Tuesday night on Open Air, Jen, our Africa coordinator, with the help of that intrepid reporter-monk Dave, launched the 2011 fundraising campaign for the Africa Vulnerable Children Project. This year we celebrate the 10th anniversary of our commitment to assist in poverty alleviation in Africa and enter our 6th year in Kantolomba.
If you’ve been involved in this practice for any time at all you know what a very big deal “participation” is for us. Ours is a practice. There’s nothing philosophical or theoretical about what we do. It’s a “bringing conscious, compassionate awareness to how you are and how you do what you do in each moment” way of living. One is either practicing, or one is not practicing. Understanding, knowing, learning, and figuring out don’t have a place in this every-moment, paying-attention practice of ours. With that orientation the folks behind the fundraising campaign have come up with a way we can all participate in this decade celebration by practicing our every-moment awareness via what they’re calling the Participation Game.
Now, I confess this sort of thing has never been my idea of a good time. I don’t enjoy games. Most of the games on offer when I was growing up were competitive, and I never liked seeing anyone lose. I just couldn’t understand the fun in something that resulted in one person or group being wildly happy while another was miserable. Oh, sure, I heard all the “it doesn’t matter if you win or lose, it’s how you play the game,” messages, but I didn’t see anyone buying it. When I realized I was cheating so my cousins could win, I quit altogether.
So, when I heard the word “game,” I watched my fundraising enthusiasm start down hill. “Can I please just hold a bake sale?” (Anyone who knows me well knows how much I must dislike games to have a thought like that!) However, I’m a student of Zen so that response was pretty quickly replaced by, “Okay, I’m willing. What do I do?”
As some of the details of the game were announced I found myself getting a little bit excited about it. The first thing we heard, on Open Air, was an invitation to send an email to africa@livingcompassion.org with “participation” in the subject line. All very mysterious. I determined to send mine in as soon as the show was over and promptly forgot. Fortunately, we had another chance the next week and I got mine in. More details were revealed. I saw some emails go back and forth as the strategy was being finalized, but didn’t really take in the details. (I don’t like games, you know.)
Then, on Tuesday night, again on the Good News portion of Open Air, all was made clear! I raced to the website and could not believe my eyes. It’s gorgeous, clear, easy to follow—fun. And, best of all, it’s a game in which everyone wins!
I cruised around making my pledge and signing up here and there (I thought I might win one of those guidance appointments), and generally had a very good time playing. I highly recommend it!
As I was playing, I recalled something that happened a couple of weeks ago at the Monastery. We were all racing around getting the place ready for a retreat, each of us with a long list of chores and tasks, attempting to get as much done as we could before the meeting time of 4 o’clock in the garden. Earlier in the day two of the monks had prepared 3 beds for transplanting tomato plants from the greenhouse to the great out of doors. It was a big job to get all those little ones into their new homes and important to do while the sun was lower in the sky, giving them the best chance to avoid the shock of a painful transition.
Everyone gathered and set to the task in typical attentive, mindful, kind, monk fashion. I was completing a task on another part of the grounds at the time, but heard glowing reports later that evening during group about how much fun it was to do something like that together. The feeling of everyone focusing their attention and energy in one direction to accomplish a compassionate outcome is as good as it gets. The consensus was that doing anything with Sangha is fun.
I confess to having felt a little twinge of disappointment that I missed the great tomato extravaganza because I know from years of experience that it’s true—being with Sangha makes everything fun. Given that, you can imagine how delighted I am to get to participate in the Participation Game.
I invite you to join the fun.
In Gassho,
Cheri
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Friday, April 22, 2011
A Vision for Practice
Gassho,
I find that when I’m engaged in an email class I have little inspiration—not to mention time—for writing a blog. I love email classes. I love the back-and-forth, getting to watch what arises in me in response to what someone writes about their practice. I love the feeling of Sangha, all of us practicing together. I feel the same way about Open Air and even the tweets, though tweets don’t have that groovy two-way communication. I can just imagine everyone out there reading and seeing and smiling.
The recording and listening email classes—named “It’s Time to Feel Good” and based on our newest book What You Practice Is What You Have—began in November and, with a short break during February and March, will continue until the end of April. Somewhere out in the middle of the last one, and continuing through this one, I began working with our new “business coach” on a retreat that will be made available only to those who have completed a recording/listening email class.
I just had a birthday* and birthdays are often an opportunity to consider mortality—especially at my age! It has occurred to me that it might be of some assistance for me to articulate my vision for practice, given all these new features in our practice.
I still see the foundation of our practice as the Not What But How work. Having a sense of how a human operates via learning to direct the attention, meditation, and the five processes (beliefs and assumptions, aspects of the personality, projection, centering, and disidentification) is core work, so much so that I still teach that retreat once a year at the Zen Monastery Peace Center. The There Is Nothing Wrong With You retreat, the follow-up to Not What But How, brings clarity—and usually profound transformation—as the role of self-hate in a person’s life is dissected.
The next huge piece of practice is recording and listening. As many of you have heard me state, I’ve never in 30+ years of offering this practice seen anything bring the level of transformation that recording and listening is providing. The unique and astonishing piece of it is that people are able, usually for the first time, to experience that 1) they are not egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate, and 2) they can have immediate, direct access to the wisdom, love, and compassion that animates us. Not “get that,” or “understand it,” but have a direct experience of. That is truly life changing.
However, I’ve not found that people can reach that depth of experience either by reading the book and following the directions, or even by doing a day-long workshop. The resistance from egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate is simply to big and too virulent for most people to move through unsupported. So, until we figure out another way, doing an email class to gain the support for getting to that direct experience seems our only avenue. I commit to offering the It’s Time to Feel Good email classes until we come up with that alternative teaching/supporting method.
When a person has completed all those elements of practice, they will be ready for the new 8-day retreat that, to me, reveals egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate in a way that is stark and unforgettable. I predict this retreat will be as transformative as There Is Nothing Wrong With You and, as such, requires a participant to be well-steeped in every aspect of practice. This stage is for the very committed practitioner.
Then, the people who have these practices under their belt will be invited to participate in a project that I, cock-eyed optimist that I am, think is going to change at least our society, if not the world. The reason I’m hopeful about that is that when There Is Nothing Wrong With You came out—nearly 20 years ago now!—the concept of self-hatred really didn’t exist in society. “Voices” were something the “mentally ill” heard. Now there are few therapists who don’t use clarity about the role of voices and self-hatred in their practices, and those notions have even slipped into most spiritual practices.
However, it’s not changing society that is my ambition, it’s maintaining support for Sangha. We all know that if practice isn’t right in front of us, it’s easy for egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate to begin its stealth slither back into our lives. How do we stay connected, focused, supported? I think Project Next is all that and more. Stayed tuned, please.
*This from the Zen Monastery Peace Center Guestmaster:
Cheri recently had a birthday and one of the monks gave her the gift of the commitment to hold ZERO tolerance for self-hate the entire day. Both Cheri and the monk were pretty excited about it, and Cheri asked us to pass along to the whole Sangha that she is open to late birthday presence (couldn't resist!). If you would like to join in, choose a day and commit, midnight to midnight, no matter what happens, no matter what the voices say, no matter what "unskillful" things occur, to NO SELF-HATE! You can do it--it's actually fun! If you would like to let us know how it goes, post a comment on Cheri’s Practice Blog.
In Gassho,
Guestmaster
PS Remember that deciding “no self-hate” does not mean there will not be any. It will likely be even louder than usual. It means you are not going to participate with, talk to, resist, or in any way engage with it.
Thanks to each of you who take our monk up on that invitation—eager to hear how it goes. And, for a little inspiration before you start your no self-hate day, take a look at the youtube video of Bob Newhart on MadTV doing a routine called, “Stop It.” (Choose the long version.) So Zen!
In Gassho,
Cheri
I find that when I’m engaged in an email class I have little inspiration—not to mention time—for writing a blog. I love email classes. I love the back-and-forth, getting to watch what arises in me in response to what someone writes about their practice. I love the feeling of Sangha, all of us practicing together. I feel the same way about Open Air and even the tweets, though tweets don’t have that groovy two-way communication. I can just imagine everyone out there reading and seeing and smiling.
The recording and listening email classes—named “It’s Time to Feel Good” and based on our newest book What You Practice Is What You Have—began in November and, with a short break during February and March, will continue until the end of April. Somewhere out in the middle of the last one, and continuing through this one, I began working with our new “business coach” on a retreat that will be made available only to those who have completed a recording/listening email class.
I just had a birthday* and birthdays are often an opportunity to consider mortality—especially at my age! It has occurred to me that it might be of some assistance for me to articulate my vision for practice, given all these new features in our practice.
I still see the foundation of our practice as the Not What But How work. Having a sense of how a human operates via learning to direct the attention, meditation, and the five processes (beliefs and assumptions, aspects of the personality, projection, centering, and disidentification) is core work, so much so that I still teach that retreat once a year at the Zen Monastery Peace Center. The There Is Nothing Wrong With You retreat, the follow-up to Not What But How, brings clarity—and usually profound transformation—as the role of self-hate in a person’s life is dissected.
The next huge piece of practice is recording and listening. As many of you have heard me state, I’ve never in 30+ years of offering this practice seen anything bring the level of transformation that recording and listening is providing. The unique and astonishing piece of it is that people are able, usually for the first time, to experience that 1) they are not egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate, and 2) they can have immediate, direct access to the wisdom, love, and compassion that animates us. Not “get that,” or “understand it,” but have a direct experience of. That is truly life changing.
However, I’ve not found that people can reach that depth of experience either by reading the book and following the directions, or even by doing a day-long workshop. The resistance from egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate is simply to big and too virulent for most people to move through unsupported. So, until we figure out another way, doing an email class to gain the support for getting to that direct experience seems our only avenue. I commit to offering the It’s Time to Feel Good email classes until we come up with that alternative teaching/supporting method.
When a person has completed all those elements of practice, they will be ready for the new 8-day retreat that, to me, reveals egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate in a way that is stark and unforgettable. I predict this retreat will be as transformative as There Is Nothing Wrong With You and, as such, requires a participant to be well-steeped in every aspect of practice. This stage is for the very committed practitioner.
Then, the people who have these practices under their belt will be invited to participate in a project that I, cock-eyed optimist that I am, think is going to change at least our society, if not the world. The reason I’m hopeful about that is that when There Is Nothing Wrong With You came out—nearly 20 years ago now!—the concept of self-hatred really didn’t exist in society. “Voices” were something the “mentally ill” heard. Now there are few therapists who don’t use clarity about the role of voices and self-hatred in their practices, and those notions have even slipped into most spiritual practices.
However, it’s not changing society that is my ambition, it’s maintaining support for Sangha. We all know that if practice isn’t right in front of us, it’s easy for egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate to begin its stealth slither back into our lives. How do we stay connected, focused, supported? I think Project Next is all that and more. Stayed tuned, please.
*This from the Zen Monastery Peace Center Guestmaster:
Cheri recently had a birthday and one of the monks gave her the gift of the commitment to hold ZERO tolerance for self-hate the entire day. Both Cheri and the monk were pretty excited about it, and Cheri asked us to pass along to the whole Sangha that she is open to late birthday presence (couldn't resist!). If you would like to join in, choose a day and commit, midnight to midnight, no matter what happens, no matter what the voices say, no matter what "unskillful" things occur, to NO SELF-HATE! You can do it--it's actually fun! If you would like to let us know how it goes, post a comment on Cheri’s Practice Blog.
In Gassho,
Guestmaster
PS Remember that deciding “no self-hate” does not mean there will not be any. It will likely be even louder than usual. It means you are not going to participate with, talk to, resist, or in any way engage with it.
Thanks to each of you who take our monk up on that invitation—eager to hear how it goes. And, for a little inspiration before you start your no self-hate day, take a look at the youtube video of Bob Newhart on MadTV doing a routine called, “Stop It.” (Choose the long version.) So Zen!
In Gassho,
Cheri
Saturday, March 26, 2011
From Mystery to Predictability
A retreatant sent this to me after the 2010 Santa Sabina retreat. --Cheri
From Mystery to Predictability
Karma can seem to be something of a mystery. What is it? How did I get “mine”? What actually is “my” karma? I remember an exercise on a retreat with you many years ago. You asked us a number of questions designed to help us get a picture of our own essential karma. I remember that my answers to the questions painted a very familiar picture of life as “me”; then what I saw in that sort of drifted away from conscious awareness. If you had asked what my karma was and how it operates in my life, I probably would have given a very vague answer… “It’s a mystery,” to quote one of my favorite lines from the movie Shakespeare in Love.
The recording process has clearly revealed the mystery around my own particular brand of karma, with more showing up every week. The road map of suffering is revealed! The broad brush strokes are clear; the subtleties are emerging daily.
After recording my “stories” and identifications for just a very few months, it is hard to remain clueless about exactly what those stories are. Almost every other entry among hours of entries is a version of two, or at the most three, stories. I listen and think “wow, that one again; that’s the same one as this morning and yesterday, too!” No more mystery for me about what the stories are that send me down the familiar hole of suffering, complete with the same package of sensations and conversations.
And, as the stories continue to repeat and be recorded, I begin to see what is behind them. What are the beliefs and assumptions that make these so real? Who is it that always falls for them? What does she believe about herself? What survival strategies arise to defend her from these stories?
So, for me, mystery has been replaced by a considerable amount of predictability. 98% of the stories are a version of 1) there is something horribly wrong with my body, physically, and I am going to be very sick and die “young” (kind of funny when you know how old I am), and 2) I am a bad/wrong person and they hate me. Both of them are directly tied to shame; for either, “I should be ashamed of myself.” The words I can most often hear in my mother’s voice are “shame on you.” The response, historically, to the stories and that sense of shame and failure is also not a mystery: the classic fight or flight. Either stand my ground and argue my case, or say, “it’s too hard, I can’t, I quit” and leave.
A couple of days ago, story #2 got started, complete with all the emotions associated with rejection and inadequacy. I grabbed the recorder like a lifeline, told it exactly what was going on, what I was feeling, and asked the mentor for help. Even through all of my emotion, the mentor was right there. First of all with reassurance for the little one getting the beating: “I know; it’s hard. I can understand why you feel that way.” And then as the guide for the adult me: “We don’t have to respond that way any more. You are an adult and can act as one. What would you like to do to take care of this situation? I’m right here to help you.” And that was that. The little one felt heard, and she disappeared. The adult was there and she knew what to do. All sensation and story gone in less than five minutes and on to a new moment.
So, not only is the karma now predictable, the way to handle it is, too! And all because of a little device made of metal and plastic that is able to digitize my voice and play it back. And all because of the willingness to use the recorder, to do the practice, to show up for me and for all beings.
Not only is there relief for me and all the internal little ones in this, there is the social relief as well. No one has to deal with that unfortunately identified version of me! And, best of all, a gift of the greater predictability of karma is the ability to be present to the mystery that is life.
Thank you, Cheri, for this practice – all forms of it – and for the invitation to reflect on what I have seen about karma and its evolution from mystery to predictability.
From Mystery to Predictability
Karma can seem to be something of a mystery. What is it? How did I get “mine”? What actually is “my” karma? I remember an exercise on a retreat with you many years ago. You asked us a number of questions designed to help us get a picture of our own essential karma. I remember that my answers to the questions painted a very familiar picture of life as “me”; then what I saw in that sort of drifted away from conscious awareness. If you had asked what my karma was and how it operates in my life, I probably would have given a very vague answer… “It’s a mystery,” to quote one of my favorite lines from the movie Shakespeare in Love.
The recording process has clearly revealed the mystery around my own particular brand of karma, with more showing up every week. The road map of suffering is revealed! The broad brush strokes are clear; the subtleties are emerging daily.
After recording my “stories” and identifications for just a very few months, it is hard to remain clueless about exactly what those stories are. Almost every other entry among hours of entries is a version of two, or at the most three, stories. I listen and think “wow, that one again; that’s the same one as this morning and yesterday, too!” No more mystery for me about what the stories are that send me down the familiar hole of suffering, complete with the same package of sensations and conversations.
And, as the stories continue to repeat and be recorded, I begin to see what is behind them. What are the beliefs and assumptions that make these so real? Who is it that always falls for them? What does she believe about herself? What survival strategies arise to defend her from these stories?
So, for me, mystery has been replaced by a considerable amount of predictability. 98% of the stories are a version of 1) there is something horribly wrong with my body, physically, and I am going to be very sick and die “young” (kind of funny when you know how old I am), and 2) I am a bad/wrong person and they hate me. Both of them are directly tied to shame; for either, “I should be ashamed of myself.” The words I can most often hear in my mother’s voice are “shame on you.” The response, historically, to the stories and that sense of shame and failure is also not a mystery: the classic fight or flight. Either stand my ground and argue my case, or say, “it’s too hard, I can’t, I quit” and leave.
A couple of days ago, story #2 got started, complete with all the emotions associated with rejection and inadequacy. I grabbed the recorder like a lifeline, told it exactly what was going on, what I was feeling, and asked the mentor for help. Even through all of my emotion, the mentor was right there. First of all with reassurance for the little one getting the beating: “I know; it’s hard. I can understand why you feel that way.” And then as the guide for the adult me: “We don’t have to respond that way any more. You are an adult and can act as one. What would you like to do to take care of this situation? I’m right here to help you.” And that was that. The little one felt heard, and she disappeared. The adult was there and she knew what to do. All sensation and story gone in less than five minutes and on to a new moment.
So, not only is the karma now predictable, the way to handle it is, too! And all because of a little device made of metal and plastic that is able to digitize my voice and play it back. And all because of the willingness to use the recorder, to do the practice, to show up for me and for all beings.
Not only is there relief for me and all the internal little ones in this, there is the social relief as well. No one has to deal with that unfortunately identified version of me! And, best of all, a gift of the greater predictability of karma is the ability to be present to the mystery that is life.
Thank you, Cheri, for this practice – all forms of it – and for the invitation to reflect on what I have seen about karma and its evolution from mystery to predictability.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
The Giant Watermelon of Presence
I’ve noticed that while conducting a labor intensive email class I have little energy or even willingness for blog writing. The demands of emails, phone calls, and texts occupy the rest of the time that could go to such a pursuit. Now that the email class is over, energy and willingness have turned to creating the retreats for the participants from that class, and I notice that with extra time and space, insight on broader topics is returning. I suppose that’s how it always works; resources are consumed by whatever the attention is focused on. I just hadn’t realized insight was so “subject driven.” While it is my experience that there are snippets of insight triggered by doing email classes and planning retreats, I don’t tend to have the big “AH YES,” fleshed-out, full-blown, general-purpose, this-is-how-it-works insights that are available in less content-focused times.
Something else I’ve noticed about insight: Insights seem to grow, in much the same way a plant grows from a seed. A seed looks very different from the plant it grows into. In fact, it’s a matter of faith for me that that is what really happens. I hold this tiny thing in my hand and require myself to get it that with time and care it will grow into a giant, sprawling creature that we call a watermelon!
With the same faith, I pursue awareness practice. I sit. I’m silent. I focus attention. I breathe with conscious awareness. I let go. I accept. I have faith. I trust that this will grow into insight, clarity, compassion, wisdom, freedom, and joy. It doesn’t seem as if just sitting down will lead to all that; it’s hard even to imagine such a possibility. But sit I do, and silent I am.
In the beginning the insights are tiny and seem huge. Do you remember those days? The “ah ha” moments were magical, mystical. The world changed from frightening and overwhelming to exciting. It felt like falling in love or a return to the happy days of the best of childhood. Then, over time it got harder, right? Practice went from effortless to work. I no longer wanted to sit in meditation; meditating was no longer a thrilling adventure into awareness. It became something I had to do, against tremendous resistance.
Still the insights appeared. Egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate, the source of all that resistance showing up as a conversation from conditioned mind, fought against the insights. “Oh, brilliant. You just saw what everybody has been talking about forever.” Or, “You had that insight a dozen times before and it didn’t do you any good.” Or, “You let go of that years ago and here it is again. You’re a failure!”
See, though, if this is also your experience of insight: There’s only one. The only insight we ever have is, “This is it!” Every “ah ha,” every moment of sparkling clarity, shows us the same thing: this is it, here we are, there’s nothing wrong, all is well, relax, say yes, say thank you, enjoy.
What you may not be noticing however—what egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate desperately wants you not to notice—is that insight, incrementally, is occupying more and more of your attention and awareness. Insight is expanding into a larger experience of presence in life.
That tiny seed of conscious awareness is growing into a giant watermelon of presence! (Just couldn’t help myself—had to say it!)
What is our part at this point? We must keep tending, keep taking care. In the garden, once the initial preparations have been made, tending translates into providing the right amount of water and watching out for dangerous critters. In life, in awareness practice, tending is a matter of paying supported attention—in the forms of sitting, workshops, retreats, everything that brings us to here/now—and watching out for dangerous critters—in the form of egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate.
Gassho,
Cheri
Something else I’ve noticed about insight: Insights seem to grow, in much the same way a plant grows from a seed. A seed looks very different from the plant it grows into. In fact, it’s a matter of faith for me that that is what really happens. I hold this tiny thing in my hand and require myself to get it that with time and care it will grow into a giant, sprawling creature that we call a watermelon!
With the same faith, I pursue awareness practice. I sit. I’m silent. I focus attention. I breathe with conscious awareness. I let go. I accept. I have faith. I trust that this will grow into insight, clarity, compassion, wisdom, freedom, and joy. It doesn’t seem as if just sitting down will lead to all that; it’s hard even to imagine such a possibility. But sit I do, and silent I am.
In the beginning the insights are tiny and seem huge. Do you remember those days? The “ah ha” moments were magical, mystical. The world changed from frightening and overwhelming to exciting. It felt like falling in love or a return to the happy days of the best of childhood. Then, over time it got harder, right? Practice went from effortless to work. I no longer wanted to sit in meditation; meditating was no longer a thrilling adventure into awareness. It became something I had to do, against tremendous resistance.
Still the insights appeared. Egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate, the source of all that resistance showing up as a conversation from conditioned mind, fought against the insights. “Oh, brilliant. You just saw what everybody has been talking about forever.” Or, “You had that insight a dozen times before and it didn’t do you any good.” Or, “You let go of that years ago and here it is again. You’re a failure!”
See, though, if this is also your experience of insight: There’s only one. The only insight we ever have is, “This is it!” Every “ah ha,” every moment of sparkling clarity, shows us the same thing: this is it, here we are, there’s nothing wrong, all is well, relax, say yes, say thank you, enjoy.
What you may not be noticing however—what egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate desperately wants you not to notice—is that insight, incrementally, is occupying more and more of your attention and awareness. Insight is expanding into a larger experience of presence in life.
That tiny seed of conscious awareness is growing into a giant watermelon of presence! (Just couldn’t help myself—had to say it!)
What is our part at this point? We must keep tending, keep taking care. In the garden, once the initial preparations have been made, tending translates into providing the right amount of water and watching out for dangerous critters. In life, in awareness practice, tending is a matter of paying supported attention—in the forms of sitting, workshops, retreats, everything that brings us to here/now—and watching out for dangerous critters—in the form of egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate.
Gassho,
Cheri
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
The Heart Never…
Just about every difficult or disastrous situation has occurred because at least one person involved either didn’t know egocentric karmic conditioning was not their authentic nature or was fooled into believing it was for long enough to do something unfortunate.
It’s extraordinarily difficult to get, to experience, that the voice talking in your head is not who you are. In fact, it takes a lot of looking to realize there’s a voice talking. “I don’t want to, I have to, I need, I don’t feel like it, it’s too hard, I’ll do it later”…sound so very much like they must be me, it’s just me thinking. It requires a lot of close attending to catch on that there’s “someone,” who actually feels most like “me,” who is listening to the voice talking.
People are conditioned to take ownership of and responsibility for all sorts of things that have nothing to do with them except they all happen in the same body/mind. Opposite opinions arise constantly, we feel one way and then another about any number of topics, one day we feel agreeable the next we don’t, and yet we go right on saying “I,” as if we are one consistent entity that is thinking of and expressing these disparate notions. This is the world of duality, and the way a “self” can appear to be separate from every “thing” else is if that illusory self takes up, and argues to maintain, opposing positions. I think X, we don’t agree, you feel Y, but at least we’re in accord that they really are delusional.
There’s a handy little tool we can apply to see if we are close to center or have been bamboozled again by egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate: We can look to see if there’s an argument in progress.
Are you arguing for or against something? Are you arguing inside your own head or with another “outside” person? Is there a voice in your head arguing that there’s something wrong with you? If there’s an argument, you can know it’s egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate doing the arguing, no matter how convinced it wants you to be that it’s “really you.” How can we know that? We can know that because the heart never argues, and the ego never stops arguing.
Isn’t that a handy little check-in?
In gassho,
Cheri
It’s extraordinarily difficult to get, to experience, that the voice talking in your head is not who you are. In fact, it takes a lot of looking to realize there’s a voice talking. “I don’t want to, I have to, I need, I don’t feel like it, it’s too hard, I’ll do it later”…sound so very much like they must be me, it’s just me thinking. It requires a lot of close attending to catch on that there’s “someone,” who actually feels most like “me,” who is listening to the voice talking.
People are conditioned to take ownership of and responsibility for all sorts of things that have nothing to do with them except they all happen in the same body/mind. Opposite opinions arise constantly, we feel one way and then another about any number of topics, one day we feel agreeable the next we don’t, and yet we go right on saying “I,” as if we are one consistent entity that is thinking of and expressing these disparate notions. This is the world of duality, and the way a “self” can appear to be separate from every “thing” else is if that illusory self takes up, and argues to maintain, opposing positions. I think X, we don’t agree, you feel Y, but at least we’re in accord that they really are delusional.
There’s a handy little tool we can apply to see if we are close to center or have been bamboozled again by egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate: We can look to see if there’s an argument in progress.
Are you arguing for or against something? Are you arguing inside your own head or with another “outside” person? Is there a voice in your head arguing that there’s something wrong with you? If there’s an argument, you can know it’s egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate doing the arguing, no matter how convinced it wants you to be that it’s “really you.” How can we know that? We can know that because the heart never argues, and the ego never stops arguing.
Isn’t that a handy little check-in?
In gassho,
Cheri
Thursday, December 9, 2010
What We Are Up To
[This is, verbatim, an email sent on December 7 to our current email class, “It’s Time to Feel Good.” The focus of the class is to make a recording of the loving encouragement of your internal mentor to keep your commitments to yourself. The commitment participants have in common is to record (R) and listen (L) to the recording as often possible. (One class member suggests we’ve coined a new verb, R/Ling.) The point is to drown out the voices of egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate, which usually dominate our internal dialogue, with what we know to be true.]
TTFG Dec. 7
What We Are Up To
Gassho,
I sensed in the most recent batch of responses a creeping reassertion of the slimy, slippery, sneaky tentacles of egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate, and it occurred to me that perhaps it’s time for a review of just what we’re up to here. Please, if you are not feeling those creeping tendrils, do not think I’m addressing this to you—though it’s always helpful to be forewarned, n’est-ce pas? Sooner or later, they will creep.
Remember in What You Practice Is What You Have how often I came back to “one process does not lead to another”? Another way to say that is “the outcome is the same as the process.” In conditioned thinking you can “do this and get that;” which is a lie. In truth, if you do this you’ll only ever get this.
In other words, you do a process as a practice because what you get is the process that you practice. (Ha, this really IS Zen.) Or, one doesn’t lead to the other; one is the other.
The value of Zen awareness practice—when you do it!—is that you don’t question the process. You just do it. (We must keep in mind here that Zen awareness practice is completely voluntary. We sign on. We ask to do it because we want to end suffering and believe this is the way to do that.) So we do the practice. No if, ands, or buts. What you do in awareness practice is to do what you’re given to do. You don’t evaluate it, you don’t decide to do it based on how you feel about it or whether it feels good or you like it or you can see the value in it or you want to—you just do it. Because you said you would. Because you decided to. Because you committed to do it.
The opportunity with that commitment is to look at what prevents you from keeping it. Overcoming the resistance that arises is what the practice is about. Overcoming that resistance is what will free you. The fact of the matter is that your commitment could be to wake up every morning of your life and pat your nose 3 times—it doesn’t matter. All that matters is doing what you committed to do. It has nothing to do with whether or not what you’re doing is beneficial, though in this case, practicing awareness, is far beyond merely beneficial. The point is that in the process of doing whatever it is you’ve committed to, the fighting it, resisting it, whining, arguing, complaining—whatever you’re indulging while doing the practice—is how you get to see everything that is between you and whatever it is you want for your life; everything that stands between you and life itself because all of that resistance is egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate, the only thing keeping you from the life you know is possible for you.
Through keeping this one commitment—to talk to and listen to the unconditionally loving, wise compassionate guidance of your authentic nature—you will learn how to keep a commitment to whatever you choose. I am suggesting to you that the ultimate commitment is to live life, not egocentric karmic conditioning, and that’s what this process will allow you to do.
This is how you train yourself in practicing keeping commitments. In this discipline you learn to physically execute what you authentically commit to. This is how you get out of the world of karmic conditioning. You have to do the process because the outcome is inherent in the process. You don’t do the process to end suffering; by doing the process you end suffering—the outcome is the process.
I will love to read (in 50 words or fewer) what happens as you consider this.
In gassho,
Cheri
TTFG Dec. 7
What We Are Up To
Gassho,
I sensed in the most recent batch of responses a creeping reassertion of the slimy, slippery, sneaky tentacles of egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate, and it occurred to me that perhaps it’s time for a review of just what we’re up to here. Please, if you are not feeling those creeping tendrils, do not think I’m addressing this to you—though it’s always helpful to be forewarned, n’est-ce pas? Sooner or later, they will creep.
Remember in What You Practice Is What You Have how often I came back to “one process does not lead to another”? Another way to say that is “the outcome is the same as the process.” In conditioned thinking you can “do this and get that;” which is a lie. In truth, if you do this you’ll only ever get this.
In other words, you do a process as a practice because what you get is the process that you practice. (Ha, this really IS Zen.) Or, one doesn’t lead to the other; one is the other.
The value of Zen awareness practice—when you do it!—is that you don’t question the process. You just do it. (We must keep in mind here that Zen awareness practice is completely voluntary. We sign on. We ask to do it because we want to end suffering and believe this is the way to do that.) So we do the practice. No if, ands, or buts. What you do in awareness practice is to do what you’re given to do. You don’t evaluate it, you don’t decide to do it based on how you feel about it or whether it feels good or you like it or you can see the value in it or you want to—you just do it. Because you said you would. Because you decided to. Because you committed to do it.
The opportunity with that commitment is to look at what prevents you from keeping it. Overcoming the resistance that arises is what the practice is about. Overcoming that resistance is what will free you. The fact of the matter is that your commitment could be to wake up every morning of your life and pat your nose 3 times—it doesn’t matter. All that matters is doing what you committed to do. It has nothing to do with whether or not what you’re doing is beneficial, though in this case, practicing awareness, is far beyond merely beneficial. The point is that in the process of doing whatever it is you’ve committed to, the fighting it, resisting it, whining, arguing, complaining—whatever you’re indulging while doing the practice—is how you get to see everything that is between you and whatever it is you want for your life; everything that stands between you and life itself because all of that resistance is egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate, the only thing keeping you from the life you know is possible for you.
Through keeping this one commitment—to talk to and listen to the unconditionally loving, wise compassionate guidance of your authentic nature—you will learn how to keep a commitment to whatever you choose. I am suggesting to you that the ultimate commitment is to live life, not egocentric karmic conditioning, and that’s what this process will allow you to do.
This is how you train yourself in practicing keeping commitments. In this discipline you learn to physically execute what you authentically commit to. This is how you get out of the world of karmic conditioning. You have to do the process because the outcome is inherent in the process. You don’t do the process to end suffering; by doing the process you end suffering—the outcome is the process.
I will love to read (in 50 words or fewer) what happens as you consider this.
In gassho,
Cheri
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Talk about Snakes…
Gassho,
There’s an Old Zen Story about the monk who wakes up one morning with snakes crawling all over her body. She, understandably, became immediately hysterical. When those called to her by her wild shrieking attempted to tell her there were in fact no snakes, she became even more upset. She was inconsolable. The head monk called in the local physician who suggested drugs to calm her down. She screamed louder at the thought. Next a therapist was brought in, but unable to communicate at all through the yelling and thrashing, suggested that perhaps the doctor was right. Finally (finally?!) they decided to send for a Zen Master. The master arrived, sat down quietly in a corner of the room and began to meditate. Eventually the monk was drawn into the stillness and slowly calmed enough to tell the master what was happening.
“They’re all over me,” she moaned piteously. “There are hundreds, maybe thousands of them, they’re everywhere. What can I do? Please help me,” she pleaded.
The master nodded thoughtfully and then told the monk, “I will help you. But first I must go to a far city; I will return in two weeks. Until then you must do two things.” “Anything,” cried the monk. “I will do anything.”
“Very good,” said the master. “Until I return you must, first, watch these snakes very, very carefully. Observe them minutely. Note their color, sizes, shapes, textures, patterns, and facial features. See everything there is to see about them and, second, do not mention them to a soul. Say not a word about them to anyone.”
When the master returned two weeks later, the head monk ran through the gate excitedly calling, “The snakes are gone! The monk is cured!”
I had quite a difficult situation arise this week. Nothing like waking up with snakes all over me, but one of those circumstances that can try one’s practice. The temptation, for me anyway, when that sort of thing happens is to talk about it. I’ve heard there’s a culture somewhere that, when there’s a death, assigns “telling the story” to the person closest to the deceased. The individual tells the story over and over until there’s no more emotional charge. Or perhaps until the facts have integrated enough that the person is free simply to grieve and begin to accept. Who knows?
I’ve long suspected that, depending on the situation, telling the story can be more a matter of “adding fuel to the fire” than taking steps to let it go. There can be that little spin, the right choice of words to elicit the desired response. Each telling can add another layer, voices might slip in, there’s a touch of added emotion, some memories surface from similar situations… And, yet, without any outlet it can feel as if the energy, remaining contained, festers.
What is a person to do? Yep, you guessed it—a person can pick up their recorder and have a very helpful talk with the Mentor. The story can come out. The story is heard again and again, if one so chooses. Information, encouragement, clarity, wisdom, compassion can come in from a source with no investment in anything other than the end of suffering.
The result of this choice to turn to the Mentor via the recording and listening was a letting go personal best for me. I highly recommend it. It is such a savings in time, energy, money, and effort. We have “stop, drop, and breathe,” and now to that we can add, “stop, pick up the recorder, breathe, hit record, and talk.” Okay, it’s not as catchy—but it’s equally powerful.
In gassho,
Cheri
There’s an Old Zen Story about the monk who wakes up one morning with snakes crawling all over her body. She, understandably, became immediately hysterical. When those called to her by her wild shrieking attempted to tell her there were in fact no snakes, she became even more upset. She was inconsolable. The head monk called in the local physician who suggested drugs to calm her down. She screamed louder at the thought. Next a therapist was brought in, but unable to communicate at all through the yelling and thrashing, suggested that perhaps the doctor was right. Finally (finally?!) they decided to send for a Zen Master. The master arrived, sat down quietly in a corner of the room and began to meditate. Eventually the monk was drawn into the stillness and slowly calmed enough to tell the master what was happening.
“They’re all over me,” she moaned piteously. “There are hundreds, maybe thousands of them, they’re everywhere. What can I do? Please help me,” she pleaded.
The master nodded thoughtfully and then told the monk, “I will help you. But first I must go to a far city; I will return in two weeks. Until then you must do two things.” “Anything,” cried the monk. “I will do anything.”
“Very good,” said the master. “Until I return you must, first, watch these snakes very, very carefully. Observe them minutely. Note their color, sizes, shapes, textures, patterns, and facial features. See everything there is to see about them and, second, do not mention them to a soul. Say not a word about them to anyone.”
When the master returned two weeks later, the head monk ran through the gate excitedly calling, “The snakes are gone! The monk is cured!”
I had quite a difficult situation arise this week. Nothing like waking up with snakes all over me, but one of those circumstances that can try one’s practice. The temptation, for me anyway, when that sort of thing happens is to talk about it. I’ve heard there’s a culture somewhere that, when there’s a death, assigns “telling the story” to the person closest to the deceased. The individual tells the story over and over until there’s no more emotional charge. Or perhaps until the facts have integrated enough that the person is free simply to grieve and begin to accept. Who knows?
I’ve long suspected that, depending on the situation, telling the story can be more a matter of “adding fuel to the fire” than taking steps to let it go. There can be that little spin, the right choice of words to elicit the desired response. Each telling can add another layer, voices might slip in, there’s a touch of added emotion, some memories surface from similar situations… And, yet, without any outlet it can feel as if the energy, remaining contained, festers.
What is a person to do? Yep, you guessed it—a person can pick up their recorder and have a very helpful talk with the Mentor. The story can come out. The story is heard again and again, if one so chooses. Information, encouragement, clarity, wisdom, compassion can come in from a source with no investment in anything other than the end of suffering.
The result of this choice to turn to the Mentor via the recording and listening was a letting go personal best for me. I highly recommend it. It is such a savings in time, energy, money, and effort. We have “stop, drop, and breathe,” and now to that we can add, “stop, pick up the recorder, breathe, hit record, and talk.” Okay, it’s not as catchy—but it’s equally powerful.
In gassho,
Cheri
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