Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Giving up: A practice in surrender


I’m sitting in the Philly Airport. It’s loud here, and it smells funny—a mix of food, fuel, and industrial-strength air freshener. My eyes are burning. A few birds have made their way inside and are flying back and forth between the rafters and the floor to peck at discarded food. Soon I will be on another plane, going somewhere else.
Airport birds
I just spent 7 weeks watching my mind. There is a giving up required in this practice. We give up the desire to see anything in particular, to feel anything in particular, and, instead, we just see and feel. This giving up is in no way an act of weakness. It is an intelligent surrender that can wake us up to the natural flow of things; it can help us stop striving to have things our way. 

Have you ever been trying to open a jar, all the while twisting the lid in the wrong direction? Tightness is what happens when we grip things in our life in an effort to get them to go our way. Once we give up on that, and just sit still and take a look at this tightness, there is often a natural release. At the point of release, we can change course and move in a direction that opens.

This isn’t easy. Sometimes when we stop gripping and twisting, what we see is terribly painful, and in these moments, it may be necessary and intelligent to fly to a high rafter of safety and stay put. But little by little, in our own timing and in our own way, we may decide to come back down and examine the very scraps of our lives. We may find that even within our pain we can find nourishment.
Don't turn your head. Keep looking at the bandaged place.
That's where the Light enters you.
  -Rumi

Cheerful Shambhala Day always involves eating!