May 7th, 2006
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Anger has it’s place. It is there to move us. It tells us things aren’t right. But we don’t want to get lost in anger. We need to be conscious of it.
Compassion means: Deep awareness of the suffering of another coupled with the wish to relieve it.
There are two phases to turning anger into compassion. Phase one is looking at the situation from the other person’s perspective. Phase two is understanding that people must be in pain to act the way they act.
There are things that people do unintentionally that upset us. Phase one would be to take the time to see things from the other person’s perspective. There is really no need to be upset once we understand that we are all trying to get somewhere in our car. Once we see that that person doesn’t know our situation, and was just acting probably as we would act if we were them. That perspective allows space into the situation. It allows perspective and understanding.
Then there are times when the other person is actually being malicious. They are trying to sabotage us in our work environment, take our job, abusing power, trying to embarrass us in public, or they are treating us poorly in one way or another on purpose. What do we do then? Well, you still use phase one, which is looking at the situation from their perspective. Once we realize that that person is doing something we don’t understand, we try to find compassion.
The way we find compassion is we begin to realize, right now, that people don’t act poorly like that unless they are in pain. Unless they have been wronged in the past.
I will point out that it’s interesting that humans don’t need to be taught to lie. A small child will lie about being caught in the cookie jar all by themselves. But that’s just self preservation, it’s not really malicious.
If we make it a practice to one, look at problems from the other person’s perspective, and two, understand that people are in pain and act poorly because of it, we can turn our own anger into compassion.
April 16th, 2006
Worry has become an epidemic. We seem to almost always have a background sense of worry. Worry means to feel uneasy or concerned about something; to be troubled; to cause to feel anxious, or distressed.
All worry is the same thing and we need to learn what it really is: An irrational habit of imagining a future that often doesn’t come. We ruin this moment when we worry. We think we’re helping ourselves by planning for the worst, but it’s a very negative, and unhealthy way to live.
We can see that worry is useless. Once we see it’s uselessness, why would we ever let it affect us again? The next time we are deep within a situation, we tend lose perspective. We think that the new situation is the most important situation ever. "If I don’t get this work done, my boss will be upset." Often our fears are not even true, but even if they are, it often doesn’t matter as much as we think. We end up being irrational about the consequences.
Does your worrying about something help the situation? I bet you work better, faster, and more accurately when you’re calm or in the zone. Worry tends to lead to mistakes. So it’s a very illogical place that we find ourselves: 1) we’ve created a small situation (not an earthquake tsunami, but rather filing papers!) to worry about. 2) We’ve chosen a less effective state of mind to deal with whatever "problem" exists. This is a horrible habit and a huge error for humans.
Examples of worry include things like our safety (staying away from strangers), humiliation (work projects, being bad at something we have to do), etc. When the thing worried about actually happens, the event itself is often no big deal. Yet beforehand we act like the world will end.
The fix: Learn to bring your attention back to your breath. First realize you’re worrying, then drop it. The practice of meditation helps learn to drop the situation. There is no use in holding on to worry. Worry is ALWAYS IN THE FUTURE. It can’t exist here. So bring your attention here to drop it.
March 19th, 2006
Trauma is horrible, and we shouldn’t forget that. We all have trauma to one degree or another. We all have “our stuff.”
Trauma has the potential to widen and deepen our experience of pain. Which allows us to have a higher “high.” Imagine someone who hasn’t had much stimulation in either direction, good or bad. Their circumstances are not as wide and as varied to draw from. They have a skinnier history to draw from. So something somewhat “bad” seems potentially horrible – like gas prices going up. Whereas, someone who has lived through a rape, or a major car accident, might not be as affected by social issues. They care, they just have a different historical comparison to weight the situation against.
Trauma also allows us to see that we survived. We went through that stuff and are still here. It didn’t kill us.
This is not to say that we should look for trauma, or inflict it on others. Life brings enough of it on it’s own.
How does pain and trauma allow for growth? Well, let’s look again at someone who is sheltered. They never get the challenges to test themselves. The Buddha is the iconic representation of this. He left his palace to learn about life and pain. He was unsatisfied with being given everything. You, your kids, and loved ones will be equally unsatisfied. Have you seen wealthy kids at the mall who have everything? Nothing surprises them, nothing thrills them. They are bored. These kids may begin looking for trauma. They won’t know that’s what they are doing, but their boredom has the potential to make them look for thrills. Those thrills, in the form of drugs, etc. can end up giving those kids their share of pain. This is a stereotype used only to make the point that pain and growth is a part of life. We can use pain to stimulate our desire to live differently.
Pleasure and pain are related. In the spectrum of self, pleasure and pain mirror one another. To leave the ego realm of pleasure and pain, it can help to go through enough pain to say “I don’t want to live this way any more.”
It is really important that we process our trauma. We need to begin to work with our pain, and process it fully. We need to feel it, rather than run from it.
Our pain is the substance that we are supposed to traverse to grow. The more of it, the more we want to wake up from it. So as we hate it, from a certain point of view it is a blessing.
We can relax a little with our children and loved ones. We can realize that pain is a part of life, and that we need to allow for some of it to grow. It is often a dis-service to over-protect a child. Pain in general is there to wake you up. It’s asking for you to be present. To drop the valuation of the situation. To open your consciousness. This is how we can begin to kill the ego, or wake up from it.
Trauma can jar us free of the ego. It can re-prioritize our lives. Sadness, fear, and anxiety that is the result of trauma can become so loud that we want to put it down. Without that pain, we might never have woken up. We can become sick of being unhappy. That is a very healthy state to be in.
So how do we want to relate to our trauma? Do we want to be fearful of it, or realize that we’ve been through it, and we’ve beaten it? It’s important that we don’t continue the cycle of abuse. It’s our responsibility to end the cycle of abuse.
Show Music: The Shanghai Restoration Project
February 5th, 2006
When is it okay to think?
When something makes you angry, there are two healthy ways to deal with it. You can become still, or you can investigate the situation using your mind. So at what point should you use your mind or thoughts to work with a situation? You should use your mind when you are aware you are using your mind.
What I am trying to convey is that thought is okay, it just needs to be conscious thought. So what is conscious thought? Thought that sweeps us away into a busy mind is an example of unconscious thought. Working out a problem, finding patterns, working with logic, setting appropriate boundaries on certain levels, using judgment to discern things are all good uses of the mind, as long as we are aware we are doing it.
Challenges will not stop. Neither will “good” and “bad” emotions, feelings, situations, etc. When we change, the world still comes, but we can deal with the world differently. By being detached from the ego, we can free ourselves of being upset that we are sad. So sadness doesn’t stop. Instead, we become okay with sadness.
Depending on how deeply in the world I’m going to live, the more things tend to define me. And hence, the more I need to protect. Be aware of what you are protecting. Be aware of what you are attached to.
Two sides of being alive can be described as thinking/experiencing, or thinking/being, or mind/body. Philosophers have discussed mind and body for ages. The goal is to have mind and body in the same place (here) at the same time (now). We could call the act of accomplishing that a higher state of being.
We don’t want to avoid things through meditation. The act of dropping thought is used to learn about thinking, and to show that thinking isn’t all there is. It is not used to abandon thought entirely. Krishnamurti’s book “Think On These Things” was mentioned to point that out. It was also mentioned that Krishnamurti often suggests “looking at things deeply” which implies using thought.
To sum up, it is okay to think when you are aware you are thinking. Thinking is a tool, and we need to learn to use it as such.
Referenced: Krishnamurti
January 16th, 2006
Audio track mixed to describe a busy mind.
First step of dealing with a busy mind is to become aware that it is occurring to you.
Next step is to bring your attention back to your breath.
There are many things that make up a busy mind. Emotions, anxieties, fears, joys, etc. You can go down each path to work with your mind, but it’s most important to learn to drop your thoughts. Drop all busyness, even though it may feel like you need to work on the content, it is ok to drop thoughts.
Do we want to spend all our time “busy,” or would we rather find peace and sit in that? We need to learn to be fulfilled.
Busy mind leads us to do things to “ease our pain” in excess (such as watch TV, drink, smoke, etc.). It’s important that we learn the middle path between fixing our problems externally with “aspirin” and sitting with discomfort. We need to learn when to stop chasing our problems.
Who do we really want to be? Would we rather free our minds and grow, learn, and express? Or do we want to let our minds run on and on endlessly?
