As we approach a year of this pandemic-life, I find myself with four (4) paid professionals attempting to keep me balanced and I wouldn’t say no to a fifth. What is it about being still that is so difficult? Is it that our demons can catch us?
Yes. I believe so.
Alaska is a hostile place that earned its reputation but the mind is truly the last frontier. It’s in our minds that we hear such horrible, hurtful and misguided things. It’s in our minds that we suffer the most. If only our demons were more like Winnie the Pooh.
“You’re braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.”
I wrote an article a while back about how we are all hardwired for dissatisfaction. Turns out, I was more right than I even knew. With insight from my Fantastic Four, I’m learning that self-deception is a story as old as time. Humans throughout history have had a little voice in their heads telling them that things are bad, that they themselves are bad. And the kicker .. everyone thinks the same thing about them that that aggrieved little voice does. For all intents and purposes, that drive for an ideal has served us well. It’s why we have air conditioning and NASA. But it’s also why we have divorce and botox.
Hearing this nagging voice of negativity is not serving me so I’ve been turning to my teachers during this downtime to help me reprogram.
The Rope and the Snake
In my spirituality class, we touched on a topic recently that I sincerely thought I had grasped but hearing it on this day .. I understood it in a much deeper way .. and it was profound. Suddenly I knew that I have and always will cause the majority of my own suffering. My mind just automatically reacts to what it perceives as a threat and .. bad news .. the threats aren’t usually real and it takes lifetimes of practice to retrain the mind.
To illustrate, my teacher, Eben, told me a parable from Vedanta philosophy (the Hindu scriptures) called Rajjusarpa Nyaya. The Rope and the Snake.
A man walks at night along a path. He sees a poisonous snake barring his way and turns and runs in the opposite direction. As he returns along the same path in the morning, he finds a coiled rope on the ground. He realizes that in the darkness, he mistook the coiled rope for a snake and it dawns on him, in the dark it is hard to see reality as it truly is. In the light of day, we see more clearly.
This story seeks to show us that our perception of reality can be clouded. Ignorance to reality sometimes manifests as rapid judgment or fear, and when that happens, we react solely based on senses or emotions.
Guilty.
I react based on my senses and emotions a lot. And it indeed causes me a lot of anguish. I must be walking around in the fucking dark most of the time.
As I sat in meditation, trying to turn my own snakes into ropes, I wept for all my unnecessary suffering. I wept for the pain I allow others to inflict upon me. And I wept because I don’t yet know how to stop it all. This is why I have to keep practicing. I want the waters of peace to wash over me. I want to see a rope for a rope. I want bliss.