Highlights from Rich Roll podcast
My younger sister, in Australia, just loves the Rich Roll podcast for inspiration from super athletes to spiritual teachers to health and nutrition. The podcast is dated 9/29/22.
Each of his guest speakers were insightful and gracious. Below are a few thoughts from the last speaker in Roll's "A Spirituality Masterclass". I’ve paraphrased his suggestions and added my own interpretation to them. His final speaker was a monk who gave a few guidelines or rules for living.
Even though this might seem prescriptive, it can be helpful, as long as I don't make a "rule" out of these practices. Think of them as guidelines which could be helpful if I am open to their use as tools in this journey.
- Breathe! MEDITATE, whichever form of meditation works for you, but practice daily.
- STOP CRITICIZING, verbal vomiting! Stop judging others. Stop blaming life for your unhappiness. Stop judging everything.
- BE TOLERANT. Be compassionate to self and "others" and life in general. This goes back to #2. Use wisdom? Yes! Just because we are tolerant doesn’t mean we cannot exercise discernment. Humility goes with this tolerance and compassion.
- Take NO offense! Stop being offended by everyone and everything. Stop picking up other people's offenses.
- Be a GOOD FINDER! See the good in life, in "others". Show appreciation! Tell others what I appreciate about them. What are they doing "right"? Express specific appreciation.
- Be quick to APOLOGIZE.
- Keep a list of BLESSINGS.
After listening to the podcast, I headed out for my walking meditation. I tried to stay focused on breathing and walking and feeling appreciation for all life forms: mountains, air, trees, rocks, birds, lizards, people.
Thoughts still strayed toward "others", even feeling superior or "right", criticizing without saying a word, but I was able to catch those negative thoughts and feelings pretty quickly, then focus attention on NOW and here, gratitude, and breathing meditation.
If I found my thoughts straying, I would refocus on the breathing meditation. From Thich Nhat Hahn, here’s my favorite, uplifting meditation:
"Breathing in, I smile to my heart. Breathing out, I smile to my lips.
Breathing in, I smile to my soul. Breathing out, I smile to my eyes."
Let love soften my heart and eyes. I began to think of the final principle laid down by the monk: make a list of your blessings. What am I grateful for? Gratitude for ability to walk. Gratitude for breath. Gratitude for shade. Gratitude for the sky, the mountains.
My thoughts returned to God, the cosmos, the universe. To emptiness, spaciousness, and openness, to sacredness. What makes a person, place, or event sacred? How do we know? I think we recognize the sacredness of a person, place, or moment by our response to that emptiness, spaciousness, and openness. The emptiness, spaciousness, stillness, and openness are in us, we just don't see it or feel it all the time. But sometimes, we feel that connection to god, to the sacred. If God is in us, then in those brief glimpses of the sacred, we are experiencing God and "self" and connection.
The Tao Te Ching says that in emptiness, we find usefulness. The Bible also says, "In quietness and stillness will be your strength" and Psalm 46:10- "Be still and know that I AM God". The Tao Te Ching often points to emptiness, quietude, and stillness as the greatest virtues. See the Tao Te Ching 11 and 16.
"Thirty spokes join together in the hub.
It is because of what is not there that the cart is useful.
Clay is formed into a vessel.
It is because of its emptiness that the vessel is useful.
Cut doors and windows to make a room.
It is because of its emptiness that the room is useful.
Therefore, what is present is used for profit.
But it is in absence that there is usefulness." - Tao Te Ching 11.
The Tao often refers to the state of being like a valley (or the feminine), it is in the expansiveness, openness, and emptiness that the valley is useful. How? Water is able to flow through a valley, bringing life wherever it touches. Living on the edge of the desert, we see this daily. Even in our worst droughts, we can see a green line spanning across the ravines and valleys. Wherever you see green trees here, you know there is water. The openness of a valley allows gravity to do its thing, bringing water down to the lowest places, trees thriving in extreme dry conditions. So what does openness mean? This quality of openness is being empty of opinions, judgments, and desires. This value is expressed in the Tao Te Ching 16. It opens with,
"Effect emptiness to the extreme.
Keep stillness whole.
Myriad things act in concert.
I therefore watch their return.
All things flourish and each returns to its root.
Returning to the root is called returning to life.
Return to life is called constant.
Knowing this constant is called illumination.
Acting arbitrarily without knowing the constant is harmful.
Knowing the constant is receptivity, which is impartial.
Impartiality is kingship.
Kingship is heaven.
Heaven is Tao.
Tao is eternal.
Though you lose the body, you do not die."
This rootedness all comes back to the wholeness we find in stillness, in being empty of all opinions and stories. Parker Palmer wrote a beautiful book called, A Hidden Wholeness. In his sweet way, he reveals the wholeness which is already in all of us. For me, it is easiest to sense this stillness inside me, this hidden wholeness, in the quiet of the early morning hours when I just soak in the sounds of nature. But if I can tap into that hidden stillness or openness within me in the midst of chaos and the noise of everyday life, I find peace.
A friend is talking to me now, telling me a story in which she was offended by someone, I've listened to her complain and encouraged her to "let it go". I even encouraged her to do the breathing meditation with me after she vented for about 40 minutes. We even talked about the pain body, which Tolle speaks of, how we get triggered by something and nothing. We go into reactionary mode. And then our reactiveness feeds on the negative reactions from the other person, and before we know it, we are both consumed in reacting to each other's pain. It's vicious. We get so caught up in telling our own stories of hurt. Then we start to replay every painful interaction from the past.
So, now? Yes, I'm sometimes slow on taking my own advice! LOL. Now, I'm shutting up and being the stillness. NOW, I'm just listening. I'm being the valley. I'm the empty, spaciousness for my friend to feel what she is feeling right now. As she repeats the same stories of offense over and over, just like I have done in the past, I am simply being here in the moment. And in that quietness without judgment, I hope that I am useful.
No comments:
Post a Comment