Can we hope for a better understanding of ourselves and the fragmentation we can feel personally as well as in the wider world? Is there a way to happiness that is sustainable and steady?
We can spend a lot of time ruminating about the way things are, how we got here and what could have made a difference, as well as seeking ways to feel happier, hoping there’s a solution for our darkest moods and obsessions and the difficulties and divisions we see more widely in the world.
Our reactivity is so quick - thought patterns, emotions, spoken words and actions appear with little conscious choice, the intimate defensive instincts that are driving them unseen and invisible. Uncomfortable feelings and sensations of the past and fears of the future flood the present, consuming all space and ease, and we are carried helplessly along.
Such helplessness is not hopelessness.
Developing a relationship with our hidden inner world and understanding its workings is the purpose of contemplative and embodied practice. Making visible what has been invisible shows us “how” we are thinking and feeling, revealing the pressure that shapes the way we treat ourselves and others. This insight guides us to reset the role we can take when we are projecting and blaming, towards relating to the pressure that is driving division and unhappiness.
It’s humbling to meet the gap between who we think we are and how we feel in these moments and recognise that communication is needed to bring our fragmented experience into balance. The more clearly we see what is going on in this hidden inner world, the more humility we feel about this realisation. Gone is the certainty and satisfaction in our views and opinions, replaced with an appreciation that we and others can and do think, speak and act from a place of distortion without realising the true nature of the impact on ourselves and others.
Developing skilful communication to deal with this reality is the focus of the Buddha’s teaching. He sought to help us understand what we are dealing with so we can uncover the embodied reactions that weigh us down in our life and relate more expansively to the pressure that’s driving experience. His insight was to give guidance on how to relate to rather than disconnect from our unfolding experience through being open to listen, learn and love.
Being open to listen
When we truly listen to our inner world and experience, we recognise how exhausting it is to relentlessly regurgitate past and future narratives. Becoming aware of the movements of our minds, shifts in sensation and energy, we can recognise what happens in the flood of the uncomfortable. Listening is a doorway to the unknown, it reveals what we have not yet understood about ourselves with an evolving humility that opens the path of self-discovery and the readiness to learn.
Being open to learn
It’s through listening to our inner world and meeting experience, that we learn it’s the same old stories, beliefs and attitudes that repeat. We learn how they distort the way we see and engage with others and situations, feeding our moods and obsessions. The Buddha described this as the dukkha that inhabits all our lives. Relating to reality, not as we see it or wish it to be, but as it is, we progressively learn what we are to leave behind as well as take forward. This leads us towards a better understanding of ourselves and the role we can take in our own life.
Being open to love
It’s in the way we meet our own mess that we discover what being open to love really means. Re-orientation into relationship with this involves us learning to take care of “how” we are thinking and feeling and the way we treat ourselves and others.
It’s also how we discover the guardianship role that’s meant for us – to take care of the precious life we’ve been gifted and embrace the meaning and purpose that role has to offer in all the circumstances of life we meet. We may be knocked out of balance on many occasions so it’s important for us to able to appreciate the conditions that support us to feel at ease, steady and centred. Learning through the body to tune into a safe environment, earthed and supported, we can meet the cycles of depletion more freely, so energy is re-directed in a wholesome way and become more confident that balance can and does restore.
Living as our own guardian in this way means that responsibility for ourselves no longer feels like another chore and burden we need to escape from, but instead it’s a gift we can give ourselves whenever we remember we’ve checked out of listening.
This re-orientation into relationship and with it a kinder, more patient communication renews our trust to meet whatever experience is unfolding, knowing we are safe. Whatever our embodied reaction, it’s okay, we forgive ourselves, we soften around the sensation, be it tension or void, offering a loving space to feel whatever is present.
This heartfelt expansion of relating to how we are feeling is the opening we need to learn how to treat ourselves and others with compassion, staying with the truth of our reaction without trying to fix or change it.
We come to realise it’s the patient embrace we give ourselves, as we face the truth of what is most challenging and painful, that brings relief and with it the steady and sustainable happiness the Buddha described. It is in the simplicity of this experience of loving relationship that we meet ourselves opening to, and love flowing with, that truth.
This engagement with the fullness of loving relationship embodies the wisdom of the Buddha’s teaching. It gives hope for healing the fragmentation that we feel, whenever we face division and difficulty, and for living in compassionate participation with the wider world.
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