Accepting Things As They Are

This is Chapter 8 of the Van Dijk book.

It breaks down as follows: pain v. suffering, do you fight reality, the experience of suffering, accepting reality reduces suffering, how to accept reality, acceptance is not forgiveness, acceptance does not mean giving up, don’t forget the “reality” in reality acceptance, making your own list, willingness v. willfulness, from willfulness to willingness, using mindfulness to reach acceptance, accepting reality as it is

Van Dijk quotes Jack Kornfield from A Path With Heart, saying: “He says that when problems arise in our lives, ‘we project our frustration onto them as if it were the rain, the children, the world outside that was the source of our discomfort.  We imagine that we can change the world and then be happy.  But it is not by moving the rocks that we find happiness and awakening, but by transforming our relationship with them’ (Kornfiled 1993, 73)” (Van Dijk 129)

“It can be helpful to start a list of situations you’d like to work on accepting.  Accepting your nonacceptance may be one more situation to add to your list of things to work on.” (Van Dijk 136)

“You’ll know what is asking for acceptance because it will be something that continues to repeat itself, a pattern.  Perhaps, for example, you notice your thoughts continuing to return to a situation or person; or perhaps a feeling continuously comes up for you.  When these patterns emerge, these are the things that are asking to be accepted.  These patterns remain because, on some level, we continue to resist them; we feel a fear or an aversion toward them, or perhaps we’re judging this experience.” (Van Dijk 140)

Accepting the Cycles of Spiritual Life

This is Chapter 12 of the Kornfield book.

Aha! And this is why I read spiritual books and why I want to get in touch with my spiritual self:

“Just as there is beauty to be found in the changing of the earth’s seasons and an inner grace in honoring the cycles of life, our spiritual practice will be in balance when we can sense the time that is appropriate for retreats and the time that is appropriate for travel, the time for settling down and planting roots, and the time to have a family and children.”  (Kornfield 171)–I’d like to write a quick prayer: God, please let me sense the time that is appropriate.  The time that is appropriate.  Let me be vigilant in my prayer to you.  Let me be open to accepting your sense of appropriate timing.  Let me know, or feel, or sense, when the time comes to settle down and plant roots.   Let me know, or feel, or sense, when the time comes to have a family and children.  In your name, I pray, AMEN.

Here’s what Kornfield has to say about my current stage of life:

“As we move into the responsibilities of young adult, we develop a compassionate concern for others besides ourselves.  This ripening can bring us a sense of interdependence, the need for mutual respect and social justice, that is a source of awakening to the path of universal compassion.” (Kornfield 174). –Again, a prayer:  God, please let me feel contentment with being a young adult.  Allow me to develop a sense of interdependence.  Allow me to reach out to others with mutual respect and compassion.  Allow me to embrace social justice that you seek for the world.  In your name, I pray, AMEN.

Here’s what Kornfield has to say about retreats and recovery:

“Modern spiritual practice often requires that we temporarily enter a spiritual community, only to return home after some days or weeks.  This transition, from the openness and support of a retreat and a spiritual community to the complexity of our daily life, can be difficult, especially if we hold on to any notion that one phase is more spiritual than the other.” (Kornfield 179).–The last prayer:  God, thank you for the tremendous spiritual opportunities you offer me.  May I accept them and appreciate them.  May I also accept the complexity of my daily life and appreciate it.  May I release any notion that one phase is more spiritual than the other.  In your name, I pray, AMEN.

The Spiritual Roller Coaster: Kundalini and Other Side Effects

This is Chapter 9 of the Kornfield book.

The sections in this chapter are:

(1)  Atitudes Toward Altered States–Certain spiritual paths insist that we need to attain profoundly altered states of consciousness in order to discovery a “transcendent” vision of life, to open beyond our body and mind and realize the divine taste of liberation. [Other schools]’s teachings say that liberation and transcendence must be discovered here and now, for if not here in the present, where else can it be found?  Instead of seeking to transcend, the perspective of the “immanent” school teaches reality, enlightenment, or the divine must shine through every moment or it is not genuine. (p. 120)

(2)  Some Common Altered States–When we begin a spiritual practice, we struggle with the pains of our body and the armoring we have forged for it over the years, we face emotional storms, and we encounter a procession of five common hinderances.  But as we continue spiritual practice, and become more familiar and compassionate with our deepest difficulties, even the most ingrained pattens of holding and fear will gradually lose their power over us.  We develop a spirit of calm and steadiness, whatever our means of practice. (p. 122)

(a)  Raptures–rapture is a broad term used to cover the many kinds of chills, movements, lights, floating, vibrations, delight, and more that open with deep concentration, as well as the enormous pleasure they can bring to meditation.  (p. 122)…Deep concentration can lead to all kinds of visions and visionary experiences.  Floods of memories, images of past lives, scenes of foreign lands, pictures of heavens and hells, the energies of all the great archetypes, can open before our eyes.  (p. 125)…(this has happened to me:  “…we can experience a release of the strongest kinds of emotions, from sorrow and despair to delight and ecstasy.  Meditation may feel like an emotional roller coaster as we allow ourselves to be plunged into unconscious emotions.” p. 126)

(b)  Chakras–This section describes the chakras and the openings of the energy body and the experience as our inner energy tries to move and free itself in the body

(3)  Skillful Means of Working with the Energetic and Emotional Openings–we need a teacher who has personally encountered and understood these dimensions of the psyche

(a)  All Experiences are Side Effects–In the Buddhist tradition, the Buddha often reminded students that the purpose of his teaching was not the accumulation of special good deeds and good karma or rapture or insight or bliss, but only the sure heart’s release–a true liberation of our being in every realm.  This freedom and awakening, and this alone, is the purpose of any genuine spiritual path. (p. 129)

(b)  Finding the Brake—very cool and interesting section!  The most important thing, however, is:  it is necessary to find a guide, someone who has touched their own madness, grief, and loss of boundaries, who can gradually and fearlessly direct us back to the ground of our own true nature.  (p. 132)

(c)  Awareness of the Dance–the practitioner’s primary responsibility is to open to the experience with a full awareness, observing and sensing it as a part of the dance of our human life. (p. 133)

(4)  Meditation:  Reflecting on Your Attitude Toward Altered States

Naming the Demons

This is Chapter 7 of the Kornfield book.

This chapter is broken up into the following outline:

Title: Naming the Demons

(1) How to Begin Naming

(a) Grasping and Wanting/ (i) Naming the Wanting Mind–“Painful desire involves greed, grasping, inadequacy, and longing. Skillful desire is born of this same Will to Do but directed by love, vitality, compassion, creativity, and wisdom.” (Kornfield 88)

(b) Anger/ (i) Naming the Anger–“Its force can grow from annoyance to deep fear, to hatred and rage. It can be experienced toward someone or something that is present with us now or that is far away in time or place. We sometimes experience great anger over past events that are long over and about which we can do nothing. We can even get furious about something that has not happened but that we only imagine might happen.” (Kornfield 89)

“We become angry either when we are hurt and in pain or when we are afraid. Pay attention to your own life and see if this is true. The next time anger and irritation spring up, see if just before they arose you felt fear or hurt. If you pay attention to the fear or pain first, does the anger even appear?” (Kornfield 90)

(c) Fear/ (i) Naming Fear

(d) Boredom/ (i) Naming Boredom–“…busy ourselves constantly in an attempt to escape our loneliness, our emptiness, our boredom. When we are without awareness, it has a great power over us and we can never be at rest…Boredom comes from a lack of attention. With it we also find restlessness, discouragement, and judgment. We get bored because we don’t like what is happening or because we feel empty or lost. In naming it, we can acknowledge boredom and let it be a state to explore.” (Kornfield 92).

(e) Judgment/ (i) Naming Judgment–“To understand the judging mind, we need to touch it with a forgiving heart.” (Kornfield 93).

(f) Sleepiness/ (i) Naming Sleepiness–“This arises as laziness, tiredness, lack of vitality, and fogginess. Our clarity and wakefulness fade when the mind is overcome with sleep, and our life or our meditation become unwieldy and cloudy…We experience laziness or reluctance in the face of difficult tasks.” (Kornfield 94).

“We are rarely lazy–we are simply afraid. The demon of sloth and torpor follows the strategy of the ostrich, thinking, “What I don’t look at won’t hurt me.” When sleepiness arises and our body is not actually tired, it is often a sign of resistance….Many times we will discover an important fear or difficulty just underneath it. States of loneliness, sorrow, emptiness, and loss of control of some aspect of our life are common ones that we fall asleep to avoid. When we recognize this, our whole practice can open up to a new level.” (Kornfield 95).

(g) Restlessness/ (i) Naming Restlessness–“With restlessness, we feel agitation, nervousness, anxiety, and worry.” (Kornfield 96).

(h) Doubt/ (i) Naming Doubt–“All kinds of doubt can assail us; doubts about ourselves and our capacities; doubts about our teachers; doubts about the meditation itself…We might doubt that the path we have chosen is the right path practice for us.” (Kornfield 97).

“Along with naming, doubt can also be dissolved by developing faith.” (Kornfield 98).

(2) Meditations on Making the Demons Part of the Path

(3) Meditation on the Impulses that Move our Life

Grasping and Wanting:

“Grasping and wanting are two names for the most painful aspects of desire.”

“There are beneficial desires such as the desire for the well being of others, the desire for awakening, the creative desires that express the positive aspects of passion and beauty. There are painful aspects of desire–the desires of addiction, greed, blind ambition, or unending inner hunger. Through meditative awareness we can bring an attention that can sort out and know the many forms of desire.

Turning Straw into Gold

This is Chapter 6 of the Kornfield book.

Where does this chapter get its title?  “Like the young maiden in the fairy tale ‘Rumplestiltskin’ who is locked in a room full of straw, we often do not realize that the straw all around us is gold in disguise.  The basic principle of spiritual life is that our problems become the very place to discover wisdom and love.”  (Kornfield 71)

What hit me the hardest?  “Every life has periods and situations of great difficulty that call on our spirit.  Sometimes we are faced with the pain or illness of a child or a parent we love dearly.  Sometimes it is a loss we face in career, family, or business. Sometimes it is just our own loneliness or confusion or addiction or fear.  Sometimes we are forced to live with painful circumstances or difficult people.”  (Kornfield 75)

I wish I could print the story about the graduate student on p. 75–she was so callous but knew she should meditate.  Then she let herself fall apart a little bit around her family.  When she went back to meditation, she cried, and then was able to properly meditate.

I also wish I could print all of page 76.  It begins with the Dalai Lama treating the occupiers and destroyers of his country as “my friends, the enemy.”  Then the ocean salt quote:

Then Kornfield turns to discuss freedom–we cultivate freedom day by day as we live.  The next paragraph is we must see the difficulties in our life as a place of practice.  Then he suggests there are two choices: to deny feelings or to freely vent feelings.  Both are problems, so the best alternative is a “wakeful and attentive heart.”

This is just such a good chapter it needs to be read in its entirety.  I wish I could distill the purpose, meaning, and fullness of the writings and the meditation provided.  A few more good quotes below:

• Often from our seeming weaknesses we can learn a new way.  The things we do well, where we have developed our greatest self-confidence, can become habitual, bringing a sense of false security.  They are ton where our spiritual life will best open. (p. 79)
• When we work with anger, it can be changed into a valuable medicine.  Transformed, our anger and judgment give us clarity to see what is skillful, what needs to be done, what limits to be set.  They are the seeds of discriminating wisdom, and knowing of order and harmony.  (p. 80)
• The seeds of wisdom, peace, and wholeness are within each of our difficulties.  Our awakening is possible in every activity.  At first we may sense this truth only tentatively.  With practice it becomes living reality.  (p. 80)