Hi all
A friend of mine writes these 'Lifeletters' for a local website. This one today really resonated with me. Seemed there were some salient points in there for the journey with alcohol. Feeling like I have 'committed to the wave'. It's AF for me here on!
If you'd like to read more of her stuff you can visit her website at Barefoot Journeys : Radiant Mind and Integrity of the Heart with Shayla Wright in Nelson BC
Enjoy
Bean
A student and friend of mine went surfing in Oregon over Christmas. We had a conversation, a very brief one, when he returned.
"You can't half catch a wave," he said. "You have to commit to it, and then once you've caught the wave, you have to surrender. If you try to control it, you'll never make it."
That image contained something for me, something that just kept working away inside, like sand in an oyster. In the nondual coaching I do with people, we learn how to ride the waves of our feelings in a very similar way. There's an edge, right at the heart of this practice, where I am no longer controlling my feeling, no matter how intense it is. But I'm not allowing the feeling to take me over. I'm meeting that feeling without any resistance at all, just like when I paddle up to that huge wave. It looks terrifying if I'm separate from it, trying to control it. How can I manage it? One little movement away from that wave, the contraction, the self- protective curl, and I'm lost in struggle and fear and dismay. I have to enter the wave, become one with it, or else it becomes my foe, my enemy.
It's quite an obvious thing when it comes to surfing, not so obvious when it comes to the chaos that life brings to us, and the feelings that emerge when we are being tumbled around in that wild unpredictable flow. It could be something small, like a computer that crashes. Or it could be something bigger: a house that burns down, a diagnosis of cancer, the loss of a job.
So much of what we are taught in our culture is about being on top of things. We don't want to break down, lose control. That's like the ultimate humiliation-something to be avoided at all costs. But the surfer isn't on top of the wave. He or she is one with it.
A dear friend who is a teacher, a therapist and a Vietnam vet, told me about a time during the Vietnam war when he and his group of men had to cross a field. It was just a few hundred yards of rocks and grass and mud, with the Viet Cong camped on the other side, not far away. If they could make it across without being seen or heard, they could escape down the river on the far side of the field. Travelling with them were some men from the villages, simple and very wise. One of these men helped my friend prepare for crossing the field. He was slapping mud all over his face, arms, hands, and neck, as camouflage.
As he did this, he was talking to my friend. "There's just one thing you have to do, if you want to cross this field and come out at the river alive, " he said.
"What's that?" asked my friend.
"Become one with the field," the villager replied.
It took them a long time to cross that field. Every single moment was the moment of surrender, of silent life-and-death practice. A gust of wind, a movement of grass, the sound of mud or rock or breath- these were not things to be argued with. There was no room for negotiation--that would have cost these men their lives. Resistance and refusal had no relevance in that crossing, during those endless hours in that muddy field. Each man had to discover, over and over again, what it was to be so one with that field that they were invisible to the Viet Cong.
When they finally made it across, and partway down the river, they stopped and had some conversation. The villager said something to my friend, something that took him a long time to understand. "Being one with the field, " he said. "That's not just how you made it out of there alive. Being one with the field is the only way we will ever put an end to war."
The war inside and the war outside are not so different. When I can soften, when I can be the space, the open field in which my most desparate thoughts and feelings are arising, I end the war inside me. When life throws me into deep water, I want to kick and thrash around and scream about how unfair it is. "Why did this happen to me?" Then I'm lost, like the tiny sufer on his board, trying to negotiate with an enormous wave.
When I'm floundering around in big ocean waves, when my life is at stake, there is a lot of natural clarity about letting go. Somehow, in the middle of our more ordinary days, we forget that surrender is not a luxury. It's the only way to be fully alive. It's the only way to stop complaining, to heal the inner bitterness, to open the heart to the unconditional goodness of life.
It doesn't mean that I'm stuck where I am, like a big lump on a log. It's strange how often we confuse the openness of non-resistance with passivity, with being stuck and helpless. We think change can only happen through hardness, through gritting our teeth and pitting ourseves against what is.
If we keep struggling, fighting, resisting, then our life becomes a kind of unending complaint. We look as if we are grown up, but it's only the body that has grown up. Inside we are living what I sometimes call a 'tantrum incarnation.' We forget, sometimes for a very long time, that we could live like the clouds live, floating on the mountain. Not passive, but just one, moving with the great flow of life, no longer needing to hold on, to prove ourselves, to dig in and take a position.
When everything seems to be lost, when chaos and darkness take over, we have, as a coach of mine puts it, a great opportunity to 'discover the gold.' The gold is always here, the possibility of receiving this moment as it is. So simple.
My human nature, my conditioned mind keeps asking, "Why can't it be my way?" Life seems to be asking us another question. We can only live our way into the answer.
"I think, finally, one must take one's life in one's arms." (Arthur Miller)
A friend of mine writes these 'Lifeletters' for a local website. This one today really resonated with me. Seemed there were some salient points in there for the journey with alcohol. Feeling like I have 'committed to the wave'. It's AF for me here on!
If you'd like to read more of her stuff you can visit her website at Barefoot Journeys : Radiant Mind and Integrity of the Heart with Shayla Wright in Nelson BC
Enjoy
Bean
A student and friend of mine went surfing in Oregon over Christmas. We had a conversation, a very brief one, when he returned.
"You can't half catch a wave," he said. "You have to commit to it, and then once you've caught the wave, you have to surrender. If you try to control it, you'll never make it."
That image contained something for me, something that just kept working away inside, like sand in an oyster. In the nondual coaching I do with people, we learn how to ride the waves of our feelings in a very similar way. There's an edge, right at the heart of this practice, where I am no longer controlling my feeling, no matter how intense it is. But I'm not allowing the feeling to take me over. I'm meeting that feeling without any resistance at all, just like when I paddle up to that huge wave. It looks terrifying if I'm separate from it, trying to control it. How can I manage it? One little movement away from that wave, the contraction, the self- protective curl, and I'm lost in struggle and fear and dismay. I have to enter the wave, become one with it, or else it becomes my foe, my enemy.
It's quite an obvious thing when it comes to surfing, not so obvious when it comes to the chaos that life brings to us, and the feelings that emerge when we are being tumbled around in that wild unpredictable flow. It could be something small, like a computer that crashes. Or it could be something bigger: a house that burns down, a diagnosis of cancer, the loss of a job.
So much of what we are taught in our culture is about being on top of things. We don't want to break down, lose control. That's like the ultimate humiliation-something to be avoided at all costs. But the surfer isn't on top of the wave. He or she is one with it.
A dear friend who is a teacher, a therapist and a Vietnam vet, told me about a time during the Vietnam war when he and his group of men had to cross a field. It was just a few hundred yards of rocks and grass and mud, with the Viet Cong camped on the other side, not far away. If they could make it across without being seen or heard, they could escape down the river on the far side of the field. Travelling with them were some men from the villages, simple and very wise. One of these men helped my friend prepare for crossing the field. He was slapping mud all over his face, arms, hands, and neck, as camouflage.
As he did this, he was talking to my friend. "There's just one thing you have to do, if you want to cross this field and come out at the river alive, " he said.
"What's that?" asked my friend.
"Become one with the field," the villager replied.
It took them a long time to cross that field. Every single moment was the moment of surrender, of silent life-and-death practice. A gust of wind, a movement of grass, the sound of mud or rock or breath- these were not things to be argued with. There was no room for negotiation--that would have cost these men their lives. Resistance and refusal had no relevance in that crossing, during those endless hours in that muddy field. Each man had to discover, over and over again, what it was to be so one with that field that they were invisible to the Viet Cong.
When they finally made it across, and partway down the river, they stopped and had some conversation. The villager said something to my friend, something that took him a long time to understand. "Being one with the field, " he said. "That's not just how you made it out of there alive. Being one with the field is the only way we will ever put an end to war."
The war inside and the war outside are not so different. When I can soften, when I can be the space, the open field in which my most desparate thoughts and feelings are arising, I end the war inside me. When life throws me into deep water, I want to kick and thrash around and scream about how unfair it is. "Why did this happen to me?" Then I'm lost, like the tiny sufer on his board, trying to negotiate with an enormous wave.
When I'm floundering around in big ocean waves, when my life is at stake, there is a lot of natural clarity about letting go. Somehow, in the middle of our more ordinary days, we forget that surrender is not a luxury. It's the only way to be fully alive. It's the only way to stop complaining, to heal the inner bitterness, to open the heart to the unconditional goodness of life.
It doesn't mean that I'm stuck where I am, like a big lump on a log. It's strange how often we confuse the openness of non-resistance with passivity, with being stuck and helpless. We think change can only happen through hardness, through gritting our teeth and pitting ourseves against what is.
If we keep struggling, fighting, resisting, then our life becomes a kind of unending complaint. We look as if we are grown up, but it's only the body that has grown up. Inside we are living what I sometimes call a 'tantrum incarnation.' We forget, sometimes for a very long time, that we could live like the clouds live, floating on the mountain. Not passive, but just one, moving with the great flow of life, no longer needing to hold on, to prove ourselves, to dig in and take a position.
When everything seems to be lost, when chaos and darkness take over, we have, as a coach of mine puts it, a great opportunity to 'discover the gold.' The gold is always here, the possibility of receiving this moment as it is. So simple.
My human nature, my conditioned mind keeps asking, "Why can't it be my way?" Life seems to be asking us another question. We can only live our way into the answer.
"I think, finally, one must take one's life in one's arms." (Arthur Miller)
makes yu think doesnt it. great thread :thanks:gyco
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