DOUBT
At our core, we all have a strong innate life force energy. Although sometimes it doesn’t feel this way, we have everything we need. We just doubt that we can do it. It’s a cornerstone of materialist culture that we always think we need more. The implication here is we’re not enough as we are. Yet, we fundamentally don’t need to increase our sense of wellness via artificial means such as caffeine, drugs, or other dopamine precursors. In fact, some of those might deplete us in the long term. Sometimes we confuse the things we take for energy for our life force. Coffee is not windhorse. Neither are our attachments or addictions. Although any of these may provide a temporary uplift or distraction.
The point is, distractions are not the point. We are, at the core, enough.
OKay truth is, I love my coffee in the morning. While good coffee, rousing music, falling in love, or cranking ourselves up on Instagram can make us feel alive for a while, sometimes we’re masking deeper needs. This creates a drain on our spiritual being. And while there is nothing inherently wrong with any activity we enjoy, there seems to be a problem when we believe we need it to get out the door. When we become reliant on these attachments, they become obstacles that block the flow of our life force. While we don’t need to increase our life force by artificial means, we can block our life force and sense of wellbeing quite easily. We can behave in ways that erode wellness. From a meditation perspective, we look at clinging and grasping – our attachments – as blocking the flow of our life force. So, the question is, what are the blockages to the flow of our life force? And how can we work with them?
Many meditation traditions refer to blockages as obstacles or hindrances. They are usually places we are holding on out of anger, desire, or ignorance. We may be holding on in our belly, or our shoulders. We may be holding on to an idea or philosophy. We may be holding on to a resentment toward another. Regardless, we are grasping at straws as way to escape the torrents we experience in life. Whether or not we recognize or acknowledge these attachments, they are causing blockages to the flow of our life force, our joy, and our life.
Throughout history, the image of a flowing river has been used by meditation traditions as a practical analogy. The flow of our consciousness is akin to the flow of a river. Sometimes we let go into the process and other times we get distracted by something compelling on the shore. This impedes our flow as we hang on. If we are very triggered, we might grasp at straws we believe will save us. Sometimes we hold on white knuckled for dear life. All of us have places that we can’t let go. And this takes self-forgiveness. We don’t have to fix everything. But we can begin to see the places that we are holding on and refusing to evolve. External circumstances may have caused our suffering, but we are nonetheless holding on.
Whether minor distractions of major post-traumatic reaction, we can feel these blockages in our bodies as we grip. Grrrrrrrrr.
From the Buddhist perspective, the eye-level process to recovery is to identify obstacles and then find communication with them. We begin with recognition, and then acknowledging that this is not our fault, it’s a fear-based reaction to pain. Then the next level is to look into the experience and find whatever issue they are trying to communicate. In extreme cases, we may not be able to access the core of our trauma, but we usually can see what we are experiencing in the moment. This is what the Buddha referred to as “removing the arrow first.” WE might notice “I’m frightened” or “I’m worried”. And that may be enough to begin the conversation.
As we develop awareness, we become familiar with these panicked voices. As we gain familiarity, they become less threatening. In time, we have the opportunity to become friendly toward them, and this is the real healing. This is developing and employing compassion. Once we become friendly with the problem we can begin to try and understand it. This 4-step method (RAIN) is a skillful means to develop compassion.
The Shambhala Teachings highlight a category of blockages known as the “Trap of Doubt”. Doubt belies confidence and creates an energetic depression that gives way to clinging to any number of self-limiting patterns that are further blockages, or obstacles in our life. When our life force (windhorse) is low, our emotional / psychological immune system becomes compromised and we become vulnerable to adventitious emotional ailments. When our windhorse is low we doubt ourselves and fall victim to our mind and our environment. We become prone to indulge in the grasping actions that further block our windhorse. On the other hand, virtuous thoughts and actions remove obstacles and allows energy to flow naturally. When our lifeforce is high mental afflictions roll off our backs.
So, to reverse the pathological effects of doubt, we can look into our experience and avoid the things that rob our life of energetic meaning. Here is a list of actions that the Shambhala School has identified as obstacles to experiencing joy. We can look into these in order to help release our minds into the flow of life.
Categories of Doubt
- Anxiety
- Jealousy
- Forgetfulness
- Arrogance
- Slandering / gossip
- Body and Mind are not Synchronized.
So, how do you experience self-doubt? How does this doubt lead to unhealthy attachments that further block our lifeforce? As we recognize doubt, we can begin to relax our attachments and let the flow of life – already in progress – resume.
Our picture today was photo I took from FIT’s graffiti board on 7th ave.
I’ve been planning on writing this post for years. Recently, my notes have been 
GRATITUDE is not only a nice thing to feel, it is a powerful spiritual practice. It is a way of opening to the world with positivity and love. Yet, gratitude is all too often lost in the pressures of our materialistic world. This kind thought doesn’t hold much value to the self-mesmerized ego-mind. Ego whispers that the world has taken so much from us we need to grab some back. Its dangerous, these whispers opine, to acknowledge the kindness the world has offered us. Perhaps we might jinx it, or maybe we’ll weaken our position.
Today’s New Moon marks a new beginning to the Tibetan reading of the Lunar New Year. And whether you celebrate only the Gregorian / Julian / solar new year, or count the lunar calendar from another date, any new moon is a time of reassessment and rebirth. In the darkest eve of the coming of the light, we connect to the womb, the mother the progenitor of our race and being.
Life has many challenges. We would do well to recognize these and relax into them. The I Ching says during times of difficulty, be like water. Wait and build up your strength. Then, when the time is right, you have the energy to flow around the obstacles. I
I want to talk about a very practical application of our meditation practice. Aside from spiritual development or enlightenment, meditation can be seen as a means to secure health and healing in our daily life. The view is not to fix anything but to support ourselves in a very physical way that creates the space for healing.
When I was a child, it was common for fathers to keep long hours at work or travel away from home. The dad’s were swimming upstream to compete in a society making its long slide away from the warmth of the family to the insatiable urges of the marketplace. We had come through the war, and before that the great depression. After that societal trauma we ended up on the winning side and didn’t look back. There seemed no limit to prosperity, as long as we were willing to work hard enough.
scarcity of an immigrant journey, the great depression, and the feeling that we had to scramble madly to compete with the world we saw on TV, lodged in our bellies and arteries. The more we had, the more we seemed to need. Food was a panacea. It brought family together, it was what we did when we celebrated, and it was how we grieved. As an adult, I was conditioned to believe that more was the answer to everything. There is so much love in this picture. But, as there was an underlying fear, there was a lack of awareness. I became addicted to anything that would give me energy, calm me down, or quiet the screaming inside. I never learned to see myself as enough. And the trumpeting of more, more, more helped to drown out my feelings. This over consumption is naturally not sustainable.