ThePracticalBuddhist.com - The Practical Buddhist Blog - Practical Advice on Integrating the Practice of Buddhism in Contemporary Life

Taking Pleasure in Each Passing Moment

8/17/2019

I have written previously that one of the ways that one offers oneself joy is to take pleasure in each passing moment. That’s not too difficult when you’re in a good space. But what about when something is troubling you.

Yes, I know, given my practice nothing should trouble me as I have embraced all aspects of my being and experience … past, present, and future. But the fact is that things do still occasionally trouble me as I am not mindful 24/7.

The other day I was in such a negative space and became aware that I was not taking pleasure in the moment. At that point, I immediately brought myself to the present, watched my breath, and became aware of all the wonderful things going on around me to take pleasure in … especially the beauty and wonder of nature. And so my mood was changed from one of dejection or slight depression, to being aware of all that the present moment offered to take pleasure in.

Since that day, I have been able to more consistently take pleasure in each moment, regardless what is occurring. And that has made a real difference in how I experience myself and the world around me. I have offered myself joy. I have been good to myself.

Being One with your True Buddha Self

8/10/2019

How do you be one with your true Buddha self? And what is the practical effect? How do you feel it?

To be one with your true Buddha self means it is your true Buddha self that guides your actions and thoughts, not your ego-mind; you are no longer controlled by your ego-mind. That is what has stood between you and your true Buddha self throughout your life.

As I’ve related, for years I would recite that I turn my will and my life over to the care of my true Buddha nature, but it didn’t really make a difference. The ego-mind is very powerful. Then some time ago, someone brought to my attention the practice of opening up your heart to embrace all aspects of your being and experience. I describe this practice in the post, “The Heart’s Embrace.” It is empowering.

Since it is not something that your ego-mind would ever consider doing, if you are able to do this, it's evidence that your meditation practice has connected you deeply with your true Buddha self. You have reached first base.

But even if it feels right, if you don't rebel, don’t take it for granted. Your ego-mind is always laying in wait; like Mara. And so the heart’s embrace is part of my daily meditation practice.

What will happen, what will be the effect of having turned your will and your life over to the care of your true Buddha self? The first thing you will notice is that when you embrace everything, nothing offends. Nothing in the past, nothing in the present, nothing in the future. And when nothing offends all internal and external struggle cease to be. You only struggle when something offends you.

The second thing that happens is that you understand that you have everything you need inside yourself to be at peace and happy. All the things that you’ve been taught to believe that you need are discovered to be just a product of the ego-mind and when you practice the heart’s embrace, when you embrace all aspects of your being and experience, past, present, and future, you let those learned experiences go. Since nothing offends, you know that regardless what life throws your way, you will be at peace and happy because you have returned home and will always return home to you true Buddha nature.

Third, when you are one with your true Buddha self, faith and mind are not separate. And as an ancient poem says, “When faith and mind are not separate, and not separate are mind and faith, this is beyond all words and thought, for here there is no yesterday, no tomorrow, to today. There is only the present moment. All else is thought.” And so you are truly present.

Fourth, when you are one with your true Buddha self, you see things through the eyes of your true Buddha self, through your unwounded, pre-trauma, heart filled with joy and positive energy, and through the neutrality of your senses, the equanimity of your Third Eye.

Finally, when you are one you will practice bodhicitta, which is having compassion, wishing that all beings be free of suffering and that they experience happiness. Even for those who are evil, you will have compassion for you know that they were not born that way; they developed that way because of their life experiences. As I stated in my post, “Evil - How Should a Buddhist Respond?” you want to keep your distance from evil, and in certain circumstances work to defeat it, but one always responds not with hatred but with compassion.

You have reached a state of great peace and you will vigilantly guard against efforts by your ego-mind to assert itself … to create doubt, fear, lack of faith. You will allow nothing, no matter what guise, what enticing or seductive message is sent, to rob you of your peace and happiness. You will have walked the Fourfold Path to Freedom, as I was taught and have related in my books, as well as my post, “The Fourfold Path to Freedom.”

Equanimity but Feel Someone’s Pain

8/4/2019

One thing about walking the Buddhist path … you’ll never want for challenges. The other day while meditating, I realized that my practice of experiencing all things directly, with dispassion, through the neutrality of my senses, the equanimity of my Third Eye had impacted my ability to see someone else’s pain as my own, to practice tonglen effectively.

While I was very aware of the pain, and understood the pain, I did not feel it in any way, and so I was not able to adjust my interaction, my comments, to reflect that pain. To correct this, I had a few months previously meditated on seeing that person as myself, and I connected with his inner child and felt the pain deeply.

But somehow that experience did not translate to my changing my interaction. Instead, I continued to respond with equanimity, with dispassion, with a distance. The point is not that I should respond with emotion. The point is that I should be sensitive to his pain and adjust my comments in an appropriate way. That is what would result from a true practice of tonglen. That would be an exercise of compassion.

And so I have practiced tonglen again and am aware that compassion does not mean just saying “aw” to his pain, but to change my interaction, my comments, in a way that is reflective of my feeling of his pain.

Sex - Misused and Abused - A Different Perspective

7/25/2019

In my book, Making Your Way in Life as a Buddhist, there is a section on how to approach sex from a Buddhist perspective. How to be free of lust, of the craving for sex. But because the body is weak, even the body of Buddhists, this post goes further.

Sex in our culture is an antagonist to spirituality, it is a source of stress, it comes between people as much as it binds them together. Why?

Sex is a function critical to the survival of almost all species of life on Earth. With the exception of man, evolution has developed the function of sex to be discreet in its purpose and limited and particular as to its timing. It’s purpose is procreation and survival of the fittest; Whether one looks at plants, fish, or even man’s closest animal relative - the apes - this is the limited function of sex. And it can only occur during finite periods of time.

For man, however, sex has become something very different. How did that come to be? While women have been found to be more “lusty” during their fertile days, women, contrary to females of all other species, are “available” for sex throughout the year.

And since males of most mammal species are horny beasts (we’ve all experienced a dog arousing himself on someone’s leg), the human male certainly takes advantage of that, even when procreation is unlikely. Why? Because we derive pleasure and other satisfaction from the sex act.

That males and even females derive pleasure from sex is hardly a new phenomenon. But in our contemporary culture, pleasure has become the primary purpose of sex … consistent with the pleasure syndrome which predominates our culture. It also serves various psychological needs. Procreation is now only a tangential function since through the use of various means of contraception, sex typically only results in pregnancy when you want it to, which is rarely.

The result is that sex is now one of the leading problems in relationships. Basically said, if men especially aren’t finding sex pleasurable anymore, they either look elsewhere for that satisfaction and/or it becomes one of several factors that leads to a failed relationship and divorce.

A related problem is that if a couple does have good sex, that gets confused, especially in the early stages of a relationship, with feeling they are in love or loved. And that just isn’t the case. It just means they have good sex. Lust does not equal love. But nevertheless couples get married based to a large extent on whether they have a good sex life because modern man does not know what love really is. Feeling loved is thus dependent on having good sex. When that’s gone, we want to move on.

The other ways in which sex is used in relationships are also not conducive to a healthy attitude towards sex and relationships. For men especially, but also for women, the use or withholding of sex is an expression of power in a relationship where otherwise one may feel inadequate or weak. When there are problems in a relationship, using sex to patch things up puts a burden on sex and rarely works for more than a limited time. And for people who are unhappy with their work or other aspects of their life, the pleasure or release of sex is a respite. For all these reasons, the general attitude is that good sex is an essential part of a healthy relationship.

Using sex primarily as a source of gratification, power, or bonding makes sex a source of major stress for man and is harmful to relationships. Sex is used in the search for something which is essentially a fleeting illusion. At the same time, its role in the procreation process is mostly negative, in that most of the time people want to make sure that pregnancy does not result from sex.

How to improve the stability and nourishing nature of marriage and other committed relationships? The answer is to base relationships on true love (more on that below), return sex to its primary purpose of procreation, and realize that there are other, more stable ways to establish a loving, intimate bond with a spouse/partner that do not involve the sex act. “What?!” the reader will undoubtedly exclaim. How absurd.

That is the ego-mind reacting. Bear with me while I explain. There is great comfort, satisfaction, and intimacy to be had within a loving relationship from hugging and various types of non-sexual touching … not as foreplay to sex, but just for the warmth and intimacy it engenders.

I speak from experience. I am in a deeply-loving, long-term relationship with my partner who is my best friend. We are family. We do not have sex. But we do have a very physical relationship. I feel more loved and more secure than in any relationship I have ever had. I should note that we are totally committed to our relationship and are not looking for sex elsewhere because we have all the love we need and understand that to be happy sex cannot be used as a source of pleasure.

I know this will sound crazy to most readers, whether straight or gay, but that is the truth. Sex has become so deeply engrained in our ego-drives, our self-image, that we cannot imagine life or a relationship without it; it is a craving. But as with all other cravings, that is just a product of the ego-mind. Yes, sex has a biological function. But what man has turned sex into has little to do with that function.

NOTE: The often-held belief that ejaculation is essential for a man’s health is just not true. There is no clear evidence of a health benefit to ejaculating or risk from not ejaculating. There is some very weak evidence that frequent ejaculation may help prevent prostate cancer, but that’s all it is. Arousal, however, does release certain chemicals which increase feelings of wellbeing. But those same chemicals are released by hugging and other types of touching connected with sincere affection.

For gays and lesbians, this would mean that while their relationships would be very physical and loving, sex would not be part of the relationship. To be blunt, orgasm would not be part of their relationship or their lives. As for raising a family, having a sex-less relationship will obviously not impact that since sex was never part of that for them anyway; gays and lesbians have found methods to have biologically-related children without engaging in procreative sex,.

What about teenagers and older uncommitted individuals? For them, sex would no longer be part of the right of passage into adulthood or a means of satisfying oneself or coarsely expressing oneself or having the pleasure of someone’s company by hooking up.

I am not underestimating the huge change this would entail for most people. The initial gap in their lives. Again people would have to be taught that there are other forms of physical interaction which are very satisfying and far less problematic.

With sex returned to its biologically-intended purpose … procreation, sex will then regain real meaning and be a source of growth and maturity. Both male and female will be making a statement, a real commitment to the future, when they have procreative sex.

But there is another real kicker in my proposal … most people have no clue as to what true love is. Yet this must form the basis of the new relationship.

This is unfortunately not something we typically learn through our experience … not from our parents, movies, or any aspect of our culture. Since love not sex will be the cornerstone of a relationship, this means that couples will need to learn what love really means and how to develop it between two people.

Simply said, love develops from mutual feelings of trust, respect, caring, and thoughtfulness. One will have to be taught this or learn it from a book since it is not part of our culture. Shedding the cultural connection between sex and love would be very difficult. But these mutual feelings I listed are the sine qua non of a loving, lasting, relationship. Of course issues of character and interest compatibility also play an important role in a relationship’s longevity.

I should say that I do not mean to imply that there are no lasting relationships based on true love that have sex as an integral part of the relationship, not just used for procreation. What I’m saying is that our current attitude towards sex is for the most part destructive both to the individual and to relationships. And so the dynamic needs to change.

The benefits of this change to both the individual and society would be significant. For couples and their children it would bring an increased feeling of security and peace, which would in turn substantially change the dynamics within a typical family, benefiting the psyches of all. For society it would mean a decrease in both illegitimate and unwanted pregnancies/births, a substantial decrease in the divorce rate, a decrease in all forms of spousal and child abuse, both physical and psychological, and a substantial decrease if not elimination of sex addiction. Just for starters.

While my proposal will sound absurd and futuristic to many, the argument that a marriage or other committed relationship should be based on true love rather than sex/lust, and that sex is actually detrimental to a relationship is not a new thought. To my surprise, although I shouldn’t have been since Montaigne is always wise and amazingly pertinent, I discovered that the French 16th century philosopher/essayist had the following to say after I began writing this post:

“I see no marriages that sooner are troubled and fail than those that progress by means of beauty and amorous desires. It needs more solid and stable foundations, and we need to go at it more circumspectly; this ebullient ardor is no good for it.”

“A good marriage rejects the company and conditions of sex. It tries to reproduce those of friendship. It is a sweet association of life, full of constancy, trust, and an infinite number of useful and solid services and mutual obligations.”

It is unfortunately impossible to imagine such a change happening on a society-wide basis. It would require a major change in the way many aspects of our culture operate, the experiences people have as they are growing up.

But we as individuals have the ability to make these changes on our own, to listen to a different drummer, regardless what is going on around us. It “just” requires making a commitment first to oneself and then finding another compatible soul to enter this journey. This is something that is within your power to do. Think about it!

This post is dedicated to my partner to whom this concept of sex was revealed recently and who shared it with me.

Being Good to Yourself

7/16/2019

Why would anyone have to be told to be good to themselves or how to do that? Because the fact is that most of us are controlled by our ego-mind, and what it considers good for us, what’s in our best interest, is inevitably not the case. But more basically, when we’re in it’s control we are surrounded by our false core beliefs which are all the things that we feel are wrong with us and therefore we don’t like ourselves. Why be good to yourself when you don’t like, let alone love, yourself?

As you can see, the seemingly “duh!” statement which is the title of this post is anything but. So, how to be good to yourself? Let me count the ways.

Take pleasure in each passing moment, being open to everything the present moment has to offer.
Be aware of all the things you are grateful for.
Be in touch with the positive energy in your heart.
Release all desire that your life be different in any way from the way it is right now at this moment.
Embrace all aspects of your being and experience, past, present and future. (See my post, “The Heart’s Embrace.”)
Love yourself unconditionally.
Have compassion for yourself.

But how do you get from being in the control of your ego-mind and its self-doubt or self-loathing to being in a state where you are in contact with your true self? That, as you all know, is the real challenge all of us face who walk the Buddhist path. That is the basic topic of every post on this website. A more comprehensive approach to the question is presented in my book, How to Find Inner Peace. Together with my later post, “Trauma.”

It starts with understanding that your ego is not your true self. That indeed, your ego-mind is the source of all your suffering. For it is your ego-mind’s emotions, judgments, cravings, and attachments that are the direct cause of your suffering, not the events that give rise to your ego-mind’s reactions. One can just as well react to an event calmly as fearfully; it’s all a matter of the ego-mind.

Realize instead that your true self is your heart, your true Buddha nature. Your heart is light, love, faith, trust, compassion, humility, gratefulness, joy, contentment, strength, courage, and wisdom. Once you connect with your heart and water those seeds, as opposed to constantly watering the seeds of your ego-mind, you will begin to free yourself from your ego-mind’s control and feel the release of moments of true freedom. Then you will begin to take the 4 steps of being good to yourself.

Do not be discouraged if you find that while in most respects you are able to follow this process, that your false core beliefs are so entrenched that they continue to cause problems. Those beliefs are part of your past trauma, and freeing yourself from trauma, as related in my post, "Trauma," is a process that requires disciplined practice over the passage of time. Speaking from personal experience, I am certainly not free of my deepest trauma. Indeed, it is only recently that I even became aware of it.

Prosperity and Abundance

7/13/2019

Having been raised in our culture, it is not unusual for sangha members to want prosperity and abundance while being spiritual. This causes internal conflict. Why? Because we define “prosperity and abundance” as influenced by our culture, not by our spirituality.

We define it mostly in terms of money and the things that money allows us to obtain and enjoy. Even if we live relatively modestly, money and the things it brings us are very important to our feeling of dignity, for without those things … if for example we were as poor as a church mouse and forced to live in the circumstances of poverty … we cannot imagine a dignified existence. Partly because of what we are used to, partly because most of the poor people we see do not lead a dignified existence. (Of course, from a spiritual perspective, neither do people with money.)

But that is a failure of the ego-mind. We have all come upon people who were poor who had the radiance and spirit of angels. Spiritually, “prosperity and abundance” refers to a richness in life that has nothing to do with money and is not dependent on money. It refers to our loving relationship with ourselves, to our love of beauty in all forms … nature, music, art … to being in touch with the joy and positive energy in our heart and radiating it out to everything we come in contact with. It refers to a richness of spirit.

Regarding dignity, another important aspect of spiritual practice and being in touch with your true Buddha self is knowing that you have everything you need inside yourself to be at peace and happy and that therefore you will be ok, safe, regardless what life throws your way. You will always have your dignity, it can never be taken away from you.

As I’ve written in Making Your Way in Life as a Buddhist and in posts, even when truly devastating or humiliating things befall you, when dark things happen, those things cannot take away your dignity unless you allow them to. Even, for example, in the violent experience of rape, one will not lose one’s dignity because your true Buddha self knows, even if others question, that this was forced upon you. (It’s your ego-mind as well as others who question whether you in some way encouraged the act.) Regardless what the police, courts, or neighborhood people think, if you are steadfast in your connection with your true Buddha nature, your dignity cannot be taken away from you. The same is true for people in concentration camps, prison, or living in typically degrading circumstances, such as being homeless.

If we have lived a middle class life, far from the horrors of war or the degradation of the ghetto, this is hard for us to imagine. And that is the point, to imagine is to give our power over to our ego-mind. This is rather a matter of faith, faith in our true Buddha self. Bach wrote a hymn titled, “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” Our Buddhist faith, our ability to take refuge in Buddha, dharma, and sangha is our might fortress. This is the true source of prosperity and abundance. And dignity.

Accepting the Life of Those Around You

7/11/2019

It is a primary principle of any spirituality to accept your life as being exactly the way it is at this moment. Only then will you be free of your emotions, cravings, and attachments because when you truly accept things as they are at the moment, and are present, nothing offends. You don’t take things personally. And when nothing offends, your mind rests undisturbed.

But recently while meditating, I realized that one must also specifically accept that your loved ones may be in pain or struggling or even just unclear at that moment. But we usually don’t. If you have a child or loved one, you do not want to see it in any pain or struggling or confused. And so you want to help him/her in any way that you can.

Why? Part of it is undoubtedly ego … helping someone feels good. The ego likes to think that someone needs our help. The ego likes to strut its stuff.

But I realized that a larger part of it is that I didn’t accept that the person I loved would experience suffering or struggle. That was not acceptable to me, that he would be in pain or confused, and so I was obsessive about doing whatever I could to spare him from those life experiences. Even quite minor things.

The irony of such action is that it is hugely counterproductive. What you actually do when you try to help someone in this way is take away their self-confidence because they read your help as indicating that you don’t feel they can find their way on their own. And so your effort to help ends up leaving the person feeling defeated and depressed.

The Buddha once said that one should not love someone, in the sense of being attached, because that leads inevitably to suffering. He was roundly criticized by many for making that statement, but the truth of the statement was ultimately realized. The trick is to love without being attached. This is one of the hardest things to achieve spiritually. To love and allow the other person to be free; to be a positive support to them, yes, but not to feel that they need to be helped or protected, whether it’s coming from your ego or compassion. People must learn how to protect themselves and find their own way.

A Carefree Day and Life

6/23/2019

The other morning after I meditated, I thought now that it’s summer and I’m off of work, wouldn’t it be nice to have a carefree day. And then it hit me that I have probably never had a carefree day in my life, at least since I was an innocent child.

That state probably best describes the impact of walking around, as I’ve described, always feeling like there was a grey cloud over my head, that there was always something from my past weighing me down. I never had a carefree day, not because I was attached to things, which I of course was, but because the ambience of my ego-mind was so dark.

This certainly fits perfectly with what I’ve discovered about my unknown, buried trauma recently and shared in a recent post. It also gives credence to something I experienced in a recent meditation but have not spoken about.

When my true Buddha self was searching for that deep trauma, it came to me that as I was born in January, 1944, to parents who had fled the holocaust, my past soul was probably someone who was gassed or shot on that day during the holocaust. (While I do not believe in the Buddhist tradition of reincarnation, I have come to believe in a variation of it. See my post, “Reincarnation - An Unorthodox Take.”)

That would certainly explain the dark ambience that I have always been aware of. And I know now, as explained in my post, “Trauma,” that until I am able to feel that past pain fully, the trauma will not be healed and it will not be released. My work is cut out for me.

In the meantime, I accept that my life is exactly that way it is right now at this moment and release all desire that my life be different in any way at this moment. And I am adopting the attitude of que sera sera regarding the future. Thus when I open my heart to embrace all aspects of my being and experience … regarding the past I embrace all trauma and feel the pain, regarding the present I know that things are the way they are because it’s just the way it is and have no desire for things to be any different than they are at this moment, and regarding the future, que sera sera.

This slightly reconstructed practice is providing me with an experience of lightness of being which is new to me. It feels very comforting to say, “que sera sera.” This is certainly not my default mode at this time; my trauma ambience is still prevalent. But I am seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.

Trauma

6/15/2019

When we talk about ending our suffering or go about the process of healing ourselves, the elephant in the room is our trauma. The Buddha taught that we suffer because of our cravings, our emotions. These cravings and emotions (the trauma) were formed by the ego mind in reaction to what we experienced, mostly as children, whether within the family, among peers, or in our culture (the traumatic incident). Our suffering is actually a result of these emotional reactions, which we often obsess about, not the incidents themselves. We suffer because of our ego-mind.

I just realized in starting to write this post that although I have in effect talked about trauma constantly, both my own and in general, I have never used that phrase, not even in my recent book, How to Find Inner Peace, which was just published. The reason is simply that I had not heard the term applied in this context until I recently came across some videos on the internet.

Trauma is a useful term to use because in a single word it says it all. Psychological trauma is defined as damage to the mind “caused” by a distressing event. Although contrary to the American Psychological Association, trauma does not just result from “terrible” events like “an accident, rape, or natural disaster.” It can result from everyday occurrences, certainly repeated ones, like a child being called “bad” or “stupid” or being neglected. Also, as the Buddha taught, the event does not directly cause the damage; it is the intervening factor of the ego-mind which causes this self-inflicted wound.

Most of us have found that despite our awareness that our emotions are a product of the ego-mind, we find it difficult not to place blame for our suffering on the traumatic incident itself. This makes spiritual healing impossible. But even for those of us who are fully aware that we suffer because of our ego-mind, the ego-mind’s habit energies are incredibly difficult to free ourselves from. I have always thought that the reason for this was that the ego-mind was so powerful. Because we’ve identified with its “I” our entire lives.

But there is a further significant reason, as I have recently learned. Trauma resides in the body, not just the mind. And healing ourselves spiritually does not free us from the trauma which is in our body.

Thus, healing trauma requires a two-pronged approach: spiritual and physiological. In my book and in posts I have described healing trauma spiritually through the process of the heart’s embrace. By sitting with the painful event(s) and embracing them as something that happened to you; that regardless how much pain was caused, those events made you the person you are today, including the part that is open to ending your suffering; own the event as part of your story and nothing to be ashamed of.

This last point is very important. So often we blame ourselves for bad things that happen to us, that other people do to us. Somehow it’s something we did, it is our fault. Either because we can’t allow ourselves to thing ill of people who are important in our lives, like our parents, or because we have been conditioned to think of ourselves as causing trouble, of being to blame. Of feeling guilt.

But these trauma events are always about the other person, not us. We do not cause the traumatic incident to happen to us. We may put ourselves in the situation where it happened, but the direct cause is always the other person. Had the other person had a different psyche, the incident would not have happened. So stop taking blame or being ashamed.

In my book, there’s another aspect to the healing process that I discuss … speaking the truth, certainly to oneself, but also often to whoever caused the trauma. As children we weren’t able to defend ourselves or were scared to speak the truth, whether for fear of losing the love of a parent or the friendship of a peer. This is one of the things that often makes anger so overwhelming.

Beware though, speaking the truth does not mean just venting your anger. That would not be productive to your healing process and would be abusive to the person you are talking to.

The right way to speak the truth has several components. First, be very clear what the truth is. We’re talking about your heart’s truth here, not your ego-mind’s. You must separate what actually happened from the spin you have put on it over the years. As the saying goes, “The facts, nothing but the facts.” But don’t go into all the gory details, just enough to make your point. Second, state clearly but free of emotion how the incident impacted you, whether in a practical way or emotionally. Third, place this statement of truth in the context of compassion, both towards yourself and the other person(s). Explain that your need to finally speak the truth and free yourself from this negative energy is having compassion for yourself. You show compassion towards the other by stating what happened free of emotion and recognizing explicitly that what occurred was the result of the other’s suffering … no one voluntarily chooses to be mean.

Between practicing the heart’s embrace and speaking the heart’s truth, the psychological aspect of trauma will heal. Not overnight, but with time,

But that does not heal the other aspect of trauma, the physiological. When we experience trauma, since we usually don’t express ourselves at the time … we may scream or cry but that is not expressing ourselves, just our emotional reaction … we shove it down inside us where it lodges in our body, often for decades or our entire lives.

When we experience trauma, our body and mind set up various systems to bear the pain of the trauma incident. This impacts many parts of our body … hormones, the brain, the nervous system. The result is that we live in a world that we didn’t live in before. We are trapped in it. Regardless what the syndrome … depression, addiction, anxiety … our world has changed. We have lost our innocence.

And this post-trauma world-view is not accessible to language. It is not something that can be changed or healed through talk-therapy. It can be ameliorated through talk-therapy or through spiritual practice, but not healed.

What we need to do is release the trauma by feeling the trauma, the emotion fully, without thinking about it. This sounds counter-intuitive and is certainly not something the ego-mind is open to. But this is what we must do. Only when we do not fear the trauma will we be healed. And as we work to release the trauma, we need to create a new habit-energy by purposefully feeling good, feeling great, being in touch with our heart, especially when we go to bed.

To release the trauma from our body, we need to turn to a physical exercise, since the trauma is our body is not accessible to language. One method which has gained a following is based on the observation of animals in stress. When the stress is passed, they shake, sometimes violently, to free themselves of the trauma and go on with their life unaffected. (I used to raise chickens and observed this after traumatic events.) And so psychologists have developed various exercises that induce shaking/tremors and encourage the body to feel the pain and release it. These exercises are to be repeated regularly for an extended period, depending on the severity of the trauma. Here is a link to one such exercise: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7f92fscxUQ

When my partner tried this technique, it worked like a charm from the first. He induced shaking and, without thinking, felt his pain fully and vocalized it. Afterwards, he felt relief. When I tried it, nothing happened. Even when I induced shaking and allowed myself to feel the pain. My ego-mind was not going to allow this.

I should explain that I recently discovered that I still had something very dark inside me, a deep trauma, which causes me to feel that I am not worthy of being loved and fear being abandoned. Which in turn causes actions that hurt both myself and my partner. It is also, I believe, the underlying reason for my facial stress/frown, the grey cloud that is always over me; it goes deeper than the false core belief that I thought was its cause. Which is why it is still with me. Given the depth of the trauma, I’m not sure what it stems from. It may quite possibly be something that I am not conscious of. That has been walled off by my ego-mind. It may even stem from a past life. But what the specifics are are not important in this therapy.

So I first turned to another method. During meditation, I breathed in through my mouth (not as usual through my nose) which opens up the throat chakra and allows the trauma, the emotion, to rise. Also during meditation my true Buddha self sought out this trauma (not to find specifically where it lay, but just in general to be open to it), embraced it, and for the first time I felt something. I could “hear” the faint sound of a scream.

I repeated this practice several times before returning to the shaking exercise. This time, when I induced the shaking and allowed myself to feel the pain, a sound emerged from my throat, naturally, which I would describe as an agonized, gut-level scream. Not a piercing scream, but a deep one. This continued for several minutes until I purposefully stopped shaking and stopped vocalizing.

I have done this now several times. Being in touch with this deep pain is not painful. Hearing my agonized screams is not painful. It is grounding. I feel like I’m doing something good for myself, something loving, which will eventually result in the release of the trauma, although I have the sense this will take some time.

In the meantime, I’ve noticed that I seem to feel more open to life, more able to take pleasure in each passing moment. That in itself is a blessing.

To See Opportunity You Must Be Free of Fear

5/21/2019

It is a maxim of Buddhist teaching that everything that we experience, even the things we don’t like or are painful, are opportunities, whether for learning, personal advancement, or spiritual growth. The challenge is that we usually don’t see these experiences as opportunities because we are wrapped up in our emotions, especially anger and fear. And so the anger or fear perpetuates itself and the opportunity is lost.

Let me give you an actual example. A friend of mine had been attending a class that was very important to him. He enjoyed interacting with the other students and it provided an outlet for artistic growth. He looked forward to this once a week event more than anything.

But something happened in the class that gave him no option other than to leave the class, which was devastating to him. This had been his “home” for almost a year. He looked around for another class but found nothing that he felt good about. He was in turmoil, filled with anxiety.

Then he said to himself that he had to let the class and the experience go. He had his memories, but he had to stop wishing that he could go back, that something would change. Stop asking, “why?” And he had to stop his fear/anxiety that he would not be able to find a new artistic home, that he needed a class, and adopt a positive outlook.

He then started looking again for a class and found one that had possibilities. He contacted the instructor and from their conversation he felt that this would be a wonderful opportunity for him. And so he started this new class and it bodes well.

Had he not freed himself from his fear and anxiety, he would have remained in an emotional straight-jacket and any judgments he made regarding that class or a new one would have been bad decisions because they would not have been made from a place of equanimity. Instead, he now sees what happened as presenting an opportunity to him for further growth.

On my own personal level, this power of fear has been encountered many times, thankfully mostly in the past. When my partner died in 1989, I said to a good friend, “What am I going to do with my life? Where am I going to find meaning?” For weeks I went through my life on auto-pilot. Yet when I got past that fear (I am a survivor; it is in my genes), that loss turned into an opportunity for artistic and spiritual growth. Had he not died, I would have never become a composer and written An AIDS Requiem and other compositions. Had he not died, I would not have met the friend who introduced me to Buddhism, which has changed my life.

That relationship was a beautiful seed from which so much more has sprung. One person after a performance of the Requiem said to me that he only hopes that at some point in his life he has the impact on another person that my partner had on me.

As with all life, it is through the cycle of death/loss that continued growth is possible.