Thanks to Beth for stepping up and leading DPX last Sunday. She led us in an Equanimity Meditation and talked about how these meditations can help with emotional regulation. We subconsciously use conditioned maladaptive ways to cope with stressful situations. Equanimity Meditation will replace our hard-wired coping strategies with new thought patterns which gradually become more automatic the more we practice. In group discussion David commented that “Parts of ourselves, such as guilt and shame can overwhelm us and feel like that is all there is, when in reality it doesn’t define who we are.” By repeating “I love you, I will take care of you. I will provide for you what you need”. We generate a feeling of safety and compassion for ourselves. Of course, that lead us to a discussion of exactly what are our basic needs and Maslow’s Hierarchy or Needs. This led to the inevitable the question “Is a cell phone a basic need?”! It is often to painful to recognize your emotional needs because so often they are not being met. I that case we need to practice soaking in the very small ways they are being met. Sometimes we don’t even know what we are feeling. It’s just a knot of confusion. Then we need to care about that confusion without trying to sort it out. Other times our pain is greater than our practice can hold. That is when we need to practice compassion for ourselves without judgement.
Uncertainty
Thanks to Paul for leading DPX last Sunday. He read from a Pemma Chodron book…. “We need to resist resentments and hardening and try to interpret our patterns, learning to stay with uncertainty, rather than shutting down.” Pemma says, “Be cool when the ground beneath us disappears”. This lead our group into an intimate discussion of death and grieving. Jen spoke of embracing uncomfortable emotions around grieving the loss of people that are still around. Beth commented that sometimes grief and sadness overwhelms the capacity of our practice and when that happens we need to avoid judgement, let go of “I should be feeling…” and sit with grief until it breaks through to self-compassion. Melissa said feeling grief, loss and pain gives us a fuller appreciation of joy when it happens.
On Joy
After listening to the Youtube video that Beth brought in (posted below) by the Buddhist nun Anuttara our group had a lively discussion. Many thoughts from our members on suffering and happiness. Such as “Even joy is suffering because it is impermanent.” To which Rob added “Back in the dark ages there was so much suffering and death that Christianity had to invent heaven to create the hope of happiness. Being shocked that we are not happy is relatively resent. Happiness and suffering are both impermanent and can be good. We don’t want to live forever! Just wait for the next moment to arrive and things will change.” Suffering is also called Dukka in Pali, which means unsatisfactoryness, or “putting up with things you don’t want or not getting what you do want”, Dave reminded us. Brendan added that “we are all searching for the perfect place and in reality, the closest we can get to the perfect place is realizing that it doesn’t exist. The closest to perfect is in the present moment.” Jen added that “you can’t pursue happiness, it just happens” Rachel spoke of responding to complex situations with skillful or unskillful means is sometimes not that clear cut and often is a combination of many motivations. To which Mike commented “I can’t be skillful with anyone in this room if I can’t be skillful with myself.” Simply put, Steven added “Compassion and kindness take more effort. People so easily hate”. One thing we all agreed on was that we are jealous of Ali Kat's Facebook photos of her trip out west and miss her presence in the group!