Letting Go – 3 – Making allies of our internal enemies

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This morning we continue a series of talks based on the book by Lama Surya Das, entitled, Letting Go of the Person you Used to Be.  This is a beautifully written book that cuts at the heart of suffering.  The subtitle is Change, Loss and Spiritual Transformation.   Last week, we simply tried, in spite of the losses and tragedies in life, to find some humor, to lighten up a bit about our stresses, our misfortunes, or difficult emotions.

Today, we are going directly into the belly of the beast and taking a look at those difficult times, the fearful emotions, the stressful reactions that we all have experienced from time to time.  I was watching an excellent series of Dharma talks by Josh Korda.  In relating his personal experience with addiction, he says that we can learn to not fear those difficult emotions or states (in Buddhism, they are sometimes called our demons), but rather, we have tools and techniques we practice for co-existing with them, not feeding them with fear and anxiety, but feeding them with love and compassion. This is the paradoxical teaching in Buddhism about the shadows of being.

The misperception is that when we “let go of the person that we used to be”, we are going to leave behind the shadow parts of ourselves and just keep the happy parts, the parts we like.  That is not the letting we are speaking of.  Instead, imagine that we are letting go of the person that used to be sleep-walking through life, the person who was distracted, the person who was continually craving and constantly living with the underlying sense of suffering or dissatisfaction.

Let's go back to what is causing this great suffering for most of us.  The Buddha found that suffering was caused by the three poisons:  craving, aversion and ignorance.  Some people have heard that to be a Buddhist, you’re not supposed to “desire” anything, and that is very misleading.  The Buddhist perspective on "desire" can be a bit confusing. The word "desire" is used to convey both the wanting AND the attachment to the outcome (also described as craving--when we feel dissatisfied until we get what we want.)  The teachings encourage us to want to be mindful, but not crave it in a way that we feel dissatisfied in this moment. 

We may also want other things.  If we have a difficult emotion or an addiction, we may want to just push it away.  We often think, “I’m not okay in this moment because I’m experiencing this awful feeling.”  “I’m not okay because I feel the craving of my addiction so strongly today.”  The teachings say when we try to push things away, we become dissatisfied in this moment--I suffer because I feel like I'm not okay in this moment.  We can practice not being attached to the thing or the outcome in a way that takes us away from being fully present in each moment.  

The third poison is ignorance--when we don’t even realize that we are having a craving or aversion—we sometimes live in a state of denial and ignorance of what is really going on.  The Buddhist practices of mindfulness, meditation and positive visualization enable us to make allies of these internal enemies.  We can see them clearly, face them directly , even befriend them, without wallowing or pushing them away or ignoring them.  

Someone posted a great Carl Jung quote this week: 

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will rule your life, and you will call it fate.  You will call it fate, or an accident, or misfortune. Invite your unconscious shadow material into the light of conscious awareness and everything will change, inside of you and outside of you.” 

Each moment is precious--an opportunity to be fully awake, regardless of the external circumstances or our internal thoughts, emotions and sensations. It's said that there is a Natural Great Perfection to be found in each moment.    If we practice first being, then the doing comes from a place of peace, instead of doing and forgetting to be aware of being.

We practice making friends with whatever thoughts or distractions arise, then come back to the breath or the sensations in the body.  We can mentally go to a higher level of consciousness. When we see clearly the judgments we so often have about what we think, what we feel, what we do, then we can ask ourselves some pointed questions that dive into the heart of our demons, the shadows that make us ashamed or fearful.   

We can stop pretending that they are not there, and we stop attempting to paint over them with smiley faces.   Someone once suggested that maybe Buddhism was just atheism with a smiley face.  I encourage you to understand these teachings at a far deeper level--that is NOT what these teachings are about.  We may become more peaceful, but still have our demons.  We may feel a greater sense of happiness, but still have times of struggle and despair.  Buddhism is not about some magical process for experiencing only the good—it’s about experiencing it all from a place of clear seeing, direct knowing, courageously facing our uncomfortable emotions or even our worst demons, and making allies out of them, instead of enemies. That is where innate, unlimited peace will be found.

We can also ask ourselves this very tough question, found in the Eightfold Path with Wise Intention:  Ask yourself, “Do I really want to relieve my suffering, or do I still want to hang on to my story at all costs?”

Gary O’Connor once attended a retreat that included the practice of making allies of our demons.  He was asked to see the dark stuff more clearly, to imagine them as a demon, then ask the question, “What do you want of me?”  Ask your difficult emotions, your fears and anxieties, your demons of whatever size or shape, “What do you want of me?”   They may want your attention, your energy, your acknowledgement, or they may want love or recognition or peace.  For our guided meditation, this is what we will examine more deeply.  

Lama Surya Das has a series of questions in Chapter Three that I encourage you to reflect upon and journal about if that feels like it would be helpful.  For the guided meditation, I ask that you reflect on these questions.  Make them your own:

1. What is it that disturbs my peace of mind?
2. Can I see it more clearly?  Can I give it a name? Can I describe it in detail to myself?
3. Taking this specific issue, I imagine it sitting in front of me in this very moment.  What is it?
4. Now, ask it the question, “What do you want of me?”
5. Find the innate ability within you to simply be present.  And within this present moment, viscerally recognize that we can always find the innate Buddha Nature, the innate wisdom and courage that is within each and every one of us, through the present moment, it can always be found.  Allow that innate wisdom to arise and speak to you.
6. Now, simply imagine saying to this issue in front of you, “I love you. You are a part of me, but you are not all of me. And that's okay.” 
7. And so it is.  We can continue to practice making allies of our internal enemies, letting go of being asleep, and find the joyfulness in mindful awareness and with ourselves, in all our complexities.