Balance

 A  non-judging orientation certainly does not mean that you cease knowing how to act or behave responsibly in society, or that anything anybody does is okay.  It simply means that we can act with greater clarity in our own lives, and be more balanced, more effective, and more ethical in our activities, if we know that we are emerged in a a stream of unconscious liking and disliking which screens us from the world and from the basic purity of knowing our own being.

Jon Kabat-Zinn 

Perceiving and Reacting

I am feeling so relieved, so hopeful...such a change from what I was feeling weeks ago.  Why?  I am reacting or responding to a life situation...which means that I not necessarily neutral or staying in the nonreactive center. Still...I am okay with it for now.

Someone I care about has taken another big, bold beautiful step forward into recovery....into his healing. He started rehab today.  

I realized that I have been reacting nonstop to having him here over the last three months because there was no stepping forward.  He was stuck here in some comfortable zone of harm reduction and substitution. And though he had not been using the "big stuff" he was still constantly numbing and far, far from clear minded. That left a big chaotic shadow in my environment and in my mind.  

Everywhere  around me, then,  there was obvious chaos and mess.  I was surrounded by  "stuff"  I didn't want here.  I tried to avoid judgment and attachment  and I kept reciting to myself, "Harm reduction...harm reduction.  Don't judge"  but I found myself constantly reacting to this situation. I couldn't seem to stay neutral in my center.  I was really, really "off".  I perceived that I was being selfish, failing in my my mission to awaken...so I felt great guilt and shame on top of the resentment and blame I was feeling.  

It wasn't until I said good bye today that I realized my motivation to change my environment, to get him into rehab was far from selfish ( don't get me wrong there was definitely  some selfishness there) ...I wanted to see him moving forward...I want what surrounds me to be a space for moving forward...not just for me but for everyone.  What I was truly reacting to  over the last three months...was a perception of "stuckness"and my own "regression and retraction." I did not like it!   I love seeing people move forward into Life.  I love feeling that my environment, my presence  somehow assists with that .  I feel absolutely awful when I feel I or my environment enables myself or others to regress or not go forward! Hmmm! 

So the relief and peace I felt today as I sent him off was so wonderful.  I know I am not completely in my center...staying neutral.  When I react in this way to the situation even if I perceive it as positive I am swinging away from center.  The fact that I see it or anything outside of me as positive, "good", "bad" , "right", "wrong", "something to like", "something to dislike"  means that I am moving away from center.  With the perception, thought or judgment  will come the emotional response/reaction taking me away from the peaceful center. Hmmm!

Find Your Center!

I was reminded three times yesterday by several  different individuals about the need to "find my center". 

I listened to Eckhart Tolle say that, Trevor Hall and then  Lee Harris express that the most important thing for us to do in 2021 is to hold that center. Then later I listened to Jack Kornfield remind us to do the same thing and there was a few sentences  in Jon Kabat-Zinn's book, Wherever you Go there You Are, that I quoted above.

I am going to work very hard at finding my center and doing my best to stay in it.  I hope, simply by doing so, that others will be able to do the same.

All is well!