Deeper listening

On our first call with the ”Awakening to the Evolutionary Relationship to Life ” teleclass at Integral Enlightenment we heard an impressive number of participants – over 400 people from 25 countries – that the course gathered. Rather amazing! During the call Craig went through a few principles of engagement for people coming together to practice.

One of them is that actually it is less important where we are on our journey than where we are in relationship to our edge. Craig pointed out the importance of allowing for the evolving edge by welcoming the discomfort and the growing pain of stretching instead of resisting or avoiding it.

“If we’re not uncomfortable, we’re probably not evolving.”

I find this to be very true for my path and maintaining a blog actually challenged me in ways I could not anticipate when I wrote my first post and which I came to appreciate.When comments starting coming in and when I started commenting on other people’s posts online, I saw how the way we listen to each other (or read) and respond to each other’s writing influences the energy between us and in itself can be used as way to deepen our practice.

The other day I posted a comment to a friend’s blog in which I shared what came up for me after reading the post but my comment deeply upset my friend. He felt that I misunderstood the point he was making in the post and thought I was lacking compassion when I replied to what other people wrote. That feedback made me reflect on my listening/reading/ skills as well as on what matters to me as someone who writes a blog (how important is it for me to be understood? ). I felt sad that my comment have created an emotional divide between us, wondering how I could have responded differently. From what place was I reading the post and what were my intentions when I was replying to it?

The Man Watching

About a month ago, when I started looking at the shadow aspect, a friend of mine was kind enough to point my attention in the direction I was not looking (of course!) .

I am in a company of a friend. Having spent some time together during the day, we share a minute of comfortable silence in the car when he suddenly breaks it by turning his face towards  me, looking me in the eye and saying,  “You are a wonderful person with a big heart”.  The second I understand what it is he is saying anxiety takes a grip of my heart and starts spreading into my stomach.  My eyes start darting around, looking for something to save me. Then, as if pulled by some unstoppable force from inside, I start talking.  I feel I have a case to argue. I am on a roll! My friend is not letting me off the hook easily: his eyes encourage me to receive the gift of his appreciation. He is sitting  next to me, smiling, giving me the time to experience my own discomfort and get comfortable with it. I stop bubbling. I have no idea what I was saying a few moments ago. I must sound like a crazy person and am ready to burst out laughing at myself when I notice the twinkle in my friend’s eyes and immediately get defensive, “Is he laughing at me?“

Cooking a new Ango-period with Dosho Port

I was delighted to hear Dosho did not give up on us and is preparing to cook a new Ango-period, expanding the menu and bringing in 24 cooks in this one huge kitchen called life. This is the one texts of Dogen’s that I really look forward to returning to again and again,  maybe because I love spending time in my kitchen and am writing this in the kitchen too.  I also look forward to all the craziness and warmth of the cooking process with old and new practioners.  Anyone can join!

Practicing with shadow

The aim of the Buddhist practice is to learn to see reality as it is, without adding anything or taking anything away.

So how do we practice with shadow?

Understanding where shadow comes from gives us insights about ourselves, shows us this is not something we could help and we don’t have to carry the guilt for having the shadow in the first place. It also gives us clues as to how we can deal with shadow material integrating it rather than keeping it under the surface.

From what I understand shadow arises when for some reason we are unable to deal with the direct experience and decide (unconsciously) to suppress it. For example, if as a child I get angry but don’t feel safe to express my anger because this is not the type of emotions my family encourages and I am afraid I will not be loved if I show anger, I suppress it and this part of my experience becomes my shadow (goes into the basement). I will then project my anger onto others and see a lot of it on my path.

Poet and author Robert Bly sees shadow as an invisible bag we all carry around. Early in our lives when we are whole, we are 360 degrees and our bag is empty. As we grow up, we internalize the don’t be- messages coming from all directions  (first our family, then even our peers) while as we grow up we try to lighten the burden by retrieving those sides of us we put into the bag (and freeing the energy that takes us to uphold the façade, that self-image that we pre- approved).

What did Ango do for my practice?

It’s been about a month since my first ever Ango-period ended.  So, what did the Ango-period do for my practice?

• Practising with a spiritual community and a teacher in a structured way (weekly hour-long webinars, interviews with the teacher, working in pairs, studying the text and discussing in groups how the insights each of us got from coming in touch with Genjokoan can apply in our everyday lives, sharing about the challenges of practice) in itself brought more attention to all aspects of practice and boosted my motivation. I was no longer alone and felt accountable for the work and my attitude to it.

• Dosho’s discussion model with a few simple but powerful questions each webinar ending with the “And now what”? helped me to start seeing practice as a part of life on all levels and in all directions: in all kinds of relationships including work, in relating to myself and my own so called problems, inner emotional life, etc.

Not one

One of the insights from the last Ango period was the importance of a community and a teacher for one’s practice.  In a community (as well as in relationships of all kinds) we have a chance to test what comes up for us in our practice.  I took a look at my own hang ups coming from earlier sometimes quite emotional experiences of joining a spiritually oriented community.

Here are some of the traits that I noticed a group could develop that can take it into a different direction than the one intended from the start:

• Being nice - syndrome:  Socializing can take over and overshadow the initial purpose for which the group is created. People start getting to know each other, get comfortable with the ideas of others and themselves, develop friendships and …new attachments. To help each other grow we need to be open to fuelling our practice by dealing with whatever comes up when the Pandora’s box is open. Conflicts? This, too.  I believe a teacher can help in a situation like that by rattling the cage now and then and bringing in the element of discomfort and uncertainty.

It takes one to know one

Until now I never really understood the mechanism of projections and what they opened for if seen not as the truth about other people but about ourselves.  How is it that we see in others what we like and don’t like in ourselves? Debbie Ford defines projection as “an involuntary transfer of our own unconscious behaviour onto others, so it appears to us that those qualities actually exist in other people.  Since we lie to ourselves about our internal feelings, the only way we can find them is to see them in others”. Makes sense: how else would I recognise something as arrogance if I didn’t know it? The others, who have the honour (often times the burden) of receiving our negative projections, have some quality that triggers that projection in us. So if I accept my own arrogance, I will not be affected by someone else’s because I will know I can be this way too. Doesn’t this also open for compassion towards others?

The problem with projections is that they actually prevent us from seeing people as they are. We are bumping into our own fears and emotions, talking to ourselves and our memories instead of the real people. We might even think we know them but in fact have very little clue about what’s behind this wall  we build between ourselves and other people. How very sad!

Your heart’s desire

One of the wonderful people at iEvolve posted a question “What does your heart desire?” a while ago and today as I was surrending to the cold taking its course in the body I allowed the spirit to play and see what the answer would be.

Freestyle painting on fabric

Me? Righteous? Never!

Committed to the shadow work, I made sure I would not be walking into the dark forest entirely by myself but asked for a support of a dear friend of mine. We agreed on giving each other honest feedback and encouragement while opening this Pandora’s box. (I sure hope we will remain friends after! ) Besides,  since it is the nature of the shadow to remain unseen to us, others might have more to say about those sides that we are hiding or denying from ourselves so it can be helpful to turn to people for some clues (probably asking the ex would not be such a good idea, at least not in the beginning ).

One of the things that came up for me even before I started going deep was arrogance and when I asked my friend about it he acknowledged that I could in fact be quite righteous.  I was prepared to hear an honest respond and was committed not to shy away from it but receive it and observe my own reaction.  The first feeling was that of frustration and disappointment, “No, dear, I can be quite arrogant but not in that way. I surely leave place for other people’s opinions and welcome the differences!” I knew exactly what I meant by arrogance and he was talking about something else! Well, I was prepared hearing the bad stuff, but obviously the one that I thought was right. When I saw the thinking process unfolding this way, I paused in disbelief:  wait a minute, what was I at the moment when I was reacting in this way if not something that could be discribed as arrogant and righteous?!

This was the first lesson: courage alone is not enough when meeting one’s demons. You gotta have some of that wisdom to cut through one’s habitual way of thinking and emotional reactivity that comes up as we start digging deeper and the ego is getting a fit. I laughed wholeheartedly at this unexpected twist and at how easy it is to get into this mind trap. I also see now that this work requires a state of mindfulness so we are not easily carried away by emotions or thoughts.

“The gold is in the dark”

C. Jung

More understanding, not more battle plans

Inspired by the exchange and sharing in the comments to the earlier post, I had a few questions coming up. For example, how can I recognise in the moment that it is the ego (false self, small self) speaking?

Slowing down and even coming to a stop is the first step, according to many mind training techniques. Guy Finley gives a simple but effective tool in his book “The Secret of Letting Go”:

“The next time you are feeling anxious – or afraid or worried about a problem you are facing – before you do anything, STOP, LOOK, and LISTEN. Remember that the false self is never far away when you are feeling bad.

Got’ya – feeling bad is a sign of a false ego lingering somewhere around. Quite logical because it is this very false self that will be convincing me that something is wrong (with me, the world around, Universe) and has to be changed.

It knows that once it get you running in the direction of its choice, sheer momentum will do the rest of the work. That is why you come to a STOP first.

Then LOOK. Be sure to look in the right direction. This is critical: look at what is talking to you, not where it is pointing. It it is an anxious or unhappy feeling that you are looking at, quietly determine from your own understanding that no negative state is interested in ending itself.

Now LISTEN. If you have done the first two steps correctly, you will soon witness the false self start having a fit. Let it rage. That is all it can do. It has no power. Just remain there, inwardly alert and attentive.

And what about that nagging personal problem? The problem you are left to solve, assuming one still exists after this lying lower nature has been thrown out, doesn’t even resemble the fearsome giant that had been stalking you earlier.”

It is amazingly simple yet we cannot see it: the false self that convinces us that there is a problem, something to be fixed, is the one we take as an adviser in solving those problems, including devising plans how we can defeat the false self itself!

“If we need to be rescued from something, then whatever is rescuing us can’t be part of what it rescues us from.  Said in a different way, you don’t jump on a tiger’s back to escape a lion. So it should be clear to us at this point that real rescue from our problems can only come to us from above the level of our problem.”

Guy Finley