Every entity in this universe wants to be appreciated.
Imagine that you had a mother or father who always consistently rejected you, made it clear that you were not welcome and that you should leave. How would you feel?
My guess is that in one way or another you would keep trying to get this mother's or father's attention, trying over and over to get them to appreciate you. Can anyone relate?
Now imagine a different scene: Imagine that every time you saw your mother or father they welcomed you, bid you come in and sit down and be comfortable. Basking in the warmth of that security, it probably wouldn't be too long before you'd ask: "Can I go out and play now?"
This is approximately the situation of those parts of our mind that we don't welcome, that we reject and wish would go away.
Suppose a flower of sadness—or irritation or anxiety or whatever—shows up in our mind. Our usual response is to try to "change our mood," to make the "bad" mood go away and substitute some mood more to our liking.
Trying to change our mood is, of course, a subtle rejection of the one that is already there. The mood that is already there, which has doubtless tried to gain attention many times before, will keep coming back trying to gain acceptance.
What would happen if we just welcomed that flower of sadness—or irritation or anxiety or whatever—and bid it come in and make itself comfortable?
I know—if we did that, it seems, how would it ever go away? But note that such an attitude is just another aspect of our rejection of the unwanted mood/thought-complex, an attitude which guarantees that it will keep coming back and trying to be noticed and appreciated.
It's good to mention here that welcoming is not the same as buying-in. There's no need to buy in to our thoughts, to clutch them to our breast and say, "How true!"
To welcome something is not the same as agreeing with it, picking it up, buying-in to its concept or any of that. We simply stop rejecting its presence, because we know now that we no longer want to reject any part of reality.
We simply welcome our flower of sadness or irritation or anxiety or whatever like an old friend, which it is. We become perfectly willing for whatever-it-is to be there because—duh—it already is!
And then we notice an interesting thing: If we're perfectly willing for whatever-it-is to be there, we're no longer suffering from it. Our suffering is caused not by the mood itself, but from our resistance to its being there.
This is part of a more general principle:
Suffering is not caused by reality itself,
but by our rejection of some part of it.
We look at some part of reality, internal or external, and pronounce that it shouldn't be here. Reality should not have war. Reality should not contain people who lie. Reality should not contain partners who leave us. Reality should not have negative feelings—on and on.
Reality itself is the ultimate arbiter of how it should be. Our little 3-pound brain is no match for the judgment of reality itself. How do we know that reality should be the way it is? Because it is. That's how we know.
This also means that there's nothing we need to do to be perfect, whole, complete. Rather, it works the other way around. First we fall in love with ourselves, "warts" and all. Then, miraculously, things do begin transforming—
even though we're no longer concerned about it.
Does this mean we don't set goals or make plans? Not at all. It just means that we hold them lightly, knowing that reality is ultimately going to go wherever it goes.
So if a flower of sadness or whatever shows up internally, we can appreciate it just like any other flower that shows up in our garden. And then, in the strangest way, we're joyful behind the "sadness" or "anxiety" or whatever. We're rejoicing at the beauty of reality in whatever form it happens to show up internally.
Naturally, the same holds true for the world. It looks like we have to maneuver the world to be a certain way and then we can love it. But as far as I can tell, it works the other way around: When we fall in love with the world as it is, it begins transforming before our very eyes even though we're no longer wanting it to be different.
This doesn't mean that we stop doing whatever we do. Just as a seed is perfect when we plant it in the ground and yet there's a place for watering it every day, so we can see the world as perfect and yet still nurture it in any way we can.
So if we're working on the environment or caring for our child or designing a new business plan, we might very well continue to do whatever-it-is, but without the stress and tension of condemning the nature of reality—or some part of it—as we do it.
Reality and God are not separate in any way; they are the same thing. If reality were different than God then God would not be One and so would not be God in the first place. Reality is God; God is reality. Would we like to see God? Simply open our eyes.
And it's as if God is playing hide-and-seek with us. God hides behind the million different faces of reality and our circumstances and then says to us, in effect: "What part of Me is it that you can't love yet?"
—jim sloman, 4.19.04 for Feb 10
|
