healing our wounds

 

 

 

 

 

When an animal in the jungle is wounded, it knows how to find a quiet place,

 lie down and do nothing. The animal knows that is the only way to get healed—

to lay down and just rest, not thinking of anything, including hunting and eating. 

Not eating is a very wonderful way of allowing your body to rest. 

We are so concerned about how to get nutrition that we are afraid of resting, 

of allowing our body to rest and to fast. The animal knows that it does not need to eat. 

What it needs is to rest, to do nothing, and that is why its health is restored.

In our consciousness there are wounds also, lots of pains. 

Our consciousness also needs to rest in order to restore itself.

 Our consciousness is just like our body. Our body knows how to heal itself

 if we allow it the chance to do so. When we get a cut on our finger 

we don’t have to do anything except to clean it and to allow it the time to heal, 

because our body knows how to heal itself. The same thing is true 

with our consciousness; our consciousness knows how to heal itself 

if we know how to allow it to do so. But we don’t allow it. 

We always try to do something. 

We worry so much about healing, 

which is why we do not get the healing we need. 

Only if we know how to allow them to rest 

can our body and our soul heal themselves.

But there is in us what we call the energy of restlessness. 

We cannot be at peace with ourselves. 

We cannot be peaceful. 

We cannot sit; we cannot lie down. 

There is some energy in us to do this, to do that, to think of this, to think of that,

 and that kind of restlessness makes us unhappy. That is why it is so important

 for us to learn first of all to allow our body to rest. We have to learn how to deal

 with all our energy of restlessness. That is why we have to learn these techniques

 of allowing our body and our consciousness to rest.

I have arrived. I am home.
In the here. In the now.
I am solid. I am free.
In the ultimate I dwell.

If you are able to arrive, then you will stop running—running within and running without. 

There is a belief in us that happiness cannot be possible in the here and the now.

 We have to go somewhere. We have to go to the future in order to be able to really be happy. 

That kind of thinking has been there for a long time. 

 

Maybe that feeling has been transmitted to us from our ancestors and our parents. 

That is why we have to wake up to the presence of that habit energy in us

 and to do the reverse.  It is possible for us to be peaceful and happy

 in the present moment.  When you are there, body and mind united, 

you have an opportunity to touch the conditions of your happiness.

 If you are able to touch these conditions of happiness that are already

 available in the here and the now, you can be happy right away. 

You don’t have to run anywhere, especially into the future.

 

 

 

~Thich Nhat Hanh

excerpts from At Home in the World

with thanks to Lion's Roar