops as that familiarity allows us to become less and less afraid of them  At some point we may realize that we can honor our feelings just as they are. That life is enriched by our feelings. In fact, our feelings and emotions might be the most human thing about our lives. The pain in our heart is what characterizes humanity. It is also happening now. If we are willing to accept and look into the felt senses, our discomfort might guide us more deeply into our life. It’s possible that although we re often afraid of our feelings and dismissive of emotions, feelings and emotions are the point of living.

Often emotional being is frequently described as an inner child. And like a child, we can learn to love and care for our broken heart so that our feelings become less crusty and defensive, and more tender. To some this seems a weakness. But it is the unfeeling crust of our defenses that create a calcification of our natural empathy and compassion. Our life becomes warped around our defenses. Our body holds tension in a misguided attempt to outrun our past. Our mind reiterates and projects catastrophe in a misguided attempt to protect ourselves from the future. And so the “bandits of hope and fear” rob us of the present. And the most important part of our life is happening in the present.

As with children, our fear of the responsibility might cause us to push them away or try to control their experiences. We might feel that our anger and anxiety are necessary to protect them. But is that the best way to protect them? The children are the point, not the obstacle. And while we can honor our children and our inner child, we can’t let then lead. Children need leadership and guidance as well as love. In the same way, working with emotions implies work. How can we honor our feelings, but still incorporate our intelligence so that we can protect our heart and ourselves? The answer begins right here. Come back. Release judgement. Allow the experience to unfold. See that the child is its own being and learn to de-fuse our reactive defenses and see them as other. I have fear. I have anger. I have jealousy. But I am not those things. I am the awake being that experiences but doesn’t identify. I am the awake being that allows. I am the awake being that cares. But I am not longer a child. I am the awake being that holds the child and allows it to grow.

And just as children grow, our emotions will change if we are not clinging to them. This is called “holding open space.” Be present but allow the changes to happen. Anger may turn to sadness, sadness to openness, openness to courage. We can protect our heart and still allow it to breath. In fact, we can allow it to sing and to dance and to love.

I love the story about how in modern times we need to describe feelings and proscribe an antidote. When a patient is depressed doctors administer medication which implies treating a disease. We often identify with our diagnosis. “I am bipolar”. “I am neurodivergent.” I have adhd.” And these become defects we try and change. In native cultures when a depressed person came to the healer the healer would ask “when did you stop dancing”. “When did you stop singing?”  Maybe there is nothing to fix and everything to love. Loving our sadness, loving our pain, loving our tenderness, loving our joy. These are the doorways to our life.

Notice. Accept. Feel. Release.

This is awakening.

 

 

Posted on by joseph mauricio

THE UNRELIABLE WITNESS

We are not what we think.

This is frequently heard in meditation circles. The path of meditation serves to uncover the fickleness of our thought process so that we can see beyond ourselves. Our thoughts don’t define us, as much as keep us entertained. If we give ourselves over to the path of meditation, we might end up finding there is more to ‘me’ than we thought.

Many of us want to change. We feel if we can do this, or adopt that, drink this, or stop eating that, life will be better. WE will be better.  However, if we have pre-conditions as to what change should be, we will likely change into versions of what we know. Instead of allowing change to change us, we want to control the outcome. But nothing in life is entirely as we expect. When I stopped drinking I had very grand ideas of how I would improve. I thought I needed these expectations for motivation. I will be thinner without the calories, I will be clearer in my life goals, I will make more money.  Naturally, as expectations set up discouragement, grand expectations are the precondition for great disappointment. So, like many, so often, I fell off the wagon in frustration. I would build myself up only to be let down. And this led me back to the same patterns for comfort. Whether I was so amazing or disheartened, this game kept spinning until finally my discouragement led me to just crash and, in exhaustion, just stay there. Once I got over the shock of not having the old pattern to rely on, I slowly began to see a life beyond my expectations. And it began and ended right here on the earth.

I saw what my Buddhist teachers were always pointing toward, that life was beyond my ability to control or define. That was the bad news and the good news. Rather than living out the patterns of my conditioning, life became more about discovery. Instead of believing that my ideas were real, I could STFU and see what was actually happening. Life from the vantage of my cushion was clearer.  There is an old saying “disappointment is the chariot of liberation”. As much as it hurts to hit bottom, if we are patient and willing to stay with ourselves, we might begin to see life more clearly. The path of meditation practice is one of removing the scales, or dropping the veils, that obscure reality. We become quite taken with our powerful minds. Mind is an amazing tool if we are able to access our higher power and see the fluctuations of our thought process. It could be said that even our mind is not what we think. It is much more than that. However, we limit its potential by iterating the reiterations of our thoughts again and again. But while our mind is vast, our thinking brain is only seeing what it has been conditioned to see. How much do we believe what we’ve been taught? And, while much of that serves us well, it is simply not all there is to life.  When a student of Trungpa, Rinpoche asked a particularly complicated and confused question he would lovingly say “it seems you are not a reliable witness.”

Really? but this is my life and my mind! I’ll do it my way! Well, okay then, but don’t complain when the outcome is always the same. And while we’re tightening the grip on our opinions, we fail to see that opinions keep changing. We fall in love with that perfect person only to realize this was not the one. We might move from town to town, or change our room or our hair color trying to define that illusive “me”.  We go from remedy to remedy to staunch the same wounds. We keep eliciting people in our lives to help us work through the same scenarios. Caught in the turbulence of needs, wants and desires we believe anything that will keep us from crashing. But, maybe crashing is just what we need. Maybe we need to hit bottom.

When asked about enlightenment, Trungpa said it may be at our lowest point. We fancifully think of a sage on the mountaintop or a bearded all know it all in the clouds. But maybe liberation is right here. Letting the ego jenga fall around us so we can begin to see what is there. The path of meditation is said to lead to “valid cognition.” We begin to boycott the hall of mirrors of our discursive mind and step past the veil into seeing things are they are. And that cannot be predetermined. How could it? Once we step from telling and retelling ourselves what other people have told us to tell ourselves, we might see life enfolding in real time. In meditation practice, everytime we recognize our distraction, and come back to the breath we are pushing the veil aside. In time, as we stop believing in the dramas, we can just let the veil be. When we realize it’s not real we can smile at the fabrictions we create. Smile and let go. Smile and return to the breath. Sakyong Mipham refers to this as the “displaysive quality of mind.” It is the mind displaying its creativity. The idea is to let it go, so that the display can be fresh and creative. Thoughts are like rainbow paintings. Watercolors on a rainy sidewalk. They can be quite beautiful. They can be frightening. But they can’t hurt, if we don’t believe them. Thinking is a radio in another room. If I believe it’s about me I’m holding on to the airwaves. I’m making the display solid. And that kills creativity.

Believing our thinking is a rookie mistake. It’s spiritually naive. If we keep recognizing we are caught, and returning to what is real right now, in the present, we will begin to stabilize the mind. Stability of mind is the requisite condition for clarity. When we see clearly, we know what is. And that is ever changing. And rarely ever what we expect.

Posted on by joseph mauricio

IN LIVING SERVICE

IN LIVING SERVICE – Commemorating the Life of Dr. King

I’m writing on the day set aside to commemorate the life and service of Dr. Martin Luther King, which this year falls on his actual birthdate, Jan 15. To many, it marks a time to reflect on our lives and the contribution to peace, equality and understanding we may be making. It is also a day of remembrance of a fellow human who took on the superhuman task of changing the mind of the world in the face of great opposition.

And to some it is a day off. And, if so, I hope you have a good day. But, I wonder what we’re taking a day away from? Chogyam Trungpa, when asked if he ever took a day off responded, “a day off from what?” I heard an interview with Yolanda Renee King and Martin Luther King III and they asked that anyone willing might reflect on their service to the Doctor’s vision today. I thought, what service can I provide today? Reaffirming my commitment to this view, which is none other than the view of the Bodhisattva, is a good start. But am I actively supporting that view or just paying spiritual lip service?  What service commitment do I have to my fellows and what actions may I take to further that commitment. And do I ever take a day off?

From the point of view of the Way of The Bodhisattva, we ground our effort in the primary vow of not causing harm to self or others. This very much equates to Dr. King’s commitment to nonviolence. So, any compassionate action is primarily based on an important non-action, or what Buddhists refer to as renunciation. You might look at it as an offering our attachment to violence. I am letting go of aggression in order to support love. That might seem obvious, but so much hatred and destruction is seen as justified retaliation for wrongs endured.  It seems a natural response. However fire answering fire burns everything.  Aggression is forever at the ready for any human unable, or unwilling, to see further.  A commitment to nonviolence urges us to look beyond an easy reaction.  In most cases, aggression is about self-protection. In renouncing violence we have little alternative but to communicate with others. Although nonviolence is the necessary first commitment, our service has to be built on a positive view. The addict puts down the drug, but is being clean and sober sustainable if they have nothing to live for? Once we put down the drug of violence, like the newly sober addict, we are naked and alone. We need faith to sustain us. Sobriety cannot be the goal, it must be our life, one day at a time. But where is our renunciation heading?

The Bodhisattva’s next vow is to offer service to the world and to try to relieve the suffering of bengs. The Dalai Lama said, “Do what you can to help others. And if you can’t help them, at least don’t hurt them.” These are the two foundational vows. Our view is to help the world, which is an aspirational vow and our commitment is to not cause harm, which is our requisite, one breath at a time.  And should we fall off the wagon? Well, the only remedy is to get back on. Unlike other drugs, aggression is so ingrained in our consciousness, we will likely fall back on it, believing in a panicked moment that it is the only answer to justice. But, when it becomes clear that we are only creating more hatred for ourselves and our world, the work is to go back to renunciation.  Just lay down the sword.  Once we are back we can see that violence is usually self-serving. It is aggression masquerading as helping others. We are lashing out in the name of justice.  But in truth, we panicked. We are triggered. We are not acting mindfully.  Perhaps violence needs to be employed in some instances. But, as violence begets violence, who’s violence is justified? In global conflict, warfare is often influenced by the constituency of the aggressors. Leaders want to stay in power. Their violence, hatred and bigotry are self-serving. It’s easier to amass power by rallying against a foe than to offer understanding. But, which approach is more sustainable? The fact that our societies are based on principles of defence makes it seem so. This is how life is. To many, life is a bloodsport with winning as the only goal. But, winning what, exactly? A bruised and torn world?

Dr. King saw that picking up arms against his enemies was selfish and self-defeating no matter how justified it felt. Many of his followers advocated violence, as though violence toward the populace would end in justice for all and happiness. Dr. King saw this as folly.  He told his followers that they would be playing into their enemies’ strength. Bigots have been practicing aggression for their entire lives, he told them.  So, he proposed an alternative. He said that God told us to love our enemy.  And then with characteristic skillfulness added, ‘he didn’t say we had to like them.’  In this way, he proposed using love as a method. Love is greater than hatred. Our very existence is proof of this. We are all products of love. We can look to the world with love and see possibility, or we can look to our world in hatred and see life shutting down. But, saying love is stronger than hatred, or peace is greater than violence, is just the view.  Love is not possible without daily renunciation and daily action.  It seems humans must retake these vows again and again. I will not react in hatred. I will foster love. I will not choose the limited method of violence no matter how powerful it feels. I will choose possibility. Love itself is just a word. Love without renunciation and action is just a hallmark card. But actively working to renounce hatred and to foster understanding can be a daily path. In this way, we are living a life of service, one day at a time.  As long as there is life to live for, there are no days off.

The Bodhisattva’s ultimate vow is service to the world. It is recommended that this offering of service be made with the Mahayana view of “no giver, no gift and no receiver”. This is to say that our offering of love and understanding to the world may have no immediate effect. It may even seem the opposite. Our giving may not aggrandize ourselves at all. We may gain nothing but the strength to continue. And that strength will grow, because we are choosing life. Service is not about us. It’s about living for the world. It’s about gently, but persistently, moving the wheel toward life. And all of this begins in our own heart. The choice can be quite subtle. It can be in our own mind, in our own thoughts. Judging, manipulating, lying are acts of aggression as they lead to separation and isolation. Caring, listening and understanding are choosing connection to life. And addicts know addiction is bred in isolation and recovery develops with connection.

Opening the heart is opening to life. It is not easy. It takes daily work to change ourselves. And it will take daily work to encourage the world to change. It will require a life of living service.

Posted on by joseph mauricio

SPECTRUM OF ATTACHMENT

I wrote a wonderful post about the power of letting go.  And then somehow my laptop ate it, and I lost the post in the either. Just gone. Fitting, no?  Not only was I forced to let go of my oh so brilliant hard work, but I also had to stop my futile attempts to salvage it. And then I had to stop trying to rewrite it.

Letting go, it seems, is letting go. And now the post is about attachment, of course.

So here goes…

 

THE SPECTRUM OF ATTACHMENT – THE STRONGER OUR NEED, THE GREATER WE CLING

Pema Chodron once said, the Buddha was someone who walked out the door, and just kept walking. HIs life stands as a testament of liberation from economic, spiritual or emotional encumberments.  Many people interpret this to mean that attachments are bad, and that we should let go of everything at all cost. But while renunciation is the foot of meditation, once we have loosened our grip on things, the path to liberation continues back to service to our world. What about our families, friends and communities? And what of the Buddha’s own family? Were they actually smiling beatifically  in shining light as he walked away? Probably not, as they undoubtedly had their own attachments. It always hurts to free our attachments. Sometimes it has to happen for our own growth and the health of others. But, when we do release the attachment, it’s possible to come back with a fresh perspective. Siddhartha left family and position, but when he became awakened, the Buddha gathered sangha and his family around him in a community of wakefulness. 

It is possible to see the path of the Buddha in stages. The blissful ignorance of his self absorbed privilege, the renunciation of entitlement, his enlightenment, and his return to the world as a teacher, healer and sage. The first stages can be seen as allegorical. We are kept in the darkness of comfortable entitlement until we give in to the nagging internal pressure to discover what else there is for us. In order to do that, we might turn away from our attachment to the life we know, especially if that attachment is causing pain for ourselves or others. At some point, however, we might return to the things with which we were attached with love and awareness and in so doing find healthy ways to express our love. Modern psychologists talk of attachment theory, delineating a spectrum of pathological and healthy attachments. From the perspective of our spiritual path, we can look at the phenomenon of attachment and similarly see it has positive and negative qualities depending on our intention. Aside from seeing its positive possibilities, we might even see that demonizing attachment is in itself an attachment. It all depends on our intention.

When we are feeling confident, comfortable and content, we are less likely to cling to our attachments. The worse we feel, the lower our self-assessment, the harder we cling to things. This clinging becomes a panicked grasping at golden straws, enticing but ultimately without essence.  The more we cling , the more we strangle the object of our clinging and the less we are able receive sustenance from our connection. When we don’t receive sustenance, our hunger grows. The hungrier we are, the more we cling. THe more we cling, the less we see. This is a shame, particularly when the things to which we are clinging are important to us. So we have an understandable attachment. But when we lose our sense of self-worth, we begin to grip and cling. Then we stop seeing the object. We have gone from appreciation to need. At that point, we no longer see the object of our clinging for who they are. They have become merely bling in our narcissistic ensemble, accessories to our masquerading. Even those we pretend to love become conflated into two dimensional tools. How often are we not seen even surrounded by those who profess to love us? We are objects of attachment. This feels hollow. And when we feel hollow? The reflexive remedy is for us to cling to something else.

But it is important to remember the doctrine of Basic Goodness. If we are able to see the goodness in anything, we can develop the ability to understand it. Attachment is the same energy, in essence, as mindfulness. The word for mindfulness in Tibetan is “Trenpa” which means “to hold to”. But mindfulness in the meditative sense implies awareness. And attachment in the pathological sense implies non-awareness.  This apparent binary can be seen more clearly as a spectrum that extends from the open awareness of appreciation to the bling panic grasping of reflex. The role of confidence is key. Confidence allows us to hold to that which we love with  open palms. Confidence, or you may say faith allows us to see and appreciate the things we love. Confidence also allows us to let them grow and become what they are meant to be. On the other hand, the greater our feeling of emotional poverty, the more need. The more we need, the more fearful we are, and the tighter we cling. The tighter we cling, the less we see. The less we see the more fearful we are, the tighter we cling. So our work is to begin to see this process, so that we can honor our world instead of trying to control it. 

I have developed a map of the spectrums to help recognize the stages of mindfulness / attachment. But the basic point is, are we opening up in confident awareness or shutting down in reaction to fear?

This is not a solid system. In fact, it’s pretty much made up. You can create your own map, or your own words. Although, I am particularly attached to mine, so here we go:

PERCEPTION > APPRECIATION > OPENING > CONFIDENCE > INQUISITIVENESS > COMMUNICATION / GROWTH >

PERCEPTION > FEAR > NARROWING > PROJECTION > OWNERSHIP > IDENTIFICATION > ADDICTION / ISOLATION

 

 

Posted on by joseph mauricio

EVERY WAKING STEP

EVERY WAKING STEP

I am writing this on the first day of the solar calendar year. New Year’s Day is seen as a time of renewal and stepping forward. However, most of us are working through the fog of our hangovers, as we try to remember what it was we’re moving past as we tentatively stumble toward wherever it is we’re going.

We have funny glasses and lipstick stains and a raging headache. Even I, who have been clean and sober for several years, are working off a sugar and carb rush from gorging on bad food. Why? To prove I’m happy. Sometimes my life feels like a series of emotional selfies trying to convince myself of something.  And so we begin the new year already buried in the past. We have grand resolutions, so inspiring today that we’ll maybe forget them in a week. In my drinking days, I would crumble the life around me, just to see myself build it back. I had a friend who told me I was simultaneously anal expulsive and anal retentive. Clean it up and tear it down. Clean it up and tear it down. And part of this crazy cycle were the outsized resolutions I would make. Inspirations that became obligations, forgotten soon enough that would be resurrected next year.  We all wish for world peace.

But what would it be like to appreciate each moment in my life? What would it be like to actually be present for my life? This would necessarily be a very slow process. One step at a time. Thich Nhat Hanh said “peace in every moment”. Bill Wilson suggested “one day at a time.” Ram Das wrote “Be Here Now.” What if this year my resolution was not an outsized or grand demand, that leads to disappointment? What if instead I resolved to step one foot after the next in humble acceptance of my life as it unfolds?  Acceptance need not be resignation. Patience need not be grin-and-bearing our pain. Acceptance of the moment can be a relief. I don’t have to try at life. I can just be. Accepting ourselves and our life as it is. Acceptance means finding life’s rhythm and dancing along. And humility suggests that we can fit into life instead of forcing life to submit to our fleeting and ever changing demands. This would reduce life down to that which we can predict or conceive. The only way we control anything is to reduce it down to a small enough space to manipulate.  Life should be bigger than we are. Life could be a space into which we can grow. And when life becomes too much, linstead of warring against the inevitable, we can learn to shift disappointment to encouragement.  Remembering to dance and to sing. Releasing the grip of demand on our life is a relief.

Remembering those we have lost as an inspiration for us to live. No one that had truly loved us would want their passing to diminish our lives.  The ones we have loved may be gone, but our love for them remains. If they loved us they would wish for us to love ourselves. In fact, it may be that there is an essential element of the universe that wants desperately to love us, if we would only learn to let it.

This year, I will burn the to-do list, even for a day. This year my bucket list will have nothing on it. This year I resolve to erase all the demands I make on myself and watch myself become. I resolve to see what life brings.  And, I resolve to remain as joyful as I can in the face of the changes that life brings. Waking in every moment. One step at a time.

But, one step at a time doesn’t imply looking only at the ground. While it is important to remember where we are, we’ve seen our feet. Life is happening all around us, all the time. I can remember my steps, but then remember to raise my gaze and look at my world. And if that becomes overwhelming or distracting? Then I come back to now. The key to being present is to enter a flow where I’m here, looking around, getting lost, and then coming  back.

Facing life with acceptance and humility, one magical step at a time.