Playin’ The Edge

I tried something new the other day.  I wanted to read a good non-fiction book.  Something spiritually oriented but how to find the right thing?  I went to the library and found the “200′s”, the spirituality section, and just wandered around. 

I found all kinds of stuff I had no interest in reading, but found some cool things too.  I picked up Hand Wash Cold: Care Instructions For An Ordinary Life.   Miller writes like a normal person who happens to be a Zen Buddhist priest. 

It’s a here’s-how-I-hit-bottom-and-found-buddhism book but totally lacking in any conversionary rah-rah sentiments that would make me drop the book in a heap on the floor.  After her first marriage breaks up, she has this to say about fear:

We are unavailable for any truly loving and fulfiling relationship as long as we are trapped in a committed relationship with the most controlling part of our own mind — our fear.  Our fear of what will happen and our fear of what will not.

Nearly everything we’re afraid will happen is going to happen anyway so what’s to fear?  There is no secure or unchanging ground, and we make ourelves safe only when we see and accept the way life is.  Utterly spontaneous and impermanent.  When it is time to laugh, we laugh.  When it is time to weep, we weep.  We are cheated of nothing in life except that from which we withhold ourselves by ego’s narrow bounds.  These bounds were made to break; indeed they must, if we ever hope to be whole again.  

Karen Maezen Miller

I saw this on Pema’s Facebook page and thought of all the people i know (including myself) having a tough time with February, or Winter, or Life.  This is for us:

Life is glorious, but life is also wretched. It is both.

Appreciating the gloriousness inspires us, encourages us, cheers us up, gives us a bigger perspective, energizes us. We feel connected. But if that’s all that’s happening, we get arrogant and start to look down on others, and there is a sense of making ourselves a big deal and being really serious about it, wanting it to be like that forever. The gloriousness becomes tinged by craving and addiction.

On the other hand, wretchedness–life’s painful aspect–softens us up considerably. Knowing pain is a very important ingredient of being there for another person. When you are feeling a lot of grief, you can look right into somebody’s eyes because you feel you haven’t got anything to lose–you’re just there. The wretchedness humbles us and softens us, but if we were only wretched, we would all just go down the tubes. We’d be so depressed, discouraged, and hopeless that we wouldn’t have enough energy to eat an apple.

Gloriousness and wretchedness need each other. One inspires us, the other softens us. They go together.

Excerpted from “Start Where You Are” by Pema Chödrön

I was driving to a friend’s house an hour away and dug through the console to find a CD to listen to.  I picked up a Kripalu CD that they’d sent me a couple years ago when I belonged to the yoga teachers association.  I’d never listened to it.  So I put it in and it was Danna Foulds talking about her spiritual practice. 

The point of her talk was that she didn’t do a traditional every-morning yoga practice.  She had tried a few things and added and deleted over time. 

It was a good talk because I’m that person too.  I like to try different things that catch my attention.  I see what works based on my own experience. 

At the end of the talk she summed it up by saying, “you need to find the practice that you’ll get out of bed for”.  As someone who crawls out of a nice warm bed to get personal time because if I don’t do it first thing, it never happens, I thought that about says it all.

 I loved this book, it was hard to pick one single quote, but here it is:

Billions of things could happen that you haven’t even thought of yet.  The question is not whether they will happen.  Things are going to happen.  The real question is whether you want to be happy regardless of what happens.  The purpose of your life is to enjoy and learning from your experiences.  You were not put on Earth to suffer….

In the end, enjoying life’s experiences is the only rational thing to do.  You’re sitting on a planet spinning around in the middle of absolutely nowhere.  Go ahead, take a look at reality.  You’re floating in empty space in a universe that goes on forever.  If you have to be here, at least be happy and enjoy the experience.  You’re going to die anyways.  Things are going to happen anyway…..

Committing yourself to unconditional happiness will teach you every single thing there is to learn about youself, about others and about the nautre of life.  You will learn all about your mind, your heart, and your will.  But you have to mean it when you say that you’ll be happy for the rest of your life.  Every time a part of you begins to get unhappy, let it go…..

In the end, if you stay happy, you win.  Make that your game, and just stay happy no matter what.

The Untethered Soul, Michael A. Singer

I’ve become a big proponent of not letting my cranky ol’ mind run the show.  My mind is really useful at times, don’t get me wrong, but there are times when it seems to be set on driving me nutty crackers.  I was reading lately about how researchers have concluded that we’re hardwired to be cup-half-empty kind of people.

And it makes sense if you think about the survival of the species.  You were more likely to survive if you were looking over your shoulder for a lion or some other angry large-toothed predator.  Being fearful and looking for what’s wrong or missing has probably helped us survive in the long run.  Our flight or fight responses are pretty well honed.  But in our modern day it’s not as handy as it was when we were cave dwellers.

Now the thing we fear might be the next squabble with our boss and how does fight or flight help us there?  We’re probably not going to punch him out.  Although running away may make sense at times.

So the researchers suggest we actively work against the tendencies of our mind to be always looking at the empty half of the glass.   Be grateful, for example.  For all the full-part-of-the-cup things you can possibly think of.   It’s a simple method of replacing the list in your mind of everything that’s “wrong” with everything that’s right.  

Somedays that “wrong”  list seems to run on auto-pilot, “oh yeah see i can’t find a parking place.  And the line-up inside is probably huge.  Do I have the money for this?  I dread seeing my credit card bill.  Just watch,  I’m going to be late and my friend will be pissed.”  and on and on on it goes.

You can also actively work against your cranky mind by telling it the score.  The cup-half-full score.  Whether you believe what you say or not, I find it gets my head into a better space and helps me feel more calm.  And that’s a start to improving my day.  Here are some lines I used in Savasana in yoga class recently:

I am filled with peace, strength and power

All indecision, anxiety, depression and discouragement are dissolving from my mind.

The life force flows freely and harmoniously through every atom of my body.I am complete and perfect now.

I dwell in perfect peace.

Acceptance of the unacceptable is the greatest source of grace in this world.

Eckhart Tolle, Stillness Speaks