The Three Marks of Existence
by Anthony Flanagan,
Understanding ourselves The three marks of existence are crucial to the Buddhist understanding of ourselves and the world around us. The first of these 'marks' or 'characteristics'  is anicca or impermanence. The second of these is dukkha or suffering, which is also the first noble truth and the third is anatta or not-self. To see the world in its true nature is to see these three characteristics inherent within all things - that the world is a place of suffering and dissatisfaction: that nothing stands still and that, however hard you look, you will never find a permanent essence, self or soul in anything! Shocking? Phew! When we first come across these ideas they may seem a little shocking. But when we start to apply them to our day to day experiences and to the world at large, they are hard to refute. First, suffering in the world is undeniable. If we're not suffering right at this minute, we know that someone elsewhere definitely is. We also know that suffering awaits us - sickness, loss of loved ones, our own death. Similarly, it's also not that hard to see that everything is impermanent. Our lives change in many ways from second to second. We can think of this on a molecular level or in a more human way - we see ourselves growing older, our moods change from day to day, our thoughts are constantly pulled this way and that. Finally, and perhaps the most challenging, if we look at ourselves carefully, it's hard to find what we might call a permanent self - what we term the self changes from day to day - sometimes minutely, sometimes dramatically. Are we the same person today that we were yesterday? Are we the same person this year as we were twenty years ago? Challenging stuff! Not-Self The idea of not self or anatta is probably the most challenging concept of all and it is quite unique to Buddhism. Other religions have the idea of a soul but Buddhism doesn't. Instead, it sees the individual as a combination of five factors known as khandhas. Each person, therefore, is made up of consciousness, feelings, mental formations (including volition), perception and corporeality (the body). None of these, according to Buddhism, is permanent and nor, either individually or collectively, do they constitute what might be called a soul. Through meditation - particularly insight or vipassana meditation - these three marks play an important role. The idea of insight meditation is to see things as they really are and this means realizing at an experiential rather than conceptual level that suffering, impermanence and not-self underlie everything. Paradoxically, to realize this is to bring an end to suffering. Not surprisingly then, the three marks of are fundamental to Buddhist thinking and practice.

 

The Monkey Mind

IT HAS BEEN CALLED the "monkey mind." It is that stream of consciousness that keeps flitting from one thing to another like a monkey jumping from branch to branch. Even when you are concentrating, your mind drifts off to fantasize about something you are going to do next weekend or an unresolved problem you must face tomorrow. But you have the power to stop the antics of this monkey mind and achieve the "quiet" of "still" mind that is essential to develop your spiritual nature. Meditation is the method for exercising this control.

An Inner Center of Peace

As the pressures of the world increase and multiply, many persons are turning to the practice of meditation as a first step toward a calmer life, toward greater clarity of mind, toward the release of strength and wisdom in their lives, and, most important, toward direct realization of the wellspring of strength and peace within themselves.

In this spiritual search we must not lose sight of the fact that it is an inner journey. For just as the ocean has quiet depths, untroubled by agitation on the surface, so has every human. In those depths—the true center and source of all that we are—abide stillness, peace, and beauty. And we can reach this inner center.

Consciousness focused on the inner center can release the power of the divine potential that is the true spiritual nature of every man and woman. But most of us, engrossed in the activities and self-centered endeavors of everyday life in the physical world, shut out our spiritual nature and the light that flows through it from the one Energy Source.

It is a natural law that our attachments and our constant busyness—our fears, desires, habits, doubts, and judgments—severely limit the amount of power we take in.

By meditation we can remove the obstacles so that the door to those spiritual levels of consciousness can be opened. Then creativity and inspiration flow into our lives, reducing the urgency of our problems and allowing us to express love and peace in all that we do.

Meditation is perfect stillness—silence of body, silence of speech, and silence of mind.

To find stillness of mind we have to learn the delicate art of allowing our actions, our thoughts, and our feelings to be whatever they are, but not let them control us. We cannot force the mind to be still, but we can withdraw our consciousness from its restlessness. Meditation is our deepest natural state—our pure consciousness—which we experience once our minds stop being busy. It is difficult for us because it is really doing "nothing"—it is just being what we are.

A Science Centuries Old

Meditation has been a central focus of most spiritual traditions, but because it takes place in silence and alone, it is less well known than more social practices like preaching and singing. However, precise instructions in meditation, set down thousands of years ago by the Indian sage Patanjali, are still available to us today. He starts by stressing the need for a pure life based not on greed and sensuality, but on harmlessness, truthfulness, simplicity, and contentment.

Patanjali's first instruction to the meditator is to "hinder" or slow down the "modifications" of the mind—to stop it from identifying with or responding to stimuli. He then sets out the following four steps necessary to master the art of meditation:

Observation (Awareness). To observe with undivided attention develops the awareness or "mindfulness" that is essential in meditation. We must be continually aware of the conditioning that lies behind our thought-feeling and try to act more and more from the center of stillness, which is our real Self. As we do this, we realize that the essential process of meditation is not different from the total art of living itself.

Concentration. Concentration is necessary to discipline the "monkey mind." We must learn to hold the mind steady on a physical object, an idea, or a revered figure, and bring it back when it slips away. The mind tries to take control, but by carefully watching the processes of our thinking we can learn to ensure that we, and not the mind, determine the content and activity of our consciousness.

Meditation. Meditation proper begins where active thought ceases and one becomes aware of the inner meaning of the object of meditation. It is like going from one-pointedness to no-point and thus experiencing wholeness.

Contemplation. In this final stage the meditator becomes completely one with the object of meditation. This brings about an expansion of consciousness that lifts one out of the little self into a greater Self. There is no longer an "I" and an "it" being meditated upon. There is only the One Reality.

How To Meditate

Each person tends to have his or her own way of meditation, but the following general techniques are common to all traditional methods:

1. Meditate regularly at the same time each day in a private place.
2. Sit in a comfortable position with spine erect.
3. Relax all muscles—deep breathing is helpful.
4. Deliberately withdraw your attention from all outer stimuli.
5. Practice one of the specific techniques outlined below.
6. Radiate the peace you have experienced outward to the world.
7. After about 15 minutes slowly come back to normal consciousness.

As aids to stilling the mind, several specific methods are used by meditators, some of which are outlined below:

1. Concentration on Breathing. Concentrate on the breath going in and out of the nostrils. Do not try to count breaths; let them flow naturally, but focus your awareness on breathing. This keeps your concentration in the present moment—the only gateway to higher consciousness.
2. Using Mantras. Mantras are words that, by their special vibrational qualities, link us with the spiritual levels of consciousness. Chanting a mantra like the ancient Indian "om" ("amen" is the English equivalent) is a powerful aid in meditation.
3. Focusing on an Object or Idea. A symbol or an aphorism such as "I am one with the Divine" can be used as a focus to initiate meditation.
4. Emptying the Mind. Many meditators simply try to empty the mind or still its activities, knowing that if this can be achieved an expansion of awareness will follow.

Techniques that interfere with one's control of the mind are not recommended because they are dangerous. Great teachers have spoken strongly against the use of drugs as an aid to meditation. Though they may open up paranormal awareness, drugs do not take consciousness to spiritual levels. The experience is dangerous because it is not under the meditator's control. The same holds true for practices such as channeling and automatic writing.

The Purpose of Meditation

The ultimate goal of meditation is the same as that of yoga—to allow the individual self to experience the greater Self, the Oneness which we can think of as God or Nature.

This experience is the greatest spiritual achievement. One person described it as follows:

I was intensely aware of my body, yet I felt suspended bodiless in a new height. Everything within me seemed to vibrate gently in golden light. There was utter stillness. I did not feel the self fuse with the Absolute. I felt the whole universe—everything that is—was in me, was me, for a fleeting forever.

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Let everything happen to you
Beauty and Terror
Just keep going
No feeling is final

Rilke (quoted from Pema Chodron, Happiness)

 

 

When we pay attention, it is gracious, which means that there is space for our joys and sorrows, our pain and losses, all to be held in a peaceful way… Jack Kornfield

 

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The human mind, in its desire to know, understand, and control, mistakes its opinions and viewpoints for the truth. It says: this is how it is. You have to be larger than thought to realize that however you interpret "your life" or someone else's life or behavior, however you judge any situation, it is no more than a viewpoint, one of many possible perspectives. It is no more than a bundle of thoughts. But reality is one unified whole, in which all things are interwoven, where nothing exists in and by itself. Thinking fragments reality — it cuts it up into conceptual bits and pieces.

The thinking mind is a useful and powerful tool, but it is also very limiting when it takes over your life completely, when you don't realize that it is only a small aspect of the consciousness that you are.

Wisdom is not a product of thought. The deep knowing that is wisdom arises through the simple act of giving someone or something your full attention. Attention is primordial intelligence, consciousness itself. It dissolves the barriers created by conceptual thought, and with this comes the recognition that nothing exists in and by itself. It joins the perceiver and the perceived in a unifying field of awareness. It is the healer of separation.

Whenever you are immersed in compulsive thinking, you are avoiding what is. You don't want to be where you are. Here, Now. 

Dogmas — religious, political, scientific — arise out of the erroneous belief that thought can encapsulate reality or the truth. Dogmas are collective conceptual prisons. And the strange thing is that people love their prison cells because they give them a sense of security and a false sense of "I know."

Nothing has inflicted more suffering on humanity than its dogmas. It is true that every dogma crumbles sooner or later, because reality will eventually disclose its falseness; however, unless the basic delusion of it is seen for what it is, it will be replaced by others.

What is this basic delusion? Identification with thought.

Spiritual awakening is awakening from the dream of thought.

The next step in human evolution is to transcend thought. This is now our urgent task. It doesn't mean not to think anymore, but simply not to be completely identified with thought, possessed by thought.

Feel the energy of your inner body. Immediately mental noise slows down or ceases. Feel it in your hands, your feet, your abdomen, your chest. Feel the life that you are, the life that animates the body. – Eckhart Tolle

5^thword.com
Lawrence S. Sanger

The body then becomes a doorway, so to speak, into a deeper sense of aliveness underneath the fluctuating emotions and underneath your thinking.

There is an aliveness in you that you can feel with your entire Being, not just in the head. Every cell is alive in that presence in which you don't need to think. Yet, in that state, if thought is required for some practical purpose, it is there. The mind can still operate, and it operates beautifully when the greater intelligence that you are uses it and expresses itself through it.        --Eckhart Tolle

The Master said, "Why are you looking for more knowledge when you do not pay attention to what you already know?"

Wisdom, on the other hand, is accumulated insight into the true nature of reality and the way things are, undistorted by self-will.

A meditation sponsor once told me that "wisdom is the gradual dismantling of that which does not work."  What doesn’t work for us are our character defects, because they block us from our Higher Power.  Meditation is a process of attrition of character defects, purification by seeing them for what they are.  Meditation is uncovering our true nature by peeling off the onion layers of character defects, shortcomings, mind chatter and self-will.  But we must act if we want the results.

As I worked the Program the first year or so, I saw with increasing clarity that my fear/avoidance cycle was a deeply conditioned response.  By my own past behavior, I had conditioned myself to avoid or escape any situation in which I experienced, or might experience, fear.  Recovery showed me that if I had become conditioned to act in an unhealthy way, then I could re-condition myself to act in another way, more healthy and wholesome way.  I could change!  Many tools were available in the recovery tool chest, but meditation has been the most useful tool for me.

Meditation is a safe laboratory to re-condition myself by facing unpleasant feelings such as fear.  When fear (or any other emotion) arises during meditation, the practice is just to sit with it, to allow it to be there, watching it arise and pass away.  See Chapter 10:  Meditating with Feelings.  There is no place to go but there is need to escape.  .  We do not distract ourselves from anything that arises when we meditate.  We experience fear by sitting with it, allowing it to manifest and to accept those feelings straight on.  This process breaks down conditioning, which means cultivating courage by teaching us to face our fears in daily life off the cushion as well.

When the attention is trained on the unpleasant emotion in question — in particular, on the bodily experience of the emotion — it gradually ceases to be experienced as a static and threatening entity and becomes, instead, a process that is defined by time as well as space.

As with any strong feelings that arise during meditation, we note them and then focus awareness on the breath if we can, causing the feelings to recede into the background of awareness.  However, if the unpleasant emotion continues to intrude on and dominate awareness, then we simply observe and experience exactly how it feels like in our body, closely watching those sensations arise and pass away.  In this way, we learn courage through meditation

http://www.5thword.com/chapter_20__courage,_serenity_and_wisdom.htm by Lawrence S. Sanger

Mindfulness relies on an important characteristic of awareness: awareness by itself does

not judge, resist, or cling to anything. By focusing on simply being aware, we learn to disentangle ourselves

from our habitual reactions and begin to have a friendlier and more compassionate relationship with our

experience, with ourselves and with others.   -Gil Fronsdal

 

What is to give light must endure burning.

- Victor Frankl

 

Letting go of suffering is truly the hardest work we will do. We can't wait until our mind is clouded and the body wracked with discomfort to do work that seems so impenetrable. ... western culture doesn't recognize dying as a state of grace, nor the power of mercy and compassion. Freedom from suffering is when your happiness is no longer dependent on the content of your mind, but on the capacities of your heart. If you're not letting go of it, you're getting buried by it. - Stephen Levine

 

The two shallow substitutes which people unconsciously take as happiness are activity and acquisition.—Vernon Howard

 

Question: Would you please explain how it is that we form attachments that end up being painful to us?

Answer: Attachment is an unconscious process that occurs when our thoughts, having formed an image of someone or something, then embrace this image as the thing itself we have imagined. We unknowingly derive a sense of “I” from each mental or emotional image thus inwardly considered, and it is this sense of self that sits at the root of attachment.... Understanding this inner dynamic helps us see why letting go is so difficult, because it is never the thing, but our own prized sense of self, that must be released. – Guy Finley

What is meant by nonduality, Mahatmi?

It means that light and shade, long and short, black and white, can only be experienced in relation to each other; light is not independent of shade, nor black of white. There are no opposites, only relationships.
--from The Lankavatara Sutra

Lama Yeshe: When you contemplate your own consciousness with intense awareness, leaving aside all thoughts of good and bad, you are automatically led to the experience of non-duality. How is this possible? Think of it like this: the clean clear blue sky is like consciousness, while the smoke and pollution pumped into the sky are like the unnatural, artificial concepts manufactured by ego-grasping ignorance. Now, even though we say the pollutants are contaminating the atmosphere, the sky itself never really becomes contaminated by the pollution. The sky and the pollution each retain their own characteristic nature. In other words, on a fundamental level the sky remains unaffected no matter how much toxic energy enters it. The proof of this is that when conditions change, the sky can become clear once again. In the same way, no matter how many problems maybe created by artificial ego concepts, they never affect the clean clear nature of our consciousness itself. From the relative point of view, our consciousness remains pure because its clear nature never becomes mixed with the nature of confusion.

G. K. Chesterton, writing many years before the development of cognitive therapy, said that "madness is a preference for the symbol over that which it represents"

Some people prolong their unhappiness by dramatizing it, which is like expecting applause for having a headache.  - Vernon Howard

My dream is to find solace, and my regret is I didn`t do this sooner.   -(powerquotes.net)

 

A man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams – attributed to J. Barrymore

`If we treated others the way we treat ourselves, we wouldn't have any friends.' – anon

 

Jim Thomson resolutely states: "I can only think of one thing greater than being happy and that is to help another to be happy, too."      www.happinessclub.com

Sharon Salzberg advises us: "It doesn't matter how long we may have been stuck in a sense of our limitations. If we go into a darkened room and turn on the light, it doesn't matter if the room has been dark for a day, a week, or ten thousand years - we turn on the light and it is illuminated. Once we control our capacity for love and happiness, the light has been turned on."

 

[You can begin] with staying with the minor discomfort or unsatifactoryness, by seeing if you can soften into it, relax into it, move in to it.  In any way: not resist it.

   This is the quote from Shantideva: “There is nothing that doesn’t grow lighter through familiarity.”
    I think that sort of what I’m getting at here. It is to becoming familiar—without it becoming masochistic--or something, becoming almost at home with life that has discomfort… big deal… not getting into a big hysterical aversion about this…

 “Shantideva says… "remove the fuel…Stop talking to yourself about it.”
When you are uncomfortable—minor or major—we fuel it, we feed it, we fan it with our thoughts.

 

That is our training to notice thoughts and train in letting them go. Our training isn’t to get     rid of thoughts, it’s to notice them and let them go. It is to undermine the fixated quality of our thoughts, the obsessive quality of our thoughts, the convincing quality of our thoughts.

   And this is particularly true in terms of discomfort because we just keep the discomfort alive. If you look at life under a microscope… that’s what you see, nothing stays still, its always moving—it is always in process. And the process is one of arising and then displaying –which is sort of like a [inaudible] and then dissolving…arising, displaying, dissolving. But what we do by talking to ourselves is: it arises, displays, and then we fixate. And it seems like it will never dissolve. Why?... because we have developed a method which sort of keeps it there. Of course it only appears to be there, but it is a pretty persuasive appearance – and has a lot of power.

    So what we are talking about here with discomfort, is tuning-in to the natural way that energy flows. And that is arising, displaying and dissolving. So whether that’s pain or pleasure alternating: it arises, displays, dissolves…[It is] called impermanence and change….

    Underlying all this is that—actually this fact that it is always arising, displaying and dissolving—is that it is never stable.  This is what we are really afraid of! All the fear, all the ‘I like’ and ‘don’t like’, all the aversion to discomfort and stuff… Fundamentally it’s a fear of this unstable, unpredictable, uncertain situation in which we have been born. And the Buddhist teachings are to help us relax into that and to find the liberation and freedom in that fluid, dynamic situation into which we have been born. But there is this peculiar habitual tendency that we all have, to have an aversion to that lack of stability. We call it insecurity or uncertainty, and it unnerves us.

     Pema Chodron

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Humans are different than other animals. In addition to greater intelligence, humans also possess a number of characteristics that animals do not have. For example, we have the capacity to learn from history, and animals obviously do not. We can contemplate the purpose of existence. We can think of ways to better ourselves and can implement them. We can delay gratification and think about the long-tem consequences of our actions. Finally, we have the capacity to make moral decisions, which may result in denying ourselves behaviors that our bodies lust for.
     All these capacities that are unique to human may be said to constitute the spirit.  The spirit, then, is that part of the human being that distinguishes us from other forms of life....
     We can also understand the importance of spirituality in recovery for addiction. Active addicts obviously have not learned form the history of their past behavior, because they repeat actions that have been proven to be destructive.  Their purpose in life is to get high, so addicts seek no other purpose.  They can hardly consider self-improvement when their behavior is frankly self-destructive.  Active addicts cannot delay gratification and do not consider the consequences of their action. Finally, addicts lack freedom, being ruthlessly dominated by the compulsion of the addiction. Addiction is thus the antithesis of spirituality. ----A.J. Twerski, Addictive Thinking

 

Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Kotzk, a 19th century Chasidic master, taught that there is nothing more whole than a broken heart.  He was telling us that brokenness is often the only way back to wholeness.  At the moment when things seem to be falling apart or ending, we may become more open to new choices that are just waiting for our recognition.  It is so hard for us to see this in the moment of our pain, but when we look back upon our lives we can discover that when one door closes, another one opens.  –Rabbi Marcus

 

Stillness (by Eric Schiffman)

The Peace Within

You imagine a spinning top. Stillness is like a perfectly centered top, spinning so fast it appears motionless. It appears this way not because it isn't moving, but because it's spinning at full speed. Stillness is not the absence or negation of energy, life, or movement. Stillness is dynamic. It is unconflicted movement, life in harmony with itself, skill in action. It can be experienced whenever there is total, uninhibited, unconflicted participation in the moment you are in - when you are wholeheartedly present with whatever you are doing.

For most of us, however, most of the time, our lives do not resemble a perfectly centered top, spinning so fast it appears motionless. Our lives are more like a top in a somewhat wild, erratic, and chaotic spin, we know we're alive because at least we're still spinning, but we are not quite perfectly centered, and we are not spinning anywhere near full speed. We don't have as much energy as we'd like, we are not experiencing as much aliveness as we might, nor are we experiencing the peace of stillness or the joy of being.

Stillness, therefore, is a higher energy state than what we're used to. This is because we are rarely wholehearted, or unconflicted, about anything. When you are not wholehearted, when you'd rather be someplace other than where you are, parts of you shut down and begin not to participate. Your energy circulation becomes constricted, and the creative life force is unable to flow through you unimpeded. Your energy flow, the amount of life force flowing through you, begins to diminish. The source of the energy does not diminish, but the amount that flows through you does. This leads to ill health, low energy, lowered vitality, lack of enthusiasm, depression, frustration, unhappiness, and suffering. None of this feels good.

When you are wholehearted about something, however, when you are where you want to be and are participating fully in the moment you are in - sometimes enthusiastic, sometimes mellow - you will experience a new sense of aliveness. You will experience a surge of energy, renewed vigor. This is not because there is actually an increase in energy, but because you are not constricting it quite so much. There is now a better energy flow. There is less conflict, less friction, less not wanting to be where you are, and therefore - for you - there will be the experience of more energy.

This occurs whenever you are not attempting to spin clockwise and counter-clockwise simultaneously. Spinning in opposite directions happens when you act on opposing desires, when you are conflicted about what you are doing, not wholehearted - granted, this is most of the time. Stillness happens when you relax inside and are in harmony with yourself.

This is the point: When you experience yourself in stillness - that is, when you give your undivided attention to experiencing the truth about you - you will experience the conflict-free, calm, dynamic peace of perfectly centered abundant life energy. This exquisite peace deep within you is actually the experience of God, or the harmony of oneness felt within you as you. It's how God is experiencing Himself-Herself now and always. It is the phenomenological feeling-tone of Being, or Existence, and it is the truest thing about who you are. When you experience the peace within you, you will spontaneously undergo a fundamental transformation in the way you think about yourself and how you see the world.   Nothing will seem quite the same ever again.

  “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.  Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.  It is our light, not our darkness that frightens us.  We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God.  Your playing small doesn’t serve the world.  There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.  We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.  It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone.  And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.  As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” -----  Marianne Williamson

This led me to conclude that while persuasion can be difficult, influence is inevitable. Why do I think this is important?  Because when we don’t realize this, it is terribly easy to feel powerless in the world simply because we aren’t getting what we want.  And yet, all the while, we are walking around influencing others in ways we aren’t even aware of.  In other words, we’re already more powerful than we believe our selves to be. What would happen if we focused less on gaining power and more on recognizing and utilizing the power we already have?  --  Blair Warren

 

Our description of the alcoholic, the chapter to the agnostic, and our personal adventure before and after make clear three pertinent ideas:

	(a)	That we were alcoholic and could not manage our own lives.
	(b)	That probably no human power could have relieved our alcoholism.
	(c)	That God could and would if He were sought.

Bill Wilson, The Big Book of A.A.

 

“Being happy doesn't mean that everything is perfect. It means that you've decided to look beyond the imperfections.”  Unknown

 

Whenever you're in conflict with someone, there is one factor that can make the difference between damaging your relationship and deepening it. That factor is attitude.”  William James

   

 In his masterwork, The Denial of Death, Ernest Becker argues, that the hostility that some people have to life is because of their own struggles against their own finitude, and a resentment of its limits.     -- Rabbi Alan Berg

"In relation to others, gratitude is good manners; in relation to ourselves, it is a habit of the heart and a spiritual discipline." - Daphne Rose Kingma

 

Faith is the bird that feels the dawn and sings when the dawn is still dark.   –Rabindranath Tagore

 

“Death is not extinguishing the light; it is only putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.”

Tagore quote

 

I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.”

Tagore quote

   
The ultimate aim of the ego is not to see something, but to be something.
Muhammed Iqbal

 Many times, we are more concerned with getting rid of the negative than with celebrating what is working for us. However, we can make choices that impact our experience of authentic happiness.
http://www.dailyvidette.com/media/storage/paper420/news/2006/11/27/Viewpoint/Choosing.Happiness-2507401.shtml?norewrite200612010814&sourcedomain=www.dailyvidette.com

 

Once something is past, it no longer exists. If you experience pain or insult, don't add to it by later repeating to yourself, "How awful that was." This way, it will only last the limited time it actually exists. This is usually very short. Realizing that suffering is temporary makes it much easier to tolerate insults and slights to your honor.

  Rabbi Zelig Pliskin’s : Gateway to Happiness, p.98

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     By accepting the way things are for you right now, for this moment only, you free yourself from wanting things to be different. Acceptance is the only way to change and free your state of mind. When you accept things, you don't make them into something that you start thinking about all the time. Once you start thinking about things that you don't accept, you start the down hill spiral of unhappiness, hopelessness, and helplessness and suffering. You can't change what has already happened to you, but you can choose to accept it.

     I am not telling you to resist what you feel or experience. It is the resistance you experience that is causing you all the problems. Just accept that you feel bad for now. You can accept your feeling without making yourself feel worse. The reason non-acceptance is a problem is that whatever is making you unhappy has already happened and there is nothing you can do about it. By accepting it you stop fighting yourself. You eliminate feeling like you have become a victim in the situation.

     Once you accept the situation, you have done more to change it than you could ever do by not accepting it. Real happiness is possible when we just observe what is happening inside us and how we are reacting. It is important not to try to change yourself, just become more aware of yourself. The more aware of yourself you become the more conscious you will be. Once you increase the awareness of how you feel right now, you can start to choose happiness. But you will only be able to choose happiness to the degree that you are aware of the existence that you actually have a choice.

     Don't try to be happy, choose it and be happy. Being happy will allow you to take control of your thinking. Being unhappy allows your thinking to take control of you and creates suffering. By not having control of your thinking and happiness you create your problems. By not being accepting you allow unhappiness to step in. You cannot change this moment. Acceptance of this moment allows us to experience peace. You may not like what has happened but you can be at peace with it. This allows you the peace of mind to see what your best choices are now.      --  by Lionel Ketchian  
   

 

 

 

    Being enlightened or being conscious and present, is not some new age doubletalk. … It simply means to be to be made lighter. At risk of angering the ego, lighten up. When you understand the terms, a mind, or that spinning thought factory for pain, anger, and resentment is a terrible thing... waste it. If it is filled with negativity and drama... waste it. Get out of the unchangeable past and the unknowable future. Buddhism says that sometimes there is nothing left in life to do but have a good laugh. If you just said in your mind "that’s stupid" , it was your ego defending and wanting to justify itself.

"Surrender is the simple but profound wisdom of yielding to rather than opposing the flow of life. The only place where you can experience the flow of life is the Now, so to surrender is to accept the present moment unconditionally and without reservation... It is to relinquish inner resistance to what is. It is precisely at those times that surrender needs to be practiced if you want to eliminate pain and sorrow from your life. Acceptance of what is immediately frees you from mind identification and thus reconnects you with Being. Resistance is the mind .   Surrender is the most important thing you can do to bring out positive change. Any action you take is secondary. No truly positive action can arrive out of an un-surrendered state of consciousness."
  …Surrender, acceptance and staying present are the keys to good mental and spiritual well being.  – Dennis Diehl


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The way out of pain is acceptance

 

	by Eckhart Tolle

 

     The greater part of human pain is unnecessary. It is self-created, as long as the unobserved mind runs your life. The pain that you create now is always some form of non-acceptance, some form of unconscious resistance to what is. On the level of thought, the resistance is some form of judgment. On the emotional level, it is some form of negativity. The intensity of the pain depends on the degree of resistance to the present moment, and this, in turn, depends on how strongly you are identified with your mind. The mind always seeks to deny the Now and to escape from it. In other words, the more you are identified with your mind, the more you suffer. Or you may put it like this: the more you are able to honor and accept the Now, the more you are free of pain, of suffering, and free of the egoic mind.
    Why does the mind habitually deny or resist the Now? Because it cannot function and remain in control without time, which is past and future, so it perceives the timeless Now as threatening. Time and mind are in fact inseparable. Imagine the Earth devoid of human life, inhabited only by plants and animals. Would it still have a past and a future? Could we still speak of time in any meaningful way? The question, “What time is it?” would be quite meaningless. Yes, we need the mind, as well as time, to function in this world, but there comes a point where they take over our lives, and this is where dysfunction, pain, and sorrow set in.
    The mind, to ensure that it remains in control, seeks continuously to cover up the present moment with past and future. An increasingly heavy burden of time has been accumulating in the human mind. All individuals are suffering under this burden, but they also keep adding to it every moment whenever they ignore or deny that precious moment or reduce it as a means of getting to some future moment, which only exists in the mind, never in actuality.
     If you no longer want to create pain for yourself and others, if you no longer want to add to the residue of past pain that still lives on in you, then don’t create any more time, or at least no more than is necessary to deal with the practical aspects of your life. How to stop creating time? Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have. Make the Now the primary focus of your life. Always say “Yes” to the present moment. What could be more futile, more insane, than to create inner resistance to something that already is? What could be more insane than to oppose life itself, which is now and always now? Surrender to what is. Say “Yes” to life, and see how life suddenly starts working for you rather than against you.
   The present moment is sometimes unacceptable, unpleasant, or awful. It is as it is. Observe how the mind labels it and how this labeling process, this continuous sitting in judgment, creates pain and unhappiness. By watching the mechanics of the mind, you step out of its resistance patterns, and you can then allow the present moment to be. This will give you a taste of the state of inner freedom from external conditions, the state of true inner peace. Then see what happens, and take action if necessary or possible.
   Accept – then act. Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it. Make it your friend and ally, not your enemy. This will miraculously transform your whole life.

 

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 ...When we trip and fall in the darkness… the bruise is suffused with self-judgment and an irrational sense of responsibility.
…The next time you have a minor wound, such as a stubbed toe or bumped elbow, note how long it takes that wound--when you soften to it and use it as a focus for loving kindness--to heal. Then compare it with the number of days it takes a similar wound to heal when you turn away from it, allowing the fear and resistance that rushes toward it to mercilessly remain. Contrast the healing of an injury in the mind or body in which loving kindness has gradually gathered to one that has been abandoned.

This softening and opening around pain has been shown in several double-blind studies to provide greater access of the immune system to an area of injury. It opens the vice of resistance into a never-considered acceptance of the moment. It denies hopelessness a home. It proves we are not helpless, that we can actively intercede in what we previously believed we had only to endure.

Working with our pain, or the pain of loved ones, cultivates a mercy that allows us to stay one more moment at their bedside when we are most needed. It allows us to not run away.

 

To open some of our healing potential, soften around the pain to melt the resistance that isolates it. Enter it with mercy, instead of walling it off with fear. Pass through the barricades of fear and distrust that attempt to defend the pain. Let what seems an improbable love--the ultimate acceptance of our pain--enter the cluster of sensations that so agitate the mind and body.

It takes patience to let go of doubt. So many fears warn us against opening beyond the numbness that surrounds pain. But when we allow ourselves to be open to and investigate these fears, we come to see them and our negative attachment to them, our compulsive warring with them, as a great unkindness to ourselves. As we open into our pain we may weep with gratitude when at last the pain does not so much disappear as become dispersed through the gradually expanding spaciousness of awareness.

As pain teaches us that fear can be penetrated by mercy and awareness, from some inherent knowing there resonates from our suffering a perfect teaching in compassion. We find in our pain the pain we all share. Softening around pain with mercy instead of hardening it with fear, the heart expands as "my' pain becomes "the" pain. Odd as it may sound, when we share the insights arising from our pain we become more able to honor the pain.

Following a tributary from the personal to the universal, we can find in our pain the pain of others as well. In our own wish to be free of suffering, others are calling out to be freed from their difficulties. Finding them in ourselves, the loving kindness that we extend to all sentient beings moves Earth toward heaven.

When we meet pain with mercy, there is a silent sigh of understanding and relief that can serve the whole world. There is exposed a meaning to life, a connection through ourselves to all others, that proposes a balm to the suffering in the world.  -- By Stephen Levine

 

 

ABOUT LETTING GO

By Nancy Reeves, Ed.S., LPC

You can’t take it with you, and you can’t carry it around everywhere. As therapists, we have to learn to let go so we can help others do it. We need to know what it means and how to do it ourselves. Some synonyms for ‘let go’ from the thesaurus: dismiss, part with, release. However, we also associate these words with letting go: surrender and abandon.

In psychological terms letting go means: I accept what is; I may not like it, but I can accept it. I relinquish my need to control. Letting go gives me room to grow. I do not have to trouble myself with obsessing about it. I have no need to be manipulative and play games. I can trust that a power greater than I will handle the details. This may not be what I need to hold on to; it’s not really in my best interest. My heart must learn to give and receive freely, joyously, and without expectations.

We practice letting go of the thoughts and emotions that keep us stuck. We learn to release negativity, sadness, neediness, games and manipulative behaviors, denial, pretending about reality, blindness to the truth, the need to tell or talk about the things that cannot be changed, complaining, willfulness and stubbornness, lust and coveting, looking longingly or regretfully back at the past, disappointments, disrespect, judgmental thoughts.

The best part is that in letting go of behaviors, thoughts, and outgrown emotions that no longer serve us is that a space is created for something new and different. Letting go gives us room to grow and change. It is movement, no longer frozen in the past. Growth and change may involve passage into darkness, a kind of psychic death. Letting go can also be viewed as an opportunity disguised as loss.

Letting go requires that you must learn some new skills: trust in yourself and in a higher power. Begin to change the thoughts that create fear. Learn to wait patiently. Focus on the good things in life. Get in touch with the love in your heart. Have intentions that are loving and good for you and for those you love. Practice pure, clear thoughts. Stay focused in the present moment. Have no expectations that you cling to. Handle all your emotions maturely and gently. Refuse to beat yourself up mentally. Refuse to obsess about what can’t be changed. Set limits and boundaries in your relationships and observe them. Accept what is. Learn to love yourself freely without judgment. Suspend criticism.

Remember that LETTING GO is NOT giving up, giving in, or accepting defeat. It is not quitting, resigning, relinquishing, nor abandoning. It not throwing in the towel!

Learning to let go is a process of healing, self-change, and restoration to health.

 

HAPPINESS and YOU!

Happiness is a decision. Happiness is also a choice. Okay, then which one is it? Well, it's both a decision and a choice, because in order to have lasting happiness first you must make the decision. In order to keep happiness, you must make the choice. Good decisions allow you to be aware of excellent choices that other people will not be mindful of or take notice.

 

Let's take a look at the difference between decisions and choices. The dictionary defines the word decision as "a determination arrived at after consideration." It also says, "a conclusion has been arrived at." The word choice is defined in the dictionary as "an option, an alternative, a preference, a selection, or an election."

 

"To get to happiness, or anywhere else, you've got to decide what you really want, and then put your energy where it will do the most good." This is a quote from the book, What Happy People Know, by Dan Baker, Ph.D. This is so true, because that is what I did when I came to the realization that happiness was what I really wanted.

 

Let me ask you to make a choice right now. Do you choose vanilla or chocolate? Which one did you choose? Why, and what were you choosing? I didn't tell you vanilla or chocolate anything! Were you thinking ice cream? Even if you are choosing between vanilla or chocolate ice cream, first you have to decide that you want ice cream and then you make a choice about flavor you want. The main thing is you walked into the store because of your decision to have ice cream. Having ice cream was your decision, and what flavor to have was your choice as a result of making that decision.

 

Author Daniel Goleman, Ph.D., in his book Emotional Intelligence said, "Even mild mood changes can sway thinking. In making plans or decisions people in good moods have a perceptual bias that leads them to be more expansive and positive in their thinking. By the same token, being in a foul mood biases memory in a negative direction, making us more likely to contract into a fearful, overly cautious decision. Emotions out of control impede the intellect."

 

Wanting to be happy led me to the understanding that to be happy is not actually needing and wanting to be happy at some future time. That's when I figured out that it is all about "being happy,'" because being happy is something you can do right now, not later. Being happy has allowed me to be free. It has shown me what freedom looks and feels like, and I have developed a taste for it.

 

Victor Frankl, author of the book, Man's Search for Meaning and survivor of Nazi concentration camp, said: "Everything can be taken from a man but ... the last of the human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."

 

Being happy is a freeing experience, much like being released from prison. Part of that freeing experience comes from not wanting or needing everything to go my way all the time. This freedom has allowed me to experience peace. For what is peace but freedom from desire. Don't get me wrong, I still want things, but I don't get upset when I don't get them or when things don't go my way. Instead, I have learned to prefer things rather than demand that I get them. I am much better off, because it makes me proactive in achieving what I want. Robert Louis Stevenson said, "The habit of being happy enables one to be freed, or largely freed, from the domination of outward conditions."

 

It is self evident that when we are unhappy we have given our power away to others and that is why we feel unhappy. We actually feel powerless. We must choose happiness to regain our power. One of Dr. Baker's tools is choice. He says, "Choice is the father of freedom and voice of the heart. Having no choices, or options, feels like being in jail. It leads to depression, anxiety and the condition called learned helplessness. Choice can even govern perception. Anyone can choose the course of their lives, but only happy people do it."

 

"Courage begins with the decision to face the ultimate truth about existence: the dirty little secret that we are free. It requires an understanding of free will at the archetypal level -- an understanding that we are free to define who we are at every moment. We are not what society and randomness has made us; we are what we have chosen to be from the depth of our being. We are a product of our will. We are self-made in the deepest sense." This statement was made by Peter Koestenbaum in his work to bring leadership philosophy to business people globally.

 

Most importantly, I have learned that happiness comes from inside. It is not something I can find or hope to find. The true opposite to happiness is not unhappiness, but fear. Unhappiness is just the effect caused by fear. Being happy dispels fear. It is in your choice, so it is in your power. In order to become a happy person you must make the decision to become happy. Then you must keep making the choice in order to reinforce that decision.

 

William George Jordan said, "Happiness can grow in any soil, live in any condition. It defies environment. It comes from within; it's the revelation of the depths of the inner life as light and heat proclaim the sun from which they radiate. Happiness consists not of having, but of being; not of possessing, but of enjoying. It is the warm glow of a heart at peace with it's self... Happiness is the soul's joy in the possession of the intangible... Happiness is paradoxical because it may coexist with trial, sorrow and poverty. It is the gladness of the heart, rising superior to all conditions..."

  by Lionel Ketchian

 

 

It's from Page 449 of Alcoholics Anonymous or The Big Book as it is widely known:

 

For me, serenity began when I learned to distinguish between those things that I could change and those I could not. When I admitted that there were people, places, things, and situations over which I was totally powerless, those things began to lose their power over me. I learned that everyone has the right to make their own mistakes, and learn from them, without my interference, judgment, or assistance!

And acceptance is the answer to all my problems today. When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place, thing or situation -- some fact of my life -- unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment.

I spent so much time trying to change the things I could not change, it never once occurred to me to simply accept them as they were.

Now when things in my life are not going the way I planned them, or downright bad things happen, I can remind myself that whatever is going on is not happening by accident. There's a reason for it and it is not always meant for me to know what that reason is.

 

The beginning stage of therapy for any problem or symptom is helping the person to disidentify from the presenting issue. We need to have the new and different experience of discovering that we are more than or larger than the source of distress with which we are so typically identified ...Real transformation occurs when we move from being the content, or story, of our lives to being the context -- or the space in which the life occurs     (Wolinsky, 1991, pp. 57-58)..

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