Oh my goodness. I just stumbled on a teaching much needed at this time.
I’ve been in a struggle for many months – which I have alluded to in this blogging expression, but I haven’t wanted to spell it out because the struggle, while mine, is not only mine. My daughter has had an incorrect thought, from my perspective. This lens she is looking through is a distorted doozy which has caused her much unhappiness and suffering. Thoughts of separation do cause suffering.
But what I was not able to see was my agenda here. I have not been able to fix her thought, correct it, punish it, banish it…The therapist wanted to medicate it. Living with it expressing itself so aggressively, so painfully everyday for months and months has been exhausting. Often I was smooth and nonreactive, but fatigue or sticky spots in me got activated and I was reacting largely at times.
I feel so cagey talking about it as “the thought.” But it is not mine to share in a public way. Just now on my jog around the block, a metaphorical equivalent occurred to me that might illustrate just why this “thought” is so difficult. Imagine you are married and your spouse thinks that you are having an affair. You are not, but nothing you can say or do changes this idea in your spouse. This is a powerful and dangerous thought to daily, family life. Every moment is rife with evidence to support the belief – if you laugh on the phone, arrive late, engage in talk with someone, answer an email…any normal behavior can be interpreted as fuel to feed this incorrect perception. The accused in this scenario can try to reassure, try to convince, try to walk the straight and narrow, but until the thought is no longer there, life is full of suffering for the believer of that thought.
Some days I think the incorrect thought is gone for good; actually, it seemed to leave for a whole week recently. I got cocky and relieved and imagined it gone, so that when it reared its ugly head again, well, that is when I tipped the boat over.
I’ve tried everything…why? I know better, but I have never been faced with such large suffering that I cannot fix, run from, or tolerate. This only leaves what?
Opening my heart.
And staying there.
Resistance to this suffering feeds “it” and engages my own ego as well.
Here is a teacher I stumbled across who reflects the subtlety of having no agenda in the face of the ego of another in the delusion of separation. The practice of being present and totally open in the face of such suffering unlocked a difficult situation for this man.
Rupert Spira shows me here how this “other” that I am judging as incorrect is my own, intimate self. There is no other than awareness. Reacting, constricting in any way is judgement. This is a slow and quiet answering that takes Mr. Spira 13 minutes, but this talk is full of truth for me today.
Life as Improv 