Tag Archives: 108Enso

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the small of fear

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One of the gifts of resentment is how it opens us to our fearfulness, our turning away time and again from what will enlarge our heart.   We can see how it weakens us so we can only cling to what keeps us small.

One of my longtime friends suggested that guilt and resentment are opposite sides of the same coin.  I added that guilt is the difference we project between our ideal and real selves.  It’s another measure of how I don’t measure up.  In situation A, I wanted to respond “this” way yet I responded “that” way!  Fear, shame, and blame arise as a consequence of that mismeasure of my worth.  Of course, it’s not always about flagellation over my mis-steps.  As I get older, I also begin to reflect on my life and how I’ve filled it and it’s a tricky balance between reflection and recrimination.

Luckily, I remember being 56 years old as if it was just a few days ago; it was a day of sati – re-collecting all the ways I create meaning.  And spiritual practice is a container in which I cultivate meaning.  As a gift to myself and encouraged by my blogger pal, Luke, to do what scares me, I went ahead with an application to a 7-day retreat at a center on the East Coast.  The application form was one of those “fill in the essay blocks with all you’ve done as a meditator.”  What a koan!  How to sell myself to get into a a container to be with no-self?  I did my best and a few days later  I got an email reply.  I had been assessed as lacking in sufficient meditation training.

I was crushed.  The if-onlies kicked in: if only I had spun my experience, if-only I had expressed my undying wish to be enlightened.  Then the what-if’s entered stage left: what-if I really don’t have any recognizable training as a meditator; what-if I’ve been a fake all this time.  The shoulda’s syncophated: I shoulda started earlier in my life; I shoulda spent less time in a wasted youth; I shoulda published that novel – It woulda been a Winner!

And then resentment kicked the doors down: what the heck do they know!  Elitist Buddhism!  Time to join the Secular Buddhist!  Seriously though, I noticed the edge of resentment.  Just a little bubble.  I asked myself, Perhaps it’s OK for you to feel rejected?  Perhaps something in this is true?  Not about your lack – or theirs – but about differences in perspective.

No one likes to be told they don’t measure up.  (To give the organization credit, they did tell my how I could meet their standards; unfortunately I don’t have the years to do it in – just yet.)  So I asked myself another life-turning question: What might happen if I treat the resentment as a bell that calls me to awareness of fear?  I noticed a few things in the days that followed.  Things I don’t do because I don’t want to risk rejection.  Things I don’t ask for because I may not get what I want.  Times I draw the shadows around me because it’s just safer than speaking my truth.  Places, people, and opportunities I avoid because I don’t know what will unfold.

Life can get very small when we live this way.

What might happen if we turn away from this smallness to the possibility of something different?

What might happen if I come to the edge between safe and sorry, an edge that vibrates with fear yet filled with possibility?

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self, continued

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I forgot for a moment who I was.  Am.  Well, in the moment that the ink spilled on the paper, I was the ball of frustration and annoyance.  And definitely not who I wanted to be.  I’d like to be this ethereal spirit that floats above such earthly nonsense as one would find in spilled ink.  Alas, that is not who I am.  Nor am I that ball of frustration and annoyance either.

We say that a lot in Zen.  You are not this, you are not that.  This arises because that arises.  I get it.  However, in that moment of spilled ink, there’s no point expounding on quantum physics and the “form is emptiness” argument.  The ink is spilled and Newtonian physics says, Wash your tabletop!  But from an Applied Buddhism perspective, this is a powerful moment: there’s a nanosecond in which to decide if I am going to practice my art or my drama.

A week ago, Maia Duerr asked a group of us what life changing question had we asked ourselves.  You can read the fantastic questions and answers here.  My life-changing question was this: “Is this who I want to continue to be?”  You can read the circumstances of the question’s birth and its life on Maia’s blog.

In the context of yesterday’s post on resentment and resonant joy, that’s a critical question.  For me anyway.  Practice tells me there really is this split second in which we get to shift from the automatic knee-jerk reaction to an event to something that is closer to self-kindness.

I’ve been watching that evolve in my days.  A note arrived that someone I knew had written “advance praise” for a book on relationships.  “Advance Praise” is publishing code for “we need to find experts in the field who can say something about this book to give it credibility.”  I know that.  My small self, however, had a “moment.”  “X?!  You got to &%*+@’ng be kidding me!  With all those divorces …???”

Resonant joy is tough in this case, and in other relationships, where there hasn’t been a sustaining connection.  In other words, without a consistent practice of sharing in the ups and downs of our path, the delusional process of who were are to each other can be very strong.  As a baby step, it’s more useful to see that none of this is about me – neither X’s accomplishment nor the apparent lack of mine (in the context of writing a review about this book).    Truth surfacing, it isn’t my field and I sure as heck don’t know squat about the capital-P psychology of capital-R relationships.  And… here’s the point of practice… X does.  While acknowledging X’s expertise is not Yippee-Yahoo Resonant Joy, it’s appropriate to our un-relationship.

My life-changing question is critical here.  Is this who I want to continue to be?  In the moment between holding up the glossy announcement of the book and the arising of the resentment, there is space to ask and answer it.  Resentment and soul-dissolving stinginess?  Steadiness and realistic appraisal?  It’s in that space that I honour what others have as rightfully theirs even if my prejudice says otherwise.  It is where I let go of wanting what isn’t mine and valuing what is.

What is your life changing question that can move you away from witholding?

 

Addendum:  Read an amazing guest post by Lisa Wilson on a deeper exploration of being kind on Liberated Life Project.