Philosophy Riffing | Liebe wird aus Mut gemacht – Love is made out of courage

14 Oct 2021 3 Comments

by zeuslyone in Letting Go, Loss, Love, Narratives, Philosophy Riffing Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Here is the second birthday creative gift post for myself. I’ve gotten responses from multiple people that they liked my posts of audio clips and wished I would do something more intentional or even more like a podcast. I attempted that last night with a general theme of “Liebe wird aus Mut gemacht” – “Love is made out of courage”. This almost hour-long first attempt at this kind of post is very much philosophy riffing and shared experience. I hope that people enjoy it as much as I enjoyed recording it.

NOTE: One detail I got wrong multiple times early in the recording – the dialogue I mention is Plato’s Phaedrus, not Phaedo. I tend to get those two dialogues’ titles mixed up in my mind, and it’s been years since I’ve read either.

Please give me any feedback on whether you enjoy this post or have themes you’d like me to explore in the future. Furthermore, let me know if you like the riffing style or would prefer something more structured! I’d love any feedback to consider whether to do more of this in the future and how best to go about it.

Previous post on Love and Language

Post from my other blog with some related analysis regarding experiences of love and language in relation to post-rock

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Life’s Vicissitudes — Letting Go

16 Jan 2019 2 Comments

by zeuslyone in Change, Letting Go Tags: , , , , ,

The “Memories” feed in Facebook brings back interesting moments that may otherwise fade. A couple days ago, a status from a few years back jerked me back into one of the most awful days of my life. Reading it, thinking back, and looking at the comments all left me with strong gratitude that things have changed, yet I could go back in my mind and in my feelings and remember how difficult it was to let go at the time and let change happen.

Other events in the last couple days bring the same to mind. All composite things are impermanent — and that means every experience we have in our lives and every aspect of our world, our bodies, and our minds will change. All of it. Things end even when they’re hard. Even when it hurts. However, what I’d like to share in looking back and at looking at other changes from afar is that there’s beauty in that as well. Even in something that seems sad or tragic, it can be a change that lets go of pain, hopelessness, or perceived meaninglessness.

To take a familiar metaphor from mythology — if fate is a thread that is weaved into a story, the end of a fated thing is the cutting of a thread, and that cut may hurt or be perceived as a violent stop — all endings are, in a way. However, it’s only in that end that the tapestry, the full story and beauty, can be completed, and sometimes that’s actually better than a thread that’s stretched so hard and thin that it’s fraying.

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May this provide you perspective to accept the ups and downs of life’s vicissitudes.

Gassho!

Reactivity

28 Sep 2016 Leave a comment

by zeuslyone in Buddhism, Letting Go, Meditation, Poetry, Practice, Warrior's Path Tags: , , , ,

Careening –
Toward, against
Retreating –
Away, behind
Reactivity
On course?
No, bound

Locked, empty, and confused
Seeking to wrest control
From the jaws
Of existential angst
– A threat to overcome
A life overrun

Where is there to be found
A freedom from endless rounds?
– In letting go
In just this

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When you encounter difficulties, the feelings and stories that arise in reaction are just that, feelings and stories. They are whirlwinds of confusion, based not in what is happening now but in deeply held beliefs about you and your relationship to the world. Let them swirl — leaves in the wind. Sometimes you fall back into them and lose touch with the present, but a moment of recognition always comes. Right then, come back to your body, come back to your breath, and rest. The confusion, the stories and the feelings are still there. They continue to swirl, but you are not lost in them.

Just rest. Do not try to control your feelings. Open to all the stories and feelings as much as you can without being consumed by them. You will experience shock, disorientation, anger and self-blaming — reactive mechanisms that protect you from the full impact of what has happened. Sit patiently and let your system sort itself out.

As you rest in the confusion, bit by bit, you separate your confusion from the challenge you are facing. Still the impulse is to oppose. Ask yourself, “What am I opposing?” Then, “Do I need to oppose this?” And, finally, “Is opposing called for at all?”

When you no longer oppose what is happening in you, you are able to rest and see more clearly. What do you see? Look in the resting. Rest in the looking. In doing this, you are mixing awareness with what you experience and what you experience with awareness. Keep coming back to the clarity without losing the stability. Keep coming back to the stability without losing the clarity.

Learn to trust that clarity. Over time it enables you to act without relying on conceptual thinking or strategizing.

– In “Reflections on Silver River: Tokme Zongpo’s Thirty Seven Practices of a Bodhisattva” by Ken McLeod

May this inspire you to rest in your confusion and find the clarity to act with freedom rather than reacting from your stories.

Gassho!

Heartbreak Wisdom Journal–Final Entry: Letting Go of Letting Go

31 Dec 2015 1 Comment

by zeuslyone in Buddhism, Change, Choice, Compassion, Heartbreak Wisdom Journal, Lessons, Letting Go, Morning Pages, Moving Forward, Narratives, Warrior's Path, Zen Tags: , , , ,

I’m closing out the year with this final entry in this series of posts that has both informed my spiritual development of this year and the course of this blog as well. I’m closing this narrative with a long set of connected thoughts about letting go–both my own and some quotes that have inspired me. This year is done, and this chapter in my story comes to a close as well. May this inspire those of you out there who have also gone through heartbreak.

What is the perfection of wisdom? Let’s look at some important elements that are the core of our practice as well as our lives. In face-to-face study, a student expresses agony over a relationship that ended two years ago and asks me how to let go. What is letting go?There is a little toy called a Chinese finger-trap. You put two fingers into it, then try to pull them out. But you can’t extricate your fingers from the trap by pulling: it’s only when you push your fingers further in that the trap releases them. Similarly, we think of letting go as doing something: throwing things away, ending a relationship, getting rid of whatever’s bothering us. But that works no better than pulling our fingers in order to extricate them from the trap. We let go by eliminating the separation between us and what we wish to let go of. We become it.

Do we let go of anger by saying good bye or going away? Of course not! That doesn’t work. The way to let go of anger is to enter the anger, become the anger rather than separate from it. If you even hold on to the notion of having to let go of it, you’re still stuck. In a famous koan, a monk went to Chao-chou Ts’ung-shen and asked, “What shall I do now that I’ve let go of everything?” Chao-chou said, “Let go of that!” The monk said, “What do you mean, let go of that? I’ve let go of everything.” Chao-chou answered, “Okay, then continue carrying it with you.” The monk failed to get the point. Holding on to letting go is not letting go.

We don’t get rid of anger by trying to get rid of it: the same applies to forgetting the self. To forget the self means to become what is, become what we are. How do we let go of a painful relationship? Become the person we wish to let go of, become the pain itself. We think we’re not the person, not the pain, but we are. Eliminate the gap between subject and object and there’s no anger, no loss of relationship, no sorrow, no suffering, no observer sitting back and crying, “Poor me!”

The Chinese finger-trap is solved by going further into the trap, and the same is true of letting go: Go into it. If you avoid the situation, it only gets worse. Totally be it; that’s letting go. Similarly, when we sit, it’s not a question of trying to do something. Don’t sit there saying, “I have to accomplish this. I have to attain that.” Just let go and be what you are, be this very moment. If you are breathing, just be breathing, and you will realize that you’re the whole universe, with nothing outside or external to you. The beautiful mountain–that’s you. Anger, lust, joy, frustration–they’re all you: none are outside. And because there’s no outside, there’s also no inside; altogether, this is you. This is the meaning of Shakyamuni Buddha’s “I alone am!”–Bernie Glass, from Infinite Circle

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I intended to write this post a couple months back around the time of my birthday, but I never got to it, and I can only believe that it wasn’t ripe. I was reading the book quoted above around the same time, but this quote means so much more to me reading it again now. This is my last Heartbreak Wisdom Journal entry. After all the steps in the spiritual path of heartbreak, I’ve finally reached the realization that continuing these narratives is not fully letting go. It’s time to let go of letting go. That’s the step forward on the path of the spiritual heart. That’s the tender vulnerability that was described in the first entry. We come full circle: nothing outside.

Let my birthday journal entry, Morning Pages from a couple months back, serve as an intention in this step forward:
“Well, 33! Made it!
I’ve been thinking of this particular one for a while. As a teenager, I loved the Smashing Pumpkins’ “33”. It is now my theme song for a year, I suppose. That’s odd, in a way, as it’s a romantic song about another person making existence beautiful:
– ” You could make it last, forever, you.”
Clearly, after the year I’ve had, I just don’t feel that way about anyone, and I wonder if I ever will again. In many ways, I totally don’t respect those concepts of romance, especially as a guiding light in the life of a person. Well, maybe I can transform that into something less deluded–transmutation.
That reminds me: I’ve been thinking a lot recently about just that. I want to handle my story around the heartbreak of the end of my relationship in a very particular way. I don’t want to cast her as a monster or villain. I don’t want to cast myself as hero or victim. It simply was. It was, however, not justified–another story that explains away–no matter what came after. Again, it simply was–the complicated interweaving of sharing life and love with other people. In the end, she simply decided that she wanted something different. That’s all.
In the end, this suffering has been, as is suffering in general, useless. That’s actually one of the best philosophical essays I have read: Levinas’ “Useless Suffering”. Explaining away my pain–to myself or the explanations of others–is ultimately an unwillingness to sit with, see, and genuinely feel the agony of a broken heart. Again, it simply is, and any meaning or story that makes it OK or gives it a telos covers it over and masks it. There is beauty in the rawness, and the only use is to sit with it and be inspired to compassion for others, to aim at liberating oneself and all sentient beings from such anguish.
So, no, I won’t cast stones. However, I will transmute–that earlier thread of connection–the love I reached for her into this compassion for all. I’ll blow the lid off of the Love of an Other that completes my Self and move to a warmth for all that exists. May I step forward on the path for the benefit of all sentient beings.”

Tonight–before writing any of this or reading these quotes again–I sat down and did a mantra meditation with mala in hand, counting–bead by bead.

Om mani padme hum.
Om mani padme hum.
Om mani padme hum.
…
…
…
108 times.

I focused my attention on Kwan Yin/Avalokitesvara/Chenrezig/Kannon–the listener to the cries of the world, bodhisattva of compassion. As I repeated the words and contemplated Avalokitesvara with his hundred arms–reaching out to touch the lives of all sentient beings, I felt my own loving-kindness swell, and I flashed on those who have done me pain, who have stoked my anger or sadness… I realized, as separation of I/Them dropped away, that They are I and I am They. Her face flashed by amidst others, and I saw tears and felt her fear, her anxiety. I embraced her feelings with loving-kindness. Many others flashed by as well. Among them all, my own face flashed up, my angry, sad face, tormented by delusion, struggling with all the cares of being human. I compassionately embraced this too. As Glass Roshi said in the initial quote above: “Anger, lust joy, frustration–they’re all you: none are outside. And because there’s no outside, there’s also no inside: altogether this is you.” — For a brief moment, I sat in this compassion and wisdom, in this karuna and prajna…

Then, like always, my mind flitted back to ordinary shenanigans–always room for more practice.

After meditating, I lay down and finished reading a graphic novel, weathering a slight stomachache. The closing words rang true and inspired me to sit down and write this entry. We shall close with them:

I can’t give you your hope. You have to grow your own and hold it through the seemingly endless darkness. The true task–to find joy in the small things we can count on.

When we stop taking pleasure in the basic experience of being alive, beat-by-beat, we lose everything that makes life worthwhile. We must relish in every sight, every touch…
… Every memory. My daughters playing in the garden. Johl kissing my neck. Marik’s elation at a new invention. These memories are enough to light my darkest hour. To face whatever awaits above. We all of us carry burdens that seem too heavy. … Losses we can’t conceivably move past. The things that once gave purpose to life. It is all too easy to give yourself over to the traumas of the past–allowing pain to define us. There is a medicine for that–hope and perseverance. Light brings light. And no matter what we face there is one thing we can control: our outlook. It’s not about ignoring the pain or mindlessly believing things will simply be better–it’s about finding the joy in participating. And when the weight of the past pulls us low we must find the strength to release it…
…and finally give ourselves permission to start over.
-Rick Remender, Low: Volume 2, closing passage

 

The character, Stel, finds the hope to start fresh, letting go of the past, but she doesn’t do this by running away from it–ignoring it–or by blindly believing that the future will make everything right again. She’s neither lost in the pain of the past nor in a dream of a hazy, euphoric future. She’s faced all of her ghosts by sitting with everything as it was and as it currently is. She’s fully taken on her pain, her burdens. She realizes that in becoming them, the weight of the past drops with the permission to start over. That permission is always at hand, right now. It merely takes the warrior’s courage to let go: to fully be here as we are. That’s what starting over is. This may begin with holding on to the wonders of golden experiences, but this sagely wisdom fully blossoms in participating joyously in every moment of life, even the most painful or burdensome. This is wrongly called “hope” because it’s not about that belief in a future deliverance; it’s actually “faith”–trust in and no separation from all that is. This is recognizing the basic goodness of existence, and it is a clear step forward to liberation: happiness that does not rely on the conditioned.

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May this light the path to letting go of heartbreak for those who need it.

Gassho!

Previous Heartbreak Wisdom Journal Entry– Entry 12: Heartmind’s Abundance

Thoughts and Letting Go–The Mind’s Kite

14 Sep 2015 2 Comments

by zeuslyone in Buddhism, Letting Go, Mindfulness, Morning Pages Tags: , , , , , , , ,

This is my first deep writing in a while. Yet again, it appears unexpectedly in the open space of Morning Pages. Enjoy!

Here we are… Another day. It’s great to be writing in this moment. As I slow down and attend to the process, I feel utterly awash with sensation. There is so much detail–sound, smell, light, touch, vibration–in every moment. Usually, though, we’ve shut much of it out as we narrow our vision/smell/hearing/etc. to some small set of attention. There’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, its’ somewhat necessary. There’s so much to experience that we can’t hold it all at once. It’s the same with our thoughts. A quiet moment of mindfulness reveals that they are a legion; however, in most moments, we’re running along with one in particular as though it were a huge kite yanking along a child on a windy day. The funny thing in each instance is our lack of awareness of the process and possibility in each. With sensation, we forget that there is so much that we are closing out in this moment, or maybe, we don’t forget as much as not even realize that’s happening. With the thoughts, the same: we don’t realize that we are holding onto that kite string and running along with them (the thoughts). Meditation can show us both that there is so much to be aware of in every moment, bodily, and so many thoughts flitting by, mentally. It can open us to our full unfolding, right here, right now. It also shows that those thoughts are not “me”. I don’t have to run along with them. I can just as readily let them go–that kite can just fly away. It is only in grasping to it that I give it the power to pull me here and there. I can just as readily watch it fly on the wind without feeling its pull. Whether that kite is in the shape of the most beautiful butterfly or the most terrifying dragon does not make it any more enduring, any more absolute. It’s just another passing moment, another gust of wind. In grabbing onto the string, I keep it flitting about in the broad, open expanse of my mind; otherwise, it will pass out of sight soon enough, and I have the opportunity to watch it soar by without mistaking that string and kite as an extension of myself–as an immutable truth that defines me.

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In this moment and in every “now”, “I” am a flux of all these sensations and thoughts, a huge amount of possibilities manifesting in reality. It’s one small fold of the universe universing itself; it’s an unfolding emergence; it’s a human becoming.

May All be happy.
May All be healthy.
May All be at peace.
May All live with ease.

May this help you let go of that kite, seeing the unfolding potential that is in every moment. May you find the liberation of not grasping onto thoughts and definitions, thereby taking the first steps out of the orbit of samsara.

Gassho!

Heartbreak Wisdom Journal–Entry 7: Letting Go of the Person You Used to Be (Part 2)

22 Apr 2015 2 Comments

by zeuslyone in Heartbreak Wisdom Journal, Letting Go, Moving Forward, Rebirth, Self-development Tags: , , , ,

Clarification: As I wrote at the beginning of the last post, I’ve broken this entry into two pieces. The first was about my personal healing experience. This piece is a long quote from Lama Surya Das’ Letting Go of the Person You Used to Be. It’s taken from the opening section of the final chapter: “Spiritual Renewal — Healing Our Wounded Hearts”. Reading this section felt very resonant with what I have been experiencing, and it was great to find that understanding and affirmation. I thought that others could benefit from his words as well.

To one degree or another, we all have wounded hearts etched with at least a few of life’s infinitely variant scars. But if that is the case, how can we find peace? How can we release our sorrow and move beyond negative memories and hurt? How can we alter and release our attachment to the past? How can we come unstuck? How can we let go of the person we used to be?
Men and women trying to recover from disappointment and loss tend to hear a wide variety of well-meaning advice. “You need healing,” their friends tell them. “You need closure.” “You need resolution.” “Move on.” Sometimes this facile, though well-intentioned advice, is the last thing that someone wants to hear. “Change your life.” “Okay, sure. Will do. Thank you!” It is easier said than done, isn’t it?
Almost twenty years ago, while I was in three-year meditations retreat, I received a letter from an old friend who told me that her talented and beloved son was gravely ill; he was only in his mid-twenties, and I remember being very saddened by this news. She asked if we would pray for him. Later I received word that he had died. I knew that my friend suffered grievously from the loss of her son. But I was still young and I probably didn’t fully understand what she was experiencing. About two years later I visited her in upstate New York and gave her some platitudinous advice.
“Maybe it’s time to let go and move on,” I said.
“Maybe it isn’t,” she replied. “Maybe I’m not done.”
The truth and authenticity of her statement were pretty startling in the face of my well-meaning, albeit useless, chiches. Maybe she wasn’t done with her mourning; maybe she would never feel done. My dear old friend is not unique in her response to major loss. Many have told me that they have never really “gotten over” some of their experiences.

…

Mourning is a necessary process as well as a deep and significant spiritual experience. It brings us closer to the ground of our being and our felt sense of authenticity. We need to intelligently process our most difficult experiences in order to regain balance, harmony, and inner peace. But there comes a time when it is helpful to seek and find ways to release the pain. Yes, certain losses remain with us; they are part of our history and our karma. But that doesn’t mean that it is appropriate for us to spend our lives grieving. We need to find ways to peacefully coexist with our sadness. We can embrace our pain and our losses and be greater and more authentically real for doing so.
I am not alone in saying that a broken heart is often the beginning of healing and renewal; many wiser men and women have spoken these words. Sometimes it is only desperation that can drive us out of a rut. When we are sad, we need comfort; we need to find new hope; we need spiritual renewal. These are attainable goals; these are all possible. Everything is possible to those who seek and persevere. In the New Testament, Jesus spoke the following beatitude, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”

…

Spiritual transformation and renewal are forms of healing, of rectification, of rebalancing. Such renewal restores us to wholeness and to peace through new beginnings. Our hopes, dreams, and aspirations are revived, and we are able to make fresh starts. Sometimes all we need to do to make a fresh start is to begin seriously questioning ourselves–our assumptions and beliefs and what we are doing. This kind of self-examination helps us think “outside the box.” When we do this, it can help us view the world in such a different way that we are sometimes able to make dramatic changes. Seeing differently is believing differently and leads to different ways of living.
Buddhism teaches that the reason we are unhappy and experience difficulty is mainly due to ignorance and our false sense of incompleteness and separation. Out of this ignorance and feelings of separateness comes all kinds of unsatisfying unfulfilling behavior and effort. A pop example that comes to mind is the all too human tendency to look for love in all the wrong places. We do well to renew our outlook and our efforts toward more intelligent and fulfilling directions and modes of seeking what we really want and need. Remember that one definition of insanity is doing what we have always done and expecting different results.
Few of us carefully examine whether or not our current pattern of desires and habits are producing the results we want. Too often we just continue as we have always done–“same old, same old”–just as our friends, colleagues, and elders have always done, thought, reacted, hoped, and believed. We do this without thoroughly, conscientiously, and deeply scrutinizing for ourselves how well these strategies work for us.
Rebirth is one form of renewal and regeneration. This may happen in the afterlife or in heaven, or it may happen through reinventing oneself or one’s career and relationships in this life. Or it can happen moment by moment by taking a good deep breath and taking a fresh and renewed look at life in the immediacy of the present moment. This moment-to-moment rebirth is a practice of both love and freedom. It allows us to embrace reality right now, as it is; it allows us to be as we are without being burdened or conditioned by the past.

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May this resonate with you who need this as it has with me. May it help you let go of your past, the person you used to be, so that you may move forward in reinventing yourself for the good of yourself and all the world. May you find liberation in stepping from your sloughed off old skin.

Gassho!

Previous Heartbreak Wisdom Journal Entry– Entry 7: Letting Go of the Person You Used to Be (Part 1)
Next Heartbreak Wisdom Journal Entry– Entry 8: Reclaiming Shards of the Past

Heartbreak Wisdom Journal–Entry 7: Letting Go of the Person You Used to Be (Part 1)

20 Apr 2015 4 Comments

by zeuslyone in Healing, Heartbreak Wisdom Journal, Journalling, Letting Go, Mindfulness, Moving Forward Tags: , , ,

Clarification: I’m splitting this piece into two parts. The first is my own personal experience of late, and the second is a related long quote that goes well with this, but I feel it best to let them both stand on their own, yet connected and in a harmonic resonance with each other.

Last weekend, I went down to the city I used to live in with my ex. I stayed with mutual friends–the first time seeing them in months. It was eye-opening. After all this time and change, I’ve still been carrying some ideas that this home has some elements that are the same, but like me, really, so much has shifted. I went, in part, to feel this connection again and to weigh the opportunity of returning there. It was odd, unhemlich really: some things still felt like the home I miss and love–homey=heimlich, but there was an overarching foreignness alongside this familiarity–unhomey=unheimlich: that bizarre feeling when the familiar is unfamiliar. The saddest part was how distant others were when I saw those other connections beyond the friends I stayed with. All of this made me realize that if I go back, it will have to be completely on my own steam and without expecting the familiar to be there. As sad as that may be, seeing things clearly, especially even the most subtle layers of desire and hope–unconscious ones, can be liberating. Seeing clearly what you are holding onto can gently open the hand, letting those things fall away.

The hardest thing was that I almost saw her. Even just hearing her voice from a distance brought up all the little idiosyncrasies about her that I still miss. I lost a partner and a best friend so many months ago with this breakup, and it is very often, still, that I hear her voice in my head, saying certain things just that particular way that only she would say them, or I can almost hear and see her responding to the goofiness that I regularly bring into the world.

Yet, the gusto of her voice, also recalled all those bizarre relationship-ending conversations, galvanized with that sentiment of self-righteousness, as though the point of this life-changing decision were distinguishing right and wrong. That voice, those eyes, that cold feeling of being disconnected from reality with overlays of denial… I’m glad that I chose not to go say hello. I don’t see any benefit in facing that now, if any of it remains at all. If that is the case, certainly she wouldn’t be interested either. She wanted my presence cut from her life, wanted me dead in a certain sense, and she’s never reached out again afterward. She could just as readily have walked down to say hello to me as well; the decision did not have to be made by me, and clearly, she didn’t want to. That’s fine. Ultimately, one of the largest parts of moving on in the kind of situation I’m in is accepting the choice of a person you love to not love you anymore. In a certain sense, it’s dying with grace. It’s letting go of the person you used to be.

I came back home to my life in the Seattle area, after this whirlwind trip, and I began the work week again. It was a bit jarring making this transition… For the week previous to the trip, I had been doing a Healing Bootcamp of sorts, described in The Wisdom of a Broken Heart, but I didn’t finish the closing of the last day due to leaving on my trip to see my friends and my old home. The middle of the relief program requires a journalling of the beginning, middle, and end of the relationship–piece by piece, and then, you write down points of gratitude for each of these stages and offer them upon your altar. At the end of the program, you perform loving-kindness meditation for your ex and burn the offered gratitude while stating that for now this relationship is over, and you are a better person for having experienced it.

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A simple altar that I set up for this recovery program — sans the written offerings described in this post

After returning from a trip of letting go, I belatedly did this final ritual–opening my heart with loving-kindness and burning the past with a cleansing fire. I stood on the bricks in the backyard, lighting each piece and feeling the warmth of the fire sharing my joy at the gifts I’ve been given (and was offering as gift over to the flames) but also burning them away–past and gone. Unlike a rebound or more aggressively “moving on”, this whole process was so kind, loving, gentle, yet affirming. It has been a completely mindful way of growing through heartbreak with acceptance, even gratitude, for pain and change. It’s not a denial of the past or the present in the slightest. On the contrary, it’s showing up for it: taking the path of the spiritual warrior–knowing that even this, maybe even especially this, is an opportunity for practice.

I still have a lot of healing to go, so there may still be several other entries in the Heartbreak Wisdom Journal, but this experience was definitely a turning point, and I feel some liberation from showing up to the person I used to be and tenderly, yet bravely, letting go of him.

Here is what I had to say about the ritual in my Morning Pages earlier this week:

I spoke to each note, reading them all aloud and emphasizing how wonderful each point of gratitude was but emphasizing also, like everything, these pass too. These moments were gone. The points of gratitude–the experiences–have shaped me. Their karmic consequences have begun blooming, yet, their cause, and the connection associated with them, has been severed and crushed. Now, it has also been burned. The fire was beautiful–flickering flames lapped at my words of gratitude, embracing them and celebrating them with the burning joy they deserved. Now, those words are dissipated, spread on the wind. Who knows what comes next? Not I.
This has given me some small amount of emotional clearance, yet there is much more healing to come.

May this help you find your own ability to let go of the person you used to be.
Gassho!

Previous Heartbreak Wisdom Journal Entry– Entry 6: Forgiveness
Next Heartbreak Wisdom Journal Entry– Entry 7: Letting Go of the Person You Used to Be (Part 2)

Heartbreak Wisdom Journal — Entry 3: Wounds

24 Feb 2015 6 Comments

by zeuslyone in Heartbreak Wisdom Journal, Letting Go, Words Tags: , , , , , , ,

Words have power. We seldom think about it. We throw them around as expendable–of little to no worth. Yet, if there is a magical element of the human being, it’s our ability to express the world through words. Words communicate. Words depict. Words create. Sometimes, words cut–like a weapon. This can leave a wound that festers like no other.

Some things that were said to me in the last conversations of my relationship have remained as wounds. Others recommend to let these things go, but if there is one thing that I have learned in meditation, such things cannot be forced. Whatever comes up, comes up. I can simply sit through it. Pushing thoughts and feelings away is engaging them with energy just as much as grabbing onto them and spinning them around in analysis. No. Letting go is relaxing the hand of the mind and letting the thoughts simply stream out of it. It is tender, and it is brave. It is the way of the awakened warrior.

One cut that has passed as a thought time and again is the moment in which I was blamed for her emotional reactivity. I was depicted as the cause of all negativity. Supposedly, no one else had this impact on her, and hence, I was some sort of emotional cancer–a tumor to be excised from her life in order to be healthy. Otherwise, according to her, she would never know peace. My mind reeled with the bizarre logic, unkindness, and completely victimizing unfairness of such an assessment. My counterexamples were batted away, and it was clear that nothing could be said to her in her dreamy haze of certainty.

Part of why this lingered is that I never fully shared this mind-crumbling bend of a moment in its complete emotional intensity with anyone else. In part, I didn’t because I didn’t want to spew blame and vitriol upon her to others. In part, I didn’t because I didn’t have the words to share such a moment at all, especially from a space of sharing without blame and aggression. I mentioned her words to friends, but the telling didn’t express the emotional nightmare of such a moment (like I said: I lack the ability to fully express)–the person you love the most in the world tells you that you are the cause of all negative feelings in her, and it’s implied that there is nothing good that you offer to your relationship with her.

I think that because of this inexpressibility, something remained held onto on a deep level–aching deep inside. No one could reassure me that that moment was completely whacked. No one could fully agree that those statements and ideas about emotional reactivity were hopelessly lost in the contrivances of a warped narrative. Instead, her words were taken at face value to some extent, and I was left wondering if I really was as horrible as she said I was. There was no one who could hear me and recognize me on the level of my own experience. From my therapy background, there was no one who could share my “felt sense”, and because of this, this sense stayed unfulfilled.

Last night, I was reading about meditation and lucid dreaming. I found unexpected recognition and release from this unlikely source. The book was talking about our perceptions and emotions. The book talks again and again about our “projections” on experiences–that the world we experience is always our interpretation of it, never the world in itself. My experience of the world is always mine, not the one that the world gives to me. I read: “Emotional reactivity does not originate “out there” in objects. It arises, is experienced, and ceases in you.” * I almost cried. Someone understood, and someone said the niggling feeling that I couldn’t quite put into words. Simple as it may be; I couldn’t say it, and the book said it for me. The feeling shifted, and my experience–the kernel of pain in that wound–unfolded.

Sometimes, to relax and let go of the thing that hurts, to allow the swollen inflammation of pain to subside, and to wash away a piece of ego, the thing we need most is to feel heard–to feel that “I” am not crazy. The feeling of an insanity that only affects myself leads to the grasping onto story and analysis of “me” more than anything else. It’s an isolating loneliness that makes a sense of myself distinct in contrast to everyone else. In being recognized, you can let go of those wounds that hurt so deeply, knowing that you are not alone.

May you feel seen, heard, understood, and recognized. May you find peace, love, and happiness. May you not have experiences that create wounds, and if you do, may you find the ability to express them and a person to listen authentically (if needs be, please post below. I’ll listen).

For the benefit of all who read this.
Gassho

*From “The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep” by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche and Mark Dahlby, Kindle Edition

Previous Heartbreak Wisdom Journal Entry: Entry 2: Gentleness Toward Your Experience
Next Heartbreak Wisdom Journal Entry: Entry 4: Depression’s World

Murderous Zeal – Letting Go

19 Nov 2014 Leave a comment

by zeuslyone in Big Picture, Courage, Empowerment, Letting Go, Loss, Narratives, Warrior's Path Tags: , ,

Disclaimer: This post is much more personally revealing than most posts I write. This will not be quite as didactic, rather processing with the intent of expressing what I need to express but cannot share with the person with whom I wish to express it. Some of you may know me enough to know who that is, and to those, I say that this is not meant to judge or cast aspersions to that person’s character, a person I love with all my heart. Instead, this is trying to put into words what I have experienced, the pure, raw pain of it, and the folly I see in what has happened. Disagreeing with another’s choices and trying to accurately describe them as they are, to call a spade a spade, so to speak, does not mean that you belittle them or that you necessarily even think poorly of them (judgment can mean both identification as well as moral judgment; judgment here is meant as the first of these two). Believe me, that’s part of the depth of my pain expressed here. So, those of you who know, either don’t read this, and let my expression be, or see what I have to say about what I’ve felt and how I’m moving forward. Expressing this here is therapeutic for me. This is not meant to cause any stir; that person will likely never see it, and I wouldn’t publish it here if I thought that that person would. So either let this be, or read it to share my expression without any more motive than that.

You took the ideology of relationships from a friend, a maxim we would have previously scoffed at, and you embraced it as creed and animating principle. “If we were together again, it would have to be completely different.” Thus armed, like one of the furies, you killed “us” with a murderous zeal that I’ve never previously seen — lashing out in fear and pain, you held dear the despairing mantra: “This must die.” Yet, must it have? You never stopped. You never questioned. You held on with certainty, out of pain, unwilling to see how things could already be different. You instead repeated fatalistic stories of how they could never change without this melodramatic action.

Stumbling forward, revising what you said from one conversation to the next, galvanizing your certainty as having been one clear idea that you held all along — not merely a reactive lash of pain which grew into a clearer purpose with time — you stand, superior, self-righteous, cold, and cruel. I’m cast as naive, weak, and pathetic, so worthy of the death you dole out. Yet, our conversations reveal that your position has not been clear throughout beyond the reaction of pain, and your words come again to stubborn, self-righteous contradictions, and after knowing you for years, it all shines as an inauthentic escape from that which you can’t face. The hardest has ultimately been the empty promise of friendship, the last thing to die after love and family: the third and final death. I’m no more than an acquaintance now. Best of luck with your coping with this pain, with your soothing escape from it. May your pain and resentment have been quenched. I fear deeply that you will feel them again in your next deeply intimate connection, as I am not the source of your emotional reactivity. My greatest hope is merely that you can be real about this at some point, for your own growth.

I’ve been working on letting go of my pain in regards to this for some time. It’s been hard. It’s been painful (ironically, letting go of pain is painful). I’ve lost more than I can put into words, and that clings to me like an old skin that I can’t slough off — so close to a fresh rebirth if I could only peel off an essential layer of who I have been. Strangely, a few sentences in a popular psychology magazine have helped me find acceptance in ways that so many wise words from friends have been unable to do (more due to my own difficulties than any ineffectiveness of theirs; sometimes, only the right words stick — one key opens a door): “To let go of a past injustice that preoccupies us, we must relinquish our natural burning hope for equity. or at least for exposing to the world the wrongdoer — your brother, your crooked business partner, your vicious former friend — for who and what he is. Dimming that eternal flame of rage is effortful. The bad guy won. It happens.” (Psychology Today, Jan. 5th 2015, p. 56)  Indeed, it does happen, and so many of the things we need to let go of are not done by “bad guys” at all, my case included. We are people. We make selfish, myopic, or childish choices sometimes. That’s how it goes, and perhaps, the first step to letting go in cases like mine is accepting that — accepting that someone you love deeply can throw you aside, can lose sight of you, but it’s not really about you. They’ve done something “bad”, but it’s not something you should take personally, no matter how deeply that cut may go into your heart. The Stoics would remind us that there are things that are up to us, and there are things that aren’t. Only the first deserve our concern, and the only part of this situation that is up to us is our reaction to it, so let’s not make the other person’s decision — that part of existence that is up to him or her — about us. It isn’t. It’s about them. Let it be, and wish them well from a place of strength and dignity, as hard as that might be, because it still hurts…

In line with what I just said, I’ve also been inspired by a book by Chögyam Trungpa entitled “Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior”. In one passage, he states:

As human beings, we are basically awake and we can understand reality. We are not enslaved by our lives; we are free. Being free, in this case, means simply that we have a body and a mind, and we can uplift ourselves in order to work with reality in a dignified and humorous way. If we begin to perk up, we will find that the whole universe — including the seasons, the snowfall, the ice,and the mud — is also powerfully working with us. Life is a humorous situation, but it is not mocking us. We find that, after all, we can handle our world; we can handle our universe properly and fully in an uplifted fashion. The discovery of basic goodness is not a religious experience, particularly. Rather, it is the realization that we can directly experience and work with reality, the real world that we are in. Experiencing the basic goodness of our lives makes us feel that we are intelligent and decent people and that the world is not a threat. When we feel that our lives are genuine and good, we do not have to deceive ourselves or other people. We can see our shortcomings without feeling guilty or inadequate, and at the same time, we can see our potential for extending goodness to others. We can tell the truth straightforwardly and be absolutely open, but steadfast at the same time. The essence of warriorship, or the essence of human bravery, is refusing to give up on anyone or anything. (pp. 16-17)

Here, warriorship is not meant in terms of violence and war, rather courageous action in life’s difficulties with wisdom and dignity. In letting go, I think there’s nothing greater to aspire to than the courageous realization of our freedom to be upright and dignified, to walk forward with intention of loving-kindness for the world, when every signal and resonant vibration of pain tells us to stop, turn back, give up, and be jaded. This simple way of seeing the world for the beauty that it is may just be the hardest thing to do, especially in times of severe pain, but this is precisely the choice that is up to us, and it is more important in these times than in any other. Has my pain fully subsided? Of course not. However, I can choose to see it, to embrace my situation with courage and dignity. Most importantly, I can choose to love myself in all of this. What better thing to share than that, and how better to share it than being a sacred warrior?

I hope that someone out there reads through this long post and finds some point of inspiration for his or her own journeys. If you make it to these words, know that you are not alone, dear friend.

Gassho.

Control and Letting Go

27 Sep 2014 2 Comments

by zeuslyone in Control, Letting Go

I found the following in my writings of a journal about a spiritual experience:
“The other thing I learned from all this was that there is not a simple duality of “in control”/”letting go”. The relationship is more dynamic than that. In my experiences, one still has control of one’s reaction and engagement in letting go. It is being in a situation, accepting it, and engaging with it in a manner fitting with that acceptance. It is NOT a complete loss of being in the situation. You are always *here now*. You can accept this or not: embrace it as another changing moment of nothingness (here meant with Buddhist resonance) or fight against it in the desire to be somewhere else – whether spatial or temporal. This also means that the power trip we get from being “in control” of our situation is another illusion. Seeking to “lose control” is oddly just as worthy of a smile as seeking to grasp onto control always. This does not mean that I’m saying we have no choices or that our actions are determined. I’m merely pointing out that we are in a world which presents different situations for us all the time. We are in relationship with these situations and cannot control them, merely accept our relationships with them and control ourselves insofar as we act in a way that shows that acceptance. Thus, it is not a dichotomy of active/passive – being passive requires a certain active engagement, and being active attempts to disregard and fight against the passive position we have in the situations of our lives – like rocks in a stream. The most control we have in our lives is precisely that I still think we do have choices and that those choices matter. We choose the situations our life brings (this is not meant as any form of blaming the victim), just like I chose to come here. Sometimes, perhaps often, we do not know the repercussions of our choices, but we choose one path or another, nonetheless.”