The Whirlpool

One of the great challenges I find in this practice is maintaining a ceaseless willingness to encounter and address my own conditioning.  This is coming up a lot lately, largely due to the amount of suffering I am encountering.  It takes many forms:  the death of a friend, the stresses of the holidays, difficult people, etc.  In all of these there is a familiar and seductive layer of conditioning that I am trying to work with.

All encounters involve people with a particular story or agenda.  When that comes to bear in an angry or painful way, it can be difficult to not to get pulled into the story and the drama.  When that happens, being fully present and open to these moments seems impossible. (make the slightest distinction and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart).

The reaction might be anger, or gossip, but when the story is spun, we can get caught in the fabric, and make it our own.  From within that fabric, we can see nothing but what we are weaving that moment.  To take in the entire fabric and the environment is to see in context of the whole.  As I develop the ability to realease the conditioned story (to which I may feel VERY entitled too), I believe I am starting to understand what it means to "forget the self".