..to respond

Learning to respond, not react. 

Life never cooperates, it may for a while and we hold on, and then things change.
We have losses.
If we are to find peace, our job is to pause.
Whether it is our bodies getting sick, people we love having trouble, running into an addictive relapse, getting a divorce, losing our job...
Life is not cooperating.
We can't change that it happens.
The teaching is: It is not what is happening it is how we respond.
The big question: Do we end up going into denial? Do we blame? Others/ourselves/lash out?
The second arrow..
If you get struck by an arrow, do you then shoot another arrow into yourself?
When we have pain in our body, or something goes wrong for someone we love - the first arrow - our mind and body goes into a reactivity that does not help to bring on healing.
Buddhist word in Pali, Papañca. Means proliferation. Our minds do this all the time, we are addicted to thinking. We worry to make things work out a certain way.
"Start worrying, details to follow"
It happens politically, interpersonally too.
Someone will say something that triggers us. We accuse, we get defensive.
Not all Papañca's are equal. It goes into our behaviors. Some of the worst ones, are what goes into our minds against ourselves. We do it all the time. If we are making other people wrong, underneath that we are making ourselves wrong. Underneath we are really down on ourselves. That squeeze of shame.
The healing and the freedom come from nonproliferation. Coming home to presence and then responding. Not reacting does not mean we are passing.
We have the wisdom in our lives to pause. To rearrive here so we can tap into our wisdom and kindness is intrinsic in our nature. We respond with intelligence, not with fear based action.
Papañca is the stories we tell ourselves. We must intentionally wake ourselves up from this trance of thinking. So we are not caught in this chain of reactivity. As yourself "what am I believing right now?"
Believing we are failing or falling short. It leads to blaming, ourselves or someone else.
When it is really intense, our mind goes into a spin that leads to a kind of insanity. Behaving in ways we barely know ourselves.
We lose access to our basic intelligence when we are in this chain reaction.
With that chain reaction, we become a small self. We disconnect from our beingness. We get identified with a small familiar version of self.  

"Your beliefs become your thoughts. Your thoughts become your words. Your words become your actions. Your actions become your habits. Your habits become your character. And your character becomes your destiny."

- Gandhi 

When we cant step out of these reactions, we must wake up. 

Can we wait with presence for something that is more pure, more wise, more awake can move through us?

This is how we can shift our consciousness. 

This is part of the cycle of war and violence. 

Every time you interrupt a pattern, even if it is a glimmer of presence, you are beginning to alter that neuro-network that is so rigid that we can do decades in the same behaviors. Just pausing, just wishing you could be more present you are making changes. 

The more you stay the more your natural presence will begin to naturally present itself. 

It opens up space.

Pause and name it. 

" Between the stimulus and the response there is a space. In that space is your power and your freedom. "

Prayer: 

May these circumstances serve to awaken my heart and mind.