I woke to two cats fighting inside my house. One of them was mine. This is part of the tension that holds the world together.
It was the suchness of the moment. Suchness is zen talk for the natural state of reality.
I am practicing using it in a sentence. How’s your suchness today?
What is your natural state of being?
“Just shut up and have joy!” was the message of my meditation teacher. She blurted it out with a do-not-mess-with-it authority. Most of her guidance is super soothing, radiating acceptance and compassion as it’s a lovingkindness practice. So this was a shift. She moved into radical directness.
Lately sources are telling me about our stuck loops. When we repeat actions and reactions it can limit getting to the place of being authentic with ourselves. It can seem easier to keep patterns of habitual repetition that feel familiar.
I think the message is that we have to notice and break out of repeated loops as much as we can to reveal more of our natural selves. Our suchness. Maybe the loops were needed at one time, but they usually expire after a while. We don’t need to read the same book over and over.
Montaigne said that the point of life is to give yourself to yourself.
Regarding our true selves, I read today that who we are only enters the world when we are strong enough to own it.
Apparently it’s common for people to be stuck, on repeat, running the same loop. One way to know we are stuck is that we are literally repeating ourselves, saying the same things every day. Repeating responses and reactions. It becomes easier to repeat the same rather than create slightly fresher pathways.
My take on keeping blocks in place:
I pledge allegiance to my stuckness;
stuck in dogma, with unease and frustration for all;
may dog bless me.
To shift out, try:
I pledge allegiance to my continued evolution,
unbound by loyalty to frozen beliefs on repeat;
may dogma release me, loosen the leash of habit to allow rapid freedom
In the direction of love and liberation for all.
Stability is not the same as being stuck.
Sitting in silent meditation is like birding. It’s slow. You don’t always know what you’re looking at or what is being seen. In one moment, it’s boring. In another, it’s intimately meaningful.
You might have repeated thoughts that are like chattering starlings. Or you might be rehearsing your own voice.
Scientists recently learned that when birds dream, they are rehearsing their songs.
Birds are messengers. Thoughts are messages. Both flit through unexpectedly. They avoid linear logic, they don’t come on schedule. Sometimes they are hard to recognize.
Light waves and sounds waves inform us. We send and receive signals all the time with people, places, and things. With eyes closed, are we like bats using thought waves to bounce off shapes to locate our position? How do we orient ourselves?
When we make a sound, or express ourselves, it lets us know where we are as well as where others are.
We don’t have to pledge allegiance to the same loop especially if it has lost relevance or aliveness.
To shut up and have joy sounds blunt, so start with just giving yourself to yourself and go from there.
