On Awareness and Compassion, or, My Mind Is A Crying Baby

Mmmmmm.....I received some words of wisdom from Tricycle's Daily Dharma in my inbox at just the right moment to spark some fruitful reflection.  I feel I'm in safe company to admit I've been engaging in a fair amount of self-flagellation lately...mostly for my resistance to what is, my continued patterns of defensiveness, and my fearful heart.  In a nutshell, for not being "spiritual" enough.  After reflecting upon the irony of that, I usually hit myself with the 1-2 punch of my personal favorite self-torture device:  Judging myself for judging myself!

Oooooh, to let go of this crazy, churning mind!  The tricky thing is, I find that in desiring to let go of it, I'm actually resisting it, which keeps me in its grasp.....Poor mind; it's just doing what it does....why do I have to push it away?!  (As if I could anyway, with that "mind"set.)

BUT NOT TO RESIST IT......

As Tara Brach writes in her beautiful book Radical Acceptance, waking up to the fullness of our being requires us to lean into our experience - which is an interdependent process of clear awareness coupled with gently holding our experience with compassion (in other words, self-love).  When I get caught up in this mind-mode (or an emotional feeling state), I find that awareness alone is sometimes not enough (because of that pesky judging for judgment phenomenon I mentioned).  I find I am served much more richly by also focusing on opening to my boundless, loving heart (and directing that energy to myself).  This morning, I actually tried to visualize my spinning mind as a fearful child or crying baby, holding it ever so gently, with the utmost love and compassion.  Only when I cultivate both of these principles simultaneously do I begin to find a peaceful release from the judging-mind-loop, and a sense of open expansiveness enveloping my being.

Here are the quotes that spawned this self-reflection:

Lovingkindness
For a true spiritual transformation to flourish, we must see beyond [the] tendency to mental
self-flagellation. Spirituality based on self-hatred becomes martyrdom.
Morality born of self-hatred becomes rigid repression. Love for others
without the foundation of love for ourselves becomes a loss of
boundaries, co-dependency, and a painful and fruitless search for
intimacy. But when we contact, through meditation, our true nature, we
can allow others to also find theirs.

-Sharon Salzberg,
Lovingkindness

Wherever You Go, There You Are
When you dwell in stillness, the judging mind can come through like a foghorn. "I don't like the pain in my knee...This is boring...I like this feeling of stillness; I had a good meditation yesterday, but today I'm having a bad meditation...It's not working for me. I'm no good at this. I'm no good, period..."

This type of thinking dominates the mind and weighs it down. It's like carrying around a suitcase full of rocks on your head. It feels good to put it down. Imagine how it might feel to suspend all your judging and instead to let each moment be just as it is, without attempting to evaluate it as "good" or "bad." This would be a true stillness, a true liberation. Meditation means cultivating a non-judging attitude toward what comes up in the mind, come what may.

-Jon Kabat-Zinn, Wherever You Go, There You Are

Again, for me, Tara's words on Radical Acceptance offer further guidance on how to translate these words of wisdom into action in the world: 

"Rather than trying to vanquish waves of emotion and rid ourselves of an inherently impure self, we turn around and embrace this life in all its realness -- broken, messy, mysterious and vibrantly alive.  By cultivating an unconditional and accepting presence, we are no longer battling against ourselves, keeping our wild and imperfect self in a cage of judgment and mistrust.  Instead, we are discovering the freedom of becoming authentic and fully alive."  -- Radical Acceptance, p. 42

Can't you just feel it in your body?  Relaxing into yourself more deeply than the best massage?  This is something I just might be able to do......Until the next time I don't, that is!

Much love,
Beth