Just some thoughts prompted by recent days' meetings. I am trying to break down my emotional life time into smaller and smaller units, and see that most states of mind only last for a short period of time. What I mean is that events have the power to hook and disturb me, causing an agitated reaction in the mind. Practice does slow that down but does not eliminate it. The natural, spontaneous, response to a painful event is to try and eliminate the source, as we move to maximize safety and minimize vulnerability. Sometimes we do that by attacking - complaining and blaming in our mind and replaying the scene, or by withdrawing. However, what I am concentrating on is the afterwards - letting go much more quickly than before, catching the reaction early by creating space in the mind.In thinking this I remembered a sermon I heard given by an Augustinian priest in Dublin many years ago. He said that some people hold onto hurt like a dog who has buried a bone and goes regularly to dig it up and lick it lovingly. We can see this often in family disputes. At moments of hurt, strong emotions - such as anger and resentment - touch us so deeply inside that they can dominate the mind in a fixed fashion, and cause us to identify with them. This identification is static, so we tend to stay the same through time, not moving forward, but looking back. Sometimes the hurt is so deep that we have no choice but to let the event process slowly within us. In these cases moving on or forgiveness is very difficult because the event that caused the need for forgiveness has also meant that the mind is covered by pain, loss, and sometimes a sense of betrayal. However, it is also true, in many day-to-day hurts and slights, we have quite a lot of control over the amount of holding on we want to do.
No matter what the situation is,
we are responsible for our own mind states
Joseph Goldstein
