An event occurred yesterday with my husband; something that was intended to be uplifting and positive but unfortunately did not have a positive ending. Intuitively, I knew to remain very quiet all day. I am certain that no-one had the vaguest idea that anything might be wrong with me. They were busy doing their thing and I was busy keeping myself busy. In fact, I was quite productive throughout the day and intent on not being upset, if that makes sense.
I'm not so good at this ethereal/philosophical/Buddhist/spiritual thing that I can repair the event in my mind and end up with an immediate 'everything is as it should be' sort of outcome, but at the same time I didn't say a word about it, to anyone, and nor did I write anything. I recognized that I needed time to process what had happened before I could even think of taking any action, or making any comment, or even just thinking about it in any sort of clear way.
The mind is as the mind is, and thus I had running through it all sorts of thoughts. I've come to a place where I completely understand and accept that we are not our thoughts - that thoughts and emotions come and go, and that we are the awareness behind all of that. In my flawed human way I noticed the thoughts, the tendency to see this event as catastrophic, but I simply noticed that. I had that quiet curiosity about the thoughts, of these invasions of my peace of mind. In other words, turbulent feelings, emotions and thoughts remained but I had a reasonable handle on them.
While I was on the retreat I got into several quite deep and meaningful conversations with a woman we shall call Rachel. She told me her life story and it's one of the most fascinating explanations I have ever heard of the reasons behind a person becoming a psychiatrist. I got to like her, a lot, and respected her as someone who had way more experience than me in these matters. 'I'm tired of Tolle,' she declared to me one day. I thought about it. 'Well Eckhart is a good place to start,' I suggested. I actually don't think Eckhart Tolle ever gets old and he helped me a lot yesterday. Here's what I read:
‘Don’t look for any other state than the one you are in now; otherwise, you will set up inner conflict and unconscious resistance. Forgive yourself for not being at peace. The moment you completely accept your non-peace, your non-peace becomes transmuted into peace. Anything you accept fully will get you there, will take you into peace. This is the miracle of surrender…
To offer no resistance to life is to be in a state of grace, ease, and lightness. This stage is then no longer dependent upon things being in a certain way, good or bad. It seems paradoxical, yet when your inner dependency on form is gone, the general conditions of your life, the outer forms tend to improve greatly.’
- Eckart Tolle, The Power of Now.
This passage was a poignant reminder to me that we must not resist our emotions. I was...upset. When I am not sure how I am feeling about something, maybe angry, maybe sad, maybe disheartened, I tend to use the word 'upset'. My mind and my body are upset, not at peace. This, for me, is good enough of a description. This was the truth and undeniable.
The passage reminded me too that I hold myself to high standards. I don't want to be 'upset' and it's upsetting when I am upset. I'm mad with myself. Why can't I get a grip so that I don't experience upset? But Tolle's wise words reminded me that I experience what I experience and that's okay.
It's the next bit of the statement that is really profound - that the moment you completely accept your non-peace, your non-peace is transmuted into peace. This worked on two levels:
When I read this I sat with my non-peace state. I breathed into it, focused on my breathing pattern and within that simple process I could feel my non-peace state to turn into a more peaceful state - a recognition that I would not always be in peace, that it was unrealistic to expect it to be so, but that at my disposal was enough wisdom to see that the non-peace was fleeting...that in my humanness and he in his humanness, we had ended up with an outcome that was...upsetting.
It wasn't the end of the world, or the product of a failed relationship, but simply the product of a failure to communicate. It wasn't as complex a problem as it seemed, but rather a quite simple one. No, we were not ideally suited to one another from a sexuality perspective, but neither were we as far apart as it seemed in the moment. Some skills needed to be honed, for sure, and we needed to devise a way for me to express what was happening to me in a heavy bondage scene, but all of that was surmountable. It didn't all spell the doom and gloom that some of the uninvited thoughts suggested.
Some day when the time is right I will share the three elements required for a successful life, as presented to us at the retreat. I am still reflecting on them myself. But, I think the first is now very obvious to me. To have a successful life one must have clarity of thought. Meditation is a bit like various experiences within a power exchange relationship. I can't really explain those experiences, although I do try on these pages. One learns about them within the experience. Meditation is like this. Alone with one's mind on a regular basis, clarity of thought begins to rule one's life. A still and calm mind speaks it's own language.
I'm not so good at this ethereal/philosophical/Buddhist/spiritual thing that I can repair the event in my mind and end up with an immediate 'everything is as it should be' sort of outcome, but at the same time I didn't say a word about it, to anyone, and nor did I write anything. I recognized that I needed time to process what had happened before I could even think of taking any action, or making any comment, or even just thinking about it in any sort of clear way.
The mind is as the mind is, and thus I had running through it all sorts of thoughts. I've come to a place where I completely understand and accept that we are not our thoughts - that thoughts and emotions come and go, and that we are the awareness behind all of that. In my flawed human way I noticed the thoughts, the tendency to see this event as catastrophic, but I simply noticed that. I had that quiet curiosity about the thoughts, of these invasions of my peace of mind. In other words, turbulent feelings, emotions and thoughts remained but I had a reasonable handle on them.
While I was on the retreat I got into several quite deep and meaningful conversations with a woman we shall call Rachel. She told me her life story and it's one of the most fascinating explanations I have ever heard of the reasons behind a person becoming a psychiatrist. I got to like her, a lot, and respected her as someone who had way more experience than me in these matters. 'I'm tired of Tolle,' she declared to me one day. I thought about it. 'Well Eckhart is a good place to start,' I suggested. I actually don't think Eckhart Tolle ever gets old and he helped me a lot yesterday. Here's what I read:
‘Don’t look for any other state than the one you are in now; otherwise, you will set up inner conflict and unconscious resistance. Forgive yourself for not being at peace. The moment you completely accept your non-peace, your non-peace becomes transmuted into peace. Anything you accept fully will get you there, will take you into peace. This is the miracle of surrender…
To offer no resistance to life is to be in a state of grace, ease, and lightness. This stage is then no longer dependent upon things being in a certain way, good or bad. It seems paradoxical, yet when your inner dependency on form is gone, the general conditions of your life, the outer forms tend to improve greatly.’
- Eckart Tolle, The Power of Now.
This passage was a poignant reminder to me that we must not resist our emotions. I was...upset. When I am not sure how I am feeling about something, maybe angry, maybe sad, maybe disheartened, I tend to use the word 'upset'. My mind and my body are upset, not at peace. This, for me, is good enough of a description. This was the truth and undeniable.
The passage reminded me too that I hold myself to high standards. I don't want to be 'upset' and it's upsetting when I am upset. I'm mad with myself. Why can't I get a grip so that I don't experience upset? But Tolle's wise words reminded me that I experience what I experience and that's okay.
It's the next bit of the statement that is really profound - that the moment you completely accept your non-peace, your non-peace is transmuted into peace. This worked on two levels:
When I read this I sat with my non-peace state. I breathed into it, focused on my breathing pattern and within that simple process I could feel my non-peace state to turn into a more peaceful state - a recognition that I would not always be in peace, that it was unrealistic to expect it to be so, but that at my disposal was enough wisdom to see that the non-peace was fleeting...that in my humanness and he in his humanness, we had ended up with an outcome that was...upsetting.
It wasn't the end of the world, or the product of a failed relationship, but simply the product of a failure to communicate. It wasn't as complex a problem as it seemed, but rather a quite simple one. No, we were not ideally suited to one another from a sexuality perspective, but neither were we as far apart as it seemed in the moment. Some skills needed to be honed, for sure, and we needed to devise a way for me to express what was happening to me in a heavy bondage scene, but all of that was surmountable. It didn't all spell the doom and gloom that some of the uninvited thoughts suggested.
Some day when the time is right I will share the three elements required for a successful life, as presented to us at the retreat. I am still reflecting on them myself. But, I think the first is now very obvious to me. To have a successful life one must have clarity of thought. Meditation is a bit like various experiences within a power exchange relationship. I can't really explain those experiences, although I do try on these pages. One learns about them within the experience. Meditation is like this. Alone with one's mind on a regular basis, clarity of thought begins to rule one's life. A still and calm mind speaks it's own language.
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