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A New Series—On Cling­ing

Today begins a new series. I almost decided that I’d turn it into a new book, and then thought, “Hey! You’ve got three books in var­i­ous stages of devel­op­ment!” So, I then thought I could write this one as an online book, aka a series.

I think my moti­va­tion has been the last month or so, as I’ve noted the dete­ri­o­rat­ing polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion in most of the Mid­dle East, and in Afghanistan, Pak­istan, and even in the cliché laden US pri­maries. Not to sit up here in Canada and preach, as we’ve got our own dramas.

The other thing was the mar­ket flux­u­a­tions. I got to think­ing about how the world seems to be shift­ing a bit, or a lot, and how inter­est­ing the times could be, for folk not well grounded in themselves.

I sus­pect that might include a pile of peo­ple, as depth is not a prized char­ac­ter­is­tic. Cling­ing, on the other hand, is. Here, in no par­tic­u­lar order are 10 things we cling to:

1– self-definition
2– peo­ple
3– “stuff”—money, pos­ses­sions, titles, jobs
4– lists of right and wrong
5– rela­tion­ships
6– body rules and ill­nesses
7– trau­mas
8– habits
9– emo­tions
10– ide­olo­gies

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Our Self-definition

One of the hard­est things to believe is that we are not as we define our­selves (and are not as oth­ers define us…) It’s dif­fi­cult because, since we were small, big peo­ple have been telling us pre­cisely this. “You are Susie! Those are your fin­gers! You are a good girl!” Pretty soon, we moved from a blank slate, to “Susie, the 10 fin­gered good girl.” This becomes us.

Then, peo­ple told us what to believe. “This is what good lit­tle Suzie wor­ships. This is what she rules she fol­lows. This is how the world is. This is what she should expect.”

Susie grows up, becomes a per­son in her own right, and spits back what she was taught to say, think and do.

And pretty much uni­ver­sally, typ­i­cally when some­thing goes wrong, Susie begins to won­der why she doesn’t feel quite right.

• She won­ders about the queasy feel­ing in her stomach.
• She won­ders about her empty heart.
• Her body starts betray­ing her —aches and pains, and sad­nesses and grief, and also feel­ings ‘no good girl should have.’

So, what does Susie do? If she is nor­mal, she pulls her ‘given to her’ iden­tity around her like a cloak, and turns the cloak into a solid wall of fear-based pro­tec­tion, and sits down in the mid­dle of her­self. And she waits for rescue.

If we have grown up in the west, the Puri­tans have got­ten into this mix, and most also believe that we are born sin­ful, need res­cue, can­not change, and are doomed to a fiery fate, if we don’t con­fess the party line.

We’ve been encour­aged to be emo­tion­less and rigid in our beliefs.

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Loos­en­ing the self definition

We begin to dis­en­tan­gle from this game through what I think of as re-identification. In my book, This End­less Moment I called this process deconstruction-reconstruction. This is the path taken by pre­cious few, and pre­cious indeed are they.

Step 1—say after me—“My iden­tity, my ego, is a con­struc­tion. It was given to me by my par­ents and tribe. As such, it is not real.”

Good start!

Step 2—say after me—“My ego, my iden­tity, is a con­ve­nience. It allows me to get a library card, a driver’s license, and to respond when called to dinner.”

As such, an iden­tity is a good thing. It’s a label, like the label on a can of peas.

This is actu­ally a good illus­tra­tion of the concept.

Mostly, hav­ing a label that you answer to, being able to work in the world, and behav­ing your­self is how to deal with the world. It’s being in, but not of the world, to quote the Apos­tle Paul.

The prob­lem comes when you for­get that your iden­tity is sim­ply a con­ve­nient label.

Step 3—say after me—“I am that which is beneath all labels. I am that which observes, and enacts, my true being.
My true Self is free from def­i­n­i­tion. When I act from my true self, I am con­fi­dent, com­fort­able in my own skin, flex­i­ble, and at peace.”

Dar­bella and I just got back from our sec­ond trip to the Zen Cen­ter we are attend­ing. I really like the leader, who often sets the scene through yoga, Qi Gong, and chant­ing, before get­ting into Zazen—“just sitting.”

Dar and I have been doing Qi Gong (and Tai Chi) for a cou­ple of decades now, and yoga seri­ously for 2.25 years. So, we can do a lot of the stuff. Sunim, the leader, even asked Dar to lead the next Qi Gong session—she laughed, blushed, and said, “Not next time, maybe later.”

She’s so cute!

I noticed that, as we were doing Qi Gong and yoga, I was look­ing at the oth­ers there, and com­par­ing my flex­i­bil­ity with theirs. My lit­tle judg­men­tal voice did what it always does. It started judg­ing. This is an ego based thing we all do. Now in the past, I would have judged my judg­ing, and tried to stop myself.

What I have learned, and it is a lit­tle thing that is also pro­found, is to just let my judg­ments run in the back­ground, and to detach from the voice. I watch with my Self, as my ego self plays label­ing games. As I do this, the voice gets qui­eter and qui­eter. And then I can do what I do, and do what I can do, as I sit.

Step 4—it’s all about let­ting go of cling­ing, and we let go not through brute force, but through accep­tance and detached observation.

• Accep­tance—I (and you!) are going to judge until we die. We are going to iden­tify with our ego selves until we die. “What does he think of me? How do I look? Am I good enough? I’m bet­ter than him, at least…” It’s all crap and all mean­ing­less, but do it we will.
  Fight­ing with our­selves and blam­ing our­selves and try­ing to stop is not going to help. Accep­tance is total or it is noth­ing. I judge, and I have com­pas­sion. I hate and I love. I am gen­tle, and I am harsh. I am attracted, repelled, and bored. And all of it is ‘so.’ Not good, not bad. It just “is.”
• Detach­ment is not the same as not car­ing. If you pic­ture your fin­gers dug into some­thing—cling­ing—detach­ment is like releas­ing your grip and step­ping back. Detach­ment is allow­ing what is to sim­ply be there.

I guess you could say that detach­ment is non-judgment, which is ironic, as the time we need the most non–judge­ment is when we catch our­selves judging.

Step 5—hold your iden­tity lightly.

Med­i­ta­tion is such a great thing. If you stick with it, you find that you can detach from your busy mind, while accept­ing that busy mind is our nature. It’s like tak­ing 10 steps back from a scream­ing kid. Still scream­ing, but not as loudly. Your breath slows, the tight­ness eases, and there you are.

• Notice, each and every time that your ego self tries to tell you that you are this and not that.
• Notice every time it tries to get you to anger your­self over some per­ceived slight, or to com­pare your­self to oth­ers, either favor­ably (snoot in air) or unfa­vor­ably (eyes down­cast, feet shuffling.)

See your­self doing it, have a breath, and detach.

Say after me—“This is me play­ing with my ego self, pre­tend­ing to be. I see me doing this, and with detached amuse­ment, I bring myself back to sim­ply being. I notice, I breathe, and I let myself go.”

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Make Con­tact!

So, how does this week’s arti­cle sit with you? What ques­tions do you have? Click here to go to the online arti­cle, and leave a com­ment or question!

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Related posts:

1. Cling Sta­tic
2. Putting Your Soul into your Being
3. Unstuff­ing from Stuff
4. No-Body Home
5. 10 Things Your Mommy For­got to Tell You

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Tagged with: Emotions • emptiness • meaningless • mindfulness • Relationships • yoga

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