A New Series—On Cling­ing

The remain­ing arti­cles in this series:

4– lists of right and wrong
5– rela­tion­ships
6– body rules and ill­nesses
7– trau­mas
8– habits
9– emo­tions
10– ide­olo­gies

photo by Edi­tor B

My, we do like our piles, don’t we? This entire series is sort of about piles of stuff—all that changes is the con­tent of the pile. I’ve listed “money, pos­ses­sions, titles, jobs” for today’s dis­cus­sion, but that’s not the end of it, by a long shot.

Stuff could include eat­ing too much of the wrong foods, drink­ing too much booze (or anything-coffee, tea, water…) or being stuffed to the gills with the sto­ries you tell your­self.

If you take a step back from it, you begin to see that each pile is about how you iden­tify yourself.

• I am this / not that.
• I have this / I never want that.
• here are my col­lected fears / these are my col­lected passions.

photo by bls_number_1fan

Much of what I do is to get peo­ple, first, to acknowl­edge that their pain (called dukkha in Bud­dhism, nor­mally trans­lated ‘suf­fer­ing,’ but actu­ally mean­ing ‘unease’ or ‘unsat­is­fac­tori­ness,’) comes from their death-grip (cling­ing to) on their piles. This is a mon­u­men­tal task, as, until you aren’t, you are a fish swim­ming in the water of your stuff—your beliefs, iden­ti­fi­ca­tions, and possessions.

And no fish knows it’s in water until you yank ‘him’ out.

Being (in the main) good lit­tle con­sumers, we teethed by chew­ing and swal­low­ing cap­i­tal­ism. The premise there is there is never enough.

I reframe this as “You can never get enough of the things that do not help.” I men­tion this because our entire cul­ture is built upon the sand of hap­pi­ness being directly related to more, more, more. We have an almost knee-jerk aver­sive reac­tion to the thought of giv­ing this up.

And, of course, we pile up edu­ca­tion, roles, descrip­tions, and diagnoses.

Many peo­ple come to me with the ques­tion, “What’s wrong with me? Or, “Why can’t I feel my body,” or “Where are all of the good [wo]men?” As if another diag­no­sis will change things for the bet­ter. I refuse to bite, because my opin­ion would only become one more item in a pile of stuff.

Here are 5 ways to begin to unpack your stuff.

It was an insight. She’d gone inside and actu­ally noticed her hold­ing pat­terns. And all hold­ing pat­terns are about want­ing more, or want­ing less, of some­thing. It’s a resis­tance to ‘what is.’

So, pay atten­tion to your body! As you inter­act with stuff—people, sit­u­a­tions, objects—keep track of what’s going on, phys­i­cally, for you. Where are you tight, in pain, grip­ping? Breathe into those areas, and see if they loosen.

The key is to notice where you first grip or tighten as you con­front a gripping/sticking point. If you com­mit to scan­ning this/these area[s] reg­u­larly, you’ll soon be aware of the games you play with yourself.

When it comes to our stuff—our sto­ries, our beliefs, the con­tents of the places we live—we want some sense of per­ma­nence, or right­ness, or cor­rect­ness. We judge our­selves to be a cer­tain way, and resist let­ting go of the judge­ment.

As you feel your mind going to judg­ment, have a breath, and ask your­self, “What am I hold­ing onto here?” Am I always this? Am I always any­thing? If I let go of this [belief, judge­ment, thing] will I cease to be? Then, have a breath, and let it go.

This is what mind does when sit­ting, as you attempt to sim­ply observe your breath. ONe rea­son to med­i­tate is to notice this men­tal process. Our minds, in a sense, never shut up—what with judge­ments, aver­sions, attrac­tions and lusts, games and projects.

And all of this is just what hap­pens.

As you notice, return to observ­ing the breath, in and out. In and out. Notice the pause at the top and the bot­tom of the breath. Bring your­self back to your breath. Let go, for a moment, to cling­ing to your mind’s chatter.

When attracted to a thing—“Boy, will dri­ving this car, wear­ing this out­fit, really make an impression!”—have a breath, and acknowl­edge the right­ness of your words. Peo­ple will either think you are spe­cial, a jerk, or won’t think about you at all (attrac­tion, aver­sion, neu­tral­ity.) So, what­ever you do, oth­ers “see it.” You just havbe no con­trol over how they see it.

No mat­ter what you do, peo­ple do what they do. You have no influ­ence on others—they decide from within their own judgments.

So, ask yourself—am I cling­ing to this thing, or sim­ply enjoy­ing it and putting it down?

Great idea. Start a pile reduc­tion project. Fire peo­ple who are into cling­ing, piles, judg­ing. Fire the part of you that is into this stuff, too. (In other words, stop let­ting this side of you run the show. Send it off to clean the toi­lets or something…)

If you haven’t used some­thing in 6 months, throw it out, or donate it. Get into the habit of let­ting go.

Then, look at things you would find help­ful, but are ignor­ing. Med­i­tate. Sit. Breathe. Move. Get Body­work. Dance. Engage and release your pas­sion. Come into “present moment being.”

And in each case, allow what emerges to emerge,
to per­sist, to fade, and to cease, cling­ing to noth­ing.
Cling­ing to no thing.

Lastly, feel your self. Lit­er­ally and fig­u­ra­tively.

Get in touch with your energy—the flow of chi within you. You can use the Body­work sec­tion of our site for hints, or buy our Body­work cd, or do yoga, tai chi, or Qi Gong. (We’re work­ing on a dvd of this.)

Or, go see some­one who can help you direct your atten­tion ever inward, to the core of you, to the ris­ing and falling of your energy, your breath, and your experience.

Notice how all of this flows like the tides of the ocean, com­ing and going. Be in this flow.

See how this sits with you.