The awful isn't us

Gargoyle, photo by Terry Barrett, Italy somewhere

I sat in my chair reading about the concept of causes and conditions after finishing a 6-week course taught by Pema Chodron. It’s not a new concept, and I was feeling a bit arrogant, sort of like I know this, but then I read:

When you feel you are being harmed by someone, remember that the harm that person may be inflicting on you (or someone dear to you) is the direct result of you yourself having harmed others in the past (p. 156).

That made me pause. 

I felt something shift inside of me. For a long time, I've understood the karmic concept as causes and conditions. But when I read those words, I personally felt their meaning. I suddenly saw—no, I felt—my deepest challenges as a larger understanding of the difficulty and that hurting people often hurt others from a place of unresolved pain. Like coming up for air after being underwater to the point of drowning, I let out a wail. In my wail, I thought, "I must have been a tiger who ate children." The thought was not literal. It was an unfolding understanding. 

I had just learned of the alligator that took a boy from the shore at Disney World in Orlando while his parents watched. In reflection about that event, I saw myself as the alligator.

Having once lost my boy swung like a pendulum to me hurting others. (Stay with me here, I'm not implying punishment.)

In the middle of the night, I felt gripped by emotive pain. I went to my cushion.

For hours, I alternated sitting with my feelings and breathing in my own pain and the pain of those parents. For each breath, as instructed so many times by wisdom teachers, spontaneous connection and comfort rhythmically arose. I breathed in pain and breathed out tenderness to the hurt and the hurters. My sob-breaths softened as I better understood a myriad of causes and conditions coming together to create something - and then their dissolution. 

No matter what comes along, we're always standing at the center of the world in the middle of sacred space, and everything that comes into that circle and exists with us there has come to teach us what we need to know. - Pema Chodron

I remained sitting till a glimmer of dawn.

The uncomfortable feelings melted and passed. Loved teachers felt nearby.

This seems incredulous, but I felt a connection and compassion for that alligator and all those who hurt others because of ignorance. I understand a bit more about the pain of being consumed or caught in the insatiable consumption of thoughts and emotions as if spinning in a gerbil's wheel. I better understand that within all of us is innate goodness and a great capacity for learning, growing, and capabilities: patience, tenderness, generosity, kindness, love, and compassion. 

I am hurt and I am a hurter. From a larger view, all of us are the child, the parents of that child, and the alligator.

With gratitude for this breakthrough, I have more clarity about what it means to be patient while learning from tough experiences and the commitment it takes to become less reactive without being overcome by anger, hatred, and despair. Sitting with feelings as they are, allowing and letting them be, and eventually analyzing them brings insight into the causes and conditions of awfulness. It seems unfathomable to me, but because of this insight, my mind and heart soften towards all. Even those who shoot, run over, bomb, and behead. 

It is possible to use awful, painful experiences to understand ourselves and others and, perhaps, eventually realize that the awful isn't truly us.

This post was written July 17, 2016

Pema Chodron introduces a talking + listening practice activity

Image: young children talk and listen. Susan Michael Barrett, photo credit.

At a meditation retreat, Pema Chodron invited us to practice listening fully and talking genuinely from our heart. 

I'm sharing the activity here because if you're like me, practicing helps me be a better partner, mom, and grandmother. I know the struggle to listen and talk openly and honestly and the effort it takes to quiet my mind in order to hear myself or another.

I believe there are no greater gifts we give than to listen and talk with genuineness. 

It takes tremendous staying power to listen. So I want to practice. 

Pema's activity is meant for groups. This is how it works:

• A leader invites participants to pair up. 

• Preferably, choose someone you do not know or do not know well. 

• Decide who will be the listener to begin. The listener will ask a question and the answerer will answer. 

• After 4 minutes, stop and switch roles. Now, here is the important part, There's no response from the person listening (which is a good response in itself).

I realize the potential in this exercise. Listening helps us become familiar with habitual responses. I get to practice not fixing another, or composing my own response while another is talking and I'm pretend-listening, or zoning out if what the person says is too hard to bear or hear. 

The goal is to be there and listen. 

When it's my turn to talk, I get to practice talking from my heart (not necessarily disclosing secrets). Genuine talk.

The leader says, "The conversation does not begin until you find a partner and you can see I am skillfully not giving you the question you will talk about yet." She reminds us of our tendency to talk to each other, back and forth. This activity isn't that type of exchange. The listener just listens and doesn't say anything. 

Now that we're ready, here is the question: What are you afraid of?"

Participants begin the practice.

After 4 minutes, a noise to stop is made by the leader and participants shift roles.

There is another 4 minutes of listening and genuine talk practice.

The exercise concludes by offering 3 minutes for both to say whatever needs to be said.

(Note: Writing originally published 10/7/10 after retreat at Omega, 2010.)

Pema Chödrön's book "When Things Fall Apart" changed how I see and live life

The inscription, When Things Fall Apart, Pema Chödrön.

I recently discovered that Pema Chödrön's book When Things Fall Apart is available in a 20th edition. 

That caught my attention.

A friend gave it to me the week my son passed unexpectedly. She said, “This book might help you.”  

On the day we memorialized my son, I had a profound experience. That morning I read the part in the book where Pema says, “Life is a good teacher and good friend” (p. 11). When I read those words, I was so distraught, I raised my arm to throw the book.

But I didn’t.

I kept reading a few more sentences where Pema encourages us to stay with our broken heart.

After the ceremony, we gathered in my sister’s home for lunch. I remember sitting in a chair in the far corner of her home, upstairs, listening to family and friends talking downstairs. I felt sad, bitter, and angry, and my heart hardening.

Miraculously, I remembered Pema’s words to stay with my broken heart. I stayed with my hurt. I sat still and let myself feel. I sobbed and softened. Later I stood up and went downstairs where I noticed that every person at the lunch had heartbreak.

And later as I studied more, I saw that every being has heartbreak.

It was that connection on that day that opened the door of my heart and mind enough to be with my hurt, and to use what I experience to connect with all others. I began my Tonglen practice. 

August marks ten years since that day and I am awed at the possibility of understanding life as a good teacher and good friend. I would never have imagined that my loss could partner, unfold, clarify, and become a transformed karmic seed. I am utterly awed. 

So, when I opened the newly printed When Things Fall Apart and saw the inscription quote Pema chose, I smiled until a tear dropped. It begins, “Life is a good teacher and good friend....”

I purchased two copies. One to take into my heart, the other to send or give to another. Sort of like Tonglen.

NOTES

I first shared this story with Margie Rodgers who I met at Omega when I wandered into the cafe to explore the offerings of Pema's Foundation. Margie is vice-president of Pema's Foundation.

Today is July 7, 2016. Pema's 80th birthday is soon (July 14, 2016) and she asks us to join her in a day of practice. In a few hours, I'll participate in a live call with her and others to ask questions as part of an intensive study and contemplation of Tokme Zongpo’s Thirty-Seven Practices of a Bodhisattva. How fortunate I am.

Spontaneity (and goosebumps) during an Omega Institute retreat with Pema Chödrön

An image from Is Nothing Something by Thich Nhat Hanh, author, and Jessica McClure, illustrator. It's a book of kids' questions and zen answers. I chose this image because it tenderly reflects the grace of a tender teacher connection.

Through my monitor, she looks me straight in the eye and calls my name.

Who? Pema. That’s who. Pema Chödrön.

I wasn’t even going to ask a question. But I did. I wanted to feel connected with her, my beloved teacher and look, lucky me.

So Pema looks through my screen and says, “Susan….

Susan…people say that if I look straight into the camera, you’ll feel the connection…so Susan….”

Oh, I feel it. I hear her call my name and feel my heart beat faster.

Okay, wait. Back up.

Why is Pema calling my name?

Pema Chödrön presented a three-day retreat at Omega Institute called Touching the Present: Exploring the Nature of Self (May 2015). I registered to attend in person, but it is sold out. So I chose the next best thing. I joined thousands of others and attended online. After Pema teaches, she invites questions. People line up at a microphone to share a personal struggle within the context of the lesson. A lot of people are in line. Getting to the front of the queue is rare.

My question is asked by an Omega moderator. He says, “I have two questions. Do you want the easy or hard one first?”

Pema says, “The hard one.” (Of course.)

That turns out to be mine. (Oh.)

I haven’t asked a question at any retreat I’ve attended online or in-person. This one came spontaneously. I wrote it to help clarify and personalize her teachings. I had no expectation it would be answered.

My question: “Will you talk about illness as not me and instead as part of a creative process?”

Then the moderator adds the other sentences I wrote as context.

“I have incurable cancer. This workshop invites an investigation of illness as both me and not me. I want to view illness as a river, constantly moving and changing, with anything possible. I want to love this illness that teaches me openness and shows me that I am not what or who I think I am.” 

I’m curious about why I asked that question. I don’t now think of myself as having cancer, though sometimes fear or unpleasant memories return. I’m really asking how to process any serious difficulty, especially the biggies like illness, aging, and dying.

Pema says, “It sounds like you know an awful lot already. At least conceptually you understand what we’ve been teaching and the direction you want to go.”

(Admission: I know a teeny, tiny bit. I'm stable, not in pain, and still giving up the idea of "me" as some fixed thing, like cancer.)

The conceptual understanding she refers to is in her lesson about the skandhas—aspects and functions of the body (form) and mind (feeling, perception, labels, mental formations, and consciousness). Pema's lesson investigates what it means to be human and live with presence, and the skandhas study helps us explore emotional reactivity. (I'm reading this book to gain an understanding of the retreat teachings.)

So, okay, I kind of understand the concept.

I want active, practical application to learn how to live the hardened, tight breath that comes when I'm afraid. 

Pema continues:

“So the instruction is mostly to take to heart and apply [what you learn here] over and over, moment-by-moment, when you get afraid and when your thinking mind begins to create unpleasant scenarios. Just keep coming back again and again to your body and mind as a direct experience. If you can, experience your illness at the level of your sixth consciousness [mind], which is to say, with an innocent awareness that does not escalate or elaborate.

[Admission: "Experience with an innocent awareness that doesn't escalate?" Okay, my head gets it. Now if my head would hold hands with my heart.]

Sogyal Rinpoche [author of the book, The Tibetan Book of the Living and Dying] says an interesting thing. When you relate to your sense perceptions at the 6^th consciousness, it creates a little gap, and that little gap makes a significant difference in how you’re going to perceive your world.”

There’s that gap again.

Pema continues, “So what I take from Sogyal Rinpoche’s story is even if it’s just a moment of fresh take—an egoless take on your illness free of storyline, the physical discomfort, and the gut reaction, whatever it might be, just relate to it at the first level over and over again.”

The first level she refers to is a body as form.

This is such a challenging practice, and her next words remind me of that. “Usually, you’re not at a place where you can stay there yet.”

YET. That is one of my new favorite words.

The place I’m not at yet is open spaciousness. Well, actually I am open to spaciousness for the first seconds when I fall into my comfy bed at night and sometimes in meditation. I completely relax and let go.

(Just for now, I imagine doing that. Susan, fall with a deep breath onto your bed or into your favorite chair. Soften. Breathe easy. Hang loose.)

So, I do know this spaciousness. 

I just don’t yet know the full potential of that expansive space when I’m in mental or physical pain. When pain shows up, the tendency is to tighten, not open. I want to feel a fall-into-my-bed fresh sense when it shows up.

I'm curious about my response process to the effects of chemotherapy and 3 years of monoclonal antibody therapy. I want to be able to embrace mental or physical pain without escalating my feelings or elaborating on what is happening. What do I mean by elaborate? An elaboration is when I label what's happening as good or bad, ugly, unfair, character-building, etc., or spin a story based on my ever-changing perceptions. 

Pema ends with, “Sogyal says that just creating that little pause, the little gap, makes a significant difference in how you perceive your illness.”

I’m exploring that.

Image: Pema, a precious presence. Andrea Roth, photographer. From the Pema Chodron Foundation website.

Opening to the thorny parts of life, a sunset, and thoughts of William and Becky

Hug Me, Simona Ciraolo. 
Simona is a Sardinian born author and illustrator who studied animation in Turin, Italy. Simona's shop. Find her on Tumblr. Hug Me is a children's book celebrating connection and inner softness. Image via Brain Pickings. 

This morning I read about how to live with endless inspiration and love. The message: Live open-heartedly. Simply allow life experiences to come in and pass through your being (Michael Singer).

Let experience come in and pass through? 

Yes. For example, when I'm walking to Le Celle (I'm in Cortona, Italy), I pass hundreds of olive trees. Those trees don't stick to my thoughts. I don't begin to judge the tree's leaves as needing to be another color or its branches as less crooked or whether there will be enough olives in my pasta tonight. I walk by and see the tree, take it in, let go, and see the next one. No issues. Same with the wildflowers I pass. I don't worry that crocus stamens are too delicate.

I see and let go so that I'm aware for the next moment.

Well, I decide that today I'll practice letting all of my experiences come in and pass through. I'll go with the flow. No problema.

So it's late afternoon and I decide to walk to the university to read email and write. As I head up the hill, I feel pink light envelope me. I turn and look.

Oh my.

Close your eyes and imagine this experience.

Bring forth from your memory the most spectacular sunset of your life. Think big sky with tangerine-oranges and pinks gradating to reds, magenta, indigo, and violet. Above that color, place patches of cerulean blues.

Next, place an expansive valley of terraced olive groves and vineyards with mountains in the distance. Highlight the mountainous silhouette in yellow-white light.

Then saturate those colors, all of them. Deeply.

I put my book bag on the ground, and walk to the waist-high Etruscan wall, lean on the edge, and gaze longer at the sunset. My breath grows deep and slows. 

I know enough about the science of sunsets that right now I'm only seeing a fraction of its stunning breadth. I’m struck that color is not permanent: the sunlight hitting me now is leftovers from the west, perhaps even yesterday's Florida or Houston sky.

Which reminds me that everything is connected. I take that in.

Moments pass.

A large bat flies by.

The bat circles in a bug feast. Loop de loop, again and again—bat as a child with a flashlight drawing lines.

I take in the experience.

I remember what I read this morning about keeping an open heart. I think, if I can be this open, and oh my goodness, my heart feels flung wide, then maybe I can be this open in any moment in any experience. All I have to do is what this sunset invites: open, relax my heart, and breathe. Let feelings in. Let thoughts come and pass.

That's it.

Okay. Now I'm where I want to be in telling you what happened after I had this wonderful sunset experience.

Well…I notice that I have an itsy bit of arrogance about how well I'm doing. Maybe it's not teeny. No, it's full-blown. Like, "Hey I've got this open-heart thing down, check this off my list."

Which is usually a sign that I'm going to get a chance to grow.

So I get to the university (and WiFi) and open my email.

The first message includes a video of the youngest member of our family and his brother who I see can now swim. I feel like I'm missing out and start randomly trading, well everything, for a chance to hug those two bundles. The next message includes a photo of seven of our grandkids dressed up, and longing joins my missing-family feeling. Then a message from a loved one, and all of a sudden a lump of homesickness saddles up and canters into my heart.

I breathe and feelings swirl, settle for a while, and pass.

But then this.

I read an email from my dear friend and yoga teacher, Becky. She and her husband, William, are at MD Anderson Center where he continues treatment for a serious illness and she continues to care for him.

There you go. Now there's something to work with.

A little humility creeps in. Life isn't always a magenta sunset.

Thoughts and feelings about illness and caregiving don't pass through easily.

I know: I have cancer and I've cared for my husband through two cancer diagnoses, one late-stage. So I'm intrigued about how to stay open.

After reading Becky's message, I'm wondering about this morning's reading and thinking about softening and opening to the thorny parts of life. Is the practice of opening my heart when life is tough really the same as my experience of watching the sunset?

Yes. Every book I've read and teacher I've listened to says yes.

It's painful. (Sometimes it's impossible for me to open.) And I realize that I often read teachings and think practicing what I read is easy. I sometimes even think I should…you fill in the blank. I should be able to do or think or feel or let go and let it all pass. But softening and opening is grueling work.

I have a tender memory of a young woman standing in line at a Pema Chödrön retreat. Pema had just finished talking about softening instead of hardening when things fall apart. She suggested that we sit with our pain: "Let your thoughts and feelings come and go."

So, it's this gal's turn. She goes to the microphone and says, "Pema, but what if a person is really ill, even dying? How does someone open to that? How do I open to watching this person suffer?"

I remember Pema's answer. And her face.

Pema sat for over a minute. She looked out at the woman. She blinked slowly. She swallowed, looked down, swallowed again and looked up and into the woman's eyes. I could see Pema breathe and soften, and I could see that it was painful to answer. Clearly, Pema had personal experience with this question.

In a whisper of a voice she said, "It takes a lot of courage."

Just remembering this and typing it now makes me cry.

My cancer is stable. I'm well. My husband is cured of his two cancers. But William and Becky, and too many others, are actively practicing softening their hearts to extreme challenge.

Moment-to-moment.

Everyday.

So I want to hold up and acknowledge the courageous heart that opens to deep pain and fear.

If I were to imagine the color of this type of courage, you know, what a heart of such softness and strength might look like, it probably would appear as the grandeur of that most-beautiful-ever-sunset I saw tonight.