Compassion is what heals us...
Pema Chodron
A Recap
As I discuss the body in terms of the teachings of A Course in Miracles I want to make sure we are all on the same page ( whether we agree or not is irrelevant). My goal is not to convince you of anything...just to share what I learned from the text and lessons, okay?
I know my last few entries are all over the place and I did not successfully accomplish what I meant to in the teaching for myself...so I probably didn't make it clear for others.
I was just trying, however poorly, to make a point that the body is not who we are. It is something "we" are in...it is a vehicle that gets us from point A to point B. It is also a tool that the mind uses.
It is different from the mind in the power it has over our lives. The mind is powerful and creative. It determines, in a great sense, what is going on in the world around us and in the body (check out past discussions on the nocebo and placebo effect).
The body does not control what is going on in the mind. It doesn't create or think for itself in the way we are conditioned to believe it does. It doesn't randomly attack us with disease and pain and malfunction. The only power the body has over our lives is the power the mind gives it.
The mind, in terms of our belief, tends to make the body more powerful than it is. The mind convinces us that the body is all powerful. That idea is just an illusion. As amazing as the body is...it does not create our experiences. The mind does. In other words, the mind controls the body yet we tend to erroneously believe it is the body controlling our experiences.
The body , however, can help us understand what is going on in the mind. When the body gets sick...there is something going on in the mind that needs to be corrected. The body then can be used as a learning instrument to help us correct the mind.
Does that, what A Course teaches about the body, make sense so far?
Ultimately we are on a mission to heal the mind. Right?
So what tool can we use to heal the mind...especially one that might fear what the body is doing and fear what Life is doing? (As in my personal example.)
We know we want to train the mind( and thus the body) to behave differently. We want to step away from old habitual patterns of reacting and do something differently. We want to partake in a practice that is more effective in reducing our sense of suffering. We want peace over mental stress.
So what do we do?
Let's look at two things before we go farther:
What is the old habitual way the mind responds to "unpleasant" things?
The habitual mind is one so many of us get lost in. It involves a pattern of building story, narrating, judging our experiences, creating preferences that we open up to and defining the unwanted things we judge as bad that we close up to. In other words, we habitually tend to, as human beings, go toward and cling to the pleasurable in our outer world experience, and close up and push away the unpleasurable.
We tend to outwardly seek gratification from life experiences that we have been conditioned to believe are pleasurable and that do feel good when we experience them. We do feel good when we find a soul mate . We do feel good when we land our dream job. We do feel good when others approve of us. Is that enough?
We also tend to avoid, close up to or push away experiences that we have been conditioned to believe are bad...like physical pain, shame, anger, fear, other people who trigger us, and circumstances that do not gratify us etc.
In terms of the body...we open up to things that make it feel good and do whatever we can to avoid or stop it from feeling bad. We get a pain, for example ...we judge it as bad because we have been conditioned to believe it is bad. We then automatically begin to use the mind to complain about it or create story about it (when we create story, narrate, complain...what we are doing is taking ourselves out of the body where the pain is and into our minds...so in a sense we are detaching from the actual moment and escaping into the unreality of our thinking about it). If that doesn't work we do whatever we can to "numb" the pain with substances or we look to something or someone outside ourselves to end the pain. We are closing up to the pain.
Now I am using the body as an example here but that thing we close up to can be anything we deem as unpleasant like a boring experience waiting, dealing with an angry boss, having a fight with a dishonest spouse, or feeling ourselves becoming irate as we deal with misbehaving children. It can be as it is in my situation dealing with other individuals who for whatever reason have a different agenda than mine.
But since we are talking about the body we will use the example of the physical pain I am experiencing in my body and the circumstances around it.
What is suffering then?
The habitual conditioned and collective mind will tell us that suffering is having to deal with all these unpleasant things. Suffering is the pain, the illness, the terrible thing someone did or said. Suffering is the shame and the fear, the anger and resentment.
A Course in Miracles, and most Buddhist teachings , I am thinking most specifically of Tonglen at the moment) tells us differently. It tells us that suffering is not that feeling or situation that is happening in our moment. It is what we tend to do with it. When we judge an experience as bad and then attempt close up to it ...avoid it, resist it , struggle against it...that is where suffering comes from.
What if the thing we are trying to avoid actually made us happy and more peaceful in the long run...would you still want to push it away? No...it is still the same thing...but because it was not something we felt the need to push away, we no longer suffer.
The problem is not the experience...it is our attempt to resist it and close up to it that brings suffering. Why do we resist it and close up? Because we have come to believe it (whatever that unpleasant thing is) is bad and to be avoided. Why do we believe this? Because we made a metal judgment about it based on what we were taught in the past. We judged it as bad.
When we follow the habitual tendencies, we make judgments and preferences instead of looking at everything in a neutral light. If we were not conditioned to believe pain was a bad thing and that it should be avoided...we would not avoid pain. We would not close up to it. If we were not taught that fear was to be avoided we would not avoid fear. We would not build story and narration around our experiences and we would just feel and deal with whatever showed up in our moment.
Yes I have physical pain and my mind wants to convince me that is a bad thing. It drags me, when I allow it to, on a big long story making journey from one thought, one judgment about it to another. That is how I resist the physical pain. I get lost in a story about it. I end up "suffering" more because of it. I fear, feel stress, anger, frustration...all because I get a spasm of pain.
What we can do with pain instead of getting lost in a habitual pattern of reacting? Tonglen
Step One: Remove the story Line and Feel
We can stay open to the pain...we can just allow it. We get rid of the story, the narration, the thinking we have built around it and we just feel!
I need to put aside my "this could be..."; and my "I can't get a diagnosis..." and my "He did this or that..." that take me out of my moment. I must just be willing to sit with and feel the pain. I may notice fear as I sit here with my physical pain that prevents me from experiencing it openly...I take away the words around the worry and I just feel the fear. I may notice I feel anger and mistrust...I remove the story line and just sit with anger and mistrust. I sit and feel.
Step Two: Remind self that others feel the same
This is where the compassion comes in. We sit and feel our own sense of pain but extend that feeling to all others out there that feel a similar pain. There were other women that day that had lumps, were fearful of what that might mean for them , and from what I have been told received the same lectures, and are therefore possibly feeling the same frustration and confusion that I am feeling. There are others who have physical pain without knowing what the cause is ( the cause is the story...the pain is the reality). There are others who are feeling fear, worry, anger and frustration for whatever reason. (The reason is the story, the feeling is the reality) . That could even include the person we may feel frustration toward...maybe they too feel fear, worry, anger and frustration and that is what is leading them to act in the way they are.
Step Three: Set your intentions for others as well as self
So we breathe in a genuine desire that all those who are just like us in their suffering be free of such suffering and we breathe out the hope for a peaceful, healed mind and body for everyone.
That is Tonglen...that is a compassionate practice. That is what I wish to master.
All is well in my world.
Pema Chodron (Sept 2016) Good Medicine Part 1: How to Turn Pain into Compassion with Tonglen Meditation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gzMOY1AI_M
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