Wise Heart Way

Principle #24: The Middle way is found between all opposites. Rest in the middle and find well-being wherever you are. #25: Release opinions, free yourself from views be open to mystery.

Practice: Don't Know Mind

Principle #23: There is no separation between inner and outer self and other. Tending ourselves, we tend the world. Tending the world, we tend ourselves.

Practice: Bodhisattva Vows

truth-telling

I had a conversation with a friend the other day about truth-telling. We've also been discussing advice-giving in my group. So I had already been pondering  this. In particular I've been wrestling with a situation where I have the urge to offer unsolicited advice. Not going to go into the specifics of what got me pondering and feeling that urge, but I do want to share that I've come to some conclusions. As if there are conclusions to come to! For now, anyway, this will do for me:

1) It's easier for me to see someone else's participation in their own suffering than it is for me to recognize my participation in mine.  I should, in all cases, just assume I am deluded.

2) When I see the "truth" about someone else's situation and feel the urge to advise them or share what I've observe I may act -- believing that I am trying to help relieve their suffering. But, more honestly, I am acting to relieve my own suffering. Their situation somehow makes me uncomfortable.

3) Rather than act on the urge to tell someone a "truth" about themselves or give them advice, a better idea might be to look at my discomfort as a sign that I need to look inside myself. What is  it is about me and my experience that the other person's situation stimulates?

4) The more I resist the idea that it's all about me, not them, the more it is probably all about me. It just seems to work like that. Chances are if I am stirred up enough to feel urgent about "helping" the other with advice or observation, it's because I have recognized something about myself in them. I live in a glass house, and I have the urge to throw stones.

5) It does no good to hold a mirror up to someone else  if they are not ready to look in the mirror. More importantly, how can I  be sure that the mirror I'm  holding up will show a true picture? I think it's wise to assume the mirror I want to hold up is just as delusional as I am.

6) I can say from my experience on both side of this truth-telling business that battering often masquerades as truth-telling, and blindness often masquerades as awareness.

7) I'd like to help my loved ones by getting better at active listening rather than trying to give advice or tell about my own experience. I'd also like to be a better model for the principles I believe in. Show, don't tell, Mary Ann.

Principle # 21: Virtue and integrity are necessary for genuine happiness. Guard your integrity with care. Principle #22: Forgiveness is both necessary and possible. It is never too late to find for forgiveness and start again.

Forgiveness Meditation

Principle #20: The power of concentration can be developed through inner training. Concentration opens consciousness to profound dimensions of healing and understanding.

Shadowing the silence

The concept of "benign silence" rises in my life. In a recent chat with fellow Wise Heart Lez, she described this odd but challenging notion. She mentioned how awkward it feels, being a teacher whose job is to impart knowledge, to remain in a state of receptive silence when the first impulse is to explain. (I hope she'll share more on this on WHW.) A few nights ago, at a dinner party with another professor, I mentioned struggling to remain in "benign silence" in conversations. His eyes lit up. "I'm learning to rest in the words of others," he replied. He no longer does others' intellectual work. Beautifully said, I thought. Then my beloved mentioned living the contradiction of being silent while speaking. If we are silent while speaking, we're in the clearest space of awareness. And we are speaking from heart, not head. Note: I recall hearing a male editor say, thinking I was out of earshot: "I love Kären's aggressive mind." It bothered me; still does. My greatest growth is to comprehend that the mind is merely a tool, not a place to live. Particularly if its a restless, grasping, overactive, hypercharged swirl. Benign silence is the antidote. (This photo is of my Shadow Self with a nod to Mr. Jung).

here i am

I am behind in my reading and commenting and feel nagging guilt and  anxiety about it. A lot of nagging anxiety -- as if I had some Blog Boss to report to who is threatening to dock my pay, or as if I was being graded for  Frequency and Quality of Blogging.

Man. I find it sooo easy to beat up on myself!

Here's an opportunity to replace that unhealthy thought that concentrated on failure, with a healthy one: So far, as a group, we've created 82 thoughtful posts and 9 comments here. And I have participated in that. Pretty cool.

Pinciple #19: What we repeatedly think shapes our world. Out of compassion, substitute healthy thoughts for unhealthy ones.

Practice: The Compassionate Replacement of Painful Thoughts

understanding stuff

You think too much, Mary Ann.

I cling to that description of me. Others hung it on me, but I've bought into it big time. I've also bought into the notion that "thinking too much" is a bad thing and that it's of the many things about myself I must fix. Besides having a tendency to drive some people away, my seeking explanation can be awfully exhausting. Fruitlessly, I bang my head against the Wall of Knowledge, looking for The Answers. I've tried to stop thinking too much. I haven't been very successful.

I can't remember the chapter in which Kornfield quoted the Zen proverb: "If you understand, things are just as they are; if you do not understand, things are just as they are." But I got bugged by that proverb which at first I  read as if it told me to "just stop thinking about it" -- all the "its" I think about, just stop. You think "too" much, Mary Ann.

And that's why I'm intrigued by Lezlie's post. I can be relentlessly driven to understand, to find reasons and explanations, to know. I'm not sure that I can ever be still and satisfied with unexplained mysteries, either.  Like hey, here's something that requires explanation: what is the point of my intelligence if my ability to make sense of my experience doesn't matter? Why would our ability to sense patterns and relationships evolve into a skill well beyond what we need to (physically) survive if we weren't meant to use it?

But lately I believe I have started a  new relationship with this all thinking I do.

I realize it's not the quest for explanation that I must address.  It's not the " not knowing" that's actually causing me to suffer.  It's the driven and desperate quality of my quest that's the problem.

Why am I so frantic about it? Therapy has helped me to see it has something to do with a need to feel safe. Could be that the desperateness is not really propelling me toward  understanding. Perhaps I am using this desperate quest to run away from something that scares me and feels unsafe. Perhaps it's not that I really want knowledge at all, perhaps it's really that I am avoiding something -- like boatloads of grief and sadness, maybe? (I have seen the fleet and it is mine.)

I haven't figured it all out. But recently it has been more fruitful for me be curious about the driven and desperate quality of my quest rather than go on the quest itself. I'm examining it closely and peeking under it to see what it has been covering up. It's spidery and creepy under there, but I think it's really where I need to go.

Whether I understand or not: "things are just as they are." I can't change any circumstance present or past. But I can change my relationship to things "as they are."  Changing my relationship is an inward journey, not an outward one. It's a heart case, not a head one. I can see that now, even though I can't always act on it.  When I can relax into the not knowing, feelings of deep grief and sadness flow over me. Sometimes I think I will drown in them.  But when I can relax into those feelings,  welcome them, and not judge them or myself, I feel relief. This relaxing and doing nothing except to note what's bubbling up and feel it fully is counter to all my programming.  I am a very old dog learning new tricks, and these tricks don't come easily, not at all. But I  practice and I sense my heart growing lighter, a glimmer of peace. Pretty cool.

It's a Mystery

Last night, at a party at Phil Deaver’s house, Carol Frost said to me, “Some things are just a mystery.  You won’t be able to explain this.”   She was listening to me attempt to console a colleague who had just experienced the break-up of a year-long relationship.

     I kept thinking about those words late into the night, and hearing them helped me see a pattern—my enormous need for explanation. Yes, yes, there it is again.  Fairly relentless.  Maybe part of the reason I became a teacher.  Somewhere along the line I caught the assumption that things can be figured out, or at least grappled with in some coherent manner.  This assumption, taken to its worst conclusion, becomes a desire to fix things.  So like last night, as I was watching my colleague’s sadness rise and fall through the evening, big tears welling, I so wanted to help her, to say something that would make sense of her experience, or give her some kind of guidance, some understanding. There must be some way to frame this event that makes it acceptable.  It's a pattern of mine, of course, one that rises in me like a relentless wave. I'm learning how to ride that wave.  I try to practice benign silence.

     As I rode through the night, I assumed Carol was right.  Of course she’s right, I thought, impatient with myself.  Love is a mystery.  You can’t even get love issues straight for yourself, so why are you trying to figure it out for a thirty-year-old woman?   Some things are simply mysterious.  I wanted to rest into that conclusion.  In a way, it would be easier.  Just give up trying to understand. There is no figuring things out, Lezlie, just accept it.  Carol’s face was so serene when she spoke.  Her words must surely be true.  In the early morning hours, I could feel myself in calmer waters.

    But now, it’s Sunday, and sunny outside, and the day is urging me forward.  The old need is rising again.  The doubt returns as that wave begins to build.  “Is Carol right?” I wonder.  Must we resign ourselves to this dark room of mystery?  Or is that an easy way to avoid doing the work?  I have this fear of not making the appropriate effort to know what can be known, to live what can be lived.  When do I succumb to mystery and when do I push toward understanding?  Or. . . do I reside in the middle of those two positions?  A surfer riding the enormous, unfathomable force of a wave but bringing my own facility of balance and focus to the board.