Recycling Karmic Trash
How do you relate to the notion that experiencing discomfort mindfully causes purification? Can you share a personal story of a time you felt nurtured by mindfully experiencing discomfort from an exogenous source? What helps you to stop caring between 'what's me' and 'what's them'?
This is so very timely. Yesterday someone asked me how I can "get along with everyone " ? I told her that I felel that everyone has their own suffering and passion. When you look closely and listen with an open heart, you will see and feel it. She told me I was beyond this time. I replied with the "Secret Mission from The Future"
But I also told her that her own emotional boundaries are so very important and that to notice who's feelings she is feeling and why.
Thanks for this reminder! I'm kind of an "HSP" (highly sensitive person) who can feel burned out by overly resonating with the plights and problems of others. As the article suggests, that probably happens when insufficiently mindful -- so there's some additional incentive to stay on it!
We have to be very carful and though the author is attempting to assist us in seeing a different view. There is a huge play on the ego that should not be ignored. The ego giving us yet another form of ignorance to attach to. The idea that we are somehow different (and especially superior) is a fallacy (and one that I am still suck in mind you). If we find ourself in this type of conversation we have moved into a material and fabricated "spirituality" and are now developing our ego further.
"Spiritual" growth has humility as it's best friend, a humility that sees everyone and thing as a teacher to learn from to discern but not to judge, condemn, or differentiate. Step back and take a bow to all that is in front of you, dwell in gratitude and take another step in the direction of healing.
We are constantly interconnected with all that is, so we are constantly affected by and affecting all that is, living and not living, human and not human. Life provides pain. Pain is part of life, and we are constantly affecting and affected by pain. We provide suffering. Suffering is how we carry and deal with pain. Experiencing the sensory arising can be suffering of pain, be it endogenous or exogenous, in a way that doesn't add to or create unnecessary pain. We are individual and one -- not one, not two, one and two. It is important to know what is my responsibility and what is not, as the serenity prayer points out so well. Knowing that is a valuable part of my spirituality and doesn't detract from it.
I and you, mine and yours, us and them -such differentiations are created in mind by conditioning.As we grow with an open mind and open heart, we experience deep connectedness, intimacy , harmony and oneness in spite of apparent differences. This happens to us as we walk on the path of contemplative-based spirituality. Living mindfully is my contemplative-based spirituality. Both exogenous and endogenous discomfort, pain and suffering have helped me to purify my inner self. Living mindfully has created equilibrium and peacefulness in me. There are times when I miss the step of living mindfully. Such experience helps me to nurture my mindfulness practice. Accepting pain coming from outside sources as well as from inside sources compassionately has helped me to look within to work on myself. Such a journey becomes a pilgrimage.
Namaste.
Jagdish P Dave
The word which immediately came to my mind was Compassion. When we sit in compassion for self and others there is less "judgment" and we can move through the discomfort with more ease, at least that has been true for me. Compassion also serves me to stop caring if it's "me" or "them" and sees it more as "us" <3
