Healing by Letting go

Healing yourself is connected to healing others.
-Yoko Ono

Really  want to help diminish suffering in myself and in others.  Can you tell? lol 

I have been on this kick for quite some time and it has led me into many strange and marvellous places in my mind. I have so many questions about humanity and the more I think I discover, the more questions arise. This seeking is never ending, isn't it?  No beginning and no end. :)

I am discovering much from ACIM, Buddhist philosophy(mainly from Thich Nhat Hanh, Pema Chodron and other dharma teachers I tap into on line or through their books), from studying all I can about Yoga , the teachings from  Eckhart Tolle(and other secular teachers) ,  and from my own Christian background.  I see these teachings as pointing fingers ...only.... so I go in the direction they point...inward.  I then determine  what the learning feels like inside and accept that which resonates. I let go of the rest. There has been so much learning and so much letting go of learning  that my world feels like it has been turned upside down.

In order to teach others I have to understand.  In order to heal others I have to be healing. Am I healing?  I don't know.  I think so.  I am realizing how much emotion I have stuffed inside me over the years of my life.  How much energy remains trapped in memories I cling to of my life events.  I supressed so much that I don't even remember what I remember lol.   These memories and emotions are coming to the surface and I know I must finally sit with them.  That is a big healing step.

I am also seeing what healing is really all about. This body I am in, that sometimes feels like it is falling apart lol, is simply manifesting what needs to be healed inside.  I think I am ready. I am ready to sit.  I know I can't help to heal another until I have healed myself.

Right now I am stuck on the letting go part.  There is so much I have yet to let go of, stuff that keeps me stuck and trapped by this idea of suffering. One of the key factors in healing from this idea of suffering, according to Buddhist doctrine,  is letting go.  The Heart sutra and the Diamond sutra speak of four things that need to be thrown out.  From Thich Nhat Hanh's dharma talk, I see that letting go involves many things including throwing away some ideologies we cling to.  We need to let go of many of the 'wrong perceptions' we hold on to that lead to suffering. (Of course wrong and right are one of the things we do not want to get too hung up on).

These things include:

• our idea of happiness
• our idea of self
• our idea that we are the bodies we are in
• the idea that we as humans are distinct and separate from other humans
• the idea that we as humans are distinct from other beings
• the idea that we as human beings are distinct from non-beings
• the idea that life has time frame
• the idea that we go from non being to being and than to non-being
• the idea of birth and death.
• the idea of extremes

Hmmm! It seems so complex and so simple at the same time. The key question I want answered is how does this apply to ending suffering in what many of us refer to as 'real time'? I would like to apply some very lay person and inexpert explanation to all of these, make them practically applicable.

 I want to learn from this so I can teach; to teach from this so I can learn. I want to heal so I can be healed; to be healed so I can heal.  He who needs healing must heal. Physician[therapist, teacher],  heal thyself. Who else is there to heal?  And who else is in need of healing? Each patient who comes to a therapist[teacher, physician, healer] offers him a chance to heal himself. He is therefore his therapist.  And every therapist must learn to heal from each patient who comes to him. He thus becomes his patient. (ACIM:Psychotherapy:2:VII:1:3-11)


Of course, I am not the real teacher here.  Check out the dharma talk below if you want  to hear it from an expert who so eloquently explains what we need to hear that even a big ego like mine is quieted enough for me to hear and understand.

All is well!


References

ACIM(2007) Psychotherapy: Purpose, Process and Practice.  ACIM: Combined Volume. Foundations for Inner Peace.

Thich Nhat Hanh.(May 2012)  Letting Go. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1Kph9R6y1E

Community Healing Begins with One

Ants, to cite just one example, work unselfishly for the good of the community; we humans sometimes do not look so good by comparison.
-Dalai Lama

After yesterday's entry you may be asking yourself, "How could a person put such personal information about another on a public blog? " That's a reasonable question I suppose and I have asked it of myself.  First of all this blog is not very public lol...my readership is very small and  few who read this will guess at who I am referring to.  Even if they did, does it matter that much? Why do we hide such things from one another?  To keep up some guise as to how humanity should be? To pretend?

Second of all...it truly  isn't just about another, is it?  It is about me and about you.  It is about all of us.

Truth is this individual's situation is very, very common and even universal.  The suffering amongst our youth today is tenfold what it was decades ago.  We need to stop pretending that suffering and mental illness does not exist as frequently and possibly as completely as it does in all of us.  We need to do something about it.  We need to start the healing process and that begin with recognizing and understanding that first noble truth of Buddhism: Suffering Exists! We all need to heal and we all need to help others heal.

So yes I will use this example with the permission of the individual involved. I do so, in hope, that one of you readers out there will recognize a need for healing in yourself or a need to act as healer in the life of some one else.  We all have the potential to heal the world.

How can we begin healing the world?  By being willing to heal ourselves one breath at a time, and then reaching out with a desire to heal another.  First let's talk about what needs to be healed.

All is well

Helping Others

Inner Development is not easy and will take time.
-Dalai Lama

Helping Those Who Do Not Want to Be Helped

Hmmm! I am thinking of those words as I contemplate how to best help someone I love who is suffering a great deal.  I am aware that I am very limited in what I can do, give or offer her especially being that she is a person who confesses that she is resisting getting better. She doesn't know why but she is aware that she  resists  suggestions, attempts, advice in any way it comes to her.  "Maybe you could try this..." is usually followed by a "I can't because..." or "It's too difficult."  and "I know that won't work." My favorite is," My mind won't let me go there."

The Need for Control in Others

 She states that she hates when people tell her what to do.  She admittedly is a 'control freak' with a desire to control all that is going on in her and around her. If someone tells her what to do, i.e. suggests something, she freaks out. One can even see the resistance suddenly twisting her facial muscles and tensing up her body.  She wants complete control over this experience, over every experience.

The problem is, however, that she doesn't have control .  She feels she is losing control of her thoughts and feelings, her daily life experiences and that is freaking her out. So in her desperation she  will ask, "What can I do?"  When one responds with an answer she automatically resists it. Part of her wants help; part of her needs help  but her controlling nature gets in the way.  It's quite the conundrum for her and for those of us who want to help.

I realize that help can sometimes be viewed as the sunny side of control.  So I try to keep my motivation for helping clear and clean.  I simply want her to feel better, for her  to heal. 

Ready to Heal?

Because I see things so differently than I did say ten years ago my approach to healing is so different.  My approach to her is so different.  The thing is, I actually believe she is ready for this new approach and that it may be effective in helping her.  She has been speaking for ages about how it feels like there are two people inside her head...a part of her mind that wants her to suffer and another part that wants more, knows more.  She has already had moments out of the blue in the midst of her suffering that she suddenly felt tremendous peace and appreciation for Life, knowing in some deep core of her being that she had everything she needed to be happy.  There have also been rare moments when I would speak to some of the things I have been learning in my own healing, and  she would say, "Oh My God!  That makes sense.  I see that now."  And her mood would just transform in front of me. These moments were very fleeting but I want to believe they did leave their mark even when ego popped back in to do its nasty shaming, blaming, scaring and depressing. Sigh!

The Thinking

Her ego, her pain body (terminology I may use that she doesn't quite accept yet) is so strong and so ferociously controlling that when it is in charge it seems there is no way of getting to her.  Her thoughts are compulsive and self destructive. In order to distract from them she does what most of us do but to the extreme: She will seek outwardly into the future for her relief...her relief is never in the present moment but in some future moment.  She sets up these expectations for the future that are constantly disappointing her because the moments never turn out the way she felt they should.  She invests so much of her thought energy into creating those mental pictures of how it should be, she gets crushed again and again.


The Feeling

She also represses painful emotions.  She has been through a lot of painful experiences that she didn't deal with emotionally...she just stuffed and stuffed and stuffed in anyway she could.  The intense energy of those emotions are swirling around inside her wanting to emerge but she is fighting that with all she has. It escapes  in gusts of anger, resentment, generalized anxiety, fear, restlessness, boredom and despair. But not the way it should. She hates all these other emotions but she really doesn't want to deal with that source of pain!!

The Behaviour

She numbs to the point of it being a problem. She punishes herself physically and emotionally for not having control because that gives her some control in the midst of the non-control. She is a risk to herself.  Sometimes she doesn't want to go on living. 

So what do I do?

So it is a challenging situation.  I don't want to push against that resistance in my desire to help her.  I am fully aware that it has to be up to her.  She has to be willing and ready to accept the small ( and it is a small amount) that I can offer her. ...simply just a finger pointing in a direction she may or may not be ready or willing to go down.

There are things I can do.  I can:

• Make myself available.  Check in with her a couple of times a day, more frequently on so called 'bad days'
• Recite Thich Nhat Hanh's Mantra either outwardly to her or at least in my head when I am with her, "Darling, I know that you are suffering? That is why I am here for you."  Just validating the suffering is a big step in helping.
• Listen attentively
• Gently probe for more to keep the communication going.  "Darling, am I understanding you in the way you need to be understood?" (Thich Nhat Hanh)
• Offer the learning I have gained in an unobtrusive, gentle way after I am given permission to do so.  I am copulating a list of suggestions that I feel may help from what I learned from my studying of psychology, philosophy, Buddhism, Yoga, theology and science.  At the same time I must monitor and recognize when emergency outside resources are needed.
• Maintain as much safety as possible
• Give options.  Instead of saying you should do this...I could say, "Maybe you could try this, this or this."
• Avoid pushing, arguing and defending
• Stay nonjudgmental removing discerning words like "good' "bad", "right"," or "wrong", "should" or "shouldn't"  from my vocabulary when I am with her
• Be aware of my motivation at all times...it can never be about me being right and her being wrong!. 
• Empower rather than be the one with the power.  Leave the decisions and the work with her.
• Take care of me and continue with my own healing.  It is easy to get "sucked in" to the negative ego of another.  I need to continue working on my own mental construction, my own inner development so that I have more to give away.

Being in Presence

There are things I do and will continue to do but doing is not the biggest objective here, is it? Being is.  If I can maintain that peaceful, calm, reassuring presence for her that acts as a reminder that there is more than just suffering than maybe...maybe just being with her will be enough.   I am hoping.

All is well.

Psychotherapy in brown and orange robes

Spirituality is not about getting something. It is always about giving up something.
-Michael Singer

Psychotherapy in brown and orange robes

I really think the Buddhists should have the market on psychotherapy. Their approach to understanding the mind and the need for healing is phenomenal.  It is simplistic, down to earth and so very, very applicable. The more I study it, the more I realize how we could all benefit if we adopted some of the principles and therapeutic approaches. We all need psychotherapy!

No Need to Convert

I am not saying we should become Buddhist...and from what I gather from watching, listening and learning...this isn't the mandate of the Buddhist teacher either.  They aren't looking to convert more people to Buddhism, they are looking to convert a mentally disturbed world to a peaceful one; monkey minds to still ones, suffering to joy and it doesn't matter if you are Hindu, Muslim or Christian. Buddhism is not in the world to increase the numbers of Buddhists  or  the power  that religion has. In fact, ego recognition, competition and power is  completely the opposite of all Buddhist doctrine.  Buddhism, I believe, is simply there to help heal the world.

A True Teacher/Healer

If you want to see someone who aspires to this sincere and honest  and non discerning role  of Buddhist teacher, watch Thich Nhat Hanh at work. Five minutes listening to him, watching that light in his eyes, feeling warmed by that peaceful smile on his face and hearing the beautiful simplistic wisdom that flows from him like water from a tap will convince you of this. You will feel at peace. He wreaks of the peaceful presence he teaches about.  He walks the walk and talks the talk...How many teachers out there actually do that?

Healing the Mind

The approaches to healing taught are not about religion.  In fact, spirituality isn't about religion is it?  The two  can compliment each other beautifully when the mind is healed.  First we must heal the mind. Buddhism offers practical and effective ways to do so.

Of course the Buddha had a well designed plan for healing which involved a number of steps.(16)  The first eight steps are addressed in a dharma talk entitled Call your Cows by Their True Names. They  were divided into two categories: Body as a portal and Feeling as a portal:

Body Portal

1. Recognizing breath going in and out
2. Following breath as it goes in and out
3. Awareness of body
4. releasing tension in the body

Feeling Portal

     5. Generating Joy
     6. Generating happiness
     7. Recognizing painful feelings
     8. Embracing painful feelings

Mindfulness and Concentration

It was taught by Buddha and his followers that in order to generate joy and happiness or healing we need to be able to be mindful, have the ability to bring ourselves back to the present moment and back into our bodies so we can experience Life fully. Concentrating on what we are doing in the here and now can help us to do that. (First four steps have that covered.)

Next we have to be able to strengthen our emotional reserves before we can entertain and not be destroyed by pain. We need to be able to generate joy and happiness at whim so when the the so called painful emotions we have stuffed begin to rise up we can deal with them effectively.  Effectively means with compassion and patience and tender loving care before we release them. We need mindfulness and  concentration to do this but more importantly we need the ability to let go and to release.

Letting Go

What we cling to in pursuit of joy and happiness often prove to be obstacles that get in our way of finding it.  When we notice suffering in our lives we tend to go after something out there and in the future, don't we? We assume that happiness is in something the future moment offers if we do a certain thing or strive for a certain thing.  We seldom find it that way do we?  The reason for that is that our idea of happiness and our idea of who we are, are obstacles in our way to healing.  If we want healing...want to embrace peace and joy and happiness we must first let go of our ideas that happiness is somewhere out there. We have to get rid of this crazy notion that we are not yet all we can be and that we need to improve by having more, doing more, learning more in order to attain joy and happiness.  We need to let go of that notion that takes us from the here and now so we can settle in the here and now, the only place where peace and joy can exist.  We need to let go of our future projections, our cravings, our clinging, our compulsive doing, our striving, our struggling and also our resistance.

Resistance is what happens when what is happening in the present moment competes with our ideas of what should be happening. If the moment right here and right now doesn't offer what we think it should in order to be happy and joyful we have a tendency to push against it or numb away from it.  We numb from the experience of feeling emotions we erroneously judge as "bad." Stuffing these down the way we do, does not make them go away.  We just cling to them more and they may get stronger. Our suffering increases with resistance and struggle.  We need to release and let go of that.

Healing Begins with a Breath

Healing, in the spiritual way then, involves many things but most importantly it involves a letting go so that we can eventually learn to accept, embrace and compassionately release our suffering. How does all this begin? With a breath...with a breath.  How more simpler can it get than that?

All is well in my world.


Desire cannot be fulfilled. Moreover, when you are desiring, desiring, desiring, you face many obstacles, disappointments, unhappiness, and difficulties.  Great desire not only knows no end but also itself creates trouble.
-Dalai Lama (quote for Tuesday, February 5)

References

Thich Nhat Hanh (Sept, 2011) Calling Your Cows by Their True Names. Plum Village online.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8pFAjQpTKY

The more time you spend thinking about yourself, the more suffering you will experience.
-Dalai Lama


Probably chose the wrong pic to represent my point lol.  D. is not a man who spends a lot of time thinking about himself nor is he a man who suffers a lot of mental unease.  But he is alone and it is seasonal...so that's my rationalization.

Anyway...I digress. I love what the Dalai Lama says here in this simple statement.  The more we think of the little me and all its tales of woe, the more we stay trapped in what the Buddhist refer to as the  discerning mind. Discerning minds are not quiet minds...they are noisy monkey minds that never settle.  They tell us that so many things that are happening to us, around us and in us are problems. So we constantly feel anxious, angry, frustrated or sad. So if he are constantly thinking about little me and its so called problems, we will suffer.

I like what Michael singer tells us, What you call a problem, someone else calls grace. Let's think about those who see grace in what we see as trouble.  "So many people need it more" , my father would often say as he gave away what he had.  By thinking of others we can rise above our selfish little egos and participate in this amazing dance called life. We can actually be happier.  

There is an end to suffering.  That end comes when we get beyond the limitations of 'little me'

All is well in my world.

Compassionate listening/healing

Compassionate listening is to help the other side suffer less.
Thich Nhat Hanh (https://plumvillage.org/news/thich-nhat-hanh-shares-secrets-to-peaceful-mind/)

I have been thinking about helping, right? Serving...doing my small part to reach out and end or at least diminish the sense of suffering in others.  I am not sure what that makes me ...other than crazier than a bag of hammers in many people's eyes lol (delusions of grandeur)...but it is what I want to do. In most sections of A Course it is referred to as being a teacher and in the later section a psychotherapist. 

It is said in the section entitled, Psychotherapy: Purpose, Process and Practice that : Psychotherapy is the only form of therapy there is.  Since only the mind can be sick, only the mind can be healed.  Only the mind is in need of healing. (ACIM: Psychotherapy: Intro:1:1-3) 

Though I do not walk away with a full understanding of A Course, even after my third time through it, nor do I adhere to all its teachings in exactly the way it was taught...I get this.  I do believe this.  I believe that the source of all our problems, all our suffering, is in the mind with how we think.

In fact, I always believed this to some extent and that is probably why I was thinking of psychology way back when I was in high school, why nursing didn't really fit, teaching did and why I have tried a couple times over the course of my life to turn my compass in this direction.  Life circumstances showed up to slow me down probably because I wasn't completely ready.  I was missing an important ingredient to seeing clearly therefore greatly limited  in my capacity to help.  I myself was still not completely clear.  I am still not as clear as I can be but I am on the right path thanks to my little journey to awakening. Now with this level of understanding I am developing, I might be ready to start helping others. I mean truly helping.

So I ran across a beautiful little dharma talk from Thich Nhat Hanh today that explained how we can best teach, best help others to transcend suffering. We can do this through a process of understanding.  Understanding and assistance with healing evolves through the following steps:

1. Understanding Self and Recognizing Own Need for Healing: Of course, to assist someone else in their healing by understanding them,  we first have to understand our selves and be in a place where we are healed, healing or at least very willing to. He [the specialized teacher/psychotherapist] learns through teaching, and the more advanced he is the more he teaches and the more he learns. But whatever stage he is in, there are patients who need him just that way.  They can not take more than he can give for now.  Yet both will find sanity at last.(ACIM:Psycho:2:I:4:4-7)
2. Understanding the nature of suffering. Suffering is of the mind and involves how we do not see a way out.  May people who suffer have their own idea of what happiness is and if they  do not get what they  think will make them happy, they often shut down other avenues.  We help when we show that there are other ways to end suffering.
3. Developing The Four Unlimited Qualities: Maître, Karuna, Medita, and Upeksha. (Hanh)

•  Maitre, according to Thich Nhat Hanh, has been loosely and somewhat incorrectly translated to mean 'loving-kindness'.  He prefers the translation of 'friendliness and 'brotherhood' so that we do not mistaken it with 'attachment.' Yes we love and we are kind but we do so in a way where we respect our own freedom and that of the person we are wishing to help. If we are not free( trapped by attachment needs) we can not help others.
• Karuna is the capacity to truly see and understand the suffering in another without getting lost in that  suffering.  When we can do that, we can help the person transcend their suffering.  Hahn uses an example of the physician. When a person presents with a series of signs and symptoms, the physician is able to help the patient by objectively determining the cause of suffering and then prescribing measures to relieve it.  If she became lost in the suffering of the individual she would not be able to remain objective enough to prescribe treatment in a healthy way. His use of Karuna allows him to be truly helpful.  He also went on to say that if the Buddha spent all his time crying with those who were suffering he would not have had  the time to truly help them. This takes us back then to the difference between pity/sympathy and empathy or compassion. Karuna is helpful compassion.
• Medita refers to a joyful approach we take to teh other person who is suffering.  I know it sounds ironic.  When we are suffering the last thing we want is someone to come to us with a big smile on their face and laughter in their tone as we relay our so called 'problems'. Here we, as teachers and therapists,  learn to use what Hanh calls empathetic joy.  We do not lose our own joy in the other person's suffering because we know our joy comes from understanding what the other has yet to understand, that suffering is unnecessary.  We see the resolution, the outcome a change of perception will lead to.  We see that the person's so called misery is a result of perception only.  Perceptions of this idea they have of themselves  we know can be changed. Psychotherapy is a process that changes the view of the self.  At best the "new' self is a more beneficent self-concept..." (ACIM:Pschcho:2.Intro:1:1-2)
• And finally Upeksha is equanimity and inclusiveness in our approach to all.  We do not discriminate or judge as we seek to help all who may need our help. We see our Self in the other.

 4.We help ourselves and the other to let go of this idea of happiness we/they may still cling to knowing, however, that they may be resistant to letting go. Their idea of happiness involves what they see as themselves and there may be a need there to defend and protect it.  What they seek from healing in the beginning may not be what we have learned to see as helpful. He wants to make the vulnerable invulnerable and the limited limitless. (ACIM:Psycho:2:Intro:3:5) Letting go is a process. We have to also ensure that we have let go before we help someone else to.

5. Patience with the process. Readiness and a willingness to let go of old beliefs is essential. So we have to understand the nature of resistance and be patient until the person is willing and ready to get better. ...no one learns beyond his own readiness. (ACIM:Psycho:2:I:1:3)

Hmm!  that is a lot to think about. 

It's all good.  All is well in my world

References

ACIM: Psychotherapy: A Course in Miracles; Combined Volume. Foundations for Inner Peace

Thich Nhat Hanh,(November 25, 2004) Love and Happiness.  Dharma Talk.  Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtPqonJJP_o&vl=en

Our thought is like water running in every direction.  But just as water, when channelized, becomes powerful, so it is with our minds.
-Dalai Lama

 

 

Respond

Life is ten percent what happens to you and ninety percent how you respond to it.
Lou Holtz (Brainy Quote)

Yeah it continues...and yeah I did something about it. I went for help so now I wait.  I figure my part is done lol...What is done next and the outcome of which is not up to me so I can relax into this.  Relax!  That is what I have to do...what we all have to do when it comes to Life, isn't it?  Relax into it.

My entries of late seem very narcissistic, I know.  They were all about me and my pain experience.  Though I would be lying if I said ego wasn't getting anything out of this sharing here lol...it really is about something bigger.  I see learning and therefore a teaching opportunity in it. (In fact...I see learning in absolutely everything these days.)  That's why I share.  Or at least that is what Redeemer ego tells me lol.

We all experience pain, illness, suffering in our lives , do we not? We have little control over what we are given, at least at the level we have come to see as our physical reality.  What we do have control over, though, is how we deal with it.  Do we react to life circumstances, including pain, with fear, resistance, struggle and a host of defense mechanisms that take us away from feeling and living the experience fully?  Or do we respond with openness, acceptance, curiosity, a willingness to learn and grow?

I am learning, albeit slowly and far from gracefully, to take the second option and I must say it is an easier one. I want to share that learning with you.

All is well in my world.

Take care of the body

Take care of your body.  It is the only place you have to live.
-Jim Rohn

Day 22 for the pain; day 20 for the more objective symptoms (signs, I guess). I might see if I can get into see someone tonight or tomorrow. I know I have to 'do' something.   

Doing is sometimes necessary

In my desire to sit and be, I  hope I haven't given the impression that 'doing' is never necessary. There are many times in Life when action is required. I also hope I did not imply that the body is not something we have to take care of.  It isn't as significant as many of us think it is, but it is a wonderful, miraculous vehicle that allows us to do what we are here to do: Experience Life and communicate that experience with one another.  We need to respect it and honor it for that reason.  So we do, on occasion, need to do something to take care of the body. The doing, however, has to be conscious and inspired doing rather than unconscious and reactive.

Reactive Doing

Reactive doing is ego based action done out of fear and resistance to what is happening in the present moment. It involves denying, projecting, blaming, acting out against someone or self, numbing, avoiding, attacking or defending. It is counterproductive to true healing.

Well as soon as I experienced the pain 22 days ago I could have panicked.  I could have got lost in what my mind wanted to say about it, dwelling on the worse case scenario.  I could have been consumed by it. Without questioning, I could have reverted back to old dependency needs and belief systems that's said that only someone or something outside me can fix this. I could have rushed off to the nearest emergency room and said, "Do something about this or at least tell me what it is."  Considering my past history, that would not have been all that productive.  The pain would have likely been dismissed and the other symptoms diminished. I would have mentally owned that causing more shame, more tension and eventually more pain.  I may have been told to 'wait and see'. I would not go back a second time. I would have reacted from ego, not the deeper part of Self.

The doing that we can do without...is the reactive doing.

Inspired doing

Inspired doing is the action that comes form a higher guidance.  The deeper part of Self directs it and it takes us towards real healing with forgiveness, acceptance and peace.

By sitting with the pain for a bit and not 'doing' anything but watching it from that calm space, getting to know it, accepting and allowing it I was freed of the resistance and the  fear.  My mind was clearer.  My body wasn't ruling.  My decision to wait and see seemed justified.  I knew in my heart it wasn't going to matter if I waited one week or three, so I allowed myself that time to become somewhat 'friendly' with what was happening. I had time to remove story, drama and narration from the physical experience so that I could see clearly.  I determined what I had the power to do  about it and asked the question: "Is medicine really necessary?  Do I have to seek outside myself for a solution? " The longer the signs and symptoms persisted I realized that it would be a good idea to get it checked out by a body mechanic. 

So I go with a calm mind, confidence that my symptomology is worthy of consideration, and with a willingness to accept whatever it is for being what it is. That is inspired doing.

That doesn't mean you should wait 22 days

I waited because I had a good understanding what was happening and what the risks were.  I kind of triaged myself.  If you are not sure, however, don't wait.  Pain, remember, is a way your body communicates with you...it tells you that there is something going on inside be it physical or something else. Listen!  Of course, you don't have to listen for 22 days lol.

Medicine can play a beneficial role

Sometimes I read what I write and think I sound like A Christian Scientist.  I am not.  A Course has some similar ideologies but I don't adhere to all those either.  I just truly believe we are responsible for our bodies and if we control the mind somehow, we will effect the way our bodies function.  We are responsible for our own  health. Medicine is not the only way to heal. I do think, however, it and other health professions can play an important role in helping us to do so.

It's all good.  All is well in my world.

Mind Moves the Body

The mind moves the body, and the body follows the mind. Logically, negative thought patterns harm not only the mind but the body.
H.E. Davey; Japanese Yoga: The Way of Dynamic Meditation

Day 21 for pain, 19 for other symptoms.

I looked back on the history of this pain today.  It first became quite noisy in the spring-summer of 2017. (I could have sworn it was only months ago...time does go faster as one ages  lol).  I had many of the same symptoms with it then that I do now. It wasn't as intense or as persistent but it was the same thing.  The cluster of symptoms that came with it scared me and I will be honest, I feared the worse.

I had an ultrasound done around that time that revealed a small but not tiny ovarian cyst which was later after a repeat ultrasound(three months later by another gyne I was referred to) called a predominant follicle, even though it had doubled in size.  I was assured it would go away when menopause kicked in. I was absolutely fine with that opinion and I eagerly anticipated the big day, gladly willing to put up with the symptoms. (Don't get me wrong: Though, I have learned to embrace the pain when I get it,  I am not at the point  where I  call it up and invite it over.  I can do without that type of company lol).

I was told that the ultrasound would be repeated in a year. I was shocked to realize today, it has been over a year and a half.

My mind is now jumping in here to build story, to put pieces together, to question, to assume, to speculate and to catastrophize the way it does. What if I am in menopause and have been since the beginning of my symptoms? Then this is not as benign as it looks. What if, what if, what if? 

Man the mind can be noisy lol. I know what the worse case scenario could be and all my symptoms do point that way...but...that doesn't mean that it is what it is.  In fact...it is unlikely because people don't live one and a half years with that possibility. I know that too.  But mind likes to stir up fear and drama doesn't it? If it is going to be something ...it plots...it has to be the biggest something out there. Body reacts.

What does this do to the pain itself? Well my body tenses up in response to the fear response being activated (good old fight, flight and freeze) and with muscle tension comes more pain. With the pain...the other symptoms and more muscle tension...and the body is  activated in a chronic cycle leading to fatigue.  We are sick in the mind, more so than in the body. The body responds to the mind. ...not the other way around.

So, though I do need to suck it up and go get this checked out (have been avoiding for all kinds of reasons), my major goal  has to be in settling the mind...freeing the experience from the mental chatter that surrounds it. This does not have to cause a fear response.  I can work on that.  :)

All is well.

What brings you here?

Life as you well know is a continuous succession: it's great, it's lousy, it's agreeable, it's disagreeable; it's joyous and  blissful, and other times, it's sad.  And being with that, being with this continual succession of  agreeable and disagreeable with an open spirit, open heart, and open mind, that's why I sit to meditate.
Pema Chodron (from How to Meditate, Sounds True, 2013)

What brings you here?

What brings you here to this point in your life where you may be seeking more through a practice of reconstructing the mind?

Maybe you are looking for  "more" and as promised by some fields of thought out there you believe you can change your external life by thinking about what you want during meditation?  Is your goal to change the externals in your life...have more wealth, more stuff, more health, more love in the form of a special relationship  or more knowledge?  Is it a desire for more that brings you here?

Are you here because you want to feel better emotionally?  Are you sick of feeling sad, angry, or anxious and you believe meditation will make all those feelings go away?

Are you wanting to put an end to thinking...to quiet that monkey mind and be free of its ceaseless chattering once and for all?  Is it your goal to "stop' or "control" thinking?

Are you looking for a continued state of  peace or well being or something other than this one? Maybe you see meditation as a way to relax and de-stress?

Is it a desire to end your own suffering once and for all? Have you reached a wall and finally realize that the only way out is through?

Maybe , if you said yes to any of the above, you will find what you are looking for through mindfulness and meditation or maybe you won't.

What I learned

As a person who came to the practice with a all of these ambitions at one time or another, I have discovered a thing or two. 

• Suffering did not go away with meditation practice.  I became, in fact, even more acutely aware of suffering all around me and in me.  It didn't go away.  I realize it isn't going to. Suffering is apart of life. All beings suffer.
• I didn't get "more" favorable life circumstances.  :)  In fact, when it comes to worldly things, I lost big time. My external challenges did not dissipate in terms of number and intensity...they multiplied. My life circumstances did not change for the better even though my experience of Life did.
• I didn't find this elusive "happiness" we all tend to seek. I found a lot of 'yucky!' Many of the 'difficult' emotions I had stuffed under the surface popped up for me to deal with and there are still plenty more down there. Joy and bliss are fleeting to say the least.
• I did not control or stop my thinking...far from it.  My thoughts are still bumping around up in my head though the spaces between 'thinking' are getting longer (and I like mean in fractions of a msc).  I realize that the mind is not going to magically stop doing what is natural for it to do no matter how many times I pop a squat on my cushion.
• Though I have moments of pure contentment and peace they are fleeting.  I have not experienced a long  continual stretch of joy in a long time. I still feel anxious at times, angry or upset. As far as well being, my body seems to be falling a part lol.  I have less of an experience of 'stress' though.
• The wall is at my back ...yes...and I finally know that if I do not want to be crushed, I have to go through suffering.  Meditation offers me a way through and I am taking my first  baby steps.  It is not a speedy process.  And it is not an easy one.

So my original  goals for meditation and mindfulness practice have not been fulfilled.  they may never be. They may be for you though.  Who knows? 

Modified Goals

What I have done with my goals, however, is change them. 

What I seek from meditation now is merely an opportunity to make peace with the present moment, to connect with the Life in me and around me and to live from that place. That means developing a willingness to openly accept all the moment offers: the circumstances, all emotions, my thoughts, states  of less than well being, and even suffering. I am learning to allow it into my experience. I open my heart to it. I stay with it and I learn from it.

That's my reason for being here.

All is well.

Use the body In the service of others

If you shift your focus from oneself to others, and think more about others' well being and welfare, it has an immediate, liberating effect.
-Dalai Lama

What We Use the Body for

The central lesson is this; that what you use the body for it will become to you....The mind makes this decision, as it makes all decisions that are responsible for the body's condition.
ACIM:TM:12:5:1,7

Day 18 for the pain, day 16 for the other stuff that goes with it.  I would like to say that I staid nice and peaceful over the last 48 with it but that wouldn't be true.  Ego stepped in at some point and there I was, once again, building story around it  and  resistance against it. Sigh! 

I even, after an intense patch, slipped behind the computer and typed in what my mind has diagnosed it as. You know how the mind is...loving the drama and the gore...it chooses the worse case scenario lol. I thought for some reason I would get something from doing that...some dramatic self recognition as tragic heroine? My identification with story only  led to a long projection into my future which suddenly became very limited.  I caught myself before I read too much and walked away. I carried fear with me.

I did want to distract from the pain though and from what my mind was saying about it. Tylenol was no longer doing the trick.Unfortunately, I couldn't "do" to distract because that just increases the symptoms...so I didn't have my normal egoic means of coping to fall back on.  I couldn't really meditate unless I meditated on the pain itself and one can only do that so much lol.  Yoga, my go to for bringing me back from my head to my body...was also a no-no...that makes matters a little worse. So it was like...what do I do?  Didn't I have to "do' something about it?

The Body's Function is to allow for Teaching and Learning

Then I read the above and these line from ACIM:

As they advance in their profession, they[the teachers] become more and more certain that the body's function is but to let God's Voice speak through it to human ears.
ACIM:TM:12:4:2


It was like wow!  It all suddenly made sense. I don't have to do anything but accept what my body is and what it is doing.

 My body is just that...a vehicle and a means for me to communicate my learning through.  My function is just to remind people, including myself, that we are more than this...what we see.  The only way people will hear this truth, the only way I heard it, is through another body or the work of another body.  I need, you need, another body to speak the words, write the message, express the thoughts and point in a certain direction. We need a body for that. And when we are ready...and only when we are ready we hear the teacher and  begin to learn and understand that we are so much more than these bodies that the teaching and learning come through. The bodies are only teaching and learning tools.

They are not us and they are not all that significant.  Therefore what they are experiencing is also pretty insignificant. This Life is not all about 'little me'.  "Little me" clings to the body and insists it functions a certain way so it remains separate and protected from harm.  The greater "I", however, sees the body as nothing more than a means to teach and to learn.  It sees no separation and no need for defence or attack. It doesn't place a lot of significance on the body so it doesn't see 'sickness' and 'death' in the same way little me sees it.

Sickness is Impossible?

It realizes:

Because it [the body] is holy it cannot be sick, nor can it die.  When its usefulness is done it is laid by, and that is all. ...God's Voice will tell him when he has fulfilled his role, just as It tells him what his function is.  He does not suffer in either going or remaining.  Sickness is now impossible to him. ACIM:TM:12:5:5-6,10-11

That doesn't mean the body won't be injured, invaded by organisms or quickly growing cells at times our minds are forgetting what they are here to do.  It doesn't mean that there isn't a life span with a generalized expiration date for the human form. It just means that as long as we are aware that we are here to perform a function and we are performing that function the body will carry us through until we have done what we are here to do.  Letting go and trusting that brings peace.

We don't decide

We don't decide when it has been fulfilled, God does.  Out of fear and a belief in separation from God...we may adopt a false sense of separation and the body may be negatively impacted it by it.  But if we are aware and seeing clearly, we will fulfill our purpose.  There is no way that we can't.

So when we are done what we are here to do...the body will be gently 'laid by'. There is no suffering 'going or remaining'. Once we get to that point of our understanding...we don't fear what the ego  labels as death.  We see that our function has been fulfilled and it is time to go. There is no clinging, or fighting to hang on or holding back.  Imagine being at that point?

Anyway...reading this section soothed me and helped to ease a lot of fear about what this may or may not be.  I don't know and I won't know until I seek a medical diagnosis.  I may get a favorable medical diagnosis in the physical world sense and I may get an unfavorable one.  I don't know.  I just know that it isn't up to little me.  :)   I can find some peace in that.

So what did I do

So I decided after feeling a certain letting go to get beyond myself. I concentrated on others...after all that is what we are here for.  I spent 10 hours helping my daughter with her chemistry.  Believe me ...Ideal gas equations are much more painful than anything the body can do to us. I distracted from my pain by helping and thinking about someone other than myself....it worked.

All is well in my world.

Pain is Life

Whatever is here is Life.
-Eckhart Tolle

I like to hear that when I go into my 16th day with this pain that ebbs and flows in intensity as so many so called 'problems' do. I like to think that the challenge is helping me to evolve to get deeper into my understanding of what is really important.  I do like to see how much I have actually grown in this area.

The Old Way of Dealing With Pain

There was a time when I would have been pretty freaked out by the pain (and the other symptoms that are taking place with it).  I would spend my time resisting it...shouting out, "Why are you doing this to me now? On top of everything else you have to lay this on me!  Haven't I got enough to deal with?"

I would have tensed up when it increased in intensity resisting it physically as well as mentally.  I would have curled up in a ball.  I would have paced (okay I do pace a bit when the intensity increases lol).  I would have moaned and groaned.

I would have denied what my rational mind and knowledge base  was saying about it.  I would over dramatize it when I could deny no longer.  I would have created a lot of story around it, a lot of "Oh no...this could be really, really bad! But I am stuck with it...look what I have been  through before when I tried to get help for pain...I can't go through that again. I won't get help for this so why bother."

I would have made an enemy of this pain, struggling and fighting against it.  I would therefore have been pushing against  each  moment I experienced the pain in or I would have  been waiting impatiently for that moment to be over. By so doing I would have made an enemy, not only out of it, but out of Life. Because whatever is here...is Life.  Pain is here in this moment.  Pain is Life.

It just is

The pain is.  It is a part of my moment and a part of my life.  I know that it, in itself, is not a problem.  I make it a problem when I resist it. So I am not resisting it.

When we allow pain into our experience, be it physical or emotional, we deal with it a lot differently than we would if we resist it. We open up to it and we can learn from it.

Become friendly with the 'isness' of whatever it is that is arising in the present moment instead of internally arguing with it, complaining about it, denying it, mentally projecting yourself elsewhere or getting very unhappy about it. (Tolle, Aging Consciously, 2019)

Pain can bring us closer to that place of true understanding the exists beyond the physicality of things.  Physical pain, when it gets intense,  can do this because it is so physical.  It is often hard to deny its presence or to think beyond it when it hits the 8 or 9 on the pain scale. The body can become loud. It is then we must do two things if we want to deal with it consciously: overcome it or transcend it.

Overcoming Pain

We can overcome it to some degree (or at least diminish its intensity) by relaxing into it as much as possible.  Once we stop resisting it ( resistance  is where most of the tension comes from) and just accept it into our moment, we relax a bit.  Once we exchange the thought:"This shouldn't be happening" for ... "It should be happening because it is."...the struggle ceases to overwhelm us and we are just left with the pain.  Pain without struggle and without thought is a lot easier to deal with than pain wrapped in tension and resistance.  Pain may actually go away. We can over come.

Transcending Pain

We can also transcend pain.  When we transcend physical pain, we may not necessarily stop pain from making its noise within our bodies but we find a way to detach from  the  noise of the body and the chatter the mind makes about it.  Very advanced yogis do this all the time: They are able to meditate for hours in the freezing cold, able to lay on a bed of nails, walk through burning coals, go days without eating or drinking.  It can be done...Even in the secular sense people can be anesthetized without a drop of anesthetic through something called "White Glove Anesthesia". 

Though I am certainly not there...I intend to hit the Tylenol big time when it gets bad or go running for help if it gets any worse...it is hopeful to note that it can be done.  We can actually transcend pain by using that higher part of ourselves.

Still  May Need Help

I am not suggesting by any means that we ignore our pain and suck it all up.  Pain is often an urgent communication from the body that something needs to be looked at.  On the esoteric level...sure it may have deeper significance...but on the physical level, where  most of us still are, it is a cry that needs to heard.

 My new understanding of things is not making me stupid lol...I know that pain is my body's way of being heard. Something is going on in there. I know I am far from Yogi status.  I am listening and will do something about it. I will seek help .  I won't run in a panic but I will gradually make my way there.

In the mean time, I will learn and I will teach.  That is why I share this experience with you.  Pain offers an amazing teaching and learning tool for all of us, regardless of where we are in this process of waking up.

Need to See Things Differently

We need to look at the world differently.  Pain is a part of that world.  We cannot stop pain from entering our lives but we can change the way we look at it and the world at large.

What the world [pain] is, is but a fact.  You cannot choose what this should be. But you can choose how you would see it.  Indeed, you must choose this. ACIM:TM:11:1:9-11

All is well.

The Insignificance of the Body and the Nature of Illness

...The insignificance of the body must be an acceptable idea...With this idea is pain forever gone.
-ACIM:TM:II:5.:3:12-4:1

Hmm!  Do you think the body is significant? 

I still must to some extent because I still have pain. lol  I am getting there though.  I am allowing the pain to some degree.  I am not struggling against it.  I am aware when my mind starts to attempt to wrap it up in a pretty package with a nice neat label on it to conceptualize the physical cause and treatment of it. I am aware when that tendency to want to create story with it, using the drama from my past experiences and the memories of so called "insults" from others, to come into play. Being aware helps me to step back from any mental fluff ego stuffs around the pain and to see it and experience it for it is. My mind and body are simply communicating...nothing more, nothing less.  My mind is responsible for the pain. The body listens.

So you foolishly think you just have to  suck up all pain?

No. I don't particularly like pain lol.  I take Tylenol ES when it gets bad.  I am watching it from a physiological perspective as well.  I know if it continues or gets any worse that I will have to "treat the body".  Though I don't focus on the cause, I have a good idea what it is. I will eventually  need to put aside any past painful health seeking memories and  get it looked after by some professional who focuses on bodies.  I know that.

Not there yet!

I am not that evolved where I can use my mind to cure myself.  I am not 100 % faithful in this line from A Course: A patient decides that this is so and he recovers. I am not yet where those people are when they are magically cured by "belief" and are able to get up out of their wheel chairs and walk across the  room after getting a bonk on the head from someone claiming to have the holy spirit flowing through them. I am not there.... yet!

On the conceptual level, I am a firm believer in the Placebo/Nocebo effect and believe all illness is psychosomatic .  I have yet, however,  to  fully internalize that belief on the experiential level. Though part of me knows that I have (well my ego mind has) chosen this pain, this condition, my physical ailments for some bizarre reason I have yet to understand, I still partially at least  operate under an old ingrained ideology that sickness or pain has chosen me.

Until I realize that I see value in pain I will not heal, I will have pain.

Healing is accomplished the instant the sufferer no longer sees any value in pain. ACIM:TM:5:I:1

Value in Pain?? Are you insane?

Yes there is egoic value in pain and yes we are all a little insane until we finally see that we, on some level ( not to be blamed for but to be forgiven for),  choose sickness.  The mind, according to ACIM,  uses sickness to keep us focused on the physical world rather than the deeper one. It tricks us into believing we are victims to the body and that the world, determined by the body's five senses, is all there is. We are at the mercy of that world surrounding us as well as the body's limitations.   The ego needs us to believe the body is more significant than the mind in our experience of life. As long as we are here in this mind-body frame of thinking and living...ego is safe.  It will not be lost to the power that generates the mind. So on some level of egoic thinking...pain has value.

For sickness is an election; a decision.  It is the choice of weakness, in the mistaken conviction that it is strength.  When this occurs, real strength [the mind and spirit] is seen as a threat and health as danger. -ACIM:TM:5:I:4-6

Healthy minds and healthy bodies are a threat to the ego because who we really are is a threat to the ego.  That's all.

How do we get rid of pain and illness once and for all then?

We wake up!  We see who we are and put ego and all its crazy control games to the side.  Without ego Life acts through us.  We heal.  Without ego you are a blessing to the world. (Tolle, What Really Matters, 2019). I am not saying our bodies  won't ever get sick or they won't die.  They will... as is the nature of all things in this physical world.  Our bodies are physical things. Every 'thing' is destined to dissolve. (Tolle, 2019) 

I am just saying the mind is stronger than the body.  The mind doesn't follow the body's lead...the body follows the mind's.  How freeing that could be for all of us to realize that.

I am not asking you to believe it though if you are not ready.  This idea that we create our own bodily ills is a hard pill to swallow.   I know , I myself, have a long way to go until I truly believe that, but recognizing that what happens to my body is not all that significant certainly makes accepting pain a lot easier. Maybe, for your own benefit you could try opening your mind to the possibility of it, just enough to know that you may have some power in getting better and healing yourself.

All is well in my world.

References

ACIM (2007) Manual for Teachers Section 5: How Healing is Accomplished. Mill Valley: Foundation for Inner Peace.

Lipton, Bruce (2005 ) The Biology of Belief. Author's Pub Core

Tolle, E. (Jan 2019) What Really Matters.  Eckhart Tolle 2019.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDU2bNN9ANM

Pain and Healing

Our lives are tailor made for our awakening.
-Adyashanti


A year ago today I wrote about healing from the perception of illness and reclaiming that sense of holistic wellness we are all entitled to. Ironically, as I study the Teacher's Manual for ACIM, exactly a year later,  I come into the teaching on healing. I am also experiencing for the first time in a long time another intense bout of physical pain. It kept me awake for much of the night because I struggled against it or fought to 'label and conceptualize' its cause and what I should do about it.

Coincidence?

I see now that the circumstances  for learning are all laid out in front of me like lessons from some exquisite lesson plan. My life or life situation  is tailored made for my awakening.

So I sat with the pain today.  I just sat with it.  I did not struggle against it.  I did not try to analyze it or conceptualize it by diagnosing it or giving it a label (though I could lol).  I didn't create story around it (though part of me really wanted to because I am so addicted to story:). I just sat with it.  I breathed into it.  I allowed it to be whatever it was and I even embraced it.  It was the most remarkable experience to embrace that pain.  There was a true letting go and in that letting go the healing arose.

The pain is still there but I don't give it any value other than pointing to the reality that the true healing that has to occur in me goes beyond the body. All illness and all healing takes place in the mind and realizing that  is what waking up is all about. We are all  given the very unique life circumstances and the learning challenges needed to help us do that.

The acceptance of  sickness is a decision of the mind, for a purpose for which it would use the body, is the basis of healing...A patient decides this is so, and he recovers...Who is the physician? Only the mind of the patient himself.   ACIM:TM:II:2:1-6

All is well!

The Insult

Never insult an alligator until after you have crossed the river.
-Cordell Hull (Brainy Quotes)

I love this little quote and so see the obvious wisdom in it.  Eckhart Tolle in The Nature of Ego and Identity,  tells his audience that we should not insult people who are still very much unconscious, especially if they are bigger than us. Like the alligator they are likely to "snap" back and sometimes that snapping can result in physical harm. Ouch!

Seriously though...insult often leads to more insult, does it not? The quote applies to everyday human relating. Insults come in many forms during our interactions: verbal, nonverbal, mental or behavioural.  They come from the mouth of others and they come form the voices in our own head. Sometimes they are intentional, meant to hurt and other times they aren't.

We are all alligators to some extent.   We have a tendency to snap back when we hurt don't we and when we do we might be pretty vicious.  As human beings we insult and we are insulted. We play an ego against ego game where no one wins. The river, then, could represent the space of distance between little "me" and the greater Self we have to cross.  Until we are conscious and free of ego identification, we do not want to insult other egos.

Say what, crazy lady?

"Weirdo!"  "You are stupid!" "Lazy!" "You are just not good enough!" "You are not as pretty as she is or as strong as he is."

How do you feel when someone lays one of those babies on you?  I guess, if you are like the majority of us who are not quite fully awakened, you won't feel very good when insulted. You may not initially be aware of how you feel because, as is human nature,  we automatically and so quickly fly off into a counter reaction of some kind when it happens.  The attack-defense-attack all happens so fast we are often  not  even  aware of what is happening internally.

 If we took the time, however, to slow the "Thought-feeling-behaviour" reaction down, we would see that we are feeling very "diminished."  It is almost as if those words just stripped away  all that was valuable about us and left us small, and weak and so, so "less than" everyone else.   Insults sting big time and they lead to a whole chain of so called problematic behavior.

What's happening?

A winding down of the process backwards from the time our palm made contact with the other person's cheek or  the even more damaging counter insult fell from our lips, reveals that a series of things occur inside of us in response to the insult or our comparison to others.

• Someone outside of us or inside of us  (don't forget we often carry around a host of inner critics who love to insult us by comparing us to others) verbalizes, in one way or another, a judgment, an opinion, an idea about who or what we are.
• Our mind quickly owns it and tries to make sense of it with thought. 
• Thought dependent ego gets involved. As is the case for most of us, Shamer ego is standing in the corner of our psyches rubbing its greedy little  hands together in earnest anticipation  for such a comment to be fed to the mind.  It  leaps out and grabs it shouting, "This is what I need to show you (and Redeemer ego)  just how 'unworthy' you are. You are weirder, stupider, lazier, uglier, weaker than everyone else and just not good enough."
• We hear it!    We believe it!!!  We own it as truth! We decide we have fallen short in the comparison game. All that so called positive self-esteem we may have had crumbles and we fall thumping down the ladder rungs one at a time.
• Then we begin to feel pretty crappy.  We feel diminished and ashamed. Shamer ego is in heaven because it seems to have control of us and our experience.  We are not in the moment...we are in our head...stuck on that insult.  It will be all we will hear and the resulting feeling of shame will be all  we will know about Life for a period of time.
• The mind tries to restore it sense of self.  Redeemer ego steps in to rebuild this sense of self or to at least stop the mind and body from experiencing these nasty emotions.  It decides to "do" something about it. (Redeemer is a doer.) It needs to defend or attack to restore the now fragile and broken sense of self.
• We react behaviourally. We strike out in one way or another in an attempt to rid ourselves of this awful shame feeling and to further protect self. We say something even meaner back to the person who insulted us or if the insult came from another body we may even strike the other person . If the voice came from inside we may strike out at the person our mind is comparing us to with some insult.  We may also strike out at our own  body...pushing it harder, making it do more to restore itself-to be more than the other or we may numb in an unhealthy way. Our goal is to take the focus off our defectiveness by making the other person more defective than us in one way or another.  We project any sense of 'insult' away from self.
• We hurt because we were hurt. We defend and attack.

All this happens so fast, like a knee-jerk reaction.  We hear the insult and we react!

Does it have to be this way though?

No, when we begin to  wake up things will change.  When we become more conscious...we will not "react" to the insult.  We will see that it is ego that reacts, not who we really are.  We will see that it is ego that insults, not who we really are.  It is ego that insults and ego that reacts.   Ego against ego cause nothing but unnecessary suffering. 

We will also see when we wake up, that we are not our ego.  We are not this fragile sense of self we have become overly identified with that is at the mercy of Shamer and Redeemer's antics; that gets offended so easily.

We will see that we are not thought and thought cannot determine who or what we really are. We will see that mind has created "an idea" of us that is too limited to be us.

Eventually, eventually after much practice and waking up we will see that we are the spaciousness, the consciousness, and the awareness that watches the ego game at play.  From here we respond, rather than react.

So what  can we do when we get insulted?

When that insult comes our way...and it will someday from some source or another...we do not need to react, we do not have to play along. We can respond from a higher place.

• We work to be more aware in most of our moments so when the insult comes we are already there and prepared to deal with it in a healthy, conscious way. We stay present, stay conscious.
• If we are just awakening, and feeling that need to react, we remind ourselves that there is a better way to handle it. We can use the mantra, "I choose peace, other than this."
• We recognize the ego in the other person and we recognize the ego in us.  As soon as we see the insult and its request for reaction as an ego thing, we can withdraw from it and choose not to partake in a battle of senseless ego drama.
• We allow the insult and the internal feelings. We decide  not to struggle against it.
• We can use a tiny bit of thought, but I don't believe we have to, to see if there is some truth in the insult that we can learn from and grow from. 
• Instead of asking, "Is it true, am I really stupider than that person?" We ask..."Is my ego still trying to control me by getting me to compare or fall into the comparison game? Do I still have a desire to react and does part of me want to hurt that person or myself because of it?"
• Be aware of a tendency to want to project outward, to numb from the shame we are feeling, or to hurt the other person or ourselves.  Be aware of any remaining tendency to defend or attack.
• We stay aware and seek to be forgiving both of the other person and ourselves for not yet being where we want to be.
• Instead of reacting with ego, we can make a choice to respond with spirit. Spirit takes us above thought, not below it.  We can be open to the other person's pain and suffering (as well as our own) that lead to the insult and our internal response.  Just be aware of it and be compassionate
• That doesn't mean we own the insult or that  we allow ourselves to be abused...we just see, understand and walk away
• We decide to sit with the feelings generated by the insult instead of doing something about it.  (That includes to decide not to numb or harm self)
• We look beyond the reactivity of the other person to any pain that might be there and we forgive and remain compassionate.  (Pretty challenging when you feel like someone has just slapped you across the face, I know.)
• We remind ourselves that the real attack is not from the other but from our own minds and this need to protect this identification we have with the conceptual self most of us are stuck on.
• We remind ourselves that we are not this little image we have of ourselves ...we are so much more.  The other person is not what they are portraying to us in that moment...they are so much more.
• We are One. The other person may never realize that.  What is important, is that we do.

Insult me if you like lol. All is well in my world..

References

Tolle, Eckhart (Jan 2019) The Nature of ego and Identity. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEEb84yCQU0

Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can.  Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can.
-Martin Luther King Jr

Attention! World Looking for Teachers: No Knowledge Required

A teacher of God is anyone who chooses to be one.  His qualifications consist solely in this; somehow, somewhere he has made a deliberate choice in which he did not see his interests as apart from someone else's.
-ACIM:TM:1:1-2


I don't want you to get hung up on that word teacher.  I  especially do not want you to get blocked by the  Course's use of A Teacher of God and on its masculine terminology. These are just words and concepts used to express a message ...nothing more. The message behind them is crucial to our understanding. The teacher role is not selective based on gender, special status or degree of knowledge.  We are all automatically teachers in one way or another when we choose to be. According to Eckhart Tolle in The Deepest Truth of Human existence once the "shift" happens in us we simply teach by demonstrating a different way of living than the way most of us live now.

No knowledge is required.

Choice?

The choice we make is not so much in the choice to become a teacher, but in the choice to be present and aware instead of being stuck in the madness of our minds. We unknowingly make a choice to teach, when we make a choice to wake up from the illusion of what we had falsely believed was real and important . We become teachers when we realize in that awakening that we really know nothing.  That is the true learning and it is true learning or 'unlearning" that brings us to this teaching role. (Eckhart Tolle, 2019)

It is the function of God's teachers to bring true learning to the world.  Properly speaking it is unlearning that they bring, for that is "true learning" in this world.
ACIM:TM:4:A:X:3:7

Conceptual Knowledge is not real knowledge

All we think we knew, prior to awakening,  is just conceptual knowledge based on thoughts, ideas, emotions dictated by ego's  "idea" of "me" in "my life".  It is not true knowing.  It is not true understanding of what is real and what it means to "be" who we really are. When we start to awaken and develop the tiniest bit of comfort with not knowing who we are or what anything really is we learn through unlearning and thus have no choice but to teach in one way or another.

In other words it is not conceptual knowledge that we need to be happy and peaceful so therefore we do not set out to learn more conceptual knowledge or to teach it.  We set out to undo the knowledge in our heads that obscures the true knowing. We put down our defenses and our illusions. Once we begin to do so we are guided to teach at a higher level while we discover peace and joy and true knowing.

No one can become an advanced teacher of God until he fully understands that defenses are but foolish guardians of mad illusions....Slowly at first he lets himself be undeceived  but he learns faster as his trust increases.  It is not danger that comes when defenses are laid down.  It is safety.  It is peace.  It is joy.  and it is God.
 ACIM:TM:4:A:VI:1:6-15


What is this true knowing?

True knowing  is the spacious awareness that exists beyond all the unconsciousness that plagues our planet today. All the identification with story, "me" and "mine" and "my" is what makes up the unconscious world, the "normal" world most of us are lost in.  The over identification with the "interpretations" our minds make about what is going on in each moment forms the basis for our "conceptual" basis of understanding.  Thoughts, feelings, and actions based on our perceptual experiences determines how most of us live.  And since most of us live this way, it is considered normal.

True Knowing is not Normal...yet

This true knowing is what exists beyond dependence on mental concepts to make sense of our world.  It exists beyond the  need to protect and defend to the point of attack and violence.  It is what exists beyond all the book learning and conditioning that gets us to believe that this body and this need to be "normal" is all that is important. It exists beyond our dependence on judging things as "good" or "bad", "right" or "wrong" etc  It is what  exists beyond thought.  It is in  the non judgmental , non interpretative spaciousness of true presence and awareness where  true knowing exists. (Eckhart Tolle, 2019)

It isn't normal maybe but it is what brings us peace. Opening our minds beyond what we think we knew frees us from the need for judgment.  Without judgment we find peace.

Open-mindedness comes from with lack of judgment. ...Only the open minded can be at peace, for they alone see reason for it.....
ACIM: TM:4:A:X:1-2

With this open-mindedness we are pulled into the teaching role more and more. We learn and we teach, and we teach and we learn.

No teacher of God can judge and hope to learn.
ACIM: TM:4:A:III:1:11

It is our goal as teachers, one by one, to make this knowing "normal".

We are not special

Another important thing to remember is that we are not special.   There is nothing 'special" about us as human forms in this role. We are just conduits for the teaching to come through. We are not the teaching! The teaching may come in different forms.  We may overtly teach in the traditional manner through lectures, satsangs or the written word.  We may teach through our examples like many of the Saints did.  We may teach through our creative expressions: paintings, poetry, or music.  We may simply teach through our presence.  When we choose to remain present in the midst of unconsciousness we are teaching.  It doesn't matter how we teach, we are not special.

The Teaching is Beyond Us

It is not about the little "me" in us. We do not necessarily set out to teach, though it may seem that way.  The teaching sets out to express Itself through us. As soon as we begin to choose, awareness has already chosen us. If we are getting ego gratification from our role or begin to see ourselves as special because of it...we are no longer teaching.  The ego can't teach. Only the spacious awareness, the presence, the Divine within us can teach.  Ego just gets in the way.

Egoic power is illusion. Eckhart Tolle

Becoming One

I like the way Tolle explains it.  He says we, as human beings, are ripples and within us is the ocean.  We remain isolated and afraid,seeing ourselves as separate ripples living independent lives away from the ocean as long as we are caught up in ego's illusions. We feel afraid, lonely, at risk for harm as long as we feel separated and disconnected.  Ego, our mind stuff, and conceptual knowledge keeps us believing we are separate ripples.   We do not realize we are the ocean and always have been. 

When we learn that we are the Ocean there is no longer a need to fear.  We have entered the spaciousness of what is.  We find peace and joy.  How can we not share that and teach that so all ripples remember who they are...who we, "as a collective whole" are.  We teach simply through our own choice of staying in the vast space of awareness that is us.

The world is calling us to teach.  We are all qualified.  No "conceptual" knowledge required.

All is well in my world.

References

ACIM 2007) Combined Volume : Manual for Teachers. Mill Valley: Foundations for Inner Peace.

Tolle, Eckhart. (January 2019) The Deepest Truth of human Existence. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sbvm6tYuP1s

The Portal to Miracles

Once a certain level of presence arises…a challenge simply intensifies presence instead of the old reactive pattern [a little me tizzy fit of resisting what is]…The movement of intelligence goes into that moment that is challenging. So a challenge comes and it is faced completely in a field if intense awareness.  ….It is not mentally analyzed… what is dealing with the challenge is not the limited conditioned mind with its conditioning.   What is now dealing with the situation is the one universal intelligence.  You would be amazed how quickly situations resolve themselves through  the simple act of giving full, and complete, non- interpretative, non-judgemental attention- clear space.  Of course that is only possible  if the portal that is the act of surrender is open. …. If you accepted unconditionally whatever this challenge is that forms this moment.

-Eckhart Tolle (see below) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAlh2rIqBhs

Been awake since 444 lol.  Felt the moon shining in and pulling me by some gravitational force to this room. :) A manuscript I was editing was opened on the screen.  I read through that and I thought "Man, maybe that's a sign I need to send this out again.  It reads pretty good. It might even get published." 

Then I heard in my head the mantras I have been writing: Is that so?  Maybe.  It really doesn't matter. I don't mind what happens because it is no big deal.

That's funny because I woke up thinking about my kids  who need me in ways I really do not seem to know how to help.  I recited those phrases then, at 4:44, but it didn't seem to settle me like it does with my writing worries or projections.  The publication of my writing I know really doesn't matter in the big scheme...the wellness of my children still does. I feel like "I should" be worried about that.  Hmmm! 

I think the thing is to start practicing with the small things (writing) and work up to the big until we realize there is no difference between the big and the small...no order of priority or importance to miracles.  The cessation of worry is an indication that a miracle is happening in us:)   What is the actual miracle?  Getting beyond ego, pain body, and mind stuff to  the clear open space of what is. It is all good.

All is well!

References

Tolle, E. (May, 2018) Don't worry about what Happens. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAlh2rIqBhs

I pray for a more friendly, more caring, and more understanding human family on this planet.  To all who dislike suffering, who cherish lasting happiness, this is my heartfelt appeal.
-Dalai Lama

I really have to get out there and shoot...I am recycling old pics again and again.