Through the Thorns
As we start noticing, one of the first things we will encounter is the feeling that the negative things in our lives are some kind of mistake. We might even feel that we are only willing to start observing our minds once things are easier, or we get our lives a little more together. To start now, with this life that has lots of loose ends and problems, doesn’t feel right. We want to fix a number of things first…then we will be ready to start on a path of becoming more present. It can be seen as a ‘project’ that we want to be ready to undertake.
“I want to check out. I do not want to be in the here and now…I know that this is where all the real blessings and payoffs are, that there is a good reason they call the now ‘the present’. I want to learn to live in the now, I want to learn to breathe my way into it and hang out there more and more and experience life in all its richness and realness. But I want to do it later, like maybe sometime early next week…”
Anne Lamott
But in fact the path of developing wisdom, compassion and awareness goes straight through the middle of our regular life, no matter what is happening, and no matter what we dislike. The true value is in seeing what is happening when we are angry, frightened, bored, defensive, aggressive, anxious, critical and stressed. Those times, those states, are the path, not an obstacle to the path. We may have heard this before, but it seems hard to believe, Yet we can find out from our own experience that over time, our ability to go deeper into those states will yield insight and transformation.
“When we understand the connection between our emotional distress and our expectations of what life should be, we can enter more deeply into an experiential practice life. Our path will take us directly to our core pain – into the helplessness of the loss of control, our fear of rejection or abandonment… As we enter into this place that we’ve avoided for so long, we discover our capacity to just be there without getting lost or overwhelmed. We experience that it’s our willingness to just be with the difficult place that engenders a spaciousness around it. We learn that we can let this place penetrate our hearts.”
Ezra Bayda, Being Zen
It can’t be stressed enough – the path of seeing is this – whatever is happening right now. Most of the learning comes from developing intimacy with what causes us pain and suffering, not from being able to appreciate the babbling brook and the birds singing.
