I am attached to my sufferings and dramas and don't want to let them go

[Bubbles]

It is sad to see that Jetsun genuine approach is spoiled by another bickering.

 

Paying just a little more attention and respect is always possible. We are supposed to be spirituallly oriented people, right?

 

Will we do that and think twice before clicking "Post" button?

 

I, myself, promise here that I will try that from now on. Hope other bums will join me.

 

Peace

[steve]

It is sad to see that Jetsun genuine approach is spoiled by another bickering.

 

Paying just a little more attention and respect is always possible. We are supposed to be spirituallly oriented people, right?

 

Will we do that and think twice before clicking "Post" button?

 

I, myself, promise here that I will try that from now on. Hope other bums will join me.

 

Peace

 

I also pledge to communicate with sincerity, civility, and compassion.

[Aaron]

I can't promise anything.

 

Aaron

Edited December 16, 2012 by Aaron

[Jetsun]

Thanks for all of the replies and advice. To be honest I don't really feel like I am in charge of the process, I understand clearly as a mental concept how it only harms me to cling onto resentment and doesn't do much good to be attached to my personal story, yet it is a different matter for that understanding to sink into the deepest parts of me for me to let it all go, so all I I feel I can do is observe how things are. I am even unsure if wishing things to be different is a good way to proceed, isn't wishing things to be different and trying to change things just another way of avoiding what is really happening?

[C T]

Hi Jetsun,

 

Avoid, or forebear, your choice. Most opt for the former.

 

http://www.samyeling.org/index/the-paramita-of-forbearance

[Bubbles]

Thanks for all of the replies and advice. To be honest I don't really feel like I am in charge of the process, I understand clearly as a mental concept how it only harms me to cling onto resentment and doesn't do much good to be attached to my personal story, yet it is a different matter for that understanding to sink into the deepest parts of me for me to let it all go, so all I I feel I can do is observe how things are. I am even unsure if wishing things to be different is a good way to proceed, isn't wishing things to be different and trying to change things just another way of avoiding what is really happening?

 

Hi Jetsun,

 

I am not saying I am in anyway more advanced than you on the path. So the following are just my two cents based on what I have experienced. I agree that one could get the impression that the blind is trying to give advice to the blind. But nevermind, and sorry if you don't find my post relevant. Just let me know in a way or another.

 

You seem to be trapped in an over psychological intellectualization of your situation.

 

So, I would say drop all your questions about yourself, and about the relation you should have to what you have lived.Because your internal turmoil maintains the separation between you and your past and takes you away from youself, and take away your energy.

I mean the past is done now. So, just take it as yours, because it is yours, and this means take full responsability for what you have lived: acknowledge it as being part of your life, a part of your life as important as any other part, but not more. If there is moral/mental pain or suffering associated with this, take it also. Take all of it as being part of you. Because you can't avoid them anyway. This means you should completely accept the facts ( including your present suffering) because they are unavoidably part of you/your life.

 

And then just decide to forget it. I don't mean to forget as a contrary of recalling, but forget it in the sense Nietzsche would have used the word: by moving on, allowing life to digest and select what is useful to her/you as as living being.

 

But, IMHO, this can't really be done if you don't pull out your thinking from this psychological internal drama you are trapped in. Those kind of ruminations are very detrimental to spiritual life because they hold you back from going further. The Christians would say: these ruminations hold you in the state of a psychological human being and prevent you from stepping into the state of a spiritual human being because they are just looping thoughts associated with emotions. These thoughts don't help you in any way. Actually they are part of the problem.

 

So to shut up your thoughts on this, you must engage in a kind of moment-to-moment mindfullness practice rooted into body work.

 

So my wild guess is that: you don't have enough daily body-mind practice. Am I right?

 

I found body-mind practice tremendously helpful deflating the useless thinking and creating a internal presence. Not only that, but you may sooner or later find that most of your turmoil has disappeared and that so you may reconcile yourself with some previously painful parts of your life without consciously knowing it being done: you may be able to look at them as ended stories. This sense of internal presence may then allow you to dig deeper and in a more skilfull way into the areas of yourself where work needs to be done, but not in a way that would separate you from yourself and create another drama.

 

Take up anything that can suit you: taijiquan, yoga, or just zhan zhuang. And, if you can, add also some manual labor that can serves you as a rooting practice in both physical reality and the eternal part of time, like carthusian monks do.

 

Hope it helps a litlle, if not just discard it and let me know.

 

PS: to do the internal work the way you are trying to do it ( I mean by introspection), my opinion is that a teacher is needed , but if you don't have any and if your suffering is quite unbearable, you may seek temporarily professional advice just to help you seeing more clearly and putting order into your thoughts so that you can move on.

 

Edited for spelling as far as I could

Edited December 17, 2012 by bubbles

[Jetsun]

So my wild guess is that: you don't have enough daily body-mind practice. Am I right?

 

Maybe I don't do enough as most of my day is spent in my head but most of my official practice is body practice, I am naturally a mind centred person but I am not any longer trying to get anywhere through psychological introspection, at least not through practice but it does happen through habit. I don't particularly rate most forms of Yoga and Qigong as they are too aggressive and blunt for this sort of work, so my practice at the moment is mostly subtle body mindfulness/vasebreathing/lungjam as taught by Tsoknyi Rinpoche. But even if you work with the body it is pretty difficult to ignore the mind and its attachments and beliefs without using repression, so as far as my understanding goes one of the main purposes of bodywork is so it is easier to observe the mind without being taken by all its whims and motions, so it doesn't claim your identity as easily.

[Aaron]

Maybe I don't do enough as most of my day is spent in my head but most of my official practice is body practice, I am naturally a mind centred person but I am not any longer trying to get anywhere through psychological introspection, at least not through practice but it does happen through habit. I don't particularly rate most forms of Yoga and Qigong as they are too aggressive and blunt for this sort of work, so my practice at the moment is mostly subtle body mindfulness/vasebreathing/lungjam as taught by Tsoknyi Rinpoche. But even if you work with the body it is pretty difficult to ignore the mind and its attachments and beliefs without using repression, so as far as my understanding goes one of the main purposes of bodywork is so it is easier to observe the mind without being taken by all its whims and motions, so it doesn't claim your identity as easily.

 

I would suggest, and this is just a suggestion, that perhaps it's time to do some good old fashioned sitting meditation. Find a quiet place, sit and meditate. Just clear your mind, don't go into it with the idea that you're deconstructing yourself or trying to reach some deeper meaning, just sit and clear your mind. I think this will give you a great deal of peace and help to quiet some of those distractions that have been causing you to suffer.

 

Aaron

[Bubbles]

.

Edited December 19, 2012 by bubbles

[Vmarco]

This thread is still active???? The blind comforting the blind with more blindness. Is anyone at TTB ready to wake up?

 

 

http://thetaobums.com/topic/25837-i-am-attached-to-my-sufferings-and-dramas-and-dont-want-to-let-them-go/page__st__34

[Vmarco]

I would agree that your spiritual work has been pretty much worthless,...as McKenna correctly said, "99.9% of the World's so-called wisdom, East and West, for the purposes of awakening, is about as useful as a glass of warm spit with a hair in it."

 

Most likely, as Dolano said, you're just not ready to wake up.

[Bubbles]

.

Edited December 19, 2012 by bubbles

[Subtle]

I have realised that I am scared to let go of all the conflicts and internal dramas going on inside of me because I fear my life will be left meaningless, it is the personal story of my life which I feel gives my life meaning and if I let it go I will just be a lifeless boring empty shell; even though all theses issues and left over resentments and outdated patterns mostly cause me suffering at least it is life with some sort of narrative and interesting drama, better than boring void.

 

If I let go the hurts other people have caused me then there is no consequence of their actions, those people never get to see the affect of their harmful action on me so they get away scot free, so I hold onto my anger and resentment like it is precious and keep reinforcing my revenge intentions in my mind and anyone who tries to take it all away I see as a threat.

 

So it could be that most of the spiritual work I have been trying over many years may has been pretty worthless as you can't let go of what you want to hold on to, to steal a phrase of Sadguru it is like like trying to lift up a plank of wood you are standing on. Although it could be that the spiritual work is what has made me finally realise this, can anyone relate or do people find that they can just let go off all their stuff without much resistance?

 

I am in the exact same conflict. The one thing that I have been holding onto is the hope, that in the afterlife, they will get a life review (People experience these in NDEs so there must be some truth to it), which will make them live from our side. What they did to us.

 

I truly, truly pray for that day.

Edited December 19, 2012 by Subtle

[GrandmasterP]

Just a suggestion Subtle old buddy and following on from your other post about your neighbour nuisance.

Any chance you could do a bit of external MA cultivation?

It's tops for externalising internal anger or conflicts and getting rid.

Very cathartic is knocking three bells of sh*t out of a training dummy.

Either way, good luck to you and I hope your noisy neighbour gets his just desserts before too long.

[johndoe2012]

.

Edited August 18, 2013 by chris d

[dwai]

I have realised that I am scared to let go of all the conflicts and internal dramas going on inside of me because I fear my life will be left meaningless, it is the personal story of my life which I feel gives my life meaning and if I let it go I will just be a lifeless boring empty shell; even though all theses issues and left over resentments and outdated patterns mostly cause me suffering at least it is life with some sort of narrative and interesting drama, better than boring void.

 

If I let go the hurts other people have caused me then there is no consequence of their actions, those people never get to see the affect of their harmful action on me so they get away scot free, so I hold onto my anger and resentment like it is precious and keep reinforcing my revenge intentions in my mind and anyone who tries to take it all away I see as a threat.

 

So it could be that most of the spiritual work I have been trying over many years may has been pretty worthless as you can't let go of what you want to hold on to, to steal a phrase of Sadguru it is like like trying to lift up a plank of wood you are standing on. Although it could be that the spiritual work is what has made me finally realise this, can anyone relate or do people find that they can just let go off all their stuff without much resistance?

 

My teacher says we stand in the way of our own progress. To me it means I prop myself up for small failures, as if enjoying the pain.

 

I used to have aspirations of being an artist at one time -- the unique salient feature of artists is that they are very troubled creatures, their anguish their creative fuel.

 

I thnk we are all like that to a certain extent -- self igniting in our misery and so used to being on "fire" are we that anything but a fleeting respite seems abnormal.

[ॐDominicusॐ]

I have realised that I am scared to let go of all the conflicts and internal dramas going on inside of me because I fear my life will be left meaningless

"scared" "me" "I" "Fear" "My" "Meaningless" ....all projections and ideas of the mind ...you are not the mind.

 

Just like the thought of a rock is not the rock; so who you think youare, si also not who you are.

 

it is the personal story of my life which I feel gives my life meaning and if I let it go I will just be a lifeless boring empty shell;

The personal story is an illusion as is the projection of the mind that what will remain will be "a lifeless boring empty shell"

 

What replaces the personal story is the ever present crystal clear Now, pure freedom, Absolute Beingness, transcendence, Beyondness, Love, compassion, the list is longer and all positive, compared to remaing the way you are now, which leaves a short list with all negatives (based on desires, suffering, and fear)

 

so I hold onto my anger and resentment like it is precious and keep reinforcing my revenge intentions in my mind and anyone who tries to take it all away I see as a threat.

 

Projection of the ego mind. The fact that there is a part of you that is aware that this is taking place inside, reveals that you are not that projection. This is the beginning of wisdom, becoming aware of the illusions and projections that the mind creates

 

Although it could be that the spiritual work is what has made me finally realise this, can anyone relate or do people find that they can just let go off all their stuff without much resistance?

"Letting go" comes in stages. 1st little things, like stupid bad habits, or limiting tv time, or giving up certain sweets. Then they get bigger, i.e. forgiving little by little. Then letting go of beliefs, then the idea that you are the mind, that you are the body, etc etc.

 

It's progressive.

 

What has always helped me is, "Why should I be attached to any of this when there are VAST UNIVERSES and Black Holes beyond comprehension revolving above my head!!!!!"

[Sloppy Zhang]

I think the thing to consider (to borrow some lines from various B.K Frantzis material, yeah, I'm a huge fan of his...) is "do what is easy first".

 

In "Opening the Energy Gates of Your Body" he mentions that sometimes you're going to run into blockages that are too big to dissolve/release. When that happens, dissolve/release what you can and move on to the next one. Sometimes dissolving something further downstream will help loosen something a bit upstream... and vice versa.

 

In some sense, some blockages are so big and are so deeply rooted, it not only takes an advanced practitioner to handle them, but someone who can feel and practically work with energies beyond just the energetic, emotional, and mental bodies, but into the realms of the psychic or, in really deeply rooted situations, the karmic bodies.

 

Rather than saying "I am attached to my sufferings" it may be more apt to say "I cannot release these blockages as of yet".

 

You may not be in a place where you could remove them... even if you wanted to!

 

It's very easy to identify with things that might define you.

 

I too experienced a lot of trauma, and that has shaped the way I view the world- things like justice, personal responsibility, responsibility to the group, are all things that, in day to day life, I used to "define" myself and to define my stance on the world. While I consider these things "good" in the sense that they help others and help me to act as a contributing member of society, I will be the first to admit that if it were not for these negative experiences in my past, I would not hold these views!

 

So in that sense I am still attached to negative things, at their root, even if they blossom into something that benefits others.

 

So what does that mean? Should I let them go? Probably. Will I let them go any time soon? Probably not. If by letting them go, will I still have the same views of morality? I'm not sure.

 

So I do what I can now. Dissolve what I can. And maybe somewhere down the line, I'll get to a point where I can realistically work on letting things go.

 

Right now if you can't let them go, don't sweat it. If you can use those feelings to draw out something that is productive or beneficial in some way, at least it's not all bad.

Edited December 23, 2012 by Sloppy Zhang