With memories, we always
have this choice.
Am I going to choose to sit mindfully with this memory, and then let it compost a bit and pass by?
Or am I going to 1. Avoid it fearfully 2. Rage at it and at the wrong 3. Act through in with confusion and sublimation.
If what we want is to have the lousy no good or horrid memory stick around, it's good to run away from it fearfully, rage about the injustice of it, or have it turn us. Into someone else.
If what we intend is to slowly have it fade into the past, we have the choice to sit with it,with compassion.
To say to ourselves "Ah, THAT there is a thought." And "THAT is a feeling." ... to provide some healthy equanimity.
So we are able to learn that we are not that thought or feeling. And what exists right now is not that situation.
Stuff like this we can't 'think through'. It doesn't dissolve it, and it doesn't clarify things. Expecting our Prefrontal Cortex to solve problems like this... is like expecting to go through life using only your pinky finger. How unnecessarily limiting.
But walking or sitting, and making the space to do it mindfully, DOES dissolve old difficult things.
So that navigating the present becomes less about looking out for land mines , and more about immersing ourselves in what is before us , today.
Am I going to choose to sit mindfully with this memory, and then let it compost a bit and pass by?
Or am I going to 1. Avoid it fearfully 2. Rage at it and at the wrong 3. Act through in with confusion and sublimation.
If what we want is to have the lousy no good or horrid memory stick around, it's good to run away from it fearfully, rage about the injustice of it, or have it turn us. Into someone else.
If what we intend is to slowly have it fade into the past, we have the choice to sit with it,with compassion.
To say to ourselves "Ah, THAT there is a thought." And "THAT is a feeling." ... to provide some healthy equanimity.
So we are able to learn that we are not that thought or feeling. And what exists right now is not that situation.
Stuff like this we can't 'think through'. It doesn't dissolve it, and it doesn't clarify things. Expecting our Prefrontal Cortex to solve problems like this... is like expecting to go through life using only your pinky finger. How unnecessarily limiting.
But walking or sitting, and making the space to do it mindfully, DOES dissolve old difficult things.
So that navigating the present becomes less about looking out for land mines , and more about immersing ourselves in what is before us , today.
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