I’m fairly identified and have been off and on all day. Out on a walk in beautiful nature, while Recording and Listening, insights dropped in. Insights I want to share in this blog. The key to not suffering is Presence and listening to the still small voice. Sounds simple. Is simple. But not easy. I have heard this so many times in practice.
Part of our short recitation: “We are here to end suffering. … If I am suffering, it is because I am choosing something over ending suffering.”
On the walk there was an awareness that I needed to record. “I” didn’t want to, but the heart said yes, and I turned on the recorder. I just started talking. I looked at my phone and saw that I had been talking for about 10 minutes. More time passed and I realized that I was no longer talking out loud. I hadn’t turned the recorder off, and I started talking again about what I was seeing.
What I saw was important. When I’m not recording, the ego thoughts go so fast, and the human is just caught up in the tirades of egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate. When I started talking again, knowing I was talking to the recorder, I had the direct experience of seeing that I couldn’t capture everything ego was saying. There were so many thoughts. This is the power of building a practice where Awareness, even in the midst of identification, can be sensed, felt, experienced.
One of the benefits of having a Recording and Listening practice is that it assists in slowing things down to give me a fighting chance at having access to what Awareness is so generously providing.
The other insight, while not new, is that when I am not consistently attending to this human being with curiosity, dedication and love, ego will torture her. Two key practices that allow curiosity, dedication and love to be available are being in nature and Recording and Listening. I tend to do these simultaneously. When I don’t record and listen or spend time in nature, ego has such easy access to me. But when I get out in nature, move the body and record and listen, even if suffering exists, a portal is opened for compassion.
Ego would love for me to talk about all the things I did while identified. What’s actually more important is that in the midst of the ego storm, I chose Love. Using the tool of the recorder, Conscious Compassionate Awareness cared for the human. That is the miracle of showing up.
Gasshō
laura c