As a kid growing up with learning disabilities in an education system before learning disabilities were a thing, school really wasn’t a good time for me. Imagine, then, my delight when something very close to a mathematical equation dropped in. Here ‘tis:
IS→conditioned mind→is not→figuring out→doing to fix.
An example:
IS: Peace
→ Conditioned mind
→ Is not: “I never feel peaceful.”
→ Figuring it out: “Maybe I’m too stressed, maybe I should leave
my job/relationship/life as it is.”
→ Doing to fix: “Ah, I know what to do. I’m going to practice
harder, meditate more….”
In other words, I leave the experience I’m having—peace—without realizing I’m having it, only to come to in a conversation of something wrong/not enough. Because something wrong/not enough is the first experience I’m aware of, it seems obvious that the problem I’m having is because I’m missing something, don’t have something, am doing the wrong thing. There’s something wrong, it must be something I’m doing or not doing, a way I’m being or not being, and I need to figure it out so I can do what I need to do to get what I need to get to be how I need to be.
That path, as we’ve all noticed, leads directly into a quagmire of misery. Once again, I’m not how I should be and it’s my fault that I’m not having the life I want. Even worse is that when I do what I’m told to do to make things right, that doesn’t work either and I feel even worse because I’ve failed at the only solution that could get me out of this mess.
The clearest example, for me at least, is one we talk about regularly in our Practice: We’re in the Yearlong Retreat or a workshop. Everyone has been asked to put themselves in the queue as support for in-the-moment presence. Person comes on and says, “I put myself in the queue because the voices in my head were telling me not to.” That seems for all the world to be what happened. But it isn’t. What really happened was 1) an impulse to hit *6 (IS), then a message from conditioned mind of “Don’t do that, you have nothing to say, you don’t want to be unmuted (is not),” followed by a cascade of “You should/I don’t want to/if you don’t you’re just giving in to ego/I’ll do it tomorrow,” etc (figuring out/doing/fixing).
The conditioned scam is to “wake us up” at the point of resistance so that we assume that’s our real, true, and authentic experience. We’re meant to believe that resistance is who/how we are. But it’s not! We just missed who/how we are, what is, because attention was not directed inward, on wholeness, it was following conditioning around “out there.” We were not in an expansive awareness. We were focused on whatever was yammering around in conditioned mind and we were unaware of what was actually happening.
So, if that’s what’s going on, and getting out of it the way we’ve always tried to get out of it doesn’t work, what?? It’s actually shockingly simple and nothing we don’t already know. And, it’s why Practice is so adamant that the self-hating beatings must stop.
If, big if here, when we hear a negative message—I don’t want to not eat sugar, stop drinking alcohol, go to bed on time, attend to finances, exercise, meditate, etc.—we stop. Just stop. Bring everything to a halt and just watch. Just notice. The conversation in conditioned mind is going to ramp up, try to push in, get louder. Self-hating messages will attempt to get us to feel bad, as if we’ve done something wrong. We just watch.
As we watch, not going along with any of the hooks being thrown at us, we can let it drop in what that negative message is. “I don’t want to stop eating sugar.” Soon we will realize that a negative message is always in reaction to the “positive” that threatens the negative, threatens ego identity. (I’m a person who wants not to eat sugar, but I’m weak and powerless, and I can’t stick to my commitments.) However, the real question we’re not allowed even to know about in order to ask is: If I stop eating sugar what will happen to ego-I’s ability to torture me with temptation, submission, shame and suffering?
Instead of heading off down a well-worn path to misery, as we stay still and just notice, we realize that we must have been having an experience of the well-being that comes from taking care of the body and that feeling of well-being triggered the ego-I reaction.
A response can go in a variety of directions. It might be a perfect time to pick up the recorder and do a victory lap around successes in moving from harmful choices for the body to lovingkindness choices for the body. If the message is “I don’t want to exercise,” we can know there was a preceding message that included a desire to move. That “time to move” message—which we are trained to miss as our attention is distracted—gets run through conditioned mind and comes out in the familiar “I hate exercising” message. I look again, a little closer, and, yes, I actually do want to get up and move.
I want to be responsible when it comes to my finances, but everything I try ends in failure. I hear, “I know I should tackle my finances, but I don’t want to,” and I deeply believe that’s me talking about how I feel. But it’s not. So, what I can do is stop. Stop and breathe. Watch everything those critical voices are saying to try to pull me in. Then it drops in. Yes, this is the time to recognize I’m getting this negativity because, though I wasn’t consciously aware of it, there was an impulse to work on my finances. I can say to the voices, “Thank you. If you hadn’t gotten so worked up, I probably would have missed this opportunity to work on my finances. Thank you so much for the reminder. I’m going to get out the paper work, grab the recorder, pull up a chair for the Mentor so we can talk everything over, and get on with sorting the money!”
In support of returning to that original, often unnoticed impulse, here’s a reminder of some Practice opportunities:
Top Tier Nagging—ready to assist us with support when our resolve tends to weaken. (info@top-tiernagging.com)
Best Shape Possible—after a final week and a short break we will be returning to take on chronic pain.
Zen Cooks—cooking together with the kind of detailed instruction that guarantees a delicious meal.
We have a whole heap of egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate to recover from. Much as the ego-I voices would like to convince us that “you should be able to do this by yourself,” that’s simply not true. Even the Buddha didn’t do it on his own. Keeping as much of our attention on here, in this moment, now, is our best way to end the suffering, and we tend to have a lot of fun as we’re doing it!
Did someone mention the Farm? Thank you. Yes, we have some photos from the Farm during the month of scything. We harvested a lot of much-needed grass and only have about 23 acres left to mow (scythe).
The Scything Operation
Team Scything
Gathering into piles
Grass used for:
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Making compost |
 Latest compost pile |
And, since we have been speaking of strawberries…
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…not to mention flowers still blooming
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In gasshō,
ch