People who have come to know me in the last ten years or so assume I have always been ‘this way’. By ‘this way’, I mean the way they perceive me – happy, contented, full of energy, always on top of things, warm, giving, calm, peaceful and serene (oh yes, those last three in particular!). (I am sure they have other impressions of me but those are not relevant to the subject of this article :-)).
You would only need to talk to my siblings and my mother and my children and my friends and acquaintances from beyond ten years ago to get very different impressions!
Whilst back then, I might have appeared to most as the ‘deep and silent’ type, my silence was more of a brooding kind; not quite the silence of tranquility and quiet joy that it tends to be these days! And in those moments when I broke my ’silence’, I was intensely vocal, headstrong and cocksure, brandishing my ’sword of judgment’ at the people and things in my life; a sword sharpened by my own beliefs about people and especially about their ability to be honest!
Put simply, if I did not sense that you were sincere and prepared to be brutally honest about everything (and I mean brutally honest about everything), well, I simply had no time for you. Needless to say, my self-appointment as judge, jury and executioner ensured that only a few survived to become friends and confidantes!
I had grown up an angry child, resentful of the various injustices I believed I had suffered through my significant others. I had grown up deciding that pretty much half the people in my life were hypocrites and the other half idiots, with a few exceptions, of which I was one of course!
Was I a happy person? Need you ask? I was intensely miserable, preoccupied with my faults and the faults of others. There’s little joy to be found when swinging uncontrollably between judgment of self and other, neither capable of returning favorable results! So, peaceful, content, warm? Umm…Nope!
What made me want to change? The desperate, almost wailing need to stop feeling so awful. The desire to stop feeling so angry and so guilty for the pain that I seemed to be causing others; at least that was what I believed then.
What helped me change? 1) The realization of the possibility that I did not have to continue the rest of my life this way. 2) The awareness that not everybody seemed as miserable as me; that in fact, many people I knew seemed to enjoy life considerably more than I did.
So, here was the turning point – a desire for change and a believe that change was possible. For the first time in my life, I believed that I could be happy. It had taken me about thirty-five years to get to this point.
I began to practice meditation in a more committed and informed way. My practice had previously been spasmodic and lacking in conviction. I attended classes, read a great deal, and practised daily. I noticed changes.
I felt more peaceful within me. I was less judgmental of myself and of others. I became more curious about myself, constantly maintaining an inner attention that kept me in touch with the ebb and flow of my thoughts, feelings and sensations.
A panorama of mental phenomena started to unfold before me – its ever-changing nature keeping me absorbed for hours at a time, even as I engaged in daily activities! Where had I been all my life???
I was experiencing true peace and not just the relief from suffering that I had previously experienced and sought through conversation, obsessive fantasizing, reading, food etc.
Yes, this was a peace that had always been sitting underneath my experiences of anger, jealousy, guilt, fear and other such troubling emotions. Here it was. I knew that it had always been there and I knew that it would always be there. It was not something that I had created. It was innate, revealing itself when all other preoccupations were allowed to settle or fall away.
I knew with a certainty I had never felt before that this was something I would always have no matter what happened! I knew I could experience peace if I allowed it. It was not something that could be acquired. Rather, it was something that had to be allowed!
I knew that I could deal with my anger and any other afflictive emotion without being helplessly sucked into a tailspin. I knew that I could observe my anger without identifying with it. It was no more ‘my’ anger. Rather it was simply ‘anger’ – an event, a phenomenon, a ‘happening’. I began to mentally say: Anger is happening. Sadness is happening. Fear is happening.
It was empowering. It was liberating. I knew because I experienced these emotions as separate to the experience of observing. I knew because I had experienced, in awareness, the rising and falling of an emotion, a thought, a sensation.
Yes, I was becoming more peaceful. I was becoming the being that I naturally am. And with this peace arose joy – a gentle lifting of spirit, often rising from the base of my chest and spreading throughout me, something quite palpable.
I was smiling a lot more, listening a lot more, often not saying very much. The brooding silence had become the loving silence, as I was judging less and accepting more. Besides, there is not a lot to say in the presence of truth. And it was truth that was beginning to reveal itself to me. The truth of my being, the truth of my nature, and consequently the truth of every other being.
So here I am today, continuing my practice, deepening and sustaining my experience of this innate peace and joy. I am less likely to take my judgments of either myself or others seriously, often chuckling inwardly (and sometimes outwardly) upon realizing that ‘judgment is happening’!
I enjoy myself far more than I ever did and I enjoy people infinitely more than I ever did! Yes, I am a much happier person now than I was ten years ago. The process of allowing peace and joy, didn’t happen overnight. It is still happening! And yes, I am becoming more that which I truly am – peaceful, loving and joyous!
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