Shunyata

When we feel tense, when we feel pain, when we feel shaky, we have no encouragement to relax and soften our stomach and our shoulders and our mind and our heart. Any time you want to make something of your life, let go. ...This is how your life becomes workable.
-Pema Chodron, page 170

Are you busy, like I have been for most of my life and recently discovered I still am, "doing" to make your life workable?  In other words, are you using action to numb from what you judge as painful or uncomfortable?

Still Numbing

All my talk, all my meditating, my yoga, my present moment practicing , my reading and writing about sinking into the present moment and I am still very much a doing addict.  I was shocked to realize that. 

My sister, a writer, asked me the other day how my writing was going.  She then asked if I found my new role as a yoga teacher interfering with my writing and my attempts at publication (submission by the way is the most time consuming and challenging part of the writing process).  I didn't remind her that I am also taking a photography course, trying to feng-shui my house the KondoMari way, renovating  and dealing with more family crisis than a soap opera script has on it while I still try to finish my novel and submit other material I have written.  That simple innocent question made me realize that  I am doing a lot.

Doing: The Drug of Choice

Why?  There is so much emotional tension brewing inside me from all that is going on around me, the loss of a beloved career and the identity that goes with it, fear over my future  etc that I am using "doing" as my drug of choice right now in an attempt to make this life at least seem workable.  If I numb, I tell myself without really realizing that I am telling myself anything, I can get through it all. I can fill in some of the gaping holes in my ego with one activity goal after another. I can distract from the demanding with the less demanding.

Ugh!!!  What that actually means is that I am not yet where I want to be.  I am far from still.  I am far from recovered from my addictive tendencies.

Shunyata

Instead of numbing with activity we need to let go and allow all that we deem unpleasant into the space that is us.  We need to let go and fall into what the Buddhists term shunyata,. Shunyata is traditionally known as emptiness.  I prefer this definition offered in How to Meditate: "open dimension of our being."  (page, 154)

We need to allow everything into that open spaciousness that is us, make more room for it if we have to.  All this numbing, this pushing it away, this resistance of what is, does not make the suffering go away. It adds to it.  It doesn't make life workable.

My life isn't all that "workable" right now.  It is busy, scattered, disorganized and I have so many semi-unrealistic  goals I can't seem to accomplish any of them. Like the monkey mind, it is a little crazy taking me further away from my true goal of peace. Letting go of my resistance will make it workable.

Instead of numbing, we need to accept.  Instead of resisting feeling we need to allow.  Instead of doing we need to find more stillness and instead of tensing up to life we need to relax into it. This is the true healing shunyata provides. Let go!

All is well.

References

Chodron, Pema ( 2013) How to Meditate. Boulder: Sounds True.