Cultivating Connection.
The Spiritual Conscious Creator / Activist Library
Photo by Mor Shani
Originally Published on Medium
Never in the history of humankind have we had so many means of communication — cell phones, texting, e-mail, online social media — but we are more distant from each other than ever.
There is remarkably little true communication between family members, between members of society, between nations. As a civilization, we surely have not cultivated the arts of listening and speaking to a satisfactory degree. We don’t know how to really listen to each other. Most of us have precious little ability to express ourselves or listen to others with openness and sincerity.
When we can’t communicate, energy gets blocked inside and it makes us sick; and as our sickness increases, we suffer, and our suffering spills over onto other people. If we want to be more connected to others, we don’t need to test them more; we need to listen to them more. Deep listening leads to understanding. Understanding leads to greater connection. The way to listen more deeply is not simply to try harder. Rather, it is to take time in practice that starts with silence — that is, with quieting our internal Radio Non-Stop Thinking.
Untying The Two Knots
Photo by Manuel Sardo
There are two kinds of knots. The first consists of our notions and ideas, our concepts and knowledge. Everyone has notions and ideas; but when we get stuck in them, we’re not free, and we have no chance to touch the truth in life.
The second kind of knot is our afflictions and habits of suffering, such as fear, anger, discrimination, despair, arrogance. They must be removed in order for us to be free. These two knots, which are etched deeply into our brain and consciousness, bind us and push us to do things we don’t want to do; they make us say things we don’t want to say. So we’re not free.
Any time we do things not from our true desire but out of habitual fear or ingrained notions and ideas, we’re not free. When you read this book, when you meditate, it’s not for the purpose of getting notions and ideas. In fact, it is for releasing notions and ideas. Don’t just replace your old notions and ideas with a newer set. Stop chasing one notion of happiness after another, exchanging one idea for another. We all have patterns of behavior, habit energies that can run very deep. Every day we allow these unseen energies to govern our lives.
We act, and react, under the influence of these tendencies in us. But our minds are naturally flexible. As neuroscientists say, our brains have plasticity. We can transform them.
Recognizing Suffering
Photo by Alexey Derevtsov
Much of my teaching is aimed at helping people learn how to recognize suffering, embrace it, and transform it. That is an art. We have to be able to smile at our suffering with peace, just as we smile at the mud because we know that it’s only when we have mud (and know how to make good use of the mud) that we can grow lotus flowers. There can be big sources of suffering, major emotional hurts that stay with us long past the original wound. But there are also what in French we call les petites misères, the little sufferings that can wear us down day after day.
If we know how to handle these little miseries, we don’t have to become a victim of the so-called daily grind. When suffering has become a block — whether from major hurts or les petites misères — we should know how to recognize it and embrace it. The suffering we feel may have been transmitted to us by our father, our mother, our ancestors. When we are able to recognize, embrace, and transform it, we do that not only for ourselves, but also for our father, our mother, and our ancestors. Pain is inescapable. It is everywhere. Besides our individual and collective suffering as human beings, there is suffering in nature as well.
Natural and unnatural disasters happen daily around the globe — tsunamis, wildfires, famines, wars. Innocent children die every day due to the lack of clean water, or food, or medicine. We are connected to these sufferings, even if we don’t experience them directly. That little baby, that old woman, that young man or young woman — when they die, in some way it’s also we who are dying. And yet at the same time we are of course still living, so that means that they are somehow still living as well. This is a meditation. Understanding this deep truth can help us develop our volition, our desire to live in a way that can help others stay alive as well.
Source from reading: Silence, The Power of Quiet in a World Full of Noise — Thich Nhat Hanh
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