This morning after early chores and breakfast and before starting into the day of homeschooling and life with our three teens, I chose to watch a most wonderful Tara Brach teaching video on the controlling self. Always couched in kindness and non-judgmental awareness, Tara offers her wisdom teachings in welcoming and accessible speech.
She spoke of thinking of our controlling self as rooted in our limbic system, part of an ancient survival mechanism which at an earlier point in our collective evolution served the whole of our species well, and not so much now. Many of our deepest held habitual responses to the people and experiences we encounter each day are rooted in a universal need to feel safe, valued and heard. And in answering to any unmet needs we may have, we can unwittingly manipulate our lives to serve feeling secure, loved and listened to.
Towards the end of her presentation she guided participants through a brief meditation whereby we were invited to imagine our striving, controlling self in terms of the myth of Sisyphus, condemned to forever push a boulder up a mountain.
How much of our lives are occupied with shouldering that Sisyphean boulder—whatever that boulder might represent to each of us? How much living do we miss out on when caught in that trance of needing to manipulate elements of our lives to serve those unmet needs?
This was a particularly rich meditation for me today.
I have been caught for most of my adult life in trying desperately to understand elements of how I am in this world which are exhaustively and fundamentally in contradiction to how the social world operates. I recognize that I have been constantly seeking explanations for my own, only recently understood, neuro-differences. This coupled with a much suffering child living many of these same neuro-diverse ways and add to that being personally investigated for a rare,-genetic connective tissue disorder, I have found myself explaining and excusing our different ways of engaging with (often dis-engaging from) the social world around us with a near constant Sisyphean refrain of "this is why...this is why". Even this very paragraph you are reading right now plays into my great need to understand and be understood. The weight of shouldering this boulder has been crushing to say the least.
During the guided mediation with Tara today, the phrase "this is why" became emblazoned in my mind across the boulder I was rolling up to the never- to- be- reached mountain top and just as it did, the incredible pain of why dropped away. And as the metaphoric boulder fell, my body moved out of the way and I was left with standing at the base of the mountain (my body, my family, my life, this world) and was overcome with the profound awareness that when I stop the endless seeking, when I no longer need to question why, why, why and re-live the pain of the years of that unknowing, I can reside in the bountiful presence of this is... recognizing that, this is, is acceptance…a word we often struggle with when the actual circumstances of our lives do not match the glossy, comfortable, desired images we wish to portray.
A couple of days ago my son Lucas invited me to travel out to Earnscliffe with him so he could try out a new lens he purchased for his camera. He had a considerable dry spell of no photography while mostly guitar playing and working with his dad for the past six months. (both very worthy pursuits to pass the hours).
With his newfound inspiration to get out in the field again we headed out and found ourselves stopped by a field of cattle who were out grazing on that overcast, cool, early November morning.
Roadside we sat, the enveloping stillness wrapping us like a shroud, the only sounds, the chewing of nearby, curious cows. Lucas commented on how gentle the vista before us was. The cow's eyes and demeanor in such obvious contradiction to the myriad men in orange jackets in the nearby fields--hunters intent on taking down the exquisitely plumed ring-necked pheasants.
Quietly, we sat feeling the depth and breadth of each breath; ours, the cattle's, the very inhalation of the soft breeze as it moved across the land itself. My shoulders fell, my cares fell away and I moved effortlessly into the ease that presence offers. In this, I was struck by how easily I forget to fall into the presence of the moment as though my life is somehow less precarious, my future existence more assured than, the preserve pheasants or the ear-tagged cattle.
Nothing beyond this very moment is certain to any of us and yet the gift each moment invites us into, by our very presence in it, is so large.
And so, this morning following my meditation, I thought about that recent experience by the field of cattle.I thought of what happens when I drop the Sisyphean boulder for even a moment. How when I do remember to do so I can bear witness to what is, the very "this is" actuality of my own life and the lives of those I love. In doing so, I can deepen my ability to both bear witness and attend beautifully, even courageously, to what simply exists in these moments of being rather than being caught in the endlessly seeking cycle of doing and questioning which so much of our lives are spent within.
Tara ended her brilliant talk with an altogether lovely Mary Oliver poem entitled When I am Among the Trees which brims with the inimitable beauty of attending to presence in our lives. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
In warmth,
Jill MacCormack
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