Staying Alive: Learning to unlearn

Do you believe in horoscopes? I read them sometimes to reflect on my life. A recurring message is a message of cause and effect:

If you don’t handle this influence well, you will have considerable difficulty with your relationships in the years to come. And these difficulties will be the result of unfortunate patterns established now. The border between discipline and habit is often hard to distinguish, but that is precisely the difference that you have to keep in mind at this time. Habit is mindless and unconscious, whereas discipline is self-imposed and suited to achieving your goals.

Learning from life lessons is not a trivial task. What makes it hard is a propensity to retreat within and avoid the painful and hurtful experiences, that is, aversion to loss.

I have been watching these hard-wired habits within myself lately. Interestingly, they are present in nearly every aspect of living. I’ve started taking tennis lessons and one of the first things I learned was about a desire to control. The more I try not to make a mistake by attempting to control technicalities of a stroke, the less control I have. Tennis is a highly cognitive sport with lots of opportunities for getting drowned in the noise – body movement, racket position, self-congratulatory or self-deprecating chit-chat, and so on. Learning what is the easiest thing to control in tennis seems obvious, but eludes even the good players.

Do you remember your first heartbreak? Did you vouch to avoid it at any cost in the future  or did you decide to keep loving in spite of pain and suffering it may bring? I did the latter, but with passing time it became more challenging to stay true to that vow. People often disappoint, betr lotus ay, attack, and hurt themselves and each other, and these data make numerous imprints within the brain operating system. The longer we live, the more “people/ things/ situations to avoid” data we accumulate. The older we are, the less power we have for swimming out of the negative information swamp, and a window of opportunity for encountering a lotus flower arising from the mud is becoming foggier.

Is it not obvious that the easiest thing to control in any relationship is not the others, but ourselves? This basic wisdom eludes most of humanity. It eludes me when I am not aware, which is plenty of time. At first my meager attempts to reconcile conflicting information and emotions within feel weak and lousy, fake and frustrating. When I do well, I eventually recover love and peace. When I don’t do well, I close myself off to the source of conflicts and miss the opportunity to grow. Then a gentle voice reminds me: “Do you remember the promise?”  I do. Life goes on and as long as I hear that voice, I am alive.

“As a human being what should we do to reciprocate the benevolent influence of life?”
”• Johwa Choi

Drop the hurt and dive for Freedom

HM_conflict1 Many conflicts arise in our lives, and many pass unnoticed because we are so used to them. The built-in operating system of suppression/ release, openness/ closeness, judging good from bad is running in the background without a hitch. There is a time, however, when the conflict becomes so big we are not able to ignore it. Depending on the conflict resolution habits and personality type, some choose to release the stressful energy through blaming and attacking the “enemy”, some choose to ingest it internally, some choose to ignore it. These could all be reasonable responses, however sometimes we need to go deeper and learn from it – what made me react this way? Why couldn’t I contain the stress and resolve it peacefully? How can I avoid repeating this pattern in the future? What made the other person to react to my words/ actions in this fashion?

When we are young, our minds are open and our hearts are big, and we can forgive and let go much easier. We don’t take ourselves too seriously, we don’t have a strong preference of who we are. As we grow older and gain status and comfort, our mental attitudes might change without much recognition from ourselves. It becomes harder to forgive and stay open. We might abandon the process of examining the status quo of our beliefs and our default emotional state.

After gaining a stable social status and a comfortable life, I noticed that my mind shrank significantly. I became judgmental and closed to new people and experiences. I could only be friends with people who had similar background and views. I considered myself a sophisticated modern woman while I was just getting further and further away from myself.

I was not happy at all with that change and searched for answers. Through the practice of Harmony Meditation  I learned how I can stay open in my mind and warm in my heart despite the challenges. It does take courage and willingness to look deeper and see myself without embellishments. A discipline of applying critique to my own self can be excruciating. It is easy to blame the other party and close the subject. With practice, the process of exploring becomes much less traumatic. At times I am able to chuckle at myself – what the heck am I doing? At times I even look forward to receiving a not-so-pleasant feedback from my teacher because I know and trust the process. I know that when I weather the internal storm of a hurt ego with a right attitude, a new beginning will come. And that feels like a miracle – what a great potential each of us hold.

“In our lives we can free ourselves if we realize that we have not one way to choose, not two ways to choose, but we can choose all possible ways.” – Johwa Choi.

In a conflict situation, I try to apply the teaching before plunging the sword of judgment and declaring myself right and the other party wrong. I know the answer is almost never black and white, and there is something to learn for me. By admitting that my worldview can be limited and flawed, I open myself to new possibilities and freedom.

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