Experience your natural happiness behind the clouds of conditioning!

Image at I Breathe In

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Quite often, people who are new to meditation practice may find the experience disconcerting.  Take a client of mine, Jake, for instance.

By his assessment, the first two daily sessions went very well for him.  However, on the third day, during the third session, he went into a mild panic and interrupted the session by asking if he could ’sit this one out’.

I opened my eyes to reassure him that I had heard his request and to indicate that I had been aware of his ’struggle’.  I did this by resting my gaze softly on his eyes, smiling and saying : “We are nearly done.  Could you hold on?”

This did reassure him and so he remained for the rest of the practice, following which, we had our usual debrief.

“What was it that troubled you?”  I asked.

“Too many thoughts” he replied shaking his head as if trying to shake off the thoughts.

“Too many thoughts or too troubling thoughts?” I asked.

He laughed in amusement, relieved that I understood.  “Troubling thoughts”, he replied.

It was time for me to share yet another Buddhist analogy that helps to describe experiences like Jake’s.

You have a garment that you decide to wash under a tap of running water.  You just assume that since you’ve used the garment, you should wash it.

As the water runs through the garment, however, you are alarmed to see how much dirt it releases from the garment.  You had not been aware of all that dirt, yet now that you see it you’re alarmed and somewhat repelled by it.

What do you do?  Do you curse the water for releasing all that dirt?  For making you aware of it?  Or do you allow the water to continue releasing as much of the dirt as possible until you are left with a clean garment?

Meditation practice allows you to become aware of all the conditioned thoughts, fears, anxieties, cravings, attachments, doubts, self-disgust, aversions and beliefs that have become part of your ‘garment’ of existence.  Meditation practice does not put all of this into your mind, no more than running water puts the dirt in your garment, it just makes you aware of the ‘dirt’.

Would you still want to abandon the practice?  Or can you see that it allows you to experience your natural happiness that lies in wait for you behind the clouds of your conditioning that your life experiences have built up?

Remember, you cannot change what you don’t know or what you refuse to acknowledge.

If you don’t know what thoughts, feelings, beliefs, attachments, aversions etc lie in your subconscious mind, or if you insist on denying or ignoring them, how can you possibly change them, or choose different thoughts, feelings, beliefs etc?

As you become more accepting of your thoughts, feelings, beliefs, cravings etc, as you become more willing to acknowledge them, they lose their ‘power’ over you.  Instead, you are able to see them for what they are – events – nothing more and nothing less, and you are in a position to make choices, choosing those thoughts/feelings/beliefs that serve you well and discarding or changing those that don’t.

Remember, you are not your thoughts or feelings, so do not identify with them.  See them instead as events that you experience.  Learn to think like this:

Anger is happening NOT I am angry.

This is not playing with words.  This is recognizing truth, or as Buddhism puts it, ’seeing things as they truly are’.

Blessings,

Lucy Lopez

Awakening to Happiness!