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Page  9

"When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us." - Alexander Graham Bell

 

 

  Oftentimes the calamities that people worry about never occur. Imagine: If you constantly worry about potential disasters, even if your life will work out perfectly in all respects, you will still live a life of suffering. Such suffering is entirely self-caused and unnecessary. Whenever you catch yourself worrying about a potential negative event, ask yourself, "How do I know for sure this will occur?"
Rabbi Pliskin, Gateway to Happiness, p.161

 

Love brings unity. And unity is power. –Noah Weinberg

 

 

Growth in wisdom may be exactly measured by decrease in bitterness. - Friedrich Nietzsche

 

     The Big Book [of A.A.] tells us, "First of all, we had to quit playing God."  Meditation is one way this becomes possible.  For instance, somehow I assumed that what I have or what I want (a new car, that good-looking blond, a better job, happiness) can be "mine," that objects can be "mine," and that even I am "mine."  In truth,  if there is any belonging, it is we who belong to our Higher Power and not the other way around.  We learn this in meditation when, for instance, we observe feelings and thoughts arise pass away.  When we have done this long enough, we realize that although these feelings and thoughts come from us, we can’t control them and we don’t own them; they come and go on their own.  This realization flies directly in the face of one of our basic assumptions — that feelings and thoughts are "ours."  The supreme addiction is our attachment to things being "me" or  "mine".

Why am I doing this?  When it is time for me to practice daily meditation, once in a while I wonder, "Now, why am I doing this meditation practice?"  This is doubt.  To challenge this unskillful thinking, early on I prepared a mental reminder list:

·         Meditation practice is an action the 11^th Step suggests.  If I want to work all the Steps, I will meditate, just for today.

·         Doubt is a mind state that prevents me from being happy, joyous, and free.  Not only will meditation dispel today’s doubt, it will weaken my tendency to succumb to doubt in the future.

·         If I get nothing else out of this meditation today, by sitting down and sitting still for 45 minutes I will practice patience, discipline and willingness.

·         If I do not practice the 11^th Step today, here and now, when will I practice it?  When do I need recovery if not now, this very moment?

Meditation provides a way for us to train in the middle way — in staying right on the spot.  We are encouraged not to judge whatever arises in our mind. In fact, we are encouraged not to even grasp whatever arises in our mind.  What we usually call good or bad we simply acknowledge as thinking, without all the usual drama that goes along with right and wrong. We are instructed to let the thoughts come and go as if touching a bubble with a feather. This straightforward discipline prepares us to stop struggling and discover a fresh, unbiased state of being.
http://www.5thword.com/chapter_2__why_meditate.htm

So what we’re seeking is what’s there when we stop doing everything else.  Cheri Huber

Maybe there’s something else to life than just getting what you want all the time . . . That something else is finding the joy within oneself, rather than as a result of life circumstances.   Cheri Huber

 

 

 

 

    Identity, too, is an ephemeral goal. Our star-studded culture pushes us to find out who we are and to take pride in being a unique entity. The sense of self, however, is a shaky ship. The more solid the identity, the more we feel a need to defend it. Even at the height of success, many people experience a restlessness, a dissatisfaction, a need to do more, earn more, own more, or receive more recognition. It's as if a small voice still whispers, "I don't know who I am" and drives them relentlessly on.
     Why do we pursue these desires if they cannot be satisfied? The mechanism of desire is based on a belief: I am incomplete as I am now. Desire is misdirected yearning that tries to correct the imbalance created by that belief. The belief, in turn, is based on a misperception: I am separate from what I experience. We reach out to the world of experience, identify objects that sing the siren song of completion, and strive to get them….
    "Well, that's all fine," you may say, "but how do I actually move from desire to renunciation?" You practice internal renunciation by moving into the experience of desire, instead of trying to fulfill or suppress it.
     Pick something you want, a physical object, a relationship, or some form of recognition. Let the feeling of desire arise. Experience how it arises in your body; feel all the emotions it triggers; and let all the stories it tells just be there. Don't be distracted. Don't try to control the experience. Don't work at anything. If you discover another level of yearning, move into that. When you move into the desire completely, a shift takes place and you know it as just an arising in experience. Now look at the object of your desire again. What has changed?
     By going into the experience of desire itself, rather than acting on it, you let go of the belief that you are incomplete. The energy of desire ceases to dictate behavior and, instead, fuels presence: being completely in the experience of what is, internally and externally.
     The chains of desire pull us into a life of frustration and suffering while renunciation cuts those chains. Renunciation, though often understood to mean "giving up" is, more accurately, the willingness to experience things as they are, not as we want them to be. Here you discover true freedom -- the deep quiet joy that has always been present in you. http://unfetteredmind.org/articles/want.php
You Can't Always Get What You Want
...and it may not be what you want, anyway. by Ken McLeod

 

 

The Sanskrit word dukkha has a very wide range of meanings. It means everything from such discomforts as "I'm not sitting comfortably in my chair, I feel a little bit uneasy" right up to extreme physical torture, anguish, emotional pain, and all of those. The First Noble Truth says that dukkha, or dissatisfaction, is an inevitable component of conditioned experience. The Second Noble Truth says it originates in ourselves. More precisely, it originates in our emotional confusion.
    One source of this confusion is the belief that we can find ways to meet our emotional needs. However, most emotional needs were laid down early in our lives. The people from whom we wanted love, attention, or understanding have changed. We have changed. We can't go back. Yet the yearning remains, causing suffering for us now. Anybody who has practiced meditation for any length of time comes to a point when they see directly the process of how we create our suffering from such yearnings. When we understand this deeply it leads to a softening in us. Two things come out of that softening: we really understand how other people create their own suffering, and, even though we may not like them, we feel a natural warmth towards them. That warmth leads to loving kindness and compassion, a willingness to find a way to help them to become free of suffering.
    As we accept suffering more deeply, we start moving through the second door which is no aspiration. Why do we suffer? Because we always want more. Its never enough. It is that grasping for something more which puts the whole process of suffering in motion. We enter this door when we begin to accept that suffering is a part of our existence. Joseph Goldstein notes that we often talk about letting go but how we actually let go is that we just let things be. It is not that we are actually letting go of something, we are letting things be right there. When we let things be we relax and open to the world of experience. There is a sense of happiness, even bliss, that comes with that opening.
http://unfetteredmind.org/articles/want.php

Getting Impersonal

One thing I like about practicing [zen meditation] with a group is
that we begin to see how impersonal it all is - all our melodramas
that can seem so terribly personal. If we spent six months together,
we all would know each other's life stories, and it would be the same
story. One person lives in Toledo, another one lives in Shanghai, but
it is the same story. Being a human being is pretty much the same
for all of us; the differences are far, far less than the similarities.
What we think, what we fear, how our emotions arise - fundamentally, we
are very much alike. We get caught up in differences in content because
that is how we experience ourselves as separate.

Working in a group enables us to see not only how we are all attached to the
same things, but how, when we are attached, we suffer, and how, when we come
back to the present moment, we cease to suffer. It's that straightforward.

As we see the sameness of our experience, our suffering becomes less
charged: our story is one more story among countless stories. It becomes
easier to find the courage to bring our attention back to the present,
to allow whatever happens simply to happen.    --"Trying to be Human" Cheri Huber, Ed. Sara Jenkins

 

Defeat may be victory in disguise; 
The lowest ebb is the turn of the tide. 

  ---Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Sitting with Feelings  Meditation allows an opportunity to work with our feelings (sensations and emotions) in a direct manner and at a depth available in no other way.  Working in meditation with feelings which are unhealthy conditioned responses erodes or eliminates them and their power over our present and our future.  Once you have experienced a conditioned emotional response with your heart and mind completely open in meditation, there is instant de-conditioning.

     Besides dealing with our existing conditioned responses that lead us around by the nose, meditation is also a way to lessen or avoid being further conditioned by them.  If we feel things fully and mindfully, they do not condition the mind.

      To illustrate this, suppose you are going to pick me up at 7 p.m. for a movie and you are "late again."  I become angry because "this is the 100^th time you have done this to me."  Before recovery, if you were "late again" my conditioning would have meant I would shut down emotionally, criticize you, call you names, cancel our plans, or perhaps behave in a more sideways (indirect) manner such as sarcasm, passive-aggressive behavior or holding a resentment against you....

     Meditation offers a different approach to my anger that you are "late again".  It can easily be used along with (but not at the same time) the Serenity Prayer or other recovery tools; it is complementary to all other recovery tools.

How would I work with my feelings (physical sensations and emotions) that "you are late again?" (Of course, there are angry thoughts associated with "you being late," thoughts with which I could meditate. I’ll discuss this in the next chapter, Chapter 11 Meditating with Thoughts.)

The practice is to substitute the angry feelings for the breath and breathing as the focus of awareness.  This is how.  I would begin meditation in the usual way, counting or following the breath to stabilize and concentrate my mind.  Soon the angry feelings would intrude into awareness.  I would begin to investigate and penetrate the actual physical sensations comprising the anger.  I would closely observe the process (not the content) of my anger.  Where and how do I physically experience this anger?  As increased pulse?  As a hot flush?  As a contraction or tension in my chest, shoulders or neck?  As adrenaline?  Where?  What does it physically feel like?  How do these physical sensations arise and pass away?  How do they change?  I would experience these feelings in minute detail, each nook and cranny of my body where I can feel them.  What are those feelings, exactly?  One insight would inevitably be that the angry feelings are not a solid, undifferentiated mass of feelings, but kaleidoscope of various subtle, pulsating sensations which together I call "anger."  As I become more aware of these experiences as they arise, their power to overwhelm me reduces.  When would I use meditation in these circumstances?  Either immediately, when the angry feelings first arise or during my next regular meditation period.

Seeing Though Feelings  After working in meditation with anger (or any other feelings) for a time in this way, a beneficial transformation occurs -- the angry feelings (and associated thoughts) diminish or evaporate.  This works in three ways:

·         Deconditioning.  By meditating with feelings, they are no longer directly linked to "you being late."  I simply experience anger and how it feels in my body.  This is how the conditioning (stimulus: "you are late again"; response: "I am angry") breaks down and reactivity diminishes.  Meditation allows me to break the "you–are–late-again-so–I–am–angry" circuit.  I am no longer an angry person who is stuck in the middle of my anger.  Instead, I am a person who is experiencing what anger physically feels like.

·         Dis-identification  Very often feelings are so powerful that they overwhelm our sense of who we are.  Confusion exists between where we stop and our feelings start.  Feelings are troublesome only to the extent that we overly identify with them as "ours."  By meditatively watching our feelings arise and pass away, feeling after feeling, one after another, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, eventually we cease overly identifying with them.  This is de-identification.  We become like a mountain peak, which is unaffected by clouds of feeling which float past in unending succession.  Meditation teaches us that feelings are something we have, not who we are.

·         Discharge  All feelings have physical and mental energy associated with them.  We experience this clearly during meditation.  The energy in rejected (unwanted) feelings is re-charged with the energy we use to push them away, thus magnifying them.  The energy in grasped (wanted) feelings is re-charged with the energy we use to grasp them, thus magnifying them.  The energy in accepted feelings (feelings neither rejected nor grasped) simply dissipates by a process of entropy (the natural tendency of matter or energy to degrade and wind down), thus dissipating the feelings.  In this way, the feelings are processed and their energy is discharged.

By meditating with anger or other feelings, we come to see them for what they really are.  We understand at an experiential, not intellectual, level that the anger or other feelings are specific changing bodily sensations that arise and pass away, just like the breath, one after the other.  The feelings are essentially fluid and impermanent, with no fixed reality that deserves, seeks or requires our continuing attention.  They are part of the ever-changing experience of being.

In meditating with anger or other feelings, therefore, we no longer are so attached to them.  They are not really ours; they just are.  This insight allows us to accept those feelings, to let them go.  Said differently, we don’t let the feelings go as much as they just pass away like a puff of smoke.

We also deeply experience the insight that there is no fundamental difference among any of our feelings.  It is only our thoughts about them (interpretation of, identification with or attachment to) that influences our actions in ways that are so often counter to our own best interests.  If we do not interpret, identify with or overly attach to the feelings, we can actually choose which feelings merit our attention and action and which ones do not.  Conscious contact enables conscious conduct.

Conditioned responses stand between us and direct experience of the world.  If we want to be fully present to what is actually going on, we cannot remain blind to our conditioning.

Remember the purpose and effect of meditating with feelings and seeing through them is not to make unwanted feelings go away or to avoid them.  That is exactly what brought many of us to our knees and to the doors of recovery in the first place.  On the contrary, the purpose and effect of meditating with feelings and seeing through them is to confront these feelings directly, head and heart on, to observe and feel them precisely, with all our focused attention, and to see what they really are, instead of distracting ourselves from them as we normally do.  The only way out is through.

When we encounter unwanted feelings, instead of acting out or repressing them, perhaps we can use the situation as an opportunity to feel our heart.  Under all our feelings we will find what it is we are trying to recover.  ---
http://www.5thword.com/chapter_10__meditating_with_feelings.htm

 

 

     Cultivating the ability to avoid the Sirens’ song of discursive thinking helps our recovery.  When obsessive thinking, desires or thoughts tempt us during our daily lives, we can better resist them precisely because in meditation we have intimately examined the temptation process, sensations, feelings, thoughts and mind states.  We have practiced letting them all go, hundreds or thousands of times.  This is training the mind.
    Seeing Through Thoughts  Perception of the nature of our own thoughts changes subtly but powerfully after we have meditated for a while.  As the mind-chatter begins to subside during meditation and there are fewer thoughts, each remaining thought stands out in stark relief against the bright background of the mind’s spacious vastness.  Most of our thoughts are a consequence of our previous conditioning.  Awareness of this reduces our tendency to identify with our thoughts.
     Then we notice two things.  First, we notice that each thought arises and passes away, just like our breath, one after the other without cessation. They are essentially fluid and impermanent. Second, we understand there is no fundamental difference among any of our thoughts.  It is our interpretation of, identification with or attachment to these thoughts that causes us to imbue them with a power that governs our behavior.  If we do not interpret, identify with or attach to thoughts, we see they are alike in an absolute sense. When that insight occurs, we can better choose which thoughts deserve our attention and intention and which ones do not.  Conscious contact enables conscious conduct.  --
http://www.5thword.com/chapter_11__meditating_with_thoughts.htm

Acceptance is standing our ground.  It is not seeking to get what we want; acceptance is wanting what we get.  We learn in recovery that it is not so much what happens to us (the content of experience), but how we relate to that what happens to us (the process of experience). The consequence of non-acceptance of life’s terms is suffering.  When we reject or grasp, we expend mental energy fighting a hopeless battle against life’s terms.  Most hardship comes from refusal to accept reality.  If we can realize that wanted, unwanted and neutral experiences are all our teachers, then life becomes continual adult education class in spiritual development, sensation-by-sensation, feeling-by-feeling, thought-by-thought, and mind state-by-mind state. --
http://www.5thword.com/chapter_18__three_a's.htm

 

satisfaction = pleasure x equanimity
 --Shinzen Young

 

One discourse the Buddha gave that is particularly helpful in un­derstanding the open spirit of investigation and discovery in dharma practice is known as the Kalama Sutta. This sutra is named after the Kalamas, a village people who had asked him how they could know which among the many different religious teachings and teachers to believe. The Buddha said that they should not blindly believe any­one—not their parents or teachers, not the books or traditions, not even the Buddha himself. Rather, they should look carefully into their own experience to see those actions that lead to more greed, more hatred, more delusion, and abandon them; and they should look to see what things lead to greater love, generosity, wisdom, and peace, and then cultivate those. The Buddha’s teachings always encourage us to take responsibility for our own development and to directly investigate the nature of our experience. –Joseph Goldstein

 

If we view a problem as an "enemy" which we either want to defeat or avoid, we stay stuck there because we have defined and limited ourselves by the problem.  Life is not a problem to solve; it is a mystery to behold.  The Dalai Lama who, along with thousands of his fellow citizens, went into exile after the Chinese government overran Tibet and began a systematic destruction of its culture, called those same Chinese as "my friends, the enemy."  Surely there is a lesson for us there. When our thinking makes the profound shift from categorizing circumstances as good/bad or right/wrong into wanted/unwanted or skillful/unskillful, we are well on the way home.  By changing our perception and attitude from one of judgment to one of acceptance (of the fact that the circumstance exists) through meditation and the other Program tools, we can begin to see a situation not as a problem, but as a decision in which we have the freedom of choice. We may not like our choices sometimes, but at least we have them.  This makes problems easier to face and we then see that
     the best way to use unwanted circumstances on the path of enlightenment is not to resist but to lean into them.  Befriending emotions or developing compassion for those embarrassing aspects of ourselves, the ones that we think of as sinful or bad, the raw material, the juicy stuff with which we can work to awaken ourselves --
http://www.5thword.com/chapter_24__problems_and_solutions.htm

 

     We will always have pain in our lives, but we will not suffer if we do not resist pain.  We mistakenly believe that by resisting pain we can protect ourselves from it, when in fact resistance is the source of our suffering.
    The normal experience of pain is intensified if we are in a contracted mind state, such as fear, anxiety, disquiet, or panic, including any mind state that would fall under the general category of aversion.

Shinzen Young has reduced this principle to a formula:

suffering = pain x resistance

Meditation provides a way to sit and face our pain however it presents itself and to practice not fighting it, not resisting it, not interfering with it.  In this sense, meditation is counterintuitive. In meditation we observe and experience our pain and just allow it to arise and pass away.  We don’t avoid it.  In this way, we reduce or eliminate suffering by concentrating on the pain that is right there in front of us rather than creating suffering by thinking about how to avoid our pain.
    There are two kinds of suffering:  suffering that leads to more suffering and suffering that leads to the end of suffering.  If we are not willing to face the second kind of suffering, we will surely continue to experience the first.
    By diving into the pain in this very moment with this very breath, suffering does not arise and pain is processed.  Meditation also prepares us not to resist pain and so not to suffer when we face painful life experiences in daily life.
    One November I told my girlfriend I wanted to end our relationship.  She asked me to delay the breakup until after the Christmas holidays.  Co-dependently I agreed.  More than two years later our relationship finally ended.  I avoided the brief period of the pain of a hurting her feelings in return for two years of suffering.

[Meditation] practice involves finding a willingness to suffer in order to end our [pain]. Instead of spending our time trying to avoid [pain], we just find the willingness to go directly into it.

This technique has general application to our lives.  The way in which we learn to sit with our pain and observe precisely how we deal with it can apply to our entire daily lives.
    When we sit in meditation, our minds wander, and the way in which we return our attention to the present provides an instant display of how we deal with ourselves — and how we are with ourselves is how we are in the world.  In observing with full acceptance whatever distracts us, and gently returning the attention to the present, we discover both what prevents us from enjoying the sufficiency of the moment and how to let go of that resistance to whatever is happening. --
http://www.5thword.com/chapter_16__pain_and_suffering.htm

 

This week we read, "Love your neighbour as yourself"; implicit is that we should take care of ourselves too. The same rule should apply to ourselves. We should avoid putting ourselves in situations that we know are difficult. Sometimes we don't need others to sabotage us; sometimes we can be our own worst enemy. And we do not help ourselves when we have a negative attitude about ourselves or our situation. The word 'deaf' in Hebrew is cheiresh. According to Siftei Kohen the letters of cheiresh are an acronym for chayim ra'im shelcha, so instead of 'don't curse the deaf, ' the verse means, 'don't curse your [own] bad life.' In other words, don't curse yourself if you find yourself in a challenging situation. Don't complain about your life and don't make yourself a victim. If things are tough, don't curse your life; find a way to improve your situation. There's no point in cursing the deaf, or ourselves.--- Rabbi Baruch Sienna

 

Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) programs are relatively new in the treatment of fibromyalgia in the US. In Full Catastrophe Living Jon Kabat-Zinn defines mindfulness as, "the complete 'owning' of each moment of your experience, good, bad, or ugly" (1990, p. 11). The theory is that mindfulness can allow patients to reduce their reactions to stress, improving their ability to cope with stressors. "In developing the capacity to step back and observe the flow of consciousness, mindfulness can shortcircuit the fight or flight reaction characteristic of the sympathetic nervous system, allowing individuals to respond to the situation at hand, instead of automatically reacting to it on the basis of past experiences."
--http://www.technomom.com/health/fmsintro.shtml

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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