Bursting Your Balloons - What Is Your Picture Of Life?

Each morning you wake up and you blow into a balloon, life bursts this and yet you frantically reach for another balloon and huff and puff into that one too. It is exhausting yet you keep on doing it. Do you know what you blow into this balloon and how to stop it? Suryacitta explains the what and the how in the podcast.

Transcript

Hello there. Each morning when you awaken from sleep you reach for a balloon and you huff and puff into this balloon. Five minutes later life comes along and bursts this balloon. You frantically search for the next balloon and you do the same with this one. You huff and puff into this balloon. We all do this to varying degrees. Life comes along bursts that balloon then we reach for another immediately and we huff and puff into that balloon and we do this all day long. What we blow into the balloon are our expectations and demands on the day. In other words you blow into this balloon your picture of how life should be of how you believe your life should be how other people should be because part of the picture of life is well myself how I should be and how other people should be. I may be slightly further down the hierarchy of demands you know how the car should be how the journey to work should be how the supermarket should be. So this this picture is multifaceted. For example part of our picture might be that people should be nice to me they should smile at me. It can also be a picture of people should disagree with me people should challenge me and that's fine too. We all have a picture but our pictures are slightly different they all vary depending on our conditioning and our character. Now let's say for example that my part of my picture is people should be nice to me. When they're not nice to me what do I do? I get upset and at that point what do I normally do or what do we normally do if our picture is not met what do we do? We get upset either with the other person or with ourselves and upset is it's like it's the key it's it's the it's the opportunity to see that ah my picture is not being met. This person didn't smile to me didn't smile at me wasn't kind to me whatever it is or they didn't challenge me that that person wasn't like I expected them to be how I wanted them to be. So we might and this is often just done in our own mind often we we do include the people in it but first of all it happens in our own mind we get upset we start complaining to ourselves blaming the other person or blaming ourselves. See this picture of life that you have that I have is not meant to be met because there are six or seven billion pictures life can't meet them all and it's it's not meant to life is not meant to form into or to yield to this picture that we have this mental picture that we have in our head you now the picture isn't really the problem actually let me just back up a little here when we blow into this balloon because obviously it's a it's exhausting keep blowing this these these demands and expectations into this balloon it's exhausting can you imagine blowing into balloon most of the day it's not very restful and so when we hold on to this picture when we cling to this picture so we it's like hold hold at the end of a balloon so nothing gets out it's not very relaxing we are tense so our picture isn't meant to be met by life that's not the work of life that's not life's job to make us happy it's there to teach us life is there to be our teacher but what do we do when when my picture is not met I get upset that upset is the opportunity to learn from life there I am putting demands on life that will never be met because people will not be nice to me all of the time it won't happen it's impossible but I keep holding on to this picture holding on to this balloon I'm not going to let go I'm going to try my hardest I'm going to make myself unhappy but I am going to get life to meet my demands to meet my picture so it's not the picture that is problematic it's the clinging to it what's your picture for later on today or tomorrow or what's your picture generally what do you expect of people to be agreeable to be kind to be disagreeable to smile what are your demands on yourself you have to be perfect never make mistakes to never be seen in an embarrassing situation to always know the answer never say don't know always help other people always be there whatever you so when we get upset what we often do is as I've mentioned we might blame see if we blame other people or even if we blame ourselves what that means is we don't have to look at actually what's going on that the the problem isn't that that person was unkind to me the problem is my demand my clinging to my picture now that doesn't mean to say if somebody is unkind that we don't say something back of course we do and that's absolutely fine it's necessary we need boundaries and we need to be able to stand up for ourselves and to stand up for the people there's nothing wrong with that but the the clue is the upset afterwards if we are clear let's say somebody's in kind to unkind to me and I say something in the moment that was out of order I'm sorry yeah that's I don't agree with that etc then that's there's a clarity to that it's clean then I don't find myself complaining I don't find myself blaming if it happens a lot I may not want to spend time with the person that's fine that's not me clinging to my picture it's just me responding to life when I'm in my spinning mind going over it and she's such a bad person who does she think she is or it's criticisms about myself that that's when I'm clinging on to my picture so what are some of the elements of your picture it's good to think about this just have a few moments you what do you cling to is it that the traffic light should be on green should be on go shouldn't shouldn't hit a stop a stop light red light I don't want to get stuck behind a big truck on a small road people should compliment me you criticism is an interesting one because and again we might come back and disagree but it's how it's done but let's play with this criticism so somebody criticizes you they press they put their finger on your button we all our buttons don't we oh no she pressed my button now she presses your button or he says something or does something oh and we feel criticized then what they do criticisms normally very brief it happens and then they stop and they've touched the button they've just your sore point then what happens they take their finger off the button and then they go away maybe having a nice cup of coffee or a glass of wine or there at home with the family what do we do they take their finger off the button we get our finger what do we do with it we find we look for that button oh there it is what do we do over and over and over we go who does she think she is he's always like this he's a bully he's this she's that or it might be to do or maybe I am useless maybe I should oh and we what we do we get caught in the storyline we get we make up a story again and again they've taken their finger off the button but you've got yours on there and we keep our finger on the button by staying in our thinking mind in our repetitive thinking mind and all his thinking is trying to protect us from actually feeling the hurt and we all want our minds to calm down now how do you calm a mind down that is in a spin in the way I've just described what we can do is just sit well sit ourself thinking I'm thinking here I'm thinking and you take your attention into the body into the area there where we feel hurt and you don't need to believe me here but try it after a minute or two if you can stay with the feeling in the body it begins to disappear and the thinking begins to calm down about it because all this all these spins staying in the storyline all these belief thoughts is fuel for the emotion now anything that doesn't have fuel or food or nourishment eventually dies so we take the our attention away from the belief thoughts and into the body and if we're not feeding this emotion it gradually dies away and then we can look at the situation with clarity it's beautiful and simple we just need to do it so those moments of upset are actually opportunities during the day are and clinging on to my picture that's what I'm doing what am I clinging on to here yeah nobody should say things like that to me or whatever it is it may be to do with physically maybe physically maybe a toothache or a headache I I don't want headaches now of course we don't was to the degree that we cling to that belief because our lives are not going to be free from pain but we make it far worse by believing that they should you so imagine that we've blown all these demands and expectations into a balloon and we're clinging on to them well we've got our thumb and forefinger on the the end the button of the balloon holding tightly I'm not gonna let go of this and we walk around most of the day holding this balloon tightly not relaxing for a moment now what should we do if we want to relax our thumb and forefinger what do we do we just let go we learn to let go of the balloon and what does the balloon do it flies around the room we don't know where and then lands on the floor who's let go of it we don't have to keep clinging to it and the more we are aware of our demands and how we cling to them the more clear you are about your picture of life the more that you can let it go and relax there's a natural letting go happened when we start to see yeah this is part of my picture there's a natural letting go and it's a relief it's a relief when everybody went or rather it's a relief when I don't cling to the picture that everybody should be nice to me or there I should be the center of attention or not the center of attention nobody should criticize me I shouldn't get ill and of course if we don't we do what we can to make ourselves well that's part of life too being sensible and look at taking care of ourselves so next time you wake up tomorrow morning when you wake up take a few minutes just to notice what's my picture of the day or am I blowing into this balloon and during the day just pause and just notice am I clinging onto a picture am I holding this balloon too tightly it's alright to have a picture we all need a picture but it's the clinging to it we all need a have a sense of how the day is going to go and that's natural but it's when we cling and when we cling if you cling on to anything let's say you have a pen by your side and you grab all that pen you cling it it's not restful it creates tension of course clinging creates tension we have to tense to cling so we learn more okay so let me be a bit more aware of my picture and see some the elements of the picture are unconscious we don't know we've got them put another way we don't realize that we have these demands it might be that the demand is that John or Sally needs to be a certain way with me and when they're not we get upset so we will be obviously we will be aware of some of this aspect of this picture elements of your picture but more and more become aware of the unconscious demands the unconscious clinging the unconscious areas of our picture okay thank you very much

Reviews

Resonates to the point of actually feeling the tension in my forefinger and thumb. Thank you for presenting a metaphor that really hits home.

Thank you so much. This was very helpful and supportive and helped me to feel much more calm. Thank you so much teacher

That was a great talk, I have listened to it on a previous occasion but definitely benefitted from a re visit! One to bookmark 🙏

Great analogy. Very crestive use of imagery.

A very interesting analogy for perceiving demands and expectations. Thank you.