opening to suffering

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



Letting go of our suffering is the hardest work we will ever do.
It is also the most fruitful. To heal means to meet ourselves in a new way – 

in the newness of each moment where all is possible and nothing is limited

 to the old, our holding released, our grasping seen with little surprise or judgement.

 

 The vastness of our being meeting each moment wholeheartedly 

whether it holds pleasure or pain. Then the healing goes deeper 

than we ever imagined, deeper than we ever dreamed.

 

The teaching of opening mindfully, heartfully, to our deepest suffering

 is part of our essential healing. The deepening awareness brings attention

 to part of the mind that had lost heart, a hidden part of ourselves 

which felt disconnected from itself and all else. It allows access to what

 was closed off, to the pain that was so deep and had been pushed deeper yet

 with each moment of self negation and suppression.

 

 

 

 

 

~ Stephen Levine

from Healing into Life and Death

 art by Kan Srijira

 

 

 

 

a silence that watches itself

 

There is a silence that watches itself. 

The silence and that which watches it may appear separate

 but are in fact one.

There is a voice that doesn’t use words — Listen!

~   Rumi

art found at DU Arts and Humanities

love lifts me

What we speak
becomes the house
we live in.
Who will want
to sleep in your bed
if the roof leaks
right above it?

Fear is the
cheapest room
in the house,
I would like
to see you living
in better conditions.

There is only one reason
we have followed God
into this world:
to encourage laughter,
freedom,
dance and love ....

God and I are rushing
from every corner of
existence,
needing to say
we are yours.

The sun never says
to the earth,
even after all this time
“you owe me”.

I once asked a bird
how is it that you
fly in this gravity
of darkness?
she responded,
love lifts me.

I should not make
any promises right now
but I know if you pray
somewhere in this world
something good
will happen.

~ Hafiz
Daniel Ladinsky and
Robert Bly versions
 

become supple as a newborn child

.

Nurture the darkness of your soul

until you become whole.

Can you do this and not fail?

Can you focus your life-breath until you become

supple as a newborn child?

While you cleanse your inner vision

will you be found without fault?

Can you love people and lead them

without forcing your will on them?

When Heaven gives and takes away

can you be content with the outcome?

When you understand all things

can you step back from your own understanding?

.

Giving birth and nourishing,

making without possessing,

expecting nothing in return.

To grow, yet not to control:

This is the mysterious virtue.

.

~ Tao Te Ching

translation by j. h. mcdonald

art by Colleen Wallace Nungari 

from Utopia Central Australia

.

from the owners manual

 

Connectedness is a biological imperative,

and at the top of the autonomic hierarchy is pathway

that supports feelings of safety and connection.

The ventral vagus (sometimes called the “smart vagus” or “social vagus”)

provides the neurobiological foundation for health, growth, and restoration.

When the ventral vagus is active, our attention is toward connection.

We seek opportunities for co-regulation.

The ability to soothe and be soothed, to talk and listen,

to offer and receive, to fluidly move in and out of connection

is centered in this newest part of the autonomic nervous system.

Reciprocity, the mutual ebb and flow that defines nourishing relationships,

is a function of the ventral vagus. As a result of its myelinated pathways,

the ventral vagus provides rapid and organized responses.

In a ventral vagal state,

we have access to a range of responses including calm, happy,

meditative, engaged, attentive, active, interested, excited, passionate,

alert, ready, relaxed, savoring, and joyful.

Co-regulation is at the heart of positive relationships…

If we miss opportunities to co-regulate in childhood,

we feel that loss in our adult relationships.

Trauma, either in experiences of commission (acts of harm)

or omission (absence of care), makes co-regulation dangerous

and interrupts the development of our co-regulatory skills.

Out of necessity, the autonomic nervous system is shaped to independently regulate.

People will often say that they needed connection but there was no one

in their life who was safe, so after a while they stopped looking.

Through a polyvagal perspective, we know that although they stopped explicitly looking

and found ways to navigate on their own, their autonomic nervous system never

stopped needing, and longing for, co-regulation.

Reciprocity is a connection between people that is created

in the back-and-forth communication between two autonomic nervous systems.

It is the experience of heartfelt listening and responding.

We are nourished in experiences of reciprocity,

feeling the ebb and flow, giving and receiving,

attunement, and resonance.

~ Deb Dana

from The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy:

 Engaging the Rhythm of Regulation

with thanks to The Marginalian by Maria Popova

a well told story

 

~Nancy Rynes

concentration and equanimity

 

As a stone mountain, one solid mass, is not stirred by the wind,

so no forms and tastes, sounds, odors, and tactile objects,

and phenomena desirable or undesireable stir the stable

one's mind. His mind is steady and freed.

.

~ Anguttara Nikaya

The development and practice of concentration

leads to equanimity. 

Enhancing qualities of faith, (or confidence), mindfulness,

 self-respect, a spirit of generosity and openess, and pliancy. 

All of which are included in a "neutrality of mind,"

a sense of being "there in the middleness."

The disipline of mindfulness together with concentration

can be very helpful in keeping our minds from habitual

occupation with unhealthy states.

A sense of ease, peace and balance equip us to deal with

the gain and loss, fame and disrepute, pleasure and pain 

that may come to us.

~ from the teaching of Buddha as

expressed by Joseph Goldstein in

Mindfulness: A Practical Guide of Awakening

everything taken away

.

It seems to me that almost all our sadnesses are moments of tension, 

which we feel as paralysis because we no longer hear our astonished emotions living. 

Because we are alone with the unfamiliar presence that has entered us; 

because everything we trust and are used to is for a moment taken away from us;

 because we stand in the midst of a transition where we cannot remain standing.

 That is why the sadness passes: the new presence inside us,

 the presence that has been added, has entered our heart,

 has gone into its innermost chamber and is no longer even there,

 is already in our bloodstream.

 And we don’t know what it was. We could easily be made to believe

 that nothing happened, and yet we have changed, 

as a house that a guest has entered changes. 

We can’t say who has come, perhaps we will never know, 

but many signs indicate that the future enters us in this way 

in order to be transformed in us, long before it happens.

 And that is why it is so important to be solitary and attentive when one is sad:

 because the seemingly uneventful and motionless moment 

when our future steps into us is so much closer to life

 than that other loud and accidental point of time

when it happens to us as if from outside. 

The quieter we are, the more patient and open we are in our sadnesses, 

the more deeply and serenely the new presence can enter us, 

and the more we can make it our own, the more it becomes our fate;

 and later on, when it “happens” (that is, steps forth out of us to other people),

 we will feel related and close to it in our innermost being.

 And that is necessary. It is necessary – and toward this point our development

 will move, little by little – that nothing alien happen to us, 

but only what has long been our own. People have already had to rethink

 so many concepts of motion; and they will also gradually come to realize

 that what we call fate does not come into us from the outside, 

but emerges from us. 

It is only because so many people have not absorbed and transformed 

their fates while they were living in them that they have not realized

what was emerging from them; it was so alien to them that, 

in their confusion and fear, they thought it must have entered them 

at the very moment they became aware of it, for they swore they had never

 before found anything like that inside them. just as people for a long time

 had a wrong idea about the sun’s motion, they are even now wrong

 about the motion of what is to come. The future stands still,

 dear Mr. Kappus, but we move in infinite space.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

from Letters to a Young Poet 

The Eighth Letter

photo by Eliot Porter

abandon ourselves

When we are hyper-vigilant, 

we fear everything and everything offends us.  

We don't dare to move forward,

 as if we could reach the ultimate dwelling 

by leaving it to others to make the journey for us. 

 

Since that is impossible, 

why don't we exert ourselves, 

my friends, for love of our Beloved?

 Let's abandon our reason and fear into his hands. 

Forget about the weakness in our nature

 that we worry about so much. 

 

Let our families look after the safekeeping 

of our physical form; that's their concern.

 All we should focus on is getting to see

 this Beloved of ours as soon as possible.

Even if there is not much comfort on this path,

 we would be making a big mistake to fret about our health.

 Anxiety over our health does not improve it one bit; 

this I know.... The journey I'm talking about requires great humility... 

 

Unless we abandon ourselves, 

this state is arduous and burdensome. 

 We would be trudging under the load of our egos,

like mud clinging to our boots and dragging us down. 

 Those who reach the ultimate dwelling

 bear no such baggage.

~ St. Teresa of Avila

from The Interior Castle

translation by Mirabai Starr

art by Julio Anaya Cabanding

a point of nothingness

 

There is no way of telling people that

 they are all walking around shining like the sun.

At the center of our being is a point of nothingness

 which is untouched by sin and by illusion, 

a point of pure truth, 

a point or spark which belongs entirely to God,

 which is never at our disposal, 

from which God disposes of our lives, 

which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind

 or the brutalities of our own will.

This little point of nothingness

 and of absolute poverty

 is the pure glory of God in us.

It is, so to speak, his name written in us …

 like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven.

It is in everybody, and if we could see it 

we would see these billions of points of light 

coming together in the face and blaze of a sun 

that would make all the darkness 

and cruelty of life vanish completely.

I have no program for this seeing. 

It is only given.

But the gate of heaven is everywhere.

~ Thomas Merton

aspects of the incomprehensible

 

 

 

The innumerable gods and goddesses of the Hindu religion are the human aspects

 of the indescribable and incomprehensible Spirit, as conceived be the finite human mind.

 

 They understand and appreciate human love and emotion, help men to realize

their secular and spiritual ideals, and ultimately enable men to attain liberation

 from the miseries of phenomenal life.

 

The Source of light, intelligence, wisdom, and strength is the One alone

 from whom comes the fulfilment of desire. Yet, as long as a man is bound

 by his human limitations, he cannot but worship God through human forms.

 He must use human symbols. Therefore, Hinduism asks the devotees

 to look on God as the ideal father, the ideal mother, the ideal husband, the ideal son,

 or the ideal friend.

 

But the name ultimately leads to the Nameless, the form to the Formless,

the word to the Silence, the emotion to the serene realization of Peace

 in Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute.

 

The gods gradually merge in the one God, but until that realization is achieved,

 the devotee cannot dissociate human factors from his worship. Therefore,

 the Deity is bathed and clothed and decked with ornaments. He is fed and put to sleep.

 He is propitiated with hymns, songs, and prayers. And there are appropriate rites

 connected with all these functions. For instance, to secure for himself external purity,

the priest bathes himself in holy water and puts on a holy cloth. He purifies the mind

 and the sense organs by appropriate meditations. He fortifies the place of worship

 against evil forces by drawing around it circles of fire and water.

 

He awakens the different spiritual centers of the body and invokes the Supreme Spirit in his heart.

Then he transfers the Supreme Spirit to the image before him and worships the image,

 regarding it no longer as clay or stone, but as the embodiment of Spirit,

throbbing with Life and Consciousness. After the worship the Supreme Spirit is recalled

 from the image to Its true sanctuary, the heart of the priest.

~ from The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna

by Mahendranath Gupta

to witness our own limits transgressed

 

 

We need the tonic of wildness, 

to wade sometimes in marshes where the bittern and the meadow-hen lurk, 

and hear the booming of the snipe; 

to smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest, 

and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground.  

At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, 

we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, 

that land and sea be infinitely wild, 

unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable,

we can never have enough of nature.  

We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor, 

vast and titanic features, the sea-coast with its wrecks, 

the wilderness with its living and its decaying trees, 

the thunder cloud, and the rain which lasts three weeks and produces freshets. 
.

We need to witness our own limits transgressed, 

and some life pasturing freely where we never wander.

 

 

~ Henry David Thoreau

from Walden, 'Spring,' 1854

photos by Eliot Porter from:

Wilderness Is the Preservation of the World 

 

wildly in love

.

 

 

 

 

 

 

They are always kissing, they can't
control themselves.

It is not possible
that any creature can have greater instincts
and perceptions than the
mature human
mind.

God
ripened me.
So I see it is true:
all objects in existence are
wildly in
love. 

 

 

 

~ Meister Eckhart

.

kin to everything

When we try to pick out anything by itself, 

we find it hitched to everything else in the universe. 

One fancies a heart like our own must be beating in every crystal and cell,

 and we feel like stopping to speak to the plants and animals

 as friendly fellow mountaineers. 

Nature as a poet, an enthusiastic workingman,

 becomes more and more visible the farther and higher we go; 

for the mountains are fountains — 

beginning places, however related to sources beyond mortal ken.


One is constantly reminded of the infinite lavishness and fertility of Nature —

 inexhaustible abundance amid what seems enormous waste. 

And yet when we look into any of her operations that lie within reach of our minds,

 we learn that no particle of her material is wasted or worn out. 

It is eternally flowing from use to use, 

beauty to yet higher beauty;

 and we soon cease to lament waste and death, 

and  rather rejoice and exult in the imperishable, 

unspendable wealth of the universe,

 and faithfully watch and wait the reappearance

 of everything that melts and fades and dies about us,

 feeling sure that its next appearance will be better and more beautiful than the last.


More and more, in a place like this, 

we feel ourselves part of wild Nature, 

kin to everything.

~ John Muir

from  John Muir: Nature Writings

a leaf says

 

 

 

 




A leaf says,

“Sweethearts—don’t pick me,
For I am busy doing
God’s work.

I am lowering my veins and roots
Like ropes
With buckets tied to them
Into the earth’s deep
Lake.

I am drawing water
That I offer like a rose to
The sky.

I am a singing cleaning woman
Dusting all the shelves in
The air
With my elegant green
Rags.

I have a heart.
I can know happiness like
You.



~ Hafiz

from The Subject Tonight is Love:

Sixty Wild and Sweet Poem of Hafiz

photo of Daisugi pruning technique