That act of losing your center and then coming back again, over and over, is a deeply spiritual thing...it is the core of your practice.
Michael Singer
Many great and wise beings , including Michael Singer, tell us that the true spiritual practice is not the meditation we do, the yoga we do, the mantras, the praying, the reading of scripture, the going to church or temple etc. True practice is the intention to remain in awareness for as long as we can.
Huh?
Our Most Important Goal: Stay Centered or Return to Center ASAP
The true goal in Life is to remain centered and aware, in the seat of objective observation, through what ever Life unfolds. If you truly want truth and peace, you need to constantly observe what goes on inside you. You need to notice when you are being pulled down and away from the present moment, when you are getting lost in the story that goes on in your head so you can bring yourself back to awareness of what is "really" going on here and now. It is not about fixing or changing anything "out there" so it doesn't disturb you. In fact, it is not about what Life is doing, at all. It is about how you are relating to Life.
Fix Yourself
If you truly want to grow, you need to change your attitude, not Life. You need to not only stop blaming Life for not going your way, you need to stop having "a way". In other words, stop preferring one thing over an other...stop liking and disliking; stop grasping for what you tell yourself is pleasant and pushing away what you tell yourself is unpleasant ( only because of how they touch or don't touch your stuff inside), while you ignore the billions of beautiful but neutral things. Stop looking at Life as if it is some big dessert cart put together especially for you that you can pick and choose from. Life has little to do with you...the personalized version of you, that is. It is not here to cater to your needs. If you are disturbed inside, as 99 percent of us are...it is not Life that is broken...it is you that is broken. Fix yourself!.
Sounds harsh I know. I put all the "you" in there for a reason so it would have greater impact but "you", I must stress, are not alone in the need for this message. 99 percent of us are in need of that message to really sink in so we live by it. This version of Life I call "me" is in desperate need of that reminder every day, as well.
How do you fix yourself?
Of course, I am going to suggest you meditate. It is a wonderful practice to create space between you and whatever is going on in your mind so you can observe it objectively. I am going to suggest you listen to the great masters and read the great works of wisdom as well. I am going to suggest you pray if that is meaningful for you, to go to church, temple or synagogue if that too has significance and brings you peace...but...the most important practice is something so practical and simple, it could easily be overlooked. That is, go to the source of all your so called problems...the mind...and observe it, really observe it. And keep observing it, every moment of your day.
Say what, crazy lady?
The Real Practice: Observing the Mind
You may come out of church feeling peaceful and centered and wonderful but just as you are about to drive home someone in the parking lot backs into you, doing a lot of damage to the car you are so attached to...what happens to that peace then? Does it stay or does it go?
Most of us are going to get pulled down into disturbance pretty fast, aren't we? We are going to find ourselves saying, "Oh No!" or a whole lot worse, while thoughts of "Oh my goodness we just had it painted, is my insurance card updated, what is wrong with these drivers?' flows through our head. We will feel ourselves going from a state of shock, fear to anger. Our blood pressure goes up, our face gets red, we feel a boulder in our gut as our hands go into tight little fists. We may go into automatic reactivity, jumping out of the car to confront the other driver. The point is...we are beginning or are already in full blown automatic reflex reactivity to what just happened. We are lost in our minds. We lost our center! And if we are really off center we will carry this with us for days and months.
Normal Isn't Necessarily Healthy
Now this is a very normal, conditioned response. You would get a lot of empathy and support from most others you tell about it, I am sure. But "normal" doesn't mean healthy, does it? Normal...doesn't mean it is the most wholesome approach for you. Normal does not mean it is going to bring you closer to truth and peace. Most normal reactions, I have learned, take us farther from peace rather than closer to it....unless...unless...you become aware enough to use it as part of your core practice.
Huh?
Beyond the Obvious Practice
At that moment you are probably not going to run back into the church, kneel down and recite 100 Hail Mary's ( or whatever prayers or mantras go with your tradition). You are probably not going to bend down to do the Sun Salutations or pop a squat on the pavement and go into some deep mantra focused meditation either. Nor are you going to reach for one of those Holy Books you keep in your trunk for such occasions, and riffle through it until you find some passage that applies to such situations. No...it is going to be so in front of you you will have to deal with it in this moment. This moment then becomes the most important part of your spiritual practice.
Michael Singer, in many of his podcasts, tells us that it is much more important to understand what took us out of our peaceful, meditative, post church state than it is to know what will put us in it. Recognizing what is happening inside us, what changes are occurring in the mind that is taking us from or keeping us from peace is the most crucial thing. We can only recognize that by turning our focus away from the life event and observing, objectively, what is going on inside.
You have to remind yourself...though the mind and all those observers and listeners you tell your story to will be convinced otherwise...it was not the event, the person backing into your car that disturbed you. It wasn't this event that unfolded in front of you. It wasn't Life that pulled you away from the peace you were just experiencing. It was you!
You were already disturbed inside from years of conditioned and socially approved stuffing and storing, pushing away and grasping...and the fender bender just poked at the disturbed stuff already in you, agitating it. It felt very uncomfortable to you...and your mind, doing what it is programmed to do, told you you had to do something about it. So you got sucked into the conditioned and habitual way of thinking and reacting. You followed habitual mind away from center into condemnation, judgement, unhealthy perception, negativity and you got lost in it. For a moment, for an hour, for a few days, or a few years you can be lost in this...believing erroneously that it was the event that was the cause of your disturbance, not the way you reacted to it.
So what can you do here instead of react?
The Three B's
You can take a step back, mentally or physically, creating a bit of space between you and your mind's tendency to react in its habitual way. You can breathe...centering yourself again in the place of spacious awareness, or "True Mind" and you can begin again from there...objectively, without judgement of this incident being "good or bad", "right or wrong", "should be or shouldn't be". Remind yourself that it was just one of the trillion events that could have unfolded in front of you. It just is.
Relax your body, relax your mind and make a commitment to notice the event, allow and experience it and then release this event and all it brings with it.
Relax! Encourage your mind and body to soften, as strange it may seem to do this at a time like this. The body and mind are conditioned for fight or flight but we don't need to give into primordial brain. You don't fight the stress response or struggle against it...you just relax into it. You pause before acting. Breathe slowly and deliberately and remind yourself...that you intend to stay conscious, calm and aware. Peace is your goal
Notice! Stay aware...instead of slipping into the tendency to suppress, repress, resist, avoid, numb, push away this situation as the mind is conditioned to do when things are unpleasant or uncomfortable...notice what is happening. Observe what is happening around you but more importantly observe what is happening in you. Feel the shock...the heart racing, the heat in your face, the pressure in your chest, the way you are breathing. Feel the anger if it is there and notice what the mind wants to do with that anger...notice the resistance, the judgement ...the pull towards reactivity if it is there. Don't follow it, just notice it. Just observe what the mind is saying, doing or wanting to do...just observe it objectively.
If you have already slipped into mental reactivity...just notice that you have and as soon as you notice that you have, you are no longer lost in reactivity because you are now observing it. Don't beat yourself up for it...just notice and with great compassion bring yourself out of the thought stream and back to the centered "True mind".
Allow! Allow this to be what it is. Like really, what are you going to do? No amount of temper tantruming or praying is going to make what happened "unhappen". It did. It's done. You have no choice but to allow, do you? Someone backed into your car. It is as it is. Let go of your resistance and those habitual tendencies that do not bring you to peace. Accept and allow!
Experience it! "Oh wow! Look what Life just gave me! This is new. So this is what it feels like to have this happen. Wow! I will add this to my host of life experiences. Cool!" I know that might seem strange but if we could remove "the pleasant and unpleasant" from our life experiences , "the shouldn't be and the should"...we would have much more peace, wouldn't we? If we could experience everything Life throws our way with awe, curiosity and wonder instead of labeling it as something that should be avoided or something that we should chase after...man we would be much happier wouldn't we? We are here to experience everything...10,000 joys and 10,000 sorrows. It is all amazing!
Release it! When the experience and the energy of the experience is ready to leave, as all things eventually are, just let it. Let it go. don't cling to it because it was something that your mind tells you you could add to your list of grievances, your "Proof that Life is Out to Get Me List"....just let it go. If you don't use mind to stop it...it will go. All things in this Life come and go...nothing is permanent. The paint job on the car you just had banged up is very temporal, as is the car. This experience is even more temporal. The person driving the car may not be here tomorrow. Heck, you may not be. All form, all events are impermanent waves flowing through you. Cling to none of it, resist none of it ( which leads to a form of storing it inside) and like the beautiful wind outside my window right now, it will all blow right through. Let it!
Hmm! That was a lot of learning and a lot of sharing for one day. :)
All is well!
Too many of Michael Singer's podcasts to cite
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