Tonglen is a way of being with people who need you-beginning with yourself.
Pema Chodron
Here is a Tonglen Practice from my yoga page. I am not sure about you but when I am feeling a bit overwhelmed, stressed or physically not 100%, as has been my "personal" experience lately, I find it helps to go beyond self-focus to "other" focus. I mean ego may not like it when we do that...it likes to wrap itself in a blanket of negativity and to stay on the "it is all about me" couch. But Self...that higher part of us...sees no separateness or uniqueness in our experience of suffering. We can actually be reminded of that Self when we think of others.
I have so many people who seem to need me right now but because I am feeling so overwhelmed and somewhat unwell I am not there for them in the way I want to be. I still have that discomfort in my side and though it may be absolutely nothing to worry about...it is a little worrying.... adding to the stressors I already have on my plate. My "next day" ultrasound has been scheduled a month from that "next day" and I have yet to hear back about any urgent cardiac tests ordered months ago when I mentioned the bad bout of chest pain I had in May... while my daughter was already in and out for her non-urgent testing in that department, leading me to perceive or assume that I have been flagged in some way. It is not that I want any tests...I just want to know what my body is trying to tell me through this nagging pain in my side and I want to know how the valve and heart is doing. The ultrasound would confirm if there is or isn't anything wrong with the spleen. As far as the cardiac test all I want, and ever wanted, was an echocardiogram once a year to check that valve and the size of my heart (left ventricle). But other things show up like the palpitations and crazy pulses, the pelvic pain and then the post menopausal DUB,the breast mass, the left eye issue which I have given up on, and this pain in my side. I am not running to ER...have not been there, prior to July 9, since I hurt my arm and really, really thought there was a fracture a couple of years ago. I stopped going for my chest pain...have not been there for that since 2016 or 2017. Man, I pulled a black legged tick out of me last year ( or the year before) and had a full blown bulls eye rash. I never wanted to bother anyone for antibiotics so I decided to put the tick in a bottle so I could send it away to find out if it had lyme prior to going that route. Well a couple of big family issues came about and I forgot about the little guy until he disintegrated. So I let that go. But here I am...once again, it seems and this might be wrong perception, stuck in an assumption from others that prevents me from getting help for my body. This is adding to triggers that bring me back to the old health seeking trauma. It is taking great effort to keep me from going there, to keep me in my here and now. It is also leading to a depletion in energy reserves that could best be used to help those who need me. Sigh!
Then I remembered Tonglen and that I am now a Certified Meditation and Mindfulness Teacher. I may not be able to control what is going on in my body or how the health care system is responding to it...but I can practice and share Tonglen! I may not be able to physically or directly end my loved one's suffering but I can do and share Tonglen! The only way out of a sense of suffering is by going through it! Tonglen helps us to go through it...or more accurately...helps the suffering to go through us.
Tonglen is a practice very counter productive to the ego's attempt to run our psyches and our lives. It is very counter intuitive to the personality's conditioned way of reacting to Life. We are often habitually programed to run away, push away ( or down), ignore, deny, avoid suffering of any kind be it in the form of mere unpleasantness or overwhelming pain. When we do that we shut ourselves off from the full experience of being human. We actually hold on to and increase our suffering when we do that. Tonglen asks us to open up to suffering, to let it in and then it transmutes it with compassion before releasing it back to the place all things go to and come from.
Pain is an essential part of our experience here and if we open up to the unpleasant, the painful, the challenging and difficult we will see that like all expereince...it is temporary and fleeting. It will blow right through us if we are open to it. Resisting that which we really cannot avoid , however, as we are so conditioned to do prevents it from flowing through. It doesn't escape us...it just gets stuck in us. It gets stuck in the collective human experience like a big knot. Tonglen helps us to avoid creating an even bigger knot and it helps us to untangle the knot that is already there. It replaces suffering with compassion, one breath at a time.
All is well.
No comments:
Post a Comment