This week's pause is from the talk I gave on Sunday night, February 20, 2022. If you prefer to listen to it, click here.
Dear Friends,
When I was in the third grade my best friend's father passed away in his sleep. Our parents were good friends and it was shocking. My friend and I lived a few minutes from the Long Island Sound and we spent a lot of time there. It was probably the summer after he died that we were at the beach; our mothers were sitting on the shore and my friend and I were swimming. We could spend hours in the water, so present and having fun. The swimming area had a float out at the end of it that you could swim to and sit on or jump off of. As kids it felt like it was such a long way out and such an achievement to get there. We were out on that float and my friend jumped into the water with a swim mask she had on. I didn't know at the time that it had any sentimental value, but it was her father's and it was old and made of glass. When she came up out of the water, she was fine, but the outer layer of glass was shattered. Thankfully, it was very thick so she wasn’t hurt, but she was so distraught. We swam back to the shore and she brought it to her mother and I gathered what it meant to her. This may have been the first time I understood how an object could have such meaning.
It is a very human process to get attached to all kinds of things. To objects, people, animals, places, ideas, ways of seeing. And yet, as adults, we know that we have to let everything go at some point. We know this intellectually, but it's a different thing to start practicing knowing it more intimately on an everyday basis so that we can be more free while we are here. It’s not that we shouldn’t have objects that we hold as dear to us. Objects can connect us to people, places. They can keep memories alive. It’s not that we shouldn’t have people who we are deeply connected with and passionate about, who we love with all our heart. But developing the awareness of when that attachment gets in the way of our happiness, of our freedom, of the other’s freedom is something we can investigate gently so that we can be more free, light, happy and so that those around us (our children, our partners, friends) can also feel more free, light and happy. Thich Nhat Hanh says that if we love someone we should let them free.
We also know that this is often hard to do. It’s hard to do because we have a basic need to feel connected. We are physically connected to our mother when we are born and from that point forward when the umbilical cord is cut, we begin a process of letting go. But we also begin a process of receiving…that first breath we receive. As infants we can’t fend for ourselves so we receive food, warmth, shelter, care until we naturally progress and want to differentiate ourselves from our parents/caregivers and we start to let go (which can then be hard for the parent and for the child; it’s a struggle for a while, a push/pull anyone with teenagers can identify with). All of life is receiving and letting go. It is an organic and beautiful process if we allow it and are not scared of it. This doesn’t mean it will be painless. Instead we can allow ourselves to grieve, even allow resistance for a while which might feel like anger/defiance. We allow the process to flow through us and find we do get through it and we grow more alive.
With mindfulness, we become more and more conscious of what we are attaching to and this awareness is an opportunity to be more free. I think it can be exciting. The challenge is to be liberated. The idea of “no mud, no lotus” comes to play here. If we really want to be free, we have to experience the mud – the growing pains to get there.
I invite you to try it now. Is there anything you are attaching to in your life that, if you honestly look at it, you realize the attachment is bringing you more stress than peace. This could be: a way of thinking about ourselves. An image we have of ourselves that we are trying to uphold. Our relationship to our work. Our relationship to exercise or our body. Anything we do that brings anxiety, but we still do it anyway. I think about devices that track our steps or our sleep. While they are meant to be a source of good they can turn into a source of anxiety. Or watching a show that helps us move into fantasy for a while, but the violence in it makes our thoughts more anxious/dark. Or, maybe we hoard objects because we can’t let go of memories associated with them (the thought that if we let go of that object we will forget that person), or we think we might someday need the thing, but in fact it adds a lot of clutter and chaos to our space (mental and physical space). Go ahead and call to mind something. And now, just imagine what it would be like to be liberated from that attachment. You don’t have to figure out how, in this moment, but just imagine getting to the place where you no longer believe you need it to be happy. Try on the phrase, ”what if I no longer need this to be happy/content?” You can imagine walking around with a heavy boot on one leg thinking you need it to be able to walk and now you get to take that boot off and realize that you don’t need it to walk. You don’t need it to be happy. How does it feel in your body just trying it on -- to let yourself be free? How would life feel different?
Then comes the work of letting go, which often takes time, but as we become more and more honest with ourselves and as we become kinder to ourselves we will move in that direction because there is ultimately less suffering there. I was thinking about the big shifts I made in my life and, every time, my body was asking me to make a shift that was kinder toward myself -- the stress of whatever I was doing was clear and I chose to listen. Even letting people go, no matter how painful, was an act of kindness. They were hard shifts, painful at times, but they brought relief in time and more aliveness, not less. We have to not want to suffer. The 4th Noble truth is the path out of suffering. There is a path. We can trust in the path of living a mindful life.
Jean
P.S. Interested in working more with "letting go?" Join me in March for a two part workshop.
No comments:
Post a Comment