I’ve been going through some emotional craziness lately.  I’ve been having to say good-bye to some people in my life and I’m not real happy about it.  It made me think about a Sylvia Boorstein article I read in January’s Kripalu Online newsletter. 

She was talking about teaching at meditation retreats and students ask her how it feels to be peaceful all the time.  And she tells them it’s just not that way.  After her decades of meditating she’s not necessarily peaceful all the time but she’s wiser about her decisions and kinder.  That sounds pretty good to me.

She wrote that when the chips are down and you’re feeling an avalanche of emotions and you’re tired and exhausted the mind gets confused.  All those things you know to be true and all those things you know about being peaceful go out the window.  And you get into your stories.  The angry ones, like “this isn’t fair”.  The pity-party ones like “poor me”.  And the scared ones like “I won’t survive it if things don’t change”.

She says:

I continue to suffer, stumbling around in stories of discontent, until I catch myself, and stop, and allow myself to know, and deeply feel, that I am frightened or confused or disappointed or angry or tired or ashamed or sad — that “I’m in pain!” Then my own good heart, out of compassion, takes care of me.  It all happens when I am able to say to myself (I honestly do use these very words). “Sweetheart, you are in pain. Relax. Take a breath. Let’s pay attention to what’s going on.  Then we’ll figure out what to do.

God I love that.  Her method just stops the stories in their tracks and injects a huge dose of compassion to the difficult reality of what’s going on.  What a great way to catch yourself instead of letting yourself squirm around in pain, wishing you weren’t in pain.

And maybe “sweetheart” isn’t your term.  Maybe you’re more of a honey, baby, darling person.  I’m more of a nickname person myself.  Pity the person who comes into my life and has their name mangled by me over time - with love of course.

My little brother finally broke down and said to me, “Cor, it’s not Crick, it’s Jonathan”.  I can’t remember how that particular nickname evolved but he’s so cute.  I still forget sometimes and he just looks at me.  But I can’t help it, I love him to pieces.  And most people who love me just call me Cor.  So that’s the one I picked for myself.  It’s not super original, but it reminds me that I care about myself too even when life sucks.  I need it especially when life sucks.

Reminding yourself to breath is so simple.  But when you’re breathing and focusing on your breath, your mind can’t really go churning off on painful tangents.  Sylvia says:

Pain is pain. Knowing the story of the distress is helpful for choosing a response but my first response….is to not be mad at it, or at myself for falling into it…. Sweetheart reminds me that it isn’t my fault that my mind is embittered, that something has upset it, that I’m in pain.  Even if I see that the source of my suffering is my own mind’s refusing to accommodate to its challenge, I can still feel compassionate about that.  No one purposely suffers.