Scripts

Meredith: When I meditate, I often find my thoughts flowing; memories rise up, emotions rise up, bodily sensations all become rather present in a way they were not before. When I realize my thoughts are rambling, I bring myself back to my breath, to this moment now, and now, and now. Sometimes, as I have been taught, I might say to myself, "thoughts" or "sounds" or "sensations" etc, to sort of claim and categorize what my mind is focusing on, so that I can then watch it dissolve the focus (only then so very soon observe my thoughts take on yet another shape). In the long hours of sitting at retreat, I began to get a little more creative with my categories, such as noticing when my thoughts were memories, or when my emotions were of sorrow, etc. One such category that I noticed myself claiming, almost more than any other of my thinking patterns, was what I began to term "fiction". This was the label I gave to my thinking when I was building stories about what might happen, or a story about what could have happened, or what someone may have done or said, invented conversations, etc.

I was thinking about this tendency and its relationship to scripts. Our minds, my mind anyway, so naturally moves into scripts or invented fictions of reality. I wondered how much of my day is spent in this kind of thinking. I think it might be a lot of the time, if my meditation time is any indication. It is helpful, it would seem, to bring conscious awareness to the way our minds work. My first tendency is to pass some judgment about it, such as thinking in scripts or fiction is a bad or wrong way of thinking. But I quickly see humor in the judgment, too. Who says it's bad? We wouldn't have storytellers or playwrights without fiction and script thinking. But do you see the trickiness of fiction thinking? Do you see that lines between fiction and reality are hazy? Do you experience that this is rather exciting in fact, that we aren't always clear if something is fiction or fact?

Mind ramblings this bright day, when homework and taxes are on the table in front of me.


Aki: I've been pondering this, thinking about what you said here about fiction and fact and meditation.

I have many fictions, thoughts and fantasies. I find when I cling to them I suffer. When I release them, as in meditation, I enjoy, the moment, this living moment. There is joy. I release into freshness, spontaneity and authenticity. When I hold on to my fictions, or facts for that matter, I tend to suffer. When I hold on to a fiction, thought or fantasy it is a short trip to manipulation, orchestration, attempting to control, and scripting. Imagination, imaging, fantasizing, creating a fiction is one thing, but quickly I tend to move unconsciously to manipulation and trying to control.

By itself fantasy or imagination can inform, give messages, possibilities, alternatives, suggest direction, opportunity. I have response-ability. I can nurture the fantasy or thought or I can release it, let it go. With awareness and the ability to respond with awareness, our behavior tends to be accurate and authentic. But it seems without this important awareness we are like a leaf on the wind, animated by these thoughts and fantasies or facts in an unconscious way. When it is unconscious our behavior is generally in the service of survival and security, following the impulse of want and fear.

When I become fascinated and preoccupied with a thought or fantasy or a fact pattern, then I am susceptible to the human tendency toward behavior driven by unconscious want or fear. But if I stay present, conscious, aware, like in meditation, meditative awareness then neither fact nor fiction hinders. I am not attempting to manipulate or script life, but responding through wakefulness. In this way I nurture wakefulness, soulfulness. I nurture the emerging essence. And it is so joyful to see and feel being meeting itself, perfection recognizing perfection everywhere. This awareness can be nurtured.

Reverence For Soul

Aki: I have been reflecting on reverence; of the dawning and nurturing of a reverent place within us. I would like to peer into that sacred space we collectively feel and intuit within; where we re-cognize our souls, where we honor and revere this space as sacred, express the intensity of our devotion to it, celebrate it as our door to the divine. We can touch this space, reflect it to one another, and bring our humility and awe to it. We need no longer project it onto anything or anyone, for nothing in form can carry this projection without breaking under its weight. I have tried, how I have tried. No, it has its own sacred space within each of us - the soul. This is where we can offer our reverence, our humility and respect. We have the moment-to-moment opportunity to live this precious life as an offering, an honoring of soul.

Bringing reverence to our inner soul is an accurate acknowledgement of that which represents our link with Being, our connection with the divine, that which infuses our daily living - from within - with sacredness. It represents that which gives us the enlargement, the expansive transformation we have sought lifelong in the external. It allows us to move beyond the personal, our limited ego-selves, while simultaneously granting us a full and rich engagement with and expression of our humanity. While heaven and earth come together within us, our awareness nonetheless allows us to differentiate between them, between the sacred and the personal, to revere each for their unique beauty and majesty. Our soul connects us with the infinite, and at the same time flows into our temporal human existence bringing recognition of deep relatedness, compassion and love.

I love my dear ones in a human and enduring way. I do not press upon them the sacred projections of my own soul. I do not freight love with demands and expectations to infuse my ego with the divine. I have learned in an experiential way how ego moves "insidiously" to co-opt divinity, wants to contain the sacred - something it simply cannot contain. Ego is insufficient to carry the infinite, sacred energy of Being. Soul is the proper vessel for the sacred, and soul resides, and is found first within. When soul is accurately honored within us, something blossoms in the outer world, and sacredness manifests in our simple and ordinary living. A divine light shines into and through our humanity, warming our lives in an ordinary and earthy, enduring and abiding way.

Meredith: I feel, perhaps I have always felt, there is a sacred space within me. When I listen to you, this place stirs within me.

Aki: Your response represents an accurate perception of the sacred. The recognition of its presence is stimulated by any number of things, people, and experiences in the outer world. But you do not make the innocent mistake of projecting it onto the personal and external, and then seek it in the external. All in the external world of form has the possibility of stimulating, reflecting and stirring the sacred within us. "When I listen to you, this place stirs within me." This is accurate seeing. This is wisdom. You have not projected your soul onto my words or onto me, a human man; you have not projected the sacred onto something external, not located it anywhere but in its rightful place within you. This is beauty. A deep peace reigns within when you see with this consciousness.

Gollum and Compassion

Meredith: A friend has been going through a very difficult time. As I listened and tried to be helpful, a tide of my own darkness welled up within me. As I looked at my friend, eye to eye, and as I listened deeply, I recognized that this pain, grief, sorrow, shame and self loathing my friend was sharing is inside of me, too. As I touched this angst, it felt as though I was tapping into a hidden corner of my own being that I rarely have the courage to recognize. It wasn't until I really felt this, and looked carefully at the ugly contents that I began to really understand my friend. It seems that in these sad and deep tributaries within ourselves we will find common ground that is fertile for compassion.

"Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It's a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity."
--Pema Chodron

Friend: This darkness within us, it is a character like Tolkien's Gollum, and it appears to be universal in all human beings. We each have a different version, but it is a darkness that is part of our shared humanity. It does provide a common ground that allows for us to feel tenderness, connection, kindness and compassion.

Meredith: These dark images make me feel sooo sad, it is nearly unbearable to keep thinking about it for very long. And yet it feels so real and authentic, like "Yes, Gollum is finally out in the open, this terrible ugly secret I have been harboring. Now you know the truth of me."

Friend: Yes this is the stuff of which Gollum is made. Acknowledging our own darkness is excruciating, and yet...and yet... we must bear this woundedness, hold our sorrow, fear and confusion within an open heart. Holding these feelings, bearing them, allowing them to be and then to go of their own accord, however raw, exposed and vulnerable gives birth to warmth and compassion. I have indulged, much more often I have repressed, and both of these ways lead to further suffering. But to allow, to accept, to hold and bear with an open heart is sooooo hard, yet it is the way I have discovered to any real peace. And yes, this is a brand new discovery. My Gollum carries the key that brings light into the darkness, the light and warmth of consciousness which dispels shadow. As excruciatingly difficult as it is, as hard as it is to hold, allowing my Gollum to be - because it is, I genuinely feel wretched and unlovable in my darkest corners, I feel sorrow and fear and confusion - is paradoxically the key to healing my suffering.

I asked the universe for the power to heal suffering, and the universe showed me compassion. Compassion was the universe's response to my request for the power to heal the suffering of myself and others.

Pema Chodron also says this over and over, compassion is a key to healing suffering of self and other. And Sylvia Boorstein says it, too; "I think it's the awareness of the vulnerability to sorrow that human beings share that keeps me kind." Warmth and love and kindness come out of being present with our own darkness, our own vulnerability, suffering, sorrow, fear and confusion. It is this awareness of our shared vulnerability to pain that generates our love and warmth for ourselves and others. It is what heals and soothes suffering.

Meredith: Right. I, too, am finding that only when I am conscious of my own woundedness and suffering, conscious of my own darkness, can I be present with the woundedness and darkness of others. This "being present with" is compassion, and it is compassion that soothes and heals suffering.