It's Time We Stop!

    Since the age of 18, I was strongly attracted to, and began reading (a lot) about Zen, other forms of Buddhism, Taoism, Shamanism, Christian Mysticism, and psychology. Thirty years later, I finally started a sitting meditation practice, and for over 15 years, I sat with a couple of local Zen groups. With my wife and two sons, we also sat numerous 7-10 day silent meditation retreats at the Insight Meditation Society (IMS), and with my wife, a one month retreat at Forest Refuge in Barre MA. Then we sat a few annual week-long retreats at Dharma Retreats in Toronto, led by teachers from IMS.
    At some point I took Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) teacher-training, and then facilitated about a hundred 8-week courses at Dalhousie University and the IWK Children's Hospital in-person, and since the beginning of Covid, online.
    All this time, I continued to read, blog, and contemplate this spiritual journey we call life. When I first started reading about spirituality & psychology almost 60 years ago, the material was puzzlingly paradoxical yet, attracted & fascinated, I kept at it. 

    “All truth goes through three stages. First it is ridiculed. Then it is violently opposed. Finally it is accepted as self-evident.” Arthur Schopenhauer, 19th-century German philosopher

    SO it's no surprise, that many - including most of our relatives & friends - quickly reject & avoid concepts & practices that strike them as unfamiliar, foreign, not quickly & easily understandable, too deep, religious, and especially spiritual. AND YET, healthy maturation, which involves at least some evolution of consciousness, REQUIRES acceptance, patience & perseverance BUT is BLOCKED by fear & avoidance.

    Over this lengthy period of slow maturation, books written by wise spiritual elders have slowly but progressively come to reflect my own lived experience. My blogs showcase what I currently resonate with, inspire me, and hopefully, help you evolve spiritually. If negative judgments quickly pop up about wise spiritual elders' experiences, consider the possibility that what you just read might not be 'just crazy talk,' but simply beyond your current level of understanding.
    The more we're able to 'unburden' our 'parts' - Internal Family Systems (IFS) talk for the less self-centered & neurotic we become - the more we actually start to experience life the way shamans, mystics & saints of all traditions, places & times describe. IFS would say that these people have become 'Self-led.' See: http://www.johnlovas.com/2021/06/frightened-children-and-wise-elders.html

        “... as self decreases,
         the Divine increases.”             Bernadette Roberts

    From her wise, inspiring 2024 book, “Psyche & Spirit. How a Psychiatrist Found Divinity through her Lifelong Quest for Truth and her Daughter’s Autism” here is Melinda Edwards:

    “Ramana Maharshi (one of the great sages of India, 1879 – 1950) taught that the ‘Self’ or real ‘I’ (our true or ultimate identity) is a non-personal, all-inclusive awareness, not an experience of individuality (small self, noisy ego). He said the individual egoic self was a fabrication of the mind that obscures the true experience of the real Self. He maintained that this universal Self is always present, but the self-limiting tendencies of the mind must cease for one to be consciously aware of it.

    Contraction & separation, when acted out or discharged externally, cause suffering & pain, not only within the target of our words or actions, but also in ourselves. Contraction and separation are the same. When we allow our hearts to open to the pain our contraction has caused in the other or in ourselves, a healing of the wound of separation takes place. The illusion of separation dissolves. This healing is a return to Love, to recognition of our Oneness with the very object of our illusion of separation. The pain itself is the doorway Home. In truth, the tenderness of pain is not separate from Love. All is One. All is born in Love.

     With all spiritual paths, although a mental concept or paradigm can be useful in conceptually understanding where the transformative process is heading, the real transformation takes place at a deeper level – at a level where habitual patterns of thought, emotion, and energy shift in a foundational way. As the veil of my fear about (my autistic little girl) Saachi’s ability to be in the world dissolved, space opened up in my system for a deeper truth to reveal itself. The hallmark of every spiritual path is the dissolution of contraction, of fear, which is the source of separation & suffering. When fear dissolves, that which is deeper and truer than fear emerges. When fear & separation dissolve, love remains.”
    Melinda Edwards “Psyche & Spirit. How a Psychiatrist Found Divinity through her Lifelong Quest for Truth and her Daughter’s Autism” 2024.

    The same theme, from one of Gangaji's wise, inspiring interviews:

     Papaji’s (W.H.L. Pooja) practice instruction for Gangaji:
    “ ‘You want freedom? Great, just sit there and do nothing.’ So since I had practiced all this Buddhist doing-nothing business (sitting meditations), I thought I knew how to do nothing, and I sat still in meditation. And he said, ‘No, no, no. That’s too much. Don’t do anything.’
    And when I heard that, it was really, deeply frightening to me. It even took me back to that moment when I was eleven-years-old and I had started doing things to get out of my unhappiness. I had a fear that if I didn’t do something, if I didn’t do a practice or I didn’t do my meditation, or I didn’t do a mantra, or I wasn’t being good, that I would fall back, I would regress, I would lose anything that I had accomplished. So it was a moment.
    And he said, ‘Yes, lose everything!’ It shook my life. It shook my life right-side up. I feel like I was walking with my head in the sand, and I knew something was wrong because I kept tasting sand, and he just turned me right-side up.
    ‘Just stop. Just be still.’ And then later, I would hear him speak to people and he would say, ‘You have to lose your enlightenment, and you lose your un-enlightenment. You lose them both. You lose it all! Lose your gender. Lose your nationality. Lose your ranking. And (now) what’s here? And what’s here that’s always here?’ ” 

Q: “How do you teach people to stop?”

Gangaji: “Well there’s a conundrum, because you can’t really teach somebody to stop. You can invite people to stop, and what I try to do, and what I saw Papaji do is you point out where they are refusing to stop or where they are active. And the way you do that is you recognize it in your own mind, because we all have the same structure. It’s a survival structure. We have active minds because we’re an intelligent species that knows how to survive. So to stop is a threat to that, and the mind will get very busy – how it’s impossible, how you shouldn’t, or you can’t ((because the ego wrongly assumes that the {healthy, appropriate} transition from 'noisy ego' to 'quiet ego' to be a physical death)). So it’s really important to be able to hear your mind chatter, to overhear your thoughts. And then there’s a possibility of choice: to follow thought OR to be still. And really, it’s just to be still for a moment.
    There’s nothing wrong with thinking or thoughts, but often our thinking our thoughts is just a re-thinking of what has been thought, and re-thought, and re-thought – obsessive kind of thinking. And with that is a lot of unnecessary suffering. So to be willing to be open to not rethink that thought – this very thought, in this very moment – then the mind is available for insight & revelation.”

Q: Stopping could be interpreted as trying to hold the mind still, or purposely letting go of attachments, but even that’s too much.”

Gangaji: “That can be an initial step because normally, in our unnecessary suffering we’re just obsessively finding reasons in the past, or the present, or the future. So I had experienced that in some of the early meditations where you were kind of arresting your thought. But there was also in that the thought of me arresting this thought. So it was complicated and it took effort. This can actually be perceived as taking effort because it definitely is a challenge – because if you’re not thinking, that means you aren’t checking your environment, something could happen, you could die ultimately. That’s the root of it. So it’s an invitation to meet your death. ((The 'noisy ego' wrongly assumes that we are constantly in a life-or-death situation. BUT we rarely if ever are! Our noisy ego or false sense of self is, however frequently challenged eg a slow driver ahead of us when we're late. Such minor incidents can & do escalate unreasonably because the noisy ego operates at a primitive 'fight / flight / freeze instinct' level. THIS is one of the reasons why some wisdom traditions formally practice meeting actual death with an evolved, peaceful clear mind ie with equanimity, instead of primitive instincts.))”
    Gangaji - “Gangaji Interview: A Life of Service to Spiritual Awakening” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmUYR2Higcc 

 

It's WELL worth listening to these lyrics again!

Accepting, Forgiving & Embracing

    Acceptance is “being open to seeing & acknowledging things as they are in the present moment; acceptance does not mean passivity or resignation, rather a clearer understanding of the present so one can more effectively respond.” Shapiro SL, Schwartz GE. “Intentional Systemic Mindfulness: An Integrative Model for Self-regulation and Health.” Adv Mind Body Med 2000; 16(2): 128-34.

MANY situations call for our acceptance – now!
    Thoughts & emotions of sadness etc about past events, and fear etc of future imagined events need acceptance now.
    The thought of death – our own & that of our loved ones – though frightening, is best dealt with a friendly, open mind & heart. These existential fears take time to fully accept, but there’s no wise alternative. If we “lean into” (rather than keep avoiding) even the hardest things with curiosity, self-compassion & acceptance, at our own pace & possibly with expert guidance, we benefit greatly in the long run!
    Anger over just having broken something or some other current mistake, needs acceptance now. Our repeated outbursts of anger - held within or vented - actually cause unnecessary suffering. This is completely avoidable by gradually learning to accept that we cannot control the world to keep us consistently safe & happy.
    Each bout of anger = non-acceptance, which we ALSO learn to gently accept, knowing that anger will gradually diminish, replaced gradually by equanimity (imperturbable peacefulness, despite a constantly changing environment).
    Even while participating in a meditation course, there are many things we’re called to gently accept. A great example is feeling the warmth radiating from our heart area!

     The first few times I practiced Loving-Kindness meditation, especially directed towards myself, my heart area felt nothing (remember the wrestler 'Stone Cold' Steve Austin?). That was some twenty-five years ago. Since then, I've practiced & guided others in this profound meditation hundreds of times. Over the years, my chest very easily radiates warmth with little or no coaxing.
    However, like myself originally, I find almost all those taking meditation (MBSR) courses have solidly armored hearts. This armoring process is a natural, background event akin to acquiring calluses - "growing a thick skin" - from prolonged hard manual labor. For us to survive life's many & varied hardships (war, homelessness, poverty, racism, physical / emotional / sexual violence, etc, etc, etc) many of us toughen-up to an extent that even we ourselves are shocked. As an extreme example, what (armoring-up) changes must take place for a soldier to survive a year of combat in a war zone? For civilians, it's not possible to comprehend the extremely difficult de-armoring such soldiers (should ideally) undergo before they could safely re-enter their home & civilian society.
    We have millions displaced from their homes due to war, famine & poverty in refugee camps all over the world; millions who've suffered early childhood trauma (ACE studies); and millions who continue to suffer from poverty & racism. A much larger proportion of our population than we realize are heavily-armored. Armoring usually includes a strong aversion to accepting, embracing & gradually shedding one's own armoring! Once armored, we have great difficulty realizing that armor is not only unnecessary now, but that is actually blocks our ability to live a happy, wholesome life.
    If YOU were now told, "You are armored", would you angrily deny it? And how would you interpret that response? OR would you reflect on it, "Well, I suppose I could be" with gentle, relaxed curiosity?

    WHEN repeatedly practicing Loving-Kindness meditation is not able to set the heart free, there is a "Forgiveness Meditation" to help initiate this de-armoring process.
    Bhante Vimalaraṁsi “Guide to Forgiveness Meditation: An Effective Method to Dissolve the Blocks to Loving-Kindness, and Living Life Fully.” CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2015.
    Of course consulting a trauma therapist may also be wise.

KINDNESS
Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.

What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken will stare out the
window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness, you must travel where the
Indian in a white poncho lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans and the simple
breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you
must know sorrow
as the other deepest thing. You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day
to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you every where
like a shadow or a friend.

 

"Quiet Reflection" ... by Mollycules www.BuddhaDoodles.com

Equanimity & Suffering

    “Someone asked me,
‘Aren’t you worried about the state of the world?’

    I allowed myself to breathe and then I said,
‘What is most important is not to allow your anxiety about what happens in the world to fill your heart. If your heart is filled with anxiety, you will get sick, and you will not be able to help.’

    There are wars — big and small — in many places, and that can cause us to lose our peace.
    Anxiety is the illness of our age. We worry about ourselves, our family, our friends, our work, and the state of the world. If we allow worry to fill our hearts, sooner or later we will get sick. Yes, there is tremendous suffering all over the world, but knowing this need not paralyze us. If we practice mindful breathing, mindful walking, mindful sitting, and working in mindfulness, we try our best to help, and we can have peace in our heart.
    Worrying does not accomplish anything. Even if you worry twenty times more, it will not change the situation of the world. In fact, your anxiety will only make things worse. Even though things are not as we would like, we can still be content, knowing we are trying our best and will continue to do so. If we don’t know how to breathe, smile, & live every moment of our life deeply, we will never be able to help anyone.
    I am happy in the present moment. I do not ask for anything else. I do not expect any additional happiness or conditions that will bring about more happiness. The most important practice is aimlessness**, not running after things, not grasping.” Thich Nhat Hanh

    ** "aimlessness" is easily misunderstood, but refers to remaining appropriate in the present moment RATHER THAN being so obsessed with some future (or past) possibility, that we ignore present moment reality eg the fact that we're driving in busy traffic with pedestrians crossing etc. Moment-by-moment we are called to remain calmly aware of & fully engaged with present moment reality RATHER THAN eg recklessly speed while obsessing about being late for an appointment. See: https://www.livinglifefully.com/flo/floaimlessness.htm

    The word "appropriate" in the context of mindfulness can be expanded to "relaxed & attuned." It's very challenging to behave wisely if one is very stressed, anxious, fearful, angry etc. So we practice being physically, mentally & emotionally relaxed, equanimous. Attuned refers to being intimately aware of, connected to, harmonious with one's self & one's surroundings - ie the very opposite of being lost in thoughts about the past or future. All of this is "doable" with patient mindfulness practice, which in turn makes EVERYTHING WORKABLE!

David A. Lovas photograph

On Becoming The Person You’ve Always Wanted To Be

     Below is a transcript from imho an excellent, valuable interview containing important points that our anemic culture knows or cares little about YET is vitally important to every one of us:

1) Most people enjoy light, upbeat music (stories, movies, plays, books, etc), and tend to criticize music outside of that comfort-zone as depressing, "too deep for me," or confusing. Most of us are acclimatized to our stunningly shallow, consumer society. Immediately following 9/11, Americans were encouraged by their president to "go shopping" to show the world what they're made of! While many went shopping with patriotic fervor; history will find such blissful ignorance impossible to comprehend.

2) We see discomfort as a violation of our basic human rights, and respond to deep suffering with strong aversion, anger, & try every possible escape: an endless array of distractions, suppression, alcohol, drugs - prescribed & otherwise, possibly ending in depression, bitterness & cynicism. Yet hardships & pain are not meaningless punishments. Like everything else in life, they're to learn from, to help us evolve. Most people simply can't handle this last point, so they choose to rail against this reality. Arguing with reality is choosing to suffer needlessly. The infinitely wiser alternative is to relax our ego & body, and humbly learn all the deep lessons being offered. There's absolutely no comparison between these two approaches, yet most of us will absolutely exhaust the first, before trying the second out of shear desperation & utter fatigue.

3) Even psychosocial-spiritually-evolved human beings can & do have all sorts of hardships, including prolonged severe physical pain eg Buddha, Jesus, and in current times, Adyashanti, Jordan Peterson, etc. This can be a shockingly unpleasant surprise, at a time when we may have (prematurely) assumed that we've already 'processed' enough pain, suffering & even heavy "dark nights of the soul." But, as long as we're alive, learning - at times from very hard lessons - continues.

4) We mistakenly assume that happiness comes only after we're finished climbing up the mountain, but as long as we live, we can and need to grow. With age, growth clearly becomes increasingly internal ie integrating our values more & more completely into our lived experience ie intention, speech & other behaviors. The quality of happiness we experience also changes, becoming progressively more subtle, deep, independent of external circumstances & independent of others' opinions. Happiness feels more & more like home, equanimity, peace, silence & stillness (not the brief 'sugar-high' of winning a lottery).

     Steven Bartlett asked Jordan B. Peterson, ‘How are you doing?’ Peterson responded,
     “Brilliantly and terribly. You know, when you listen to a profound piece of music, one that sort of spans the whole emotional experience, it’s not happy. Happy is elevator music. Probably, you shouldn’t listen to that at all. And you think, ‘Why?’ Well, it’s harmless, treacly, sweet, simple, lacks depth, it’s shallow – that’s a problem. It doesn’t have that deep sense of awe & horror, I would say, that’s characteristic of the best of all music.
     You know, you listen to some so-called 'simple music' – Hank Williams is a good example. You know the blues cowboy from the 1950s, who died of alcoholism when he was 27, and whose voice sounds like an 80-year-old man. Simple melody, you know, but there’s nothing simple in the song and in the voice. It’s deep. You know it’s like black blues in the States from the 1920s. He was certainly influenced by that tradition. There’s this admission of a deep suffering at the same time as you get the beautiful transcendence of the music. And that’s meaning, you know, that’s awe-ful in the most fundamental sense but, you need an antidote to suffering, and it has to be deep. And deep moves you tectonically and it’s not a trivial thing. But that’s better than happiness. And maybe, if you’re lucky, while pursuing that and while you’re immersed in it, you get to be happy. And you should fall on your knees and be grateful that when it happens. You know it’s a gift. It really is a gift. And it comes upon you unexpectedly – your happiness, you know. But you aim to climb uphill to the highest peak you can possibly envision. And that’s better than happiness.

      Wherever I go in the world, people come up to me and, I wouldn’t say they’re happy to see me. They’re often in tears, and they often have a pretty rough story to relate – they were suicidal, or nihilistic, or homicidal, or trapped, desperate. And they tell me that, real fast. And then they say, ‘I’ve overcome that to a large degree, and thank you for that. And then you think, well that’s really something, to have that happen over & over. In some ways you might think, well how can anything better possibly happen to you, than to have people come up to you all over the world, strangers, and open themselves up to you like that, like they’re old friends, so quickly? But at the same time, it’s an awful thing, because you see even in the revelation of their triumph, the initial depth of their despair. So I wouldn’t change that. But it’s not nothing. It’s certainly not just happiness. It’s better than happiness, but it’s almost unbearable."

Q: "Why do you do what you do?"
     “To see what will happen. Some programs you cannot predict. You cannot predict how they’re going to end. You have to run them. Well, I believe that truth will save the world. I believe that. So you speak truthfully, and you watch what happens. And you take your consequences. And maybe you hope and have some faith that, in the final analysis, things will work out in your favor, but perhaps they will and perhaps they won’t. But that’s faith, eh? That’s faith. Faith isn’t believing in things that you regard as ridiculous, sacrificing your intellect. It’s a decision. Will truth, beauty & love save the world? Well, you can find out."
     Jordan Peterson: How To Become The Person You’ve Always Wanted To Be | E113 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uLDin9A9pc EXCELLENT INTERVIEW well worth investing 1hr 6min of time

Appreciating the Subtle

     Equanimity, peace, & other subtle states are seldom appreciated or discussed these days. When we do notice subtle states, we tend to dismiss them as "boring" or rush to escape them! We overlook or dismiss most of life; instinctively cling to pleasant experiences; and instinctively reject unpleasant experiences. 
     Unless we deeply understand & minimize this conditioned, trance-like reactivity, we will continue to create unnecessary suffering for ourselves & others.

     ‘Equanimity’ can be defined as: "a gentle matter of fact-ness with whatever comes up in experience. In a similar way, a scientist is trained to maintain the detached viewpoint of a neutral observer."
       Shinzen Young. “The Science of Enlightenment. How Meditation Works.” Sounds True, 2016.

     “Being bound neither by delight nor distress is a classical description of the mind-state of equanimity. Bikkhu Bodhi describes this mind-state as a ‘considered mind’ (‘because a prejudiced mind, a mind that has already been made up, cannot consider anything that is contrary to its accepted views’); a mind that has become pliable; become stable; become flexible; reached a state of not fluttering. This is a concentrated mind, without blemish, purified and cleansed with all defiling tendencies gone.
     This is admittedly an accomplishment of a buddha (with a small b) and a tall order for those not trained in the mental discipline. Still, in investigating deeply the workings of our own minds and meditative experiences, we may be able to catch a glimpse of some of the attributes described above. This glimpse, in turn, is a peek into the mind-state that has gone beyond [seeking] delight and [avoiding] distress.” Mu Soeng 
       Mu Soeng, Gloria Taraniya Ambrosia, Andrew Olendzki. “Older and Wiser. Classical Buddhist Teachings on Aging, Sickness and Death.” Barre Center for Buddhist Studies, 2017.

     "... my hope (is) to have ‘traversed the world’s attachments’ (and therefore achieving) a state of equanimity and contentment rooted in wisdom. Contentment is a state of mind and need not rely upon a particular set of external conditions. We are accustomed to thinking that we’ll be content once this, that, or the other thing takes place, and we thereby put a lot of energy into trying to make those conditions manifest. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. Even when it does, when we reach a goal (such as retirement) or fulfill certain criteria (such as having a comfortable place to live), it may still turn out that we are not content. Either the conditions change, as they are wont to do, or we find that new desires arise to clamor for our attention once the old ones are fulfilled.
     At any given moment, the quality of one’s experience will be defined by whatever emotional states are arising. Riding the roller coaster of desire, we might be gratified half of the time and distressed the other half. We are being told by the Buddha, however, that we also have a third option – not climbing on board in the first place. Any moment with desire is a moment entangled in suffering. Any time we want things to be different than they are, we are setting ourselves up for disappointment. This is because delight and distress are two sides of the same coin, and we cannot have one without the other. It is precisely because he is not consumed with delight that the Buddha can ‘sit alone, without being consumed by regret.’
     Many people will say that it is worth the distress to experience the delight. As we mature, however, we may find ourselves drawn more to the middle range of experience, the state of mind described here by the Buddha in which the fires of desire no longer burn. This is of course the best-known metaphor for awakening: ‘the fires of greed, hatred, and delusion have been extinguished (nirvana).’ Conventional wisdom assumes it is boring and bland in this middle emotional range, but those who have experienced firsthand the equanimous quality of mind that comes from true mindfulness know better. Unencumbered by the emotional highs and lows, the mind is capable of a remarkable clarity and immediacy. Delight and distress do not spice up our experience as much as they confuse and obfuscate it.
     If our contentment depends upon receiving the things that delight us or avoiding what causes distress, it will remain shallow. At the deeper end of the pool, the mind is more calm, more focused, and hence more powerful. Awareness itself is the most astonishing aspect of the human condition. As we learn to orient toward it more often and more skillfully, the contentment described here by the Buddha becomes increasingly accessible. Profound well-being awaits us here and now, in every moment, and can be reached simply by ceasing the attempt to get somewhere else." Andrew Olendzki 
       Mu Soeng, Gloria Taraniya Ambrosia, Andrew Olendzki. “Older and Wiser. Classical Buddhist Teachings on Aging, Sickness and Death.” Barre Center for Buddhist Studies, 2017.

Metabolizing Difficult Emotions in Real Time

     In mindfulness meditation, we practice physical processing: 'leaning into' challenging emotions - WHILE these show up as unpleasant physical sensations. We approach these opportunities with curiosity, interest & equanimity knowing that, what we used to mistakenly consider frightening solid objects, DO with this approach disintegrate into harmless bits of energy.

     “Most people don’t maintain a continuous mindful relationship with their subjective thoughts & feelings, so most people do not have the ability to experience anger, fear, sadness, shame, & confusion without suffering. When an objective problem presents itself, it produces uncomfortable subjective mental & emotional states, and you suffer. A salient feature of suffering is that it distorts behavior. You cannot perform the delicate act of threading a needle while somebody is holding a flame to your body. Your whole body shakes; the objective functioning is distorted because of the internal suffering. In the same way, the delicate act of human interaction is frequently subjected to the distorting influences of (perhaps subliminal) suffering. Because of this subjective suffering, our objective responses to objective situations are often less than optimal, and sometimes horribly distorted.
     When objective responses are nonoptimal, they sow the seeds for new problems – new objective situations that cause distress. Then we respond suboptimally to that new situation. This can create a feedback loop that has the potential to spin out of control at any time.
     Even in situations where the suffering appears to be quite small, the distorting influences can add up. For example, a current cultural norm in the United States is to go from passionate love to acrimonious divorce in just five or ten short years. How does this happen? It happens in dozens and dozens of small daily interactions, some of them a little bit emotionally charged and a few of them charged in big ways. When interactions that are unpleasantly charged are not experienced completely in the moment, they are not metabolized. They leave a ghost, a remnant suffering that haunts the cellar of our own mind. That remnant suffering sinks into the subconscious and distorts our subsequent responses. We make cutting remarks when we merely need to reply. We yell when we merely need to be emphatic. We bite when we merely need to bark.
     The same cycle destroys a relationship here, a career there; leads to a war here, a rampage there; a repressive dictatorship here; an ethnic cleansing there. That is the basic pattern on this planet: People do not understand how to experience pain fully, that is, without suffering. Suffering distorts their response to the source of the pain, and this distorted response can easily lead to more pain and, hence, more suffering.
     Here’s a diagram that sums up the problem.  

     So where does meditation come in? Meditation allows us to experience pain without suffering and pleasure without neediness. The difference between pain and suffering may seem subtle, but it is highly significant. When physical or emotional pain is experienced in a state of concentration, clarity & equanimity, it still hurts but in a way that bothers you less. You actually feel it more deeply. It’s more poignant but, at the same time, less problematic. More poignant means it motivates and directs action. Less problematic means it stops driving & distorting actions. I appreciate that merely hearing these words may not be enough to clarify the concept. But look back; perhaps you’ve experienced something like this in the past. If not, having read these words here will help you know what to look for in the future.”

       Shinzen Young. “The Science of Enlightenment. How Meditation Works.” Sounds True, 2016.
       *** HIGHLY recommended ***

Awkward Path to Peace, Equanimity & Joy

     If you're seriously committed to meditation practice, your noble quest to see clearly and find peace, equanimity & joy independent of circumstances might be smooth & easy, but more likely will have some ups & downs.

     “Depending upon various factors – such as psychological disposition, early conditioning, genetics, random chance – some people experience significant instability along the journey from surface to Source.

     Understand that your ordinary ordering principle is being ripped away – the body cannot get comfortable, the mind cannot get answers – but a new ordering principle, which is much deeper, is in the process of revealing itself.

     The awkward intermediate zone is a stage that some meditators pass through wherein the old coping mechanism (tighten up & turn away) is in the process of being shed, but the new coping mechanism (open up & turn toward) is not yet strong enough to provide abiding safety and fulfillment.” 
       Shinzen Young. “The Science of Enlightenment. How Meditation Works.” Sounds True, 2016. 
 

Complete Experiencing - Healing Trauma

     To be held in safety & unconditional love is one of the most fundamental of human needs. But life's paradoxical. A part of us longs for, while another part resists intimate connection.
     Meditation practice helps us to clearly see ourselves, others & the rest of reality, accept and re-establish intimate relationship with everything - "life's 10,000 joys and 10,000 sorrows." Shinzen Young's book (below) clearly explains how to achieve this through regular meditation practice.

     "Every time we identify with feeling separate from life, that’s a very subtle trauma. It’s the trauma of the perception of isolation." Caverly Morgan

      "... everything yearns to be met. Everything yearns to resolve itself in love – that love being the open space of acceptance, of allowing, of staying resolutely present, and unconditionally open to every nuance of your inner experience." Amoda Maa

      "Once we are willing to be directly intimate with our life as it arises, joy emerges out of the simplest of life experiences." Pat Enkyo O'Hara
 
     "To be enlightened is to be intimate with all things." Dogen

     "If trauma is defined as ‘inescapably stressful event that overwhelms people’s existing coping mechanisms’ and that in its psychological sense overwhelms the integrity and continuity of the self because its damage to the internalized links between self and other, then for a great many people there can be many small traumas, generating many areas of sequestered, dissociated, and partially dissociated experience. This is in addition to vulnerability to severe trauma.
     ... most crucially at issue in dissociatively-based psychopathology is the collapse of relationality – both interpersonal and intrapersonal (or interstate). Dissociation, as a state of being divided and as a chronic process, is ultimately a barrier to relationality, both within and between selves.
     ... I believe (most of us have) an addictive proprietorship over dissociative solutions ... The way we do this and how much we do it may differ, but I think we do it all the same.”
     Elizabeth F. Howell. “The Dissociative Mind.” Routledge, 2008

      “Paradoxically, the more we try to change ourselves, the more we prevent change from occurring. On the other hand, the more we allow ourselves to fully experience who we are, the greater the possibility of change.
 
      Every identification we hold about ourselves disconnects us from the fluidity of our core nature. Our identifications – that is, all the fixed beliefs we take to be our true self – along with the associated patterns of nervous systems dysregulation separate us from ourselves and the experience of being present and engaged. As much as we may feel constrained by our survival styles, we are afraid to, or do not know how to, move beyond them.
      Our survival styles are reflected in our bodies in two ways: as areas of tension (hypertonicity) and as areas of weakness or disconnection (hypotonicity). Patterns of tension and weakness reveal the ways we have learned to compensate for the disconnection from our needs, core self, and life force.
     All of us are somewhere on the continuum of connection to disconnection from our core selves and our bodies.”
       Laurence Heller, Aline LaPierre. "Healing Developmental Trauma: How Early Trauma Affects Self-Regulation, Self-Image, and the Capacity for Relationship.” North Atlantic Books, 2012.

     “The basic premise of mindfulness meditation is that consistently infusing the qualities of concentration, clarity, and equanimity into ordinary experience over time causes a fundamental shift in our paradigm. It is for this reason that mindfulness is sometimes called insight meditation.

     If you want to be happy independent of conditions, you’ll need to learn how to have a complete experience of each basic type of body sensation. On the spiritual path, we have to learn how to have a complete experience of anger, so that anger does not cause suffering which then distorts our behavior. For the same reason, we have to learn how to have a complete experience of fear, sadness, and so on. We even have to learn how to have a complete experience of physical pain, as well as other unpleasant feelings in the body such as fatigue and nausea. When I say, ‘Have a complete experience of x,’ its’ just a quick way of saying, ‘Experience x with so much concentration, clarity, and equanimity that there’s no time to coagulate x – or yourself – into a thing.’ You and x become an integrated flow of energy and spaciousness.
     Learning how to have a complete experience of discomfort sets us free. Learning how to have a complete experience of pleasure deeply fulfills. … The body sensations of making love are spiritual to the extent that they are complete, that is, experienced in a state of concentration, sensory clarity, and equanimity. To know what true love is, we need to experience it as it truly is. In Tibet, that’s called the oneness of bliss and void.” 
       Shinzen Young. “The Science of Enlightenment. How Meditation Works.” Sounds True, 2016.