For today’s Soul Care Sunday we are going to dive into suffering and attachment. Sounds heavy for a Sunday? Prepare to be surprised as it’s actually all about presence and lightness.
A man Kamak Ravikant went to study meditation in a silent Retreat. He went to ask one of the monks a question on leaving, and feeling calmer and stronger but still felt something was missing.
He asked ‘How do you find peace?
The monk replied ‘I say yes. To everything that happens I say yes”.
This leans into meeting life exactly where it is meeting us. Not just ahead of it, and not being stuck behind it. Being present in each moment.
I still remember the moment I heard one of my beloved teachers Ram Dass repeat the words of the Third Patriarch of Zen, Seng-Tsan – which forms the first sentence of the Hsin Hsin Ming; ‘The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences”. I remember this landing with absolute clarity in my heart, piercing me. Then kind of falling apart as I am plagued with preferences. And we all are. The teaching is not ‘break your mind and have no preferences’. The teaching is about not being attached to our preferences. Let them swell like waves inside of us and then dissipate out into the larger ocean of the mind. Interestingly this doesn’t turn us into wet blankets with no personality, but allows us to meet the moments of our lives with clarity and curiosity.
Nisargadatta Maharaj one of my favourite teachers breaks this down even further.
“Suffering is exclusively the result of attachment or resistance, it is a sign of lacking readiness to go on, to flow with life.
In my world, nothing ever goes wrong.
It is your restlessness that causes chaos.
Love is will, the will to share your happiness with all.
Being happy, making others happy, this is the rhythm of love.
If you are angry or in pain, separate yourself from anger and pain and watch them.
Externalization is the first step to liberation.
The real does not die, the unreal never lived.
Set your mind right and all will be right.
When you know that the world is one, that humanity is one,
you will act accordingly.
But first of all you must attend to the way you feel, think and live.
Unless there is order in yourself, there can be no order in the world.
Nothing is done by me, everything just happens.
I do not expect, I do not plan, I just watch events happening,
knowing them to be unreal.
Everybody dies as he lives. I am not afraid of death,
because I am not afraid of life.
I live a happy and shall die a happy death.
Misery is to be born, not to die.
You do not have any problems, only your body has problems…In your world, nothing stays, in mine nothing changes”.
IN MY WORLD NOTHING EVER GOES WRONG.
What a mandate to live by, what a truth to embody. I was so moved by this I got it tattooed on my arm. Might seem extreme, but the mind body system I find myself in has been conditioned to lean into drama, to hypothesise, and, to panic. This tattoo on my arm is a potent reminder. Pointing to all my life experiences where what was ‘going wrong’ ended up being an excellent teaching, an expansion. Often not in the moment, but in the greater scope of my life.
I see this time and time again with our students. They land, even if clumsily at first in a place where they surrender to, and find their grace, even within excruciatingly challenging situations. It’s not that grief and sadness isn’t felt, it’s instead that they find they can still exist with it, and it opens them up to other things that they were missing.
JOURNAL PROMPTS
If you feel curious about where how this might move through your life, some prompts to Journal on…
Where are you attached to certain things in your life? If you dig deep, can you find the source of WHY you are attached?
What does the statement bring up for you; ‘in my world, nothing ever goes wrong’?
What does the rhythm of love feel like for you in every aspect of your life?
What does order within you feel like? What does disorder feel like? What are you willing to do about it?
Begin to observe all the things happening in your life, without jumping into judgement about – and journal about the joys and the challenges of this.
SIGNPOSTS BACK HOME CONVERSATION SERIES
Mutribo and I have started a Conversations series I think you might like. A way to have a weekly session of meditation and knowledge at your own timing. We start with 15 minutes of meditation, chat for about an hour then complete with 15 mins of meditation. You can try the first talk out through the link below.
We are going to offer a few of these talks as a gifted offering and then we will fold them into our Portal Membership and then these Conversations will be available to all our Portal Members as a weekly offering as a part of your membership!
The Portal Membership is a teaching resource where you can come and learn at your own pace including our Mindfit Meditation program, a multitude of courses and programs on self development and spirituality, that also includes our Live Monthly Talks that you can join me with each month where we explore themes and practices. It is truly an incredible resource and we have made it as financially accessible as we can – an investment the equivalent of a take out cup of coffee a week. You can join annually with a huge discount, or pay monthly, and the membership spans a year.
BECOME A PORTAL MEMBER