things change again

Sounds like a great opportunity to enhance your practice.

-cmarti

right, like each experience, event, sensation that comes up each instant.

However, I know what you are talking about, since this incident is really challenging me in so many ways, the opportunity to really see myself and my lies, illusions, delusions, stories, etc. up close and real is particularly great.

The creepiest thing right now and the hardest to deal with (and the greatest opportunity for practice) is seeing, once again, that I am not only NOT the nice, caring, sensitive guy I like to think I am, but I am, sometimes, actually insensitive, selfish, even destructive.

Chris, Mike - really fascinating subject to come up today. I am being hit hard by emotional stress, rounds of really powerful feelings of being unable to cope with an upcoming situation and those habitual thoughts - can't, not good enough, fail, not gonna work, messing up - amazing the zinging back and forth of fear in the body and fear in the mind, feeding off each other til I'm shaking, heart racing.... breathe breathe breathe.... see the habits of mind, see the illusion... breathe. It's a bunch of old buttons being pushed, and I know it. Coaching myself all day to just to keep opening up instead of adding fight to the fear. Hardest time I've had in a while.

Your conversation's been relevant, so thanks.

And Mike, sorry you lost your cat. Cats are way cool, and I've had and lost quite a few in my own life.

I thought this was kind of interesting, seeing "low self-esteem" as a kind of laziness. What do you think? Cut and paste:


Low self-esteem can actually be
categorised as
a form of laziness as explained by Ringu Tulku Rinpoche...

"The Buddhist notion of diligence is to
delight in positive deeds. Its opposite, called le
lo
in Tibetan, has three aspects. Le lo is usually
translated as
"laziness," though only its first aspect refers to
laziness
as we usually understand it.

The first aspect is not doing something because of
indolence,
even though we know that it is good and ought to be
done.

The second aspect is faintheartedness. This comes about
when we
underestimate our qualities and abilities, thinking,
"I'm
so incompetent and weak. It would be good to do that,
but I could
never accomplish it." Not having the confidence of
thinking,
"I can do it," we end up doing nothing.

The third aspect refers to being very busy and seeming
diligent,
but wasting time and energy on meaningless activities
that will
not accomplish anything in the long run. When we do many
things
for no real purpose, we fail to focus on what is truly
worthwhile
and our path has no clear direction.

When we refrain from these three aspects of laziness, we
are diligent."

or, from How
to Free Your Mind: Tara the Liberator by
Thubten Chodron:

It can be difficult to accept others
and to
accept ourselves. "I should be better. I should be
something
different. I should have more." All of this is
conception;
it's all mental fabrication. It's just the mind churning
up "shoulds,"
"ought tos," and "supposed tos." All this
is conceptual rubbish, and yet we believe it. Part of
the solution
is to recognize that these thoughts are conceptual
rubbish and
not reality; this gives us the mental space not to
believe them.
When we stop believing them, it becomes much easier to
accept
what we are at any given moment, knowing we will change
in the
next moment. We'll be able to accept what others are in
one moment,
knowing that they will be different in the next moment.
This is
good stuff for everyday practice; it's very practical.

Here's what happens to me, Mike: I get angry, scared, worried, bored, nasty, nice, whatever. When those things happen the tendency is to deny it, avoid it, run away, fight it. I have found, however, that just letting it be, observing it, being with it, experiencing it, is really the only effective path to freedom. By experiencing the negative things it seems they are observed, seen that they, too, are just the chimera that is all experience, and they can thus pass away as they arise.
I used to beat myself up about all the negatives that I thought defined me. Now I stop myself when I observe the fighting, denial, avoidance or guilt and remember that it's all my experience, just like everyone else's, and once gone is just gone. I think it might have been Einstein who said this, but it works for me:
"Life is like riding a bicycle. The only way to stay up is to keep moving."
Or something like that.
So yeah, what I was after was that sentiment. There is no "good" and no "bad." There is just... what is. What happens just happens and the notion that you control it all is a pernicious illusion.
[image]

-cmarti

Yes.

The ideal for me is to let it be, observe, be with it, experience it, have bare awareness, disembed, all that. I can and do do this often in my life and in my practice. The great part about this experience is that sometimes there are those things that are harder if not impossible to do that with, at least at first, because I'm seeing someting that I SO don't want to see or acknowledge about myself (I also don't want to just SEE that my kitty is dead). So, for some reason, when I do manage to really be intimate with what happened/is happening, there seems to be quite a surge of intimacy with stuff.

If I at some point come to some conclusion about who I am (awful or wonderful) rather than keeping the ability to just see what is true right now with brand new eyes -- my practice will stagnate and intimacy will be lost until I can open up again to what is really going on.

"The great green earth is the gate of liberation."

This is a very relevant thread: thanks to all you companion/contributors.

Mike, my condolences about the loss of your cat friend. I'm thinking that practice in such situations might start with seeing that there are two things here: the worthy sorrow of bereavement; and the questionable habit-mind that struggles with 'whose fault' the sad event was, founded in the strange idea that we are 'at the controls' in every minute detail of the events of our lives.

And then, I'm thinking that this thread could equally well be titled 'The Heart Sutra in the life of MM'. That might seem distastefully grandiose: but only if we've got 'The Heart Sutra' in some glass museum case of our minds. If all intimacy, large and small, is explicating that sutra endlessly, beginninglessly-- there we have it.

Okay, back to DJ.
He emerged from his second or third jail stint this year so far (for "drunk in public") near the first of the month, which means he has money in his pocket. For those who don't remember, the guy gets $900 a month in SSI, which gets automatically added to his EBT card on the first of each month.

He had his dad take him from Sonora -- where the dad lives in a house and DJ lives on the street or in abandoned buildings -- down to Modesto where his mother and I live. He got a room at a cheap hotel and then called Bec, saying, "I'd like to come see you guys saturday night."

Bec said on this call he didn't sound drunk. In spite of her new "tough love" non-enabling approach, she wants to see her son, of course. She told him he could come over as long as he wasn't drinking. He promised that he would be sober.

On Saturday he called to confirm and once again assure Bec that he was sober.

We picked him up at the hotel at 7 p.m. He was standing out front with a large "jack in the box" soda cup, a cigarette, and a boxed DVD player and some other items he wanted to "return" to Walmart later. He looked okay. His mom was happy to see him.

-- now the weird thing is, both of us automatically hoped that he'd gotten sober somehow, and was coming over to announce his new, recovery lifestyle. We even talked over what we'd do if he proposed that he move in while he got ready to go to rehab or something. It's amazing how much one can fantasize prefered outcomes.

So, once he got in the car he was very talkative. Red flag. He kept sipping from the cup.

We get to our house and he keeps talking. He goes outside every three or four minute to smoke the same single cigarette (jail style). He keeps sipping. More talking. He asks us if we like Frank Sinatra. We do. He puts a greatest hits albmun on the stereo. More talking.

I walk near him and smell bourbon. I asked him if he is drinking/drunk. He admits, yes. I tell him that he lied to us and that I didn't appreciate it. He looks contrite and keeps sipping, smoking, talking, singing along with Frank.

The conversation turns into us kind of interrogating him about his lifestyle, going to jail all the time, drinking, mental health, rehab, therapy for his mental health, etc.

I ask him if he still thinks he isn't an alcoholic. He says, no, because he doesn't drink in the morning. Silly answer, of course. He tells us that he, unlike us, has faith in Jesus and that Jesus will, very soon, give him a great life. He doesn't think he needs to sober up, get treatment, get a job, go to college,etc. like everyone else, because Jesus is going to take care of everything.

He keeps sipping, and as he does, his talking becomes more and more strange. We take him to Walmart and then back to the motel at about 8:30 or so. In the car he tells us that he is a "rapper" and that people like his raps and that he is very popular, and will soon be rich and successful while continuing to drink and smoke weed. Also, that he has been in touch with "Snoop Dog." (Remember, this is a chubby 28 year old paintfully shy depressed white kid with no actual performing experience) I tell him that he is not a rapper, that he will not be a succesful performer and that he needs to deal with real life like everyone else. His only response to that is "well, I have to be careful because Snoop and them tried to have me killed."

After we dropped him off Rebecca cried for a while and then ... stopped.