Tag: Meditation

All of these…controlled by me

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ImageI’ve decided to return to actively practicing a lovingkindness meditation as I recognize that I had allowed feelings of fear, anger, and sadness to overwhelm me and veer me away from my path.

I allowed these feelings to rack my body with pain, my heart with dis-ease, my mind with worry, and my soul with turmoil.

It is truly hard to move forward while walking backwards.

If we keep our view always to that which is behind us, or always to that which we have around us, or always to that which we have ahead of us…I am not sure that we can truly be able to live mindfully or peaceable.

Instead I believe that mindfulness and peaceability comes from reminding ourselves of the following:

We may look behind to remind ourselves of the lessons we have learned. We may look around us to understand where those lessons have brought us. We may look ahead to understand what lessons we must choose to learn to arrive where we choose to be.

In essence, there is no need to despair neither our past, our present, or our future if we each remember that…

Who or what I am.
Who or what I will be.
Who or what I was recently.
All of these…controlled by me.

-db

The In-Between State

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Every now and again, I pick up Pema Chodron‘s book, The Places that Scare You, and read a chapter or two.  Today, I turned to chapter twenty-two “The In-Between State,” which seems to aptly describe my present state of being.  She writes that “[a]nxiety, heartbreak, and tenderness mark the in-between state.  It’s the kind of place we usually want to avoid.”

Found via Google Images

Found via Google Images

She also explains that, in this state, one has already begun to reject those things, in which one once found pleasure.  That is, in this in-between state, one begins to understand that the suffering that is being experienced is far greater than any pleasurable acts that one might have relied upon in the past to quell one’s fears.

Thus, what can one do in confronting such a state of being?  Chrodon states that the answer lies in being able to stay in the middle.  Specifically, she writes, “By not knowing, not hoping to know, and not acting like we know what’s happening, we begin to access our inner strength.”

The task, then, is to hold oneself in abeyance, even if the world seems to be demanding that a decision be made, or a step be taken.  It is in standing still that allows one the opportunity to hear, with clarity, the inherent wisdom within.  It is a wisdom that understands that there need not be judgements of good or bad, right or wrong, etc.

So, how am I handling my in-between state?  Well, I am silently facing my many internal selves, and that are asking me to choose a direction–I am learning to sit with their uncertainties, their fears…my uncertainties, my fears… Until next time,D.

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