Three things

Every year
everything
I have ever learned

in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side

is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.

To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

Mary Oliver.

Disappointments

Life is a great teacher, and provides regular opportunities for us to grow. Somtimes these can come in the shape of things not working out or people letting us down. Our initial reaction may be to see these as negative, but the focus in our practice is how we work with what is happening:

When there’s a disappointment,
I don’t know if it’s the end of the story.

It may be just the beginning of a great adventure.

Pema Chodron

The real mystery

People travel to wonder at the height of the mountains,
at the huge waves of the sea,
at the long course of rivers,
at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars;
and they pass by themselves without wondering.

St. Augustine

Feeling Safe

Many of us look outside ourselves for affirmation and some sense of worth, often turning to our careers or possessions to give us value. We can do the same in relationships, often expecting others to fill gaps we perceive in our self, which we can find hard to accept fully. This can be a well-established pattern by the time we reach adulthood. It can take the shape of us feeling we need to earn acceptance, or taking care of others at the expense of of own emotional needs. Freud wrote about a repetition complex, which is our need to seek out people who re-enact earlier emotional experiences, rather than necessarily people who allow us be loved just for our own sake.

It is only when we feel safe that we begin to relax with ourselves, as we are, and we can drop these early roles, or the ongoing commentary on how we are doing. Often this happens when we find ourselves with someone who accepts us or listens with real empathy. We find that we do not have to work to deserve love, we do not have to perform, but that we are lovable, deep down, before anything we do. A necessary prerequisite for growth is unconditional acceptance. Receiving such acceptance is like a gentle touch with a feather, warm and caring. It allows us reverse some of the patterns we have established and heals our inner self. It creates a safe haven from the storms of life.

Easter Monday: Open our eyes

In Italy, the Monday after Easter Sunday is known as La Pasquetta ("Little Easter") or Lunedì dell'Angelo ("The Monday of the Angel"). Ir is a day for relaxing outside, for going for a walk and having a picnic. It probably has it roots in ancient Spring festivals, when people would gather outdoors to celebrate. It was a day when a journey, a walk, or even a drive in the car had to be made. The religious meaning given to it, at least as it was explained to me, was to remember the journey made by Jesus' two disciples on the road to Emmaus on Easter Day.

These two disciples set out on Sunday for the village of Emmaus, a walk of a few days. As they were going along, Jesus joined them. They did not recognize him. They were replaying the events of the past - the days of the Crucifixion - and were worrying about what was to happen to them. Their concerns and chatter, their fear-driven desire to run away, did not allow them recognize that God was actually walking with them. In this way, they are just like us, caught in worries about the past, or running away or basing our view of the future on fears. Like us, we often fail to recognize the richness of our life lies in the present moment, when all we can experience is right with us. Often, to be fully alive, all we have to do is see what is being offered to us, right in this moment, rather than thinking our joy lies somewhere else, sometime else. It is sad if we are so focused on getting to a destination, we do not notice who is right beside us now.

The present moment
contains past and future.
The secret of transformation,
is in the way we handle this very moment.

Thich Nhat Hahn, Understanding Our Mind

Easter

In Ireland and elsewhere, the Lily is a symbol of Easter, being associated with new life and a pure offering to God.
In this simple poem, Mary Oliver sees the flower as silently following night and day, darkness and light, the up's and down's of life, trusting, knowing that the dawn will follow the night.
This trust is the perfect attitude, the perfect prayer, the attitude we try to cultivate in sitting.


Night after night
darkness enters the face
of the lily
which, lightly,
closes its five walls
around itself,
and its purse of honey,
and its fragrance,
and is content to stand there
in the garden, not quite sleeping,
and, maybe, saying in lily language
some small words we can’t hear
even when there is no wind
anywhere,
its lips are so secret,
its tongue is so hidden –
or, maybe,
it says nothing at all
but just stands there
with the patience
of vegetables and saints
until the whole earth has turned around
and the silver moon
becomes the golden sun –
as the lily absolutely knew it would,
which is itself, isn’t it,
the perfect prayer?

Mary Oliver, The Lily

Accepting diversions

All the stress in your life comes
from your fixed notion of how
the Universe should behave
and from your inability to accept
the merry diversions
the Universe takes from your agenda.

In fact, you generally take these
diversions from your script
as a personal affront.

Srikumar Rao, Are you Ready to Succeed?

Holding on: A dog and bone story

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

Life events as our teacher: a cat story

One day I was sitting on my bed meditating, and a cat wandered in and plopped down on my lap. I took the cat and tossed it out the door. Ten seconds later it was back on my lap. We got into a sort of dance, this cat and I...I tossed it out because I was trying to meditate, to get enlightened. But the cat kept returning. I was getting more and more irritated, more and more annoyed with the persistence of the cat. Finally, after about a half-hour of this coming in and tossing out, I had to surrender. There was nothing else to do. There was no way to block off the door. I sat there, the cat came back in, and it got on my lap. But I did not do anything. I just let go. Thirty seconds later the cat got up and walked out.

So, you see, our teachers come in many forms.

Joseph Goldstein