“The past has no power to stop you from being present now.
Only your grievance about the past can do that. “
Eckhart Tolle
I have been thinking a lot about both my desire for connection with others and the frustration of that at times and realise despite some of the deep pain caused I am as separate as I want to be or feel myself to be. And ultimately I can either hold onto and foster attitudes of blame or anger or separation or just let the whole thing go through practicing unconditional acceptance, reminding myself everyone is different, not everything in life is a personal attack. Also I do have power over my own life but not ultimately the lives, choices or influence of others. The fact is that some humans just cause us a lot of pain at times. But how we end up reacting in the end is up to us, after we process all the feelings involved.
I was listening to Australian comedian Adam Hills on tele last night and during recent stand up appearance in London he told a story of the joke an Australian journalist told to the Dalai Lama : so the Dalai Lama goes into a pizza bar, and he asks “Can you make me one with everything?” It made me smile as I thought of how so often with my strong idealism and Aquarian and Neptunian energy that is what I most hope for, that I will feel connected deeply with others, seen, felt and known. But realistically this cannot always happen because separation is a part of life, and I am not just talking of physical separation but of that deep sense of existential aloneness that can overcome so many of us in the Dark Night of the Soul or when we have suffered from rejection in the past.
Painful life events can make us believe we are alien, separate from everything, most especially other human beings. At the worst end of the spectrum we can come to feel after too many hard knocks or a lifetime of disconnection that our entire life has been a mistake or one bad joke after another and we can then sink into the depths of despair. Our body can be filled with pain or a lot or wounds or thorns. I have recently visualised (and I am working on a poem about this at the moment) this pain as shards of a beautiful diamond that splintered and came to be lodged deep in tissue, representing the compacted consolidation of past hurts and injuries we had to bear both inter personally and intra personally.
For some of us these thorns, splinters or shards come to rule our lives. They can be evoked by each new crisis and it can be so hard to dislodge them. So I was delighted to come across the following beautiful passages written in the book Embracing Each Moment by Buddhist monk Anam Thubten last night. I read it as gentle rain fell after days of crippling heat and as the rain falling soothed my soul so did his words. They spoke to my experience this week of feeling like a thorn or splinter was trying to make its way to the surface of consciousness and was actually physically manifesting in my bottom lip. The inflammation seems to have died down now after two or four or more very painful days.
I love how in these passages he reminds us the joy and surrender is the outcome of the forgiveness process that is never simple and can often be quiet painful because it involves a lot of struggle along with the experiencing and processing of difficult feelings before we can arrive at a deeper place of recognition of the need of a far deeper letting go that so often happens through grieving (at least in my experience.) With the feeling of the thorn lodged inside can be the rising up of tears from deep within our suffering body, psyche and soul as we realise not only the painful cost of holding on to injuries but also how most things just came out of blindness or ignorance instead of any malignant or malicious intent on behalf of the wounder.
I really hope these passages speak to readers. I love this Buddhist Monk. I would love to adopt him as my new spiritual teacher because he seems to put into words things I have experienced so deeply. Don’t you just love it when that happens?
most of the time our own pain and suffering originates out of our relationships with other human beings. It starts with our parents and other people who were close to us when we were young. Out of our experience with other human beings we feel hatred, resentment, and jealousy (and confusion?). We compare ourselves with others sometimes feeling pride and other times feeling guilt, shame, and self loathing. If we look inside, we can see that we all have wounds, pain, suffering and self loathing to a certain extent. They all come from our relationship with the human world. Sometimes we are not in touch with our internal conflict. We are not in touch with our own pain, anger and self loathing.
Buddha said that seeing people locked in conflict made him completely distraught. But on close examination, he discerned a thorn, hard to see, lodged deep in their hearts….we see that too, right now in our own time. … there is war… violence and injustice and an unbelievable amount of both physical and internal suffering. Therefore it is totally understandable to feel completely distraught or hopeless. Sometimes we are thinking about our human brothers and sisters who live on the other side of the world. We also see suffering in our own families and in ourselves. Remember, Buddha said that when he looked he saw a thorn. It is a very powerful simile, a thorn. He said a thorn is lodged n our hearts. He also said that it is very hard to see. There are lots of thorns lodged in our hearts. They are hard to see unless we quiet our minds and turn our attention completely inward to hear the cry of our hearts and the confusion of our minds. Perhaps you recognise there is a thorn inside you.
With this in mind I would like to share a beautiful practice of forgiveness… Forgiveness can set our hearts free. It can remove the thorn from our hearts. If we don’t know how to forgive, then we will be walking around for the rest of our lives with that thorn lodged in our hearts. .. It will colour our relationships with others and the world. .. I realise there are many people in my life I need to forgive. This is a beautiful epiphany. It is not a negative or disheartening realisation. forgiveness.. is liberating…when you look into yourself, if you look with complete honesty and courage, you may find many of these thorns. You may find you have whole groups of people you need to forgive… parents.. relatives…friends.. or humanity. Or you may have to forgive yourself… And definitely you have to forgive humanity, because humans have been very destructive to each other.
But forgiveness is not really easy. It is especially not easy to truly forgive when there is no divine or eternal reward.. yet it can be the most liberating experience you can ever witness. Forgiveness comes from understanding the human condition and understanding where each of us is coming from. Understanding those who have caused harm to us. Understanding their karma, their background, their suffering, their delusions and realising there is no evil in anybody. There is no evil in human beings. Everyone is harming each other with complete unawareness. So we are ruled by our own delusions, by our own neurosis. Sometimes all we need is understanding. When we have this understanding, there is no human being in this world we cannot forgive. Imagine you are looking into the heart of another, and you can see the heart is full of wounds. Imagine you are looking into the mind,.. and you recognise there is a cloud, a cloud of confusion. As long as we are walking around with this thorn in our hearts we will always be in pain. We will be suffering secretly and silently. We may not be aware of our pain. We will still, of course, go to parties, eat delicious food, and play music. We will be busy with our daily chores, and yet there will be silent pain.
… imagine going inside and keep enquiring until you find al those old thorns. If you can let go of some of these thorns you will experience indescribable freedom and joy as expressed by many of the ancient masters. :
Ten thousand flowers in spring.
The moon in autumn.
The cool breeze in summer.
Snow in winter.
If your mind is not clouded by all of these unnecessary things.
This is the best season of your life.
Are you experiencing the best season of your life? Do you know how to get your heart get drunk with joy? Have you felt pure joy, pure love, and pure freedom at least once some time within the past ten days? If you can forgive everybody, including yourself, you may be able to feel this joy. this unconditional freedom. You may feel that every day is the best season of your life. When there are no thorns in your heart, then perhaps the only thing you experience is this pure joy all the time. You will be falling in love in each moment. You will be falling in love with everything, with nature an d with all of these countless wonders manifesting every minute.
When you totally forgive yourself, you know how to accept yourself. Then you will love yourself truly. You will give this empowerment to yourself.. then you will be (full of) infinite love, boundless compassion.
Are not these such deeply spiritually true and life affirming passages? And the forgiveness practice well in my experience is does liberate us to feel this level of joy after all the burning up of despair, suffering and pain of holding on is finally processed and done.
Emerging From The Dark Night 