And to start this topic I kind of think we need to look at discouragement a little bit before we enter into courage.
Sometimes what happens,
Especially when we're starting a new meditation practice,
We think it will be really beneficial but after a while we get discouraged by basically our mind and what the experience of meditation is.
So discouragement,
It contains the word courage but literally it means a lack of courage,
The absence of it.
But it's really more than the absence of something.
Discouragement is kind of the presence of a criticalness,
A disappointment,
A pushing back,
An aversion of something.
There's judgment that it's supposed to be different.
So discouragement is kind of like an activity.
We sort of do discouragement.
You know for some people sometimes it can be a really big shock to notice what's going on inside their minds.
When you sit for,
Maybe you didn't have a practice and then you sit down and then you start to notice how much the mind is out of control.
And what happens to some people is you see that restlessness in the mind and then the inclination is this is impossible.
I'm never going to be able to calm down.
The mind just races off.
And so what happens is they stop meditating.
But really in the beginning of practice,
Even in the middle and in the end,
It's very common to see how out of control the mind is.
And it's easy to get discouraged by it.
But instead a teaching that was given to me that I offer to you is actually instead of being discouraged by the wild mind,
Maybe find some satisfaction in knowing that maybe you just know your mind more.
Maybe you didn't know before how wild and restless and agitated your mind was.
And by sitting still you get to really see it like,
Oh wow.
It's really easy to say I can't do this.
It's impossible and go back to your old way of being where you don't know,
Where you ignore the fact that you have a wild agitated restless mind.
But it's still happening.
The mind is still restless and it's still agitated and it's still wild.
But you're just going back to the engagement of your life and not paying attention to that.
So maybe better to know the mind that is restless than to go back to that state where you don't know that.
Like there's some improvement there.
And there can be some satisfaction in that knowing.
Our minds are malleable.
They're flexible.
It can be changed.
It can be bent into a different area.
It can flow with experience.
But it's not easy to tame it.
So one of the first qualities,
One of the first qualities that we begin to learn is patience.
To be patient with the restless wild mind.
Just be patient with it.
That's how it turns around.
You know one of the causes for discouragement is that we see how out of control things are.
In the mind,
In our culture.
So to think that we can control,
Control always what's going on in our life.
It's just a set up for more discouragement.
So one of the things we learn in meditation to some degree is to see well this is my inner experience and to flow with it.
Part of the wisdom that comes from practicing is to see how things are constantly,
Constantly changing and to have some equanimity with it.
I want to read from a little bit from this book When Things Fall Apart by Pemi Chodron.
She wrote something that I thought was such just so beautiful and accurate.
We sometimes think that Dharma is something outside of ourselves.
Something to believe in.
Something to measure up to.
However,
Dharma isn't a dogma.
It isn't a dogma.
It is total appreciation of impermanence and change.
Total appreciation of impermanence and change.
Again,
Easier said than done,
Right?
So discouragement is a state of mind and what's interesting about it is when we're in the middle of a state of mind we are usually believing in that state of mind and are entangled by it.
We take it so seriously.
So one of the functions of mindfulness is to lift ourselves out of it and just to see this is a mood.
It's the mood of the moment.
That's all it is.
And to sort of put it into different context.
It's not who we are.
It's a fraction of who we are.
But it's not all of us.
It's a really great practice when we can realize that it's just a fraction of who we are.
It's not the whole of us.
So the mantra that I learned around these strong states like discouragement,
Like anger,
Like fear,
Like we talked about last week,
The mantra I love this is wow.
Wow.
Like when you see something in nature where you're just mesmerized by it like going to Yosemite for the first time,
You know,
You drive through the tunnel and it's like wow.
So for our inner life,
You know,
Wow,
I didn't know I could be this depressed.
Wow.
Or look how much anger is here.
Wow.
You know,
It's just a state of mind.
It comes and it goes.
It's a piece of who we are.
So then with discouragement to see,
This is discouragement.
Wow.
Really feeling discouraged.
And then to leave it alone.
To hold it without adding any story or action or criticism to it.
This is discouragement.
This is how it is.
Then notice all the conclusions that you make when there's discouragement.
I can't do this practice.
This is not the right time to do this.
These are not the right people to do it with.
Like all of these inner conclusions that we have.
When we're living in discouragement,
We tend to believe those conclusions.
But if we can get this sort of wow perspective,
Wow,
Look at all the conclusions I'm drawing based on discouragement.
It's like this pulling back this equanimity.
It's just a state of mind,
Our thoughts are just our thoughts.
And if we hang out with discouragement,
We might see some of the reasons of what's going on there.
One of them,
A pretty common one is this idea of progress.
You know,
Like we,
We haven't made enough progress on this path.
And progress,
I think is a very dangerous topic for meditators.
It trips people up,
Like wanting something to happen,
Or judging ourselves for when it doesn't happen.
Or when it does happen,
That it's you start to measure yourself against other people.
So when things happen that we don't want to happen,
Like the restless mind,
We get discouraged.
So the freedom of the heart,
The freedom of this practice.
It doesn't come from a particular state of mind.
But how we relate to it.
The content of experience isn't that important.
It's how we relate to it.
And this is a very important move in mindfulness practice.
To switch from the experience,
Whatever it is pleasant or unpleasant,
To how you're relating to the experience.
The experience is not the point.
It's how we relate to it.
So we'll talk a little bit more about that on Thursday as we enter into courage.
But I felt it was necessary to first look at what trips us up,
How we get discouraged.
So thank you.
Thank you for your your presence and I'd love to hear your comments.
