Don't Fight With Your Practice (aka Making Peace With Your Practice)

There's a way in which we can find ourselves fighting with our own experience: knowing we're frustrated or anxious, yet wanting to feel something different: calmer, safer, and free. When this fighting stance spills over into everyday life, difficult moments can feel even worse.

This episode explores the question, what if we could relax just a little bit more, even with the hard stuff? Could we be happier and more content? Check it out, on today's episode, which is the 300th Wake Up Call.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the Wake Up Call.

This is Judy Cohen,

And this is the 300th Wake Up Call.

So happy birthday to all of us,

Our happy anniversary.

And some of you have been on the call since day one.

So wanting to say really thank you for being here week after week,

Supporting the call by your presence,

Sometimes some of you are supporting it financially.

And most importantly,

With your practice.

So feeling very humbled and very honored to be with you all every week.

Thank you.

So today I want to continue with the practice of ground.

We've explored the G,

Feeling the earth beneath your feet or your bottom,

Sensing into that connection to the earth where all beings have been born and lived and died,

Our connection to one another,

The ground beneath our collective feet.

And then R,

Rest,

Using the out breath to rest and also doing that with each task or each endeavor,

Resting while walking,

Resting while eating,

Resting while reading and listening and speaking.

And then O,

The next letter in ground about opening to whatever is present and really bearing witness to what's present,

Which I find is not easy.

And it's,

What can I say?

I get to O and I open and I see anger or frustration or affront or remorse,

And it can feel so painful,

So shameful.

But it can also be,

It can also be really healing,

Especially when there's plenty of self-compassion,

Which is kind of the secret ingredient or the indispensable ingredient.

So self-compassion and also no judgment.

In other words,

No,

How could you be resentful,

Judy?

Or you should know better or again.

And somehow over time,

Opening,

Bearing witness with curiosity,

With courage,

With compassion,

It builds a kind of resilience.

And,

You know,

I think what we're looking for is not so much that tough lawyer resilience,

Which we already have plenty of,

Or at least I know I do,

Like I can do anything,

I've got this,

I don't need any help.

Not so much that kind of resilience,

But resilience that's more infused with kind of a caring and a resilience that is,

May hold on,

I see something in the chat,

Congratulations.

Thank you.

I was thinking,

Maybe y'all couldn't hear.

So kind of resilience that says,

I'm not going to be able to do this,

I'm going to be able to do this,

Right?

So it's not that that's really the goal of the conversation,

But it's that sense that says life is full of these difficulties and it's hard and I'm here for whatever arrives.

Like the Rumi Palma,

The guest house,

This being human is a guest house.

Every morning,

A new arrival,

A joy,

A depression,

A meanness,

Some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor and he says welcome and So today I want to talk about the U in ground,

And U stands for unclench or untangle or untie or untether.

And the image that I wanted to offer for today is the image of a demon,

Which I'll get to in a minute.

So imagine you're grounded and resting in the present moment and you're opening to what's there.

And I was doing the practice and what I opened to was pretty solid,

This pretty solid,

Sticky feeling of resentment the other day.

And so I was staying with it.

I'm staying open to it,

Staying curious,

Being self-compassionate.

And it just wasn't ultimately where I knew I wanted to land.

So I sat longer and the great teacher Ajahn Chah used to instruct,

Let go a little more.

I did that.

And it amounted to a kind of unclenching,

Kind of untangling or tethering myself to the resentment,

Which,

And I guess this is true of all afflictive states.

It's nothing more than that.

It's a state of mind or a state of heart,

If you rather.

And yet it's so powerful.

I literally felt stuck in its clutches.

And then I was listening to a talk by John Dunn,

Who's a wonderful teacher.

He's at Richie Davidson Center for Healthy Minds in Madison,

Wisconsin.

And he's a scholar,

Tibetan scholar,

Speaks the Tibetan language,

Speaks the Pali language.

Pretty amazing.

And he was talking about the Bodhisattva's way of life,

Which is this seminal text from the seventh century written by Shanti Deva.

And one of the verses,

This is chapter five.

He says,

Although enemies such as hatred and craving have neither any arms nor legs and are neither courageous nor wise,

How have I been used like a slave by them?

And I realized that was exactly how I felt.

And maybe you can relate that the resentment.

It wasn't solid.

It was just a formation in the mind.

And yet it felt so powerful.

I felt clenched around it like it was part of my story,

The story of me,

At least on that morning.

And even more,

I could see how I not only felt like a slave to the resentment,

But also I was doing battle with it.

Right.

And that's the title of today's wake up call is I've done to battle with your practice.

I was doing battle with the resentment.

I was kind of waging a battle between something that resided in my own heart and body and kind of knowing better,

I guess.

And because I did know better,

But the sense of not liking the resentment and wanting it to stop,

It was so powerful.

So the invitation of you unclench is really to lay down our arms,

Right?

To lay down our arms,

To get grounded and feel the support of all beings,

To rest in the moment,

To open to what's present and then to just unclench.

And the Tibetans have a story about this.

And it's a story about a great yogi called Milarepa.

And Milarepa lived in a cave.

And one day he came back to his cave after he had been gathering firewood and his cave had been taken over by demons.

So being a very fiery guy,

He first thought,

Okay,

On guard,

I'll conquer the demons.

And he attacked them with all he had.

Which is what I was doing.

And it's also what we're taught to do as lawyers.

We open to what's present.

And then if it's not what we want,

Or it's not going to be the best thing for our client,

We do battle with it.

And my impulse,

My training was to conquer the resentment.

But Milarepa's story is pretty accurate to my experience.

The demons,

Here he is doing battle and the demons just sat there staring and their eyes were bulging and the blood was dripping from their mouths.

And they were going away.

So then Milarepa decided to teach them the way of mindfulness and compassion and impermanence.

And that's totally me too.

And also our training as lawyers use reason,

Use persuasion,

Go for the aha moment.

Right.

But no big surprise,

Milarepa did that and he looked around and the demons were all still there.

So then Milarepa finally surrendered and he said to the demons,

I give in,

What can I learn from you?

And he really meant it.

And he unclenched his fists and maybe he got grounded.

Maybe he took a breath.

And then he opened to whatever the demons,

Whatever the present moment and all of its afflictive states of mind and heart had to teach him.

And that's the invitation of you,

The letter you in ground to let go of wanting things to be different.

And instead to see what these really uncomfortable moments can teach us,

What can my resentment teach me?

I know I have a lot to learn.

I might as well start right here.

And when Milarepa did that,

Almost all of the demons disappeared,

Almost all of the demons,

Except the biggest,

Fiercest,

Most terrifying one,

The one breathing fire and dripping blood all over the cage.

And so what now?

Milarepa realized he had to unclench even more.

So he walked over to that last huge demon and he laid his head in its mouth and he said,

Eat me if you want.

And there was such a profound unclenching and letting go and really love in that gesture,

Milarepa loving all the parts of himself.

Then that last huge demon bowed to Milarepa and dissolved.

And so when we get to the you,

The invitation is to unclench and surrender at that level.

To see our demons get curious and then love them.

To stop fighting with ourselves,

Stop fighting with our practice.

And with a huge amount of self-compassion to see that resentment and all of these afflictive states are just part of being human.

That we can't conquer with them or we can't reason with them or we can't cure them.

We can only learn to be with them and to learn from them.

We can only learn to lay our heads in the mouths of our demons in the slime and the muck and the flames over and over.

Over and over,

To kind of lay our heads in the laps of our own wounded hearts day after day and say,

Here is resentment and longing and fear and confusion and delusion.

Everything is here and I'm here too,

Not clenching,

Not fighting,

Not turning away,

Not trying to be better,

Not trying to be or become anything.

Just laying my head down with an abundance of,

With a whole ocean of love.

So let's say.

And just taking a moment or two to touch the earth.

See over connection with the earth.

With all of the beings who are on the earth right now with you,

All of us together.

And to invite a restful quality to the moment.

Using the outbreath to just relax as much as possible.

Let go a little.

On each out breath.

And then whatever is here.

For you,

Whatever your experience is,

Just open to that and see it for what it is.

And then unclench.

Let go a little bit more or a lot more and just know that whatever you're sitting with right in this moment.

It's okay.

It's just part of being human.

We're not here to cure ourselves or to become better.

Or just.

Summoning or cultivating enough love for opening to the love that's already here.

We can just be with whatever.

Laying our head in the mouth of the demon.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Just get her away.

Which you could hardly blame it right.

Just that really loving invitation to come on back and just practice a little bit more.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Seeing it in this last minute of practice.

You want to let go of a little bit more.

Thank you everyone for being on the wake up call today.

I'm the 300th wake up call.

Yeah.