“If you want to have the consistent experience of failure, try to become an ideal human being” ~ Adyashanti
I don’t know if you’re anything like me…. but, frankly, there a number of things about myself that I really wish I could change, wish I could ‘improve’ or ‘get over’…..
But no matter how many times I firmly resolve to change them, or feel badly about them, or pray about them….I have to admit, they haven’t moved all that much!
I console myself by saying that ‘self improvement projects’ aren’t in vogue anymore – they’re not considered ‘spiritually correct’, so to speak. The idea is that being on a perpetual ‘self improvement project’ is like being on a hamster wheel. There is always going to be more to improve, more conditioning to overcome.
And then we find ourselves living in that limited space, in the realm of whatever issue or circumstance we are pushing against, rather than experiencing the rest of who we are – and that can engender an ongoing sense of ‘not okayness’.
And, of course, the more we fight against something, butt our heads against something, the more it solidifies – like that old saying, “Whatever we resist, persists”.
So what can we do….??
Well…..“What if the Problem Isn’t the Problem”?. What if the real problem isn’t fundamentally the issue we’re trying to get over? What if changing how we’re viewing the situation and ourselves could free things up to some extent?
I love the teaching phrase, “Always Being, Always Becoming”. At the same time as we are “Beingness Itself”, we are also always in the process of “Becoming”, of developing and evolving further.
What if we could hang out both as being and becoming and let that not be a problem?
Another way to say this is, “Allowing ourselves to be complete with incompletion”. In a sense, incompletion is an inherent aspect of life — life is rarely, if ever, neatly tied up — whether it’s our perpetual ‘To Do’ list, nature interrupting the bloom of a flower due to drought or frost, or emotional patterns that seem to re-emerge….
This particular inquiry is what is ‘up’ for me personally – exploring living in the blending, the co-arising of ‘Being’ and ‘Becoming’ – the coming together of the soothing wholeness (where everything feels complete and okay) and the vicissitudes/challenges of life (where things feel tenuous and unresolved).
I’d be happy to support you in whatever is happening in your life at this time. If you’d like to schedule a videoconferencing session, I’d love to hear from you :-). Please email elly@nilenet.com or call me at 303-506-3507.
Warmly,
Elly
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“The point here is awakening, right? The point is not to learn how to suppress yourself so that you feel better. It’s how to wake up to the reality of your being, and we wake up to the reality of our being by relating with our human nature, not by avoiding it. Not by going around it. Not by trying to pray it away or mantra it away or meditate it away. We wake up by letting everything within ourselves reveal itself, be felt, be experienced, be known. Then and only then can we move on to a deeper level. This is very, very important and it’s something that a lot of people don’t understand. It’s easy to use meditative techniques to suppress our human experiences, to suppress things that we don’t want to feel. But what is called for is just the opposite. True Meditation is the space in which everything gets revealed, everything gets seen, everything gets experienced. And as such, it lets go of itself. We don’t even let go. It lets go of itself.”
~ Adyashanti, True Meditation
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