Respond...

Watch your thoughts; they become your words;
watch your words, they become your actions;
watch your actions, they become your habits;
watch your habits, they become your character;
watch your character, that becomes your destiny.
Lao Tzu ?

I am not sure for certain that Lao Tzu said this...I have studied the Tao Te Ching but do not know which verse or translation they come from.  But it sounds like something he would say lol and many sources credit these words to him.

Anyway, I was reminded of them during another fantastic dharma talk by Tara Brach.  (I really, really like her teachings.) And because I was thinking about "thinking" lol and more specifically our propensity to go negative and what that does to the version of reality we experience.

The last two dharma talks I listened to from Tara Brach have come to me at the precise moment I seemed to need them, helping me deal with an issue in my life.  Helping me to respond rather than react.

The Programming and Core Beliefs

In my programming, my store consciousness, my conditioning, the memory center of my brain (hippocampus) are core beliefs.  These beliefs are triggered and become further ingrained in my mind as "truth" because of past experiences.  One of the core beliefs I have is that "Drugs and addiction, like some social and rampant curse,  are everywhere and I need to protect my children from them. They are all so vulnerable . "  And believe me... I have had plenty of circumstantial evidence to convince me that this was true. Whether my fear driven belief actually led to the manifestation of the evidence, or the evidence before me led to the manifestation of the belief is still not 100% clear.  I am learning to lean more toward the idea that our thoughts create our reality.

I recently had another activation of this core belief which led to intense fear, worry, anger and this reactive mode of judging, assuming, and fighting off the "evil" doers or influences.  I reacted big time.  It started as a little thought leading to a little fear and built into a full reactive mode of thinking, feeling and behaving in a way that I knew was not helpful. I once again, found myself rocking back and forth in the rocker all night, as I have spent many nights as a mother doing over the years.

I would see some possible "evidence" and I would fly off into reactivity. 

Certain individuals entered my home, through someone who knew someone who knew my loved one. I had the  strongest "Mama Bear"  sense they were seasoned addicts with an ulterior motive, seeking a place to hide out.  What was even worse, they were from  out of province and though I was assured by someone that they had already completed their two week self isolation, something within told me they didn't! I saw these individuals, I didn't know, as the "enemy" and I wanted them out of my home! I made it clear.  They came in again, after we were thought to be in bed,  even after I said no more. I felt my mind spinning ...fear, anger, resentment, worry, confusion. The emotions would have been okay on their own, passing through me in about one and half minutes, but my core belief, now activated, kept feeding them...making the reaction stronger and stronger.

Because everything seemed to be  done so secretively and suspiciously, I seen my loved one at the center of some addiction spiral, out of control, fed by these individuals who I assumed were probably hiding out from the police.  I built this tremendous story up based on this gut feeling I had and the  strange behaviour of the visitors who showed up. You see I do have a strong intuitive sense especially when it comes to things like this...but I couldn't tell which was gut and which was pure egoic reactivity.  I couldn't tell if I was seeing through the eyes of gifted insight from the higher Self, or from a place of fear based memory and conditioning in the lower self. All I knew was that every hair on the back of my neck was up and I was in fight mode.

Responding in a Loving, Healthy Way

 I knew in order to handle this situation from a place of responding rather than reacting, a place of Love rather than fear, I had to be able to step back and create space between my thinking and myself.  So that is what I did.  And thanks to Tara Brach's video  I was able to stop the "sub cortical looping" to a great degree.

Steps to Responding

Firstly, I asked myself to stop believing what my mind and my physiological reaction was telling me. I had to realize that though there was probably some truth in what I was thinking...a great deal of it was brought on by stored memory of past situations with others. The fear I was experiencing could have been a result of old triggers just as much as from what I was witnessing in the present situation. I don't have to believe all my thoughts.

Secondly, I asked myself for permission to "stop" acting so I could pause and just  feel what was happening in my body and in my moment.  I was indeed too uptight to do anything responsively rather than reactively.  So I breathed.  I meditated.  I brought myself down and into the spacious non-judging place where there is no "evil doers", just unconscious, lost and suffering individuals who needed and deserved my kindness and compassion more so than my judgment and the war I was starting against them.

Thirdly, I intentionally felt compassion for myself for going there..(.I certainly have some legitimate experience in this area and the circumstances were strange)  and I had compassion for all involved. The feeling/thought stream  that the behaviour was dangerous, that drugs and some breech in social consciousness was taking place did not go away...but with the compassion and kindness story becoming louder than the fear story...I was able to relax into a space between it and me. I felt myself able to respond rather than react.


Oh man...this compassion place is a much better place to be in than the fearful closed up reaction place ego tends to take us.  I see more clearly now and am inspired to take the next "productive" steps necessary.  Hmm.

Post Note: after taking the next step of opening communication around the subject, I realize my mind once again created a story with only a tad of reality in it lol.  It was mostly F> false E>evidence A>appearing R>real.

Moral of this story..."Please don't believe everything your mind tells you." lol

All is well!

Tara Brach (Sept, 2015) Learning to Respond not React.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymPF0q7U5oM