So Special/So Wounded: Navigating Our Hopes & Fears

We all tend to seek out and hope for gain, status, praise, and pleasure, and resist or fear loss, disgrace, blame, and pain – even though all are inescapable, and visit each of us in different forms throughout our lives.

And how we relate to these hopes and fears – often called the 8 Worldly Winds – often dictates how we experience our entire world.

This talk explores how our meditation practice can help us to pay closer attention to these various winds so that we can learn how to better allow them to rise and pass without clinging so tightly to any of them, and therefore, discover more freedom and ease in our lives. It includes a meditation at the end.

Transcript

So I just want to start this talk by saying that so often whenever I'm offering a teaching,

It can really almost feel like I'm attempting to describe just one particular thing over and over but in a different way each time and this just feels especially true for this talk.

For those of you who listen to me regularly,

You likely know that my very favorite teaching phrase comes from one of my teachers,

The German Monk and Scholar,

B.

Q.

Anagyo,

Who has summarized the entirety of our practice in just four words,

Which I know I repeat so often.

Many of you can likely recite it with me.

These four words are keep calmly knowing change.

Keep calmly knowing change.

And honestly,

The more I practice and study,

The more and more I recognize that as B.

Q.

Anagyo has said,

This is truly really what we're aiming for in so many ways.

At the end of all my retreats that I lead,

I offer students a magnet with those four words on them to help them to remember.

And as you might imagine,

I have several of these at my home,

On my refrigerator,

And my filing cabinet,

Etc.

Really anywhere there's somewhere I can stick them.

And lately,

I need to confess that they've been a sort of lifeline for me since I've really needed to be reminded of this really wise teaching many,

Many times a day.

Some of you may know that a little over six months ago now,

At age 60,

I made what was probably the most difficult decision of my entire life,

Which was to separate from my husband after almost 30 years of marriage.

And so besides leaving that long-term relationship,

This also meant that I needed to leave my two cats,

Who I dearly love,

And the home where I'd been living for more than 20 years,

Which happened to be a house that we rented on a large farm in the Shenandoah Valley.

And that farm and that land and that big garden that I had there was really,

Truly a major source of joy for me.

So right now I'm living on my own in a house that I'm renting downtown in the city where I live with a new cat.

And so needless to say,

This whole process has been a kind of titanic change and an almost hourly or even minute-by-minute reminder of one of the Buddha's main teachings,

Which is the truth that everything in this life is constantly changing and impermanent,

Right?

All the seasons,

All creatures,

All beings,

All relationships,

All things,

Situations,

Emotions,

The universe itself,

And of course ourselves.

We are all in constant,

Never-ending motion and transition.

The Pali word for this change is anicca,

Anicca,

Which means impermanence.

And it's one of what are called the three truths of life,

Along with dukkha,

Which is suffering,

And anatta,

Which means that we ourselves have no solid permanent self or identity and are also,

Of course,

In constant change.

And so the quick summary version of why this all comes down to our continuing to calmly know change is because we suffer or experience dukkha when we try to cling so much to everything that is inherently impermanent,

Which of course is everything,

Including ourselves.

And especially when we continue to cling to our view of ourselves or our vision of who we think we are,

Right,

Which is anatta.

And so as you might imagine,

I've really been coming face to face with all three of these truths pretty fiercely lately,

Including that last one,

Anatta,

Which is often the most complicated because our grip on who we think we are is often just so strong and intractable.

And with this one,

We tend to really want to believe that we can hold on to our identity,

Right?

But unfortunately,

As the Buddha so wisely pointed out to us,

We cause ourselves and others so much pain and suffering by trying to believe,

Maintain,

And prop up that identity,

That ego.

And one of the main reasons this is so difficult for us is a truth that we are almost constantly being blown around by what are called the eight worldly winds,

Which have also been described as the eight vicissitudes,

Concerns,

Dharmas,

Conditions,

Or the eight attachments.

And besides that term wind,

I really appreciate that definition of these being attachments because,

Again,

It's our strong grip that is so often the cause of our pain and our misery around these.

So for this talk,

I wanted to explore these a little because once we can begin to become more conscious of them and more clearly recognize them when they arise,

We'll be much better able to work with them and hopefully loosen our grip a bit.

And so to start,

I thought it might be really helpful to read this short description directly from the look of a Patti Sutta where the Buddha tells us this.

He said,

Monks,

These eight worldly conditions spin after the world and the world spins after these eight worldly conditions.

Which eight?

Gain and loss,

Status and disgrace,

Praise and blame,

Pleasure and pain.

These are the eight worldly conditions that spin after the world and the world spins after these eight worldly conditions.

And again,

These are gain and loss,

Status and disgrace,

Praise and blame,

Pleasure and pain.

So you might notice these are four pairs of opposite conditions.

And if we can think of them as like umbrella categories,

It can help us to remember that they are mainly referring to all of the conditions that we either hope for or fear.

Hope and fear.

So for instance,

We tend to seek out and hope for things like gain,

Status,

Praise,

Pleasure,

Right?

And we all tend to fear or not want loss,

Disgrace,

Blame or pain.

And of course,

This is just a really obvious truth,

Right?

But the idea here is that if through our practice we can start paying closer attention to these,

We'll start to notice that not only are all of these conditions constantly arising and passing and changing,

Just like everything else,

But that we ourselves are constantly either wanting or not wanting these particular things at both conscious and unconscious levels.

And depending on how we're relating to them,

Our fears and our hopes about these eight worldly winds can often dictate how we experience our whole world.

Before I go on though,

I just want to pause for a minute and remind us that it's not that wanting or fearing any of these things in and of themselves is going to cause us to suffer.

Because of course we want things like gain,

Status,

Praise,

Pleasure.

And of course we don't want things like loss,

Disgrace,

Pain or blame.

Of course,

We're all human and it's just how we're wired.

So it's really okay.

We also want to remember that we really don't have a lot of control over these conditions,

Which again are constantly arriving and departing throughout our lives,

Just like the wind.

So for instance,

Sometimes these can arrive as a kind of a slight breeze that doesn't last that long.

Or sometimes it can arrive in the form of a really intense storm,

Right?

One that might completely shake up our world and last so much longer than we expected it to.

And just to emphasize,

These conditions or winds really aren't the problem.

Because if that were the case,

Life itself would be a problem.

What we are being asked to recognize is that our level of either attachment or resistance to our wanting or not wanting any of these conditions is essentially what is going to determine our level of stress and suffering or our sense of balance and ease.

So this is really the key.

It's the most important thing to remember,

That our level of attachment or resistance is what is going to determine our level of stress or ease or suffering.

So for instance,

If we take a closer look,

We might notice that whenever we find ourselves swept up in wanting or not wanting or hopes or fears,

It can often feel like we're kind of trapped in some sort of tornado,

Like we're basically just being spun around and around by these winds.

And what we tend to want,

Sometimes really desperately,

Is just to make it stop,

Right?

We want the pain of the wanting or the not wanting to somehow be fixed.

This means having things turn out exactly how we want them to,

Because somehow we think that is what's going to fix it.

And of course,

The problem is that this is really,

Truly impossible to make everyone and everything in our lives be exactly as we want them to be all the time.

And as we all know,

We each have all manner and variety of strategies to try to avoid the pain and frustration of this kind of wanting and not wanting.

All of which,

Of course,

Just tends to make things even worse.

One of my professors,

When I attended Naropa University in Boulder,

Colorado,

The great teacher Judy Leaf,

Once wrote what I thought was a really good explanation of this.

She said,

It is one thing to recognize what we would like to attract and what we prefer to get rid of,

And quite another to be obsessed with getting our way and terrified of things going wrong.

She said,

These cycles of hope and fear occupy our minds and capture our energy.

No matter what is happening to us,

We think it could be better or at least different.

No matter who we are,

We think we could be better or at least different.

Nothing is ever good enough and therefore we can never relax.

And here she's again describing what the Buddha called dukkha or suffering,

Which has often been translated as the suffering that we experience when we can't seem to find permanent satisfaction.

And if we think about it,

We often tend to have this notion,

Mostly unconsciously but sometimes even consciously,

That if we could just set up our lives where we would only experience those pleasant wins,

Then we could really kind of achieve permanent satisfaction.

Like we might have a kind of hopeful underlying belief that someday,

Finally,

We're gonna discover that sweet spot and life is just gonna stay that way,

You know,

Permanently.

And somehow we failed if we haven't reached that yet.

But as those of us who've lived on this earth long enough can attest,

Life just has a way of continuing to pull the rug out from under us and disrupting our wish for this again and again and again.

And this is exactly what the Buddha was trying to draw our attention to 2,

600 years ago,

Right after his Enlightenment,

When he offered us his first sermon on the Four Noble Truths.

In that very first Noble Truth,

The Buddha simply acknowledged there is suffering.

There is suffering or there is dukkha,

Dissatisfaction.

As well as the truth that we are all experiencing it,

None of us are immune.

We all experience this.

And so if this is really it,

If this is life itself,

The full catastrophe as the teacher Jon Kabat-Zinn has called it,

What do we do?

How do we work with this?

How do we remain steady and find some peace and ease in the very center of the storm?

So to begin,

Our practice is inviting us to very actively become much more conscious about our particular fears and hopes,

So that we can learn how not to cling so tightly to what we want,

And to not so strongly reject or push away what we don't want.

And so we really want to be aware of and explore our particular hopes and fears,

So that we're going to be more able to catch ourselves more quickly when we find that we've been somehow swept up into a kind of stressful tornado of wanting or not wanting.

When the Buddha first introduced the teachings on the Eight Worldly Winds,

He told us this,

Quote,

Gain,

Loss,

Status,

Disgrace,

Censure,

Praise,

Pleasure,

Pain.

These conditions among human beings are inconstant,

Impermanent,

And subject to change.

Knowing this,

The wise person,

Mindful,

Ponders these changing conditions.

Desirable things do not charm the mind.

Undesirable ones bring no resistance.

Ones welcoming and rebelling are scattered,

Gone to their end,

Do not exist.

And so what he's telling us here,

As always,

Is that we need to be mindful of these,

And to really examine and question them.

And so one of the ways we can start to take a closer look at these is through the eyes of the ancient Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna,

Who termed these eight conditions as the Eight Worldly Preoccupations.

As in,

These are the fears and hopes that we tend to preoccupy ourselves with.

So you might even,

Right now,

Just take a moment to consider this for yourself.

Are you in any way preoccupied with hoping for something in your life right now?

Preoccupied with that hope?

Just a question.

You may or may not be.

Just take a look.

You might also consider if you are preoccupied in some way with fearing something.

You're preoccupied with some sort of fear.

Preoccupied.

Just take a moment.

One of the great things about our mindfulness practice is that it can really help us to more clearly see and acknowledge what our minds tend to be focused on or preoccupied with,

So that we can then hold it up to the light and examine it a bit,

And see if we can in some way start to let it be,

Or create a little more space around it,

So that eventually we can start to let go.

It can also be really helpful for us to better understand why our clinging and resistance causes us so much extra stress.

And so I thought it might be helpful to just go over each of these four pairs of winds or conditions and take a closer look at them.

So to begin,

We might first consider why does hoping for something or fearing the loss of something tend to cause us stress?

And just as a reminder,

It's not that we don't hope or want or have fear of losing things.

Again,

Of course we do.

It's just part of being human.

But as the Buddha points out,

The problem,

Again,

Lies in our level of attachment to these things,

In the amount of hope that we're investing in these things,

And how we want them to turn out a particular way.

So for instance,

We tend to put so much weight into things being exactly as we want them to be,

That we end up in a way carrying that sort of mental weight around with us,

Like we're literally carrying a heavy chain,

Because we're just so unwilling to let go of our expectations of how it should be.

And with this particular worldly wind of hope of gain or fear of loss,

One particular word that we can consciously invite ourselves to become much more aware of is the word should.

The word should,

As in I should or shouldn't.

He,

She,

They should or shouldn't.

It should or shouldn't.

Right?

As we all know,

The should is almost always toxic.

Right?

So when we can start to notice our level of attachment to our shoulds,

Can really shed some light on how much stress it's causing us,

Which can again help us to start to loosen our grip a little,

Because we can see how much pain it's causing us.

I often tell my students,

Don't should all over yourself.

Right?

Just don't do it.

It's a helpful way to remember.

There's also a wonderful old parable from the Zen tradition that I like to remember when working with this one.

And I know many of you have likely heard this one,

But it's great.

It involves a farmer and his son who had a beloved stallion,

Apparently,

Who helped the family earn a living.

One day the horse ran away and their neighbors exclaimed,

Your horse ran away?

What terrible luck!

The farmer replied,

Maybe so,

Maybe not.

We'll see.

A few days later the horse returned home,

Leading a few wild mares back to the farm as well.

And his neighbor shouted,

Your horse returned and brought several horses home with him.

What great luck!

The farmer replied,

Maybe so,

Maybe not.

We'll see.

Later that week the farmer's son was trying to break one of the mares and she threw him to the ground and broke his leg.

The villagers cried,

Oh my gosh,

Your son broke his leg.

What terrible luck!

The farmer replied,

Maybe so,

Maybe not.

We'll see.

A few weeks later,

Soldiers from the National Army marched through town recruiting all the able-bodied boys for the army.

They did not take the farmer's son because he was still recovering from his injury.

Right,

So obviously the story can go on and on and on and I think it does actually,

But I think you get the point.

And I love that Zen phrase so much I've written it down on a sticky note for years now because it really does help remind me to loosen my grip a bit and become more willing to live with uncertainty rather than holding on so tightly.

Maybe so,

Maybe not,

We'll see.

Another of those pairs of worldly winds that we can explore is our desire for status or even fame as well as our fear of disgrace or insignificance.

And with this one I find it really helpful to remember that our hope and our fear on these two things is actually built into our DNA,

Right,

So we don't have to feel bad about these.

We all want to feel some sort of belonging to a particular community or a tribe and we all also fear disgrace or somehow being ostracized from the collective.

In ancient times we all survived in much smaller tribes and being excluded from these usually meant the unlikely prospect of trying to survive on our own in really harsh conditions.

And so we're actually wired to have these hopes and our fears so it's really okay and good to remember that,

Right,

It's just natural.

But if we want to reduce our suffering around this we really want to use our practice to take a good look at our current-day attachment to these ancient hopes and fears.

Just as an example,

Instead of having a fear about survival,

Today what we might find ourselves trying to protect is our image of ourselves,

Right,

Or our story about ourselves or about how these things reflect on our identity or our ego.

A few years ago now at a longer personal retreat I was on up in Massachusetts I spent some of my time in the Center's library and in a book by the teacher Mark Epstein I was really happy to come across a story that I hadn't heard before about one of my old writing teachers,

The great beat poet Allen Ginsberg.

Apparently when Allen was in India studying with a great Indian teacher,

Deborah Baba,

Many considered a saint.

He was bemoaning to Baba about he and a close friend who had recently grown apart and how lonely he was feeling about that.

In the book the interaction was described this way,

Quote,

Baba struck deep at Allen's heart.

He said softly,

How wounded,

How wounded,

And Epstein wrote about this this way,

Said in his gentle,

Caring,

But inspiring and unsentimental way,

The Baba's retort helped bring Ginsberg's self-identification as a wounded soul into awareness.

This was so important.

What Baba was gently pointing out was that while the loneliness was definitely causing Allen some pain,

His identity of himself as someone who was wounded is what was causing the real suffering.

As the Buddha so wisely told us,

Whatever is taken to be a self will cause suffering.

I'll repeat that,

It's a famous line,

Whatever is taken to be a self will cause suffering.

And so what Baba's response did essentially was to knock Allen out of his delusion and suddenly he could see how much extra suffering that he was creating for himself by defining himself in that way.

What he realized was that this was just a really old habit of mind arising from a kind of entrenched,

Established identity that had formed in childhood and that it was causing him to suffer just even more.

As a confession,

As I was reading that story I was feeling a bit of the same and so this really struck me at the right moment.

It also occurred to me that the opposite of that phrase might be so special,

You know,

Which is when we think that we are somehow so much more important than others or that in some way we're special,

Which is also simply another kind of identity,

One that can also cause us so much pain when we're believing it or maybe even trying to nurture it or maintain it.

And so now whenever I notice myself being blown around by this particular wind,

I have yet another phrase written on a sticky note to ponder,

Which is the title of this talk,

Which is so special,

So wounded,

So special,

So wounded.

And that phrase also closely relates to another one of those pairs of winds,

Which are two that we almost constantly are being bombarded with,

Which are the winds of praise and blame,

Praise and blame.

And as with all the others,

We might notice that with these winds we often feel like we want a kind of perfection here too or a kind of permanence,

Which mainly involves wanting only positive opinions of ourselves from other people,

Which unfortunately,

Again,

Is just completely impossible.

Just as a,

For instance,

A dear friend of mine and I recently started a monthly dancing group where people can come together once a month to kind of let off some steam and find some joy in moving their bodies together and dance.

And we're really excited about this and we were also really thrilled because a reporter for the local newspaper decided to write a story about it.

And when it came out in the newspaper,

I need to confess that I suddenly found myself feeling really nervous about what the community was going to think about this,

Right?

So to me,

It's yet another way for me to create space for community,

Which I feel like I've been doing for a long time,

You know,

Somewhere where people can be together in silence but energetically together and create a sense of belonging together and support.

But I noticed when the article came out that I was suddenly worried about my identity,

You know,

Honestly worried about how the community might perceive me as one of the creators of this new dance community.

And so when I noticed that I was struggling with this particular wind,

I found myself recalling a famous passage from the Buddha,

Who during his own lifetime was admired and praised,

But he was also judged and criticized quite a lot.

In his teachings,

The Buddha told us,

This has been going on through the ages.

They criticize the silent ones.

They criticize the talkative ones.

They criticize the moderate ones.

There is no one in the world that escapes criticism.

There never was and never will be,

Nor is there now the wholly criticized or the wholly approved.

And I love to remember that passage because it can help us to remember that,

Again,

We're not special.

We're not being singled out.

We're not the only ones to be wounded by judgment or criticism,

Even though,

Of course,

When it's happening,

It can sometimes really feel like that.

When we're investigating this one,

Another thing to notice is whether our dukkha or dissatisfaction might be showing up in the form of feeling like maybe we can never get enough praise to fully satisfy us.

We can also notice if we're somehow feeling like we can never be fully free from that threat of being found wanting in some way.

We're never free of that.

And with this particular one,

We might notice that when we're really attached to both our hope and our fear about how we're being perceived,

It can often feel like we're being pushed and pulled back and forth and back and forth by other people's different opinions of us.

We might even notice,

Again,

If we might be preoccupied with this.

The Tibetan Buddhist master Lama Yeshe calls this the constant yo-yo effect,

Which he describes this way.

Someone gave me a present.

I feel so happy.

Someone took away my gift.

I'm so unhappy.

Somebody says,

You're wonderful,

And you feel up.

Somebody says,

You made a mistake,

And then your mood goes down.

We can all relate to that.

I remember experiencing a really clear example of this when I was reading some of the comments about a talk that I posted.

The first commentator wrote that she really appreciated hearing my laughter throughout the talk and that she'd been laughing right along with me.

And in the very next comment box,

The very next one,

Someone else had written that while they had enjoyed my talk,

They found my laughter just totally distracting.

And so in the span of about 30 seconds,

I got to experience those two opposites,

Praise and blame,

Really in the same moment,

Right?

And it caught me.

And because I was experiencing both at the exact same time and didn't know which one was true,

If you will,

My ego suddenly had nothing to do and nowhere to go.

And in that moment,

I noticed that there was no identity that I could hook myself onto.

And I found myself laughing out loud about this.

I also realized that if I'd only gotten one of those comments,

I probably would have had a very different experience,

Right?

And what it reminded me was that neither comment was really about me at all.

And when I recognized this,

I could truly let go of needing to feel either special or wounded.

It was very liberating in that moment.

And so finally,

We come to the fourth pair of those winds,

Which are often called the winds of pleasure and pain.

And these are probably the most difficult ones for all of us,

Because they encompass all of the rest.

The Indian Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna termed this pair of winds happiness versus suffering,

And explained that we tend to look at things in terms of our hope for happiness,

And our fear of suffering.

And whenever I'm teaching newcomers about the practice,

I like to describe how in the teachings,

Our emotional lives are often likened to the ocean,

Which experiences all these different winds,

All of which can create a variety of waves in the water.

And so if we can imagine that we ourselves are that ocean,

The truth is that it's our common tendency,

Right,

To want only to experience the waves or winds of gain,

Pleasure,

Success,

And praise.

We tend to really welcome those,

Or maybe even seek them out.

And of course,

On the other hand,

We tend to want to resist the inevitable waves of pain,

Grief,

Anger,

Sense of failure,

Blame.

The problem is that whenever we resist or try to black out all the difficult waves that arrive,

What happens is that we ourselves tend to become more like ice cubes than flowing water.

And so sadly,

In our effort to protect ourselves,

What happens is that we only end up hardening our own hearts.

We harden them.

And instead of protecting us,

What happens is that we not only lock in whatever that wave brought,

The grief,

The anger,

The blame,

Etc.

,

We also end up blocking out our full capacity for joy,

Our full capacity for experiencing life itself.

And so essentially,

What the teachings around all of these different winds is asking of us is to practice,

Which means not perfectly,

Riding all of those waves or the winds of our lives fully,

Allowing each of them to be experienced as they arrive,

To let ourselves fully feel them,

To feel the joy,

The gladness,

Along with the grief,

The anger,

Whatever it is,

Without automatically believing them,

Acting out on them,

Identifying with them,

Or clinging to them,

Or resisting them.

Instead,

We're being asked to fully investigate these winds,

Open up to them,

And see what they might have to teach us,

And allow them then to soften us,

Soften our hearts,

So that we can truly start to experience more flow and ease in our lives.

Many years ago,

There was a famous phrase that was attributed to the teacher,

Jon Kabat-Zinn,

That was turned into posters that I used to see at some of the retreat centers.

It's a common phrase,

So you may have heard it,

But it relates to this teaching.

It was,

You can't stop the waves,

But you can learn to surf.

You can't stop the waves,

But you can learn to surf.

Another one of my teachers,

Jonathan Faust,

Offers a shorter version of that phrase,

Which is simply,

Surf's up,

Surf's up.

I have to admit,

I love that one,

Not only because it's much simpler to remember,

But it's also kind of really light,

Which might be helpful,

You know,

To add a little humor into things when the winds are maybe not so strong.

Just surf's up,

Here it is.

You might even use it as another one of those sticky note phrases,

Or those teaching phrases.

We can just jot down on a sticky note to remind us that,

You know,

This is it,

Just one of those winds simply arising.

Instead of resisting or holding on,

We can instead practice becoming open to fully knowing what's flowing through.

And honestly,

That opening up to the knowing,

That knowing part,

Is truly our whole practice.

Learning how we can courageously soften and open more and more,

Instead of clinging and resisting,

And in doing so,

Discover much more peace.

And before I offer you a brief meditation on this,

I just wanted to end with a quote from my favorite Buddhist nun,

Pema Chodron,

Who says it this way,

We want to know our pain so that we can stop endlessly running.

We want to know our pleasure so we can stop endlessly grasping.

Then,

Somehow,

Our questions get bigger and our inquisitiveness more vast.

We want to know about loss so we might understand other people when their lives are falling apart.

We want to know about gain so we might understand other people when they are delighted,

Or when they get arrogant and puffed up and carried away.

When we become more insightful and compassionate about how we ourselves get hooked,

We spontaneously feel more tenderness for the human race.

We spontaneously feel more tenderness for the human race.

So she's talking again about how we soften and open.

That's how we do it.

And so if it's available to you and you're ready,

I'd like to offer a brief meditation on these winds.

So if you're someplace where you can find a comfortable seated position,

You might do that now.

Close the eyes.

If you're out walking,

You might become aware of the bottom of your feet on the earth,

Your body moving through space,

The act of walking itself.

Again,

Sensing into your breathing.

If you're driving your car,

You might sense your hands on the wheel,

Your seat on the car cushion,

Car seat cushion,

Your feet on the pedals.

Aware and breathing.

Maybe each of us taking a nice deep breath in,

Maybe holding at the top.

Slow exhale,

Letting go.

A couple of rounds of these on your own just to get in touch with the breath.

Bring your intention into the body,

Becoming embodied.

Breathing in.

Breathing out.

On each exhale,

Consciously allowing yourself to let go a little bit.

Let yourself sink down into the support of the earth or the cushion or chair.

The body becomes softer,

More open.

You might drop the shoulders.

Let the tummy be soft.

You might notice the center of the palms.

Let the center of the palms soften in a gesture of both receiving and letting go,

And then be open.

You might notice the face and allow the forehead to be smooth,

Eyes soft in their sockets,

Teeth slightly parted so the jaw can relax.

Still aware of the breath.

If you haven't already,

You might just allow your breathing to be natural in the body,

Just noticing each inhale and exhale.

If there's still control,

No worries at all,

Just noticing the breath.

Letting the breath calm the mind and the body.

Again,

Maybe dropping the shoulders.

Letting go.

As you're ready,

I'd like to invite you to consider,

Again,

What you might be preoccupied with lately.

With as much kindness and compassion as you can,

No judgment,

Just curiosity,

You might become aware of what you're hoping for or maybe what you're fearing.

Maybe they're tied together,

Just notice.

You might even consider,

How does this hope or fear live in my body?

How does it affect my body,

This longing or this fear?

No judgment,

Just curious.

If it's helpful,

You might even place one hand or both on the heart,

If that's available.

One hand on the heart,

One on the belly,

Just to get more in touch with the body and the heart,

More in touch with that hope or fear.

Let yourself really experience it.

Let yourself see it and feel it.

Let it be known in the body,

The mind,

And the heart.

You're not trying to fix it,

Change it,

You're just trying to see it and know it.

As you're ready now,

You might consider using that Zen phrase from the story of the farmer and maybe tell yourself something like,

Maybe so,

Maybe not,

We'll see.

Just see how it lands.

Maybe so,

Maybe not,

We'll see.

You might even consider two other phrases from the Zen tradition,

Which are not always so,

Not always so.

My favorite,

Which is,

What if nothing's wrong?

What if nothing's wrong?

Just try on whatever seems to resonate,

No right or wrong answer.

Finally,

You might consider,

What might help me to discover just a little more space around this?

What might help me discover just a little more space around this?

And finally,

With the eyes still closed,

Just listening to these words from Donna Fowles,

Who tells us,

There is no controlling life.

There is no controlling life.

Try corralling a lightning bolt containing a tornado.

Dam a stream and it will create a new channel.

Resist and the tide will sweep you off your feet.

Allow and grace will carry you to higher ground.

The only safety lies in letting it all in,

The wild and the weak,

Fear,

Fantasies,

Failures and success.

When loss rips off the doors of the heart,

Or sadness veils your vision with despair,

Practice becomes simply bearing the truth.

In the choice to let go of your known way of being,

The whole world is revealed to your new eyes.

The whole world is revealed to your new eyes.

Namaste and blessings.

Reviews

A beautiful talk, it resonated with me so much. Thank you ❤️