I’ve mentioned this before, and I’m sure I’ll mention it again, but a huge component of change is remembering to let it happen.
Change, by the way, is inevitable. If it’s involuntary (or someone else’s idea), resisting it can be downright painful.
But a lot of times we resist changing even when we say that’s what we want, and sometimes the resistance is almost unconscious. We simply forget to let go of the person we used to be.
For example, as noted yesterday, you might have an intention of living love. But there’s this little part of you that is either afraid or … well, afraid to actually love (tomorrow: trust). So we fall back in the habit of judgment, as though being critical protects us. Take the homeless person begging for change on the corner. When I started tonglen practice, I found this was an easy place for me to start, although it got tougher when I stopped making up stories about why he was there. Regardless, many of us find it safer to judge him for being there. Not necessarily negatively—judgment is just another word for making up stories.
At any rate, remembering to practice, just as with any other change, involves letting go of the person who didn’t practice. Getting up at 5:30 in the morning to write involves letting go of the person who slept until seven. Quitting smoking means letting go of being the person who reaches for a cigarette.
And so forth.
One practice to bring in here is to consciously let go of that person with a breath. Acknowledge that at this moment, you might want to be that person, but you don’t have to be. Acknowledge that you aren’t the same person you were ten years ago (no one is), and then release being the person you were five minutes ago.
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Monday, December 5, 2011
Expansion = love
If you practice, and then pay attention, you can feel your heart expanding.
Yup. Just like the Grinch.
It’s a neat trick, and I highly recommend it. It starts by actively practicing love, and actively practicing joy, which I will admit can be tough sometimes. Feel free to start with the easy moments and work your way up to the tough ones.
Aside from having to remember to practice (more on this tomorrow), this is far easier than it sounds, though. Active love and active joy involve taking time to step back and find those things in ordinary circumstances. It also means taking time to step back and release—or simply fail to attach to—those moments that don’t promote love and joy.
Instead, attach to expansiveness. Not in the sense that it becomes an addiction, because therein lies a danger of attaching instead to repelling those things that fall the other way, but rather in the sense that you automatically seek the expansiveness, inclusive of love, joy, and compassion, in every moment.
Love is expansive. Remember your tonglen practice—we breathe in that which is tight, painful, anguished; we breathe out the space of love, which feels like space, feels expansive and glowing. In the hardest of circumstances, in the most mundane of tensions, in the most ordinary exhaustion, we can still take a single breath that begins to turn things around. But…the practice isn’t in order to turn things around. The practice is to bring all of those experiences into our practice of experiencing life as love. In other words, we don’t do this for an external goal (if I practice breathing love and expansiveness into everything, my life will become problem-free), we do it because the goal (in this case) is the practice of love—and trust me, your life won’t suddenly become problem-free! I’ve found, though, that when problems arise, they’re a lot less stressful, which is an excellent bonus.
Yup. Just like the Grinch.
It’s a neat trick, and I highly recommend it. It starts by actively practicing love, and actively practicing joy, which I will admit can be tough sometimes. Feel free to start with the easy moments and work your way up to the tough ones.
Aside from having to remember to practice (more on this tomorrow), this is far easier than it sounds, though. Active love and active joy involve taking time to step back and find those things in ordinary circumstances. It also means taking time to step back and release—or simply fail to attach to—those moments that don’t promote love and joy.
Instead, attach to expansiveness. Not in the sense that it becomes an addiction, because therein lies a danger of attaching instead to repelling those things that fall the other way, but rather in the sense that you automatically seek the expansiveness, inclusive of love, joy, and compassion, in every moment.
Love is expansive. Remember your tonglen practice—we breathe in that which is tight, painful, anguished; we breathe out the space of love, which feels like space, feels expansive and glowing. In the hardest of circumstances, in the most mundane of tensions, in the most ordinary exhaustion, we can still take a single breath that begins to turn things around. But…the practice isn’t in order to turn things around. The practice is to bring all of those experiences into our practice of experiencing life as love. In other words, we don’t do this for an external goal (if I practice breathing love and expansiveness into everything, my life will become problem-free), we do it because the goal (in this case) is the practice of love—and trust me, your life won’t suddenly become problem-free! I’ve found, though, that when problems arise, they’re a lot less stressful, which is an excellent bonus.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)