The Places that Scare You

Amen.

I like Tolle’ mojo on this as well. He says: “Watch out for any sign of unhappiness in yourself, in whatever form—it may be the awakening of the pain-body. This can take the form of irritation, impatience, a somber mood, a desire to hurt, anger, rage, depression, a need to have some drama in your relationship, and so on. Catch it the moment it awakens from its dormant state.”

Pema also says: “Ordinarily we are swept away by habitual momentum and don’t interrupt our patterns even slightly. When we feel betrayed or disappointed, does it occur to us to practice? Usually not. But right there, in the midst of our confusion…” is where we can gain the most from our practice.

She continues: “Acknowledging that we are all churned up is the first and most difficult step in any practice. Without compassionate recognition that we are stuck, it’s impossible to liberate ourselves from confusion. ‘Doing something different’ is anything that interrupts our ancient habit of indulging in our emotions. We do anything to cut the strong tendency to spin out… Anything that’s non-habitual will do—even sing and dance or run around the block. We do anything that doesn’t reinforce our crippling habits. The third most difficult practice is to then remember that this is not something we do just once or twice. Interrupting our destructive habits and awakening our heart is the work of a lifetime.”

Here’s to being compassionate warriors and interrupting these habits!!! :)

What a great story!

Imagine that: A mouse that’s smart enough to see that eating the cheese will lead to the end of its life and then deciding not to nibble!

What cheese are you nibbling on right before the snap of the trap comes down and suffering begins?

Can you see that the harsh words or anger or criticism or gossip or the zoning out in front of the TV or the extra hour online or the extra glass of wine or couple beers are all just cheese sitting in a trap waiting for you to snatch it so suffering can getchya?!?

The first step in changing our behavior is always awareness of the behavior that’s causing suffering, so let’s make it official.

Here are my 5 Favorite Cheeses:

1. _______________________________________________________________
2. _______________________________________________________________
3. _______________________________________________________________
4. _______________________________________________________________
5. _______________________________________________________________

Alrighty.

Now that we’ve got the top temptations identified, let’s see if we can become more aware of moments when we’re tempted to snatch the cheese and NOT DO IT!!!

All this reminds me of some of my favorite Dalai Lama wisdom. He says: “One begins identifying those factors which lead to happiness and those factors which lead to suffering. Having done this, one then sets about gradually eliminating those factors which lead to suffering and cultivating those which lead to happiness. That is the way.”

There ya go.

That is *definitely* the way, eh? :)

While we’re on the subject of rodents, how about some rat poisoning?

That’s another great image, eh?!?

You holding a grudge?

You DO realize that’s about as smart as eating rat poison and thinking the rat will die, right?

Seriously though. It’s that backwards. :)

A MUCH better solution would be to have compassion for the other individual, to realize that we’re all just pilgrims on the quest to discover our highest selves and offer ourselves and others a hug and a smile when we’re not quite living up to the standards we aspire to.

But a grudge? Not such a good idea.

Next time you’re feeling the urge to hold a grudge, go to the store and look at a box of rat poisoning on the shelf and commit to no longer consuming the lethal stuff!!

Love that.

Reminds me of a section in Marci Shimoff’s great book Happy for No Reason (see Notes) where she provides us with an inspiring look at some of the recent and powerful findings in Positive Psychology.

In the book Marci talks about the fact that we all have what psychologists call a “happiness set point” that’s about 40% genetic, 10% circumstantial (like our wealth and marital status) and 50% within our control. Researchers have discovered that even if someone experiences great gains or losses they tend to wind up at the same happiness set point.

For example, after about a year, a lottery winner will lose her buzz and go back to the same level of happiness AND, after the same period, a person who loses his legs will come out of the despair and back to the same basic level of happiness.

Remarkable, eh?

The cool thing is we can raise our happiness levels through practices like what Pema recommends here: to “incline our minds to joy.” In essence, to practice LOOKING for things to celebrate. The warm water in our shower, the smooth ride on a freeway, the abundant food in a grocery store or at a farmer’s market.

Our life is FULL of blessings and we want to develop the practice of seeing the beauty. As we do this, we literally train our subconscious minds to find more amazing stuff for us.

It’s kinda like when we go out and buy a car. Ever wonder why suddenly you see your make/model/color car EVERYWHERE you look?

Obviously, those cars were *always* there, but you didn’t see them until you’d thought about it enough times that your subconscious mind (technically, your reticular activating system (or RAS) which is responsible for filtering the trillions of stimuli that constantly bombard us) thought it must be important to you and started showing you all of them on the road!

The SAME THING happens when we incline our mind to joy. OR, for that matter, when we incline our mind to pain.

If we’re ALWAYS complaining the world’s evil and people are cruel, guess what? Our subconscious mind will filter our experiences and serve up all kinds of examples of evil and cruelty.

If, on the other hand, we incline our mind to joy and celebrate all the little things that are going well in our lives, our RAS will feed up more and more examples of things to celebrate.

Powerful stuff.

So… What can YOU celebrate today?!?

And, how about a look at the opposite of inclining our mind to joy?

Hah. “Pouring cement on the garden.”

Well, that’s one way to make sure our flowers don’t grow, eh?!?

Are YOU constantly thinking about the things that aren’t going the way you want?

(Hint: if you make a habit of blaming, criticizing, and complaining you prolly are. :)

If so, stop that!

In The Diamond Cutter (see Notes), a great book all about applying the wisdom of the ancient Tibetan Buddhist sutra by the same name, Geshe Michael Roache talks about the importance of getting rid of what he calls “useless talk.” Specifically, blaming, criticizing, complaining, and gossip.

It’s an incredibly powerful practice to start cleaning that stuff out of our minds as we incline our minds to joy.

To recap:

Inclining our minds to joy = planting seeds in what will be a beautiful garden.

Nurturing our dissatisfaction = pouring concrete on our garden. :)

(So, now we’ve got cheese and mouse traps, eating rat poison, and pouring cement on our garden as great images to help us become more aware of habits that aren’t serving us. :)

Pema talks about the virtues (or “four limitless qualities”) we want to cultivate and “the near and far enemies” to these virtues.

It goes like this:

As Pema says: “These enemies are good teachers that show us that we can accept ourselves and others complete with imperfections. We develop trust in our open and forgiving mind. In doing so, we discover the strength that allows us to enter into the suffering of the world.”

Check out the book for a full discussion of each of these limitless qualities and their enemies.

For now, let’s look at a couple in more depth:

This reminds me of an incredibly powerful model one of my friends and favorite teachers, David Emerald, has developed. He calls it “The Dreaded Drama Triangle” (or “DDT” for short) and describes it in his great little book The Power of TED*. Check out the Notes and his book for what I consider to be on the most elegantly simple and powerful models to understand how we’re showing up in the world.

In short, Emerald tells us that we can assume one of two orientations in the world: that of a Victim or of a Creator. If we choose Victim, we see everyone as helpless and switch between our role as a Victim and that of a Persecutor and a Rescuer. The pity that Pema is describing above is very much a part of how a Rescuer would try to help someone.

To have true compassion, we need to step out of The Dreaded Drama Triangle and into what Emerald calls “The Empowerment Dynamic.” From this position, we live as a Creator and we see others as inherently strong and capable of dealing with the challenges of the world.

Rather than fall into roles of the Persecutor or Rescuer, we become Challengers and Coaches. Seeing the inherent power of those around us, we can avoid the near enemy of Pity and live with true compassion.

And Zen Master Genpo Roshi talks about true compassion in his great book Big Mind Big Heart (see Notes). He says this: “I am always compassionate, but sometimes in a very feminine, gentle way, nurturing and supportive, and sometimes in a very masculine way, ruthless and decisive. But I always have in my arsenal what is necessary to get the job done. I am totally integrated. There’s no need to become integrated; I am Integrated Feminine/Masculine Compassion. Another name for me is Big Heart.”

Let’s remember to maintain flexibility and integrate masculine and feminine compassion as we address idiot compassion—the near enemy of compassion!

Impermanence.

We talk about this theme a lot because it’s another one of those Ideas all of our great teachers come back to again and again.

I like Anthony de Mello’s lyrical words on the subject (see Notes on Awareness): “As the great Confucius said, ‘The one who would be in constant happiness must frequently change.’ Flow. But we keep looking back, don’t we? We cling to things in the past and cling to things in the present… Do you want to enjoy a symphony? Don’t hold on to a few bars of the music. Don’t hold on to a couple of notes. Let them pass, let them flow. The whole enjoyment of a symphony lies in your readiness to allow the notes to pass…”