A reservoir of love, mindfulness, acceptance and gratitude

It's amazing what stillness can do. One of the requisites to the experience of vipassana, or insight, is the practice of samatha, which is stopping.  Lately, I have felt overwhelmedly overwhelmed, and a little lost as to what to do about it.  Money hasn't been exactly flowing the way I want it to, logistics seem to pile up, organizing has taken on a life of its own and matters in my personal life feel sometimes sublime and other times as though the San Andreas fault has finally given way once and for all.  This past weekend, I hit a fresh kind of emotional bottom, and I began to take little steps to get myself back to healthy.  Monday night, I went to a 12 step meeting that put me back in connection with a certain type of spiritual wisdom I had been missing.  Tuesday morning, I got up and sat for 20 minutes.  Maybe because my intention had shifted or because I was so utterly humbled and overwhelmed, but the meditation had a different quality to it than I have felt in a while.  I began to feel the energy of fear floating in me, not as me, but as something in me.  Something that I could embrace.  I began to feel the energy of mindfulness rush to hold it, and I was able to stop being scared of it - stop running from it - start embracing it with love.  It was a kind and tender moment.  I realized how long it had been since I simply let myself stop and hold the things that move inside of me - the things that feel overwhelming.  I so often try to process through them so they don't overwhelm me, that I forgot to just notice what it feels like to feel overwhelmed - and then hold those feelings with compassion and understanding.  So I began to practice holding the fears of not be able to handle what is happening in my life, not being able to figure out what to do, not being able to.... etc. etc. When I simply sat and embraced those energies, it felt good.  Really good.  Like a release of tension on a very deep level.  I wasn't scared of my fear anymore, because I remembered fear is just something in me.  It is not me.  That took some recognition.  It took samatha.

I started to get an image of my consciousness as a reservoir.  A large pool with varying degrees of water in it depending upon my practice - my concentration - my diligence.  I saw that when the reservoir is full, many objects can be thrown into the water, but they are met with buoyancy.  They rise to the surface and are gently guided to the filters that allow them to move on to wherever it is that they go once they've moved on from my consciousness.  If the water is not enough, maybe they float but can't make it to the filters and they get stuck longer.  They hang around.  If there is very little water at all, then they hit bottom.  They make solid contact and stop being just energies floating in me.  They start feeling like they are me.  I start to feel like I am this fear.  I am this anger.  I am this defensiveness.  I am this overwhelm.  When I stop and breathe and see what it feels like to be these energies, I guess something happens.  I see that I can love even the really shitty stuff and hold it and let it be okay.  I can just acknowledge that it is there.

One would think that the conscious enlightened response to fear would be to know the way to make fear move through as quickly as possible so that it does not corrupt our peace, joy, love and happiness.  So that we can keep on living badass spiritual baller lives with everything in order. One would think that giving space for fear to hang around longer than absolutely necessary would be an idiotic response to the arising of fear (or anger, or doubt, or overwhelm) in us.  But in my experience, this is wrong.  When I am on autopilot, snoozing my way through a sleepwalking life, I typically try to get rid of unpleasantness and uncertainty as quickly as I can.  This is primarily because I don't have the capacity to hold the unpleasantness in that moment. Naturally, I want it to go away. My reservoir is not full. The balls of fear and anger and frustration that are thrown in just land on the bottom and that's who I am in that moment - fearful, angry, frustrated.  This is me.  And it is uncomfortable.  I want to get rid of that as soon as I can.  As absolutely soon as I can!



But when I let my reservoir start to fill a bit, and those balls of knotted up emotion and difficult experience start to float, start to be held by the energy of love and mindfulness and acceptance, then I am free to not be afraid anymore.  It doesn't really matter if they stay or not.  They way it didn't really matter this morning when a tiny little fuzzball of a dog got out of its front yard and ran up to meet my 80 pound pitbull.  I knew my dog was safe.  We didn't need to be afraid or panicky or overwhelmed. There was just the energy to meet the stimulus with compassion.  The more full the reservoir, the more discomfort can be buoyed and the less fear needs to enter into my interactions with life.  When I am at my best, I can understand the idea that Richard Rohor posits about the experience of Centering Prayer:  Everything Belongs.  There is nothing I need to shut out, because practice is about embracing the reality of what is with love and understanding.  Understanding helps me see that these fears and overwhelms are not me.  And, perhaps ironically for some, once we are no longer driven to get rid of the discomforts we face, we often find the appropriate ways to respond to them to help them move through us with grace and ease.  Once I am okay feeling fear, I become less afraid.  It's probably the most beautiful paradox I have experienced in life.  And it all starts with stopping. It all starts with the ability to just let myself be with what is, with who I am, with what I feel inside - and hold that person/feeling/energy/thought with a kindness and a love that just lets it be. Just sees what it feels like.  Just explores the sensations and drops the perfectionism that drives me toward thinking I should never have uncomfortable experiences.  The more I do this, the more I can hold myself... the more I can hold the world around me.  Its people.  Its uncertainties.  Its crazy elections and broken systems and all of those things.  It just starts with embracing the fear I feel in my own breath - embracing all the things I don't know or don't have answers to or can't figure out.  Just letting them be there in the pool of acceptance, while I run this hose of mindfulness to lift them higher and higher with love.