Karmic Habitual Patterns April 20, 2008
Posted by bodhidude in : Psychology, Spirituality, blog , add a comment
Karma otherwise known as the law of cause and effect in Buddhism is a key aspect of how life in this world functions. The idea here is that our current experience is a result of our past actions of body, speech and mind. Every action we engage in produces a result that is similar in quality to the original causal action. Understanding Karma is essential in order to live a happy life according to Buddhism because if we want to be free of suffering and create more happiness for ourselves and others we must know what the actual causes of these are. If we want happiness and are not able to achieve it we need to understand what we need to do to create that happiness and how we are creating what we do not want so we can cease doing so. The law of cause and effect states that a positive result such as happiness can never be created by a cause that is not of the same quality, that is if we want peace we will never create it with anger and violence no matter how we might justify them.
In my work as a Buddhist counselor, I’ve been looking at ways of bringing the idea of Karma into my work and helping people gain an understanding of it that will help them work with their process in more effective ways. One way that Karma can come into play is in understanding deep long standing and painful habitual patterns. From the point of view of Karma, the more we engage in a behavior the more we are likely to engage in it again, it becomes a habit, whether positive or negative. It becomes a habit that is carried across lifetimes and can be strengthened and solidified over many lifetimes of playing it out. Often my clients are dealing with very powerful habitual patterns which go incredibly deep, carry enormous energy that cannot always be traced back to logical sources in this life, and resist change persistently. Having an understanding of Karma can help explain why some habits are so powerful while others seem to be much easier to change. If we can recognize that with our most difficult habitual patterns we are dealing with processes that have been playing out over many lifetimes we can begin to understand why it can take a good deal of time, effort and energy to change them which can help us not to get discouraged but rather to have a resilient attitude in working with them.
No matter how powerful and deep a habitual pattern might be it can always be change by first illuminating and understanding it and secondly by consciously engaging in the opposing behavior. Even one instance of resisting a habitual behavior and doing the opposite has an effect on altering the overall pattern, it creates a small crack in the larger pattern. If you create enough cracks eventually the pattern will fall and there will be a breakthrough. This simply requires persistence. We can change our painful dysfunctional habits we just need to be realistic about what is required to do so and be willing to put the effort forth.
It comes down to the money April 14, 2008
Posted by bodhidude in : Livelihood, blog , add a commentIn so many ways I am now living more as a I want to and doing more of what I want to do. The major challenge I face now is money. How do I do what I love and create enough financial resources to make ends meet. Working as a counselor in private practice is incredibly challenging from a financial point of view because the income is so unstable. People cancel appointments, they abruptly end counseling, they can’t afford to pay more than the minimum or they can’t come very regularly. All of this is understandable but it leads to the question of how you make a living off something like this when the incoming funds vary so greatly.
I also have the ability to do computer work on the side but my skills have aged on that quite a bit and my passion for doing it is gone, its doesn’t feel like what I should be doing right now. Nevertheless the bills need to be paid and I need money to move and pay rent and I must admit that I feel confused and lost in terms of how to make this all work consistently. When you are doing healing work and needing to depend on it to make a living it can really interfere with the energy and the ability to help people because its all too easy to start seeing clients as a commodity. It distracts from the true work and focus on the client and the healing that they need.
I’m so used to working at a job and getting a paycheck and this feels so foreign to me. However I know that somehow I must make it work or maybe just allow it to work because I cannot go backwards and live like I was before. Money and how to create enough of it now is my primary process, my main focus.
Living in community and exploration April 12, 2008
Posted by bodhidude in : Community, Relationship, blog , add a commentFor most of my life I’ve either lived alone or with a partner but for the last several years I’ve felt a draw to live in community but haven’t been able to let go of my comfort zone until now. However what I’m finding is that I’m not sure I really know what it means to live in community from an experiential perspective. I feel a pull to share resources, connect with people in an intimate way and co-create a shared vision together. On the other hand I have tended to be a very private person who really enjoys time alone. The question becomes is there a middle ground between these two poles. I believe there is but its an interesting process of discovering that middle ground.
Currently I’m living in a community house with some very wonderful people whom I haven’t had much of a chance to get to know yet. The vibe at this place is very open and grounding and that feels really good with where I’m at right now. Its going to be interesting to see to what degree I fit in and connect with the space and the community here. Its a bit of an experiment and that seems to be where I’m at right now, in an experimental and exploratory phase. I’m not sure where its going to lead but it seems my difficulty right now is directly related to the degree that I grasp at things being settled and stable. The reality is that they are not and when I’m able to embrace that things begin to feel powerful and open and ok until the grasping returns.
The real challenge is letting go of grasping and realizing there is nothing to hold onto. Damn that is hard to do at times, the pull to grasp, solidify and need things to be the way I’m used to is sneaky in the way it creeps in and powerfully frightening when its fully activated. I’ve put myself in a situation where I have no choice but to let go because I have released most of what I was using for my sense of security. At a deeper level I know that community living is the right path both for me personally and for the future of our society and planet but I just don’t know what that will look like for me or how it will manifest yet. The process is certainly moving forward in any case……
A dissolving identity April 11, 2008
Posted by bodhidude in : Psychology, Spirituality, blog , add a comment
With all the change and letting go I’ve done lately I’m starting to realize that I don’t really know who I am anymore. Many of the things that I’ve been letting go of and changing have been key parts of my identity. So this process is forcing me to redefine who I am to the core. I used to consider myself a committed partner, a computer guru, a stable firmly rooted person and a fairly cautious person but now I’m finding I am none of those things per se. I’m still interested in being in relationship but in a way that defies labels and roles. I’m still interested in computers but but I don’t work with them in the same way anymore nor do I put myself out to people as a computer person anymore, they’ve become nothing more than a tool for expression. Now that I’ve let go of my apartment (comfort zone) of 4 years and am staying in various temporary housing situations I don’t feel like a stable rooted person anymore, actually more of a floating free spirit. I’m also far more willing to experiment, take risks (conscious ones) and put myself in situations I would have never imagined in the recent past.
What I’m realizing from all of this is just how much many of these things made up my identity and put me in a box of who I thought I was. Now I feel like I don’t know who I am and that at once feels frightening and also free. Maybe I don’t need to know who I am, maybe I just am. I have less and less use for labels these days and much more use for the phrase – I don’t know. I don’t know who I am and I’m finding I’m less and less interested in the question.
The suffering of change April 10, 2008
Posted by bodhidude in : Psychology, Spirituality, blog , add a comment
In Buddhism, the first of the Four Noble Truths states that all life in this world is characterized by suffering or unsatisfactoriness. It specifies three forms of suffering; basic suffering which includes obvious things such as physical pain, sickness and emotional distress, then there is the suffering of change and what is referred to as all pervading suffering based on our illusory sense of self and separation.
I’ve been experiencing all three forms of suffering lately as everyone is but most intensely the suffering of change. This type of suffering occurs because all things are impermanent and change both in the moment and over time. However we usually don’t relate to things with this understanding rather we become attached to those things we think provide us with comfort, safety, pleasure and security. When we lose these things due to inevitable change we experience suffering due to our attachment. What we don’t realize is that these external things are not the actual source of our pleasure, love, security and peace. Our mind is the source and projects these qualities onto these external objects.
I’ve been in an intense process of letting go of much that I held onto in my life, everything from my job and career to my way of being in relationship to my living space. I’ve shifted from working a regular job with a consistent paycheck to working for myself with the uncertainty, increased responsibility and freedom that entails. I’ve begun to let go of my need to be in traditional relationship and instead have started to focus on being in more open free connections with people including lovers. I’ve just moved out of my apartment of four years, one of which was with my partner, and into a shared living situation which is very fluid and uncertain. I’ve experienced intense pain, fear and sadness throughout this entire process because letting go of each of these things has illuminated my attachment and clinging to them, its illuminated what I was getting from them and relying on them for. It has also illuminated to the degree to which they had become part of my identity. The process has been quite scary and unsettling at times but also extremely illuminating and freeing.
Letting go of so much at the same time is not something I would necessarily recommend to everyone but it has forced me to go inward for my sense of peace and security, the very place it all originated from anyway. Without as many of the typical external objects on which to project my peace and security I’ve been able to more clearly see its inner source and find ways of accessing it directly. I’ve seen this as finding incredible freedom because I feel like I’m getting to the point of not needing external people, things and situations to be a certain way in order for me to be happy because I see how I create my own happiness and can therefore access it at will, if I can get out of my own way in doing so. This way of seeing things seems to allow for change and impermanence to flow more freely because I’m not needing to hold onto or solidify things as much.
Its an ongoing process filled with moments of freedom and bliss and moments of terror but its a process I have chosen.