Don't surrender your lonliness so quickly. Let it cut you more deep. Let it ferment and season you as few humans and even divine ingredients can. Something missing in my heart tonight has made my eyes so soft, my voice so tender, my need for God so absolutely clear.
Hafiz
I woke up this morning peaceful and glad to be alive. I was aware of that peacefulness...I smiled and laid back into it. Life was perfect...for all of three minutes maybe. :)
I realized it was just the dogs and I in the bed. One by one the thoughts came into my head...trying thoughts, demanding thoughts regarding the present stressors in "my" life and the changes I felt needed to be made recently and fears about the future. With those thoughts came all kinds of emotions, feelings, perceptions and judgements.
My story included so many "my", so many "me", so many "I". Things are happening in "my" life, to "me" and "I" am suffering. And once again the good old core ( solar plexus) began to twist up into that knot I am becoming all too familiar with.
I jumped out of bed...not to run happily into the day...but to run from my moment, one full of "unwanted" thoughts, feelings, images and ideas. Sigh....ego was up to his old tricks.
Aha! As I soon as I hit the floor attempting to escape the sudden chaos in my mind, I observed that I was trying to run from what is becasue I was sinking into thoughts and emotion and getting lost there.
I also realized ego was doing this and suddenly I found myself questioning: Who is it that is suffering? Who is thinking these thoughts and feeling these feelings? And who is witnessing me thinking these thoughts and feeling these feelings?
Those questions alone seemed to help me to detach from the mental melodrama I was creating. The future disappeared and with it the worry and fear; the past disappeared and with it the resentment and grief. I was just in the moment. It was neither good or bad. It just was. It was very peaceful.
And that lasted for all of three minutes as well...lol.
I kept going off and coming back...being pulled into past and future, dragging my sorry butt back to the moment. Calm and peaceful one moment, full of pressing thought the next. I am still not "enlightened" becasue I am still very much an egoic person...but...but... every time I pull myself back; everytime I witness what I am thinking and feeling, knowing that I am thinking and feeling, I wake up a little more and I stay awake a little longer. It is a process.
So it was ironic, once again, that these were the videos that showed up this morning and that I was drawn to listen to: Mooji's "I watching" and Jack Kornfield's "Who Am I?" ( see links below)
Mooji encourages us to watch our "I" sense. Ask which "I" is doing the talking and the thinking. Is it the "I" ego creates, the "little me" lost in some idea of self that is nothing more than a mental construct or is it the Self. He states that as soon as we see the person that is starring in the melodrama we got going on as a mental construct, the moment we realize that all the "I" "Me" and "My "is coming from an idea we have of who we are and not Who we Really Are...then we stop supplying energy to it and it eventually dissolves. As we distance from that idea of self ...we become aware of the true Self...if only for a second.
Jack Kornfield reminds us that the suffering the body and mind experience is not who we are either. He, at teh same time, encourages us not to attempt to bypass suffering- to resist or escape it like I was trying to do this morning ...but simply to hold it as another important part of being human in our hearts, without getting lost in it or tangled up in its tethers. Tethers will remain ...thoughts, pain, fear, doubt, anxiety, lonliness etc will remain as part of the human tapestry, what life offers all of us, but we do not need to get tangled up in them. When we practice becoming still, quiet and mindful we come to see our true nature as Self. We are not this suffering...we are whole, compassion, kindness, love, peace and joy. We are not seperate from what is.
Life will continue to flow by us and through us carrying a million different experiences, a million different thoughts, a million different feelings. We just need to allow them to flow through. They will keep coming and going, changing and morphing...as will we. And they will not last forever nor will we in these forms. Everything ...except Self...is perishable and impermanent.
We are going to be human and that is part of the beauty of all this. We are going to keep getting lost in thought and feeling...until we become enlightened. For most of us, that won't happen in this life time. So don't beat yourself up if you find yourself being pulled away by ego...just catch what is happening...ask is this "I" in my drama, my "little me", or is it my True Self? 90 percent of the time...it will be your "little me". Then ask who is watching all this? As soon as you ask this, you are the watcher, the observer and no longer lost in ego. That is enough to bring you back to awareness.
We just need to keep bringing ourselves back again and again to this moment, to presence and to the awarenes that we cannot help but be.
All is well in my world.
Jack Kornfield ( April, 2018) Episode 67 Who Am I? Be Here Now Network. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLAzKM-RgQQ
Mooji (January 31, 2021) A Simple but Profound Exercise- "I"- Watching. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXKjlCltQUs
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