Day Two continued (Section 15)

Barbara: Aaron is going to talk about reactivity and resistance.

Aaron: I am Aaron. You are beings of habit. That is not a problem, but it is well to understand the roots of your habits and to investigate them regularly to see if they are still useful to you. If you grew up in a situation where you had many older brothers and sisters who were always tossing things at you, it might have been very skillful to walk around with your hands in front of your face to protect yourself. Thirty years later, in a situation where nobody is throwing anything at you, do you still walk around defended?

Often when we look at old habits we see they came from that place where we once were, where they were necessary or at least seemed necessary at that time. That little child had a choice between defending herself or firmly telling her brothers and sisters, 'You may not do that to me.' Perhaps defending herself felt safer, even if it would have been more skillful to just say, 'No!' However the habit evolved, the real question is, 'What do I do with it now?'

Many of you spend much of your life reacting, which I define as moving from a place of habit, rather than responding, which I define as moving from the present situation. In your meditation practice you may begin to note certain habits. You may begin to see that in certain situations certain mind states are triggered, such as self-judgment or unworthiness.

Each of you would need to look independently at this. What triggers anger in you? What triggers desire? What triggers unworthiness? From where do these mind states arise? There are two fruits to looking in this way. First, you begin to cut the identification with the mind state, to really understand, 'I am not my anger, or my jealousy, or my pride, but these have arisen because of conditions.' And second, you begin to understand, 'I have a choice here.' This choice is what you have often not seen. You may become so embedded in habit that you forget you have a choice.

Once you understand that you do have a choice, how do you choose?

Those of you who aspire to loving kindness want to choose a loving route, but often precisely what loving means is confusing. If somebody is acting rude to you, is it more loving to simply accept that rudeness? Or, is it more loving to say, 'No! You cannot speak so to me'?

To answer what loving means, you must become increasingly aware of the old patterns. Sometimes the patterns are very deeply rooted. Every being wants to be valued. Every being wants to be loved. Since your parents are also human beings with their own fears, their own perceived sense of limitation, your parents asked you to be who they needed you to be. They may have asked you to be the polite and good child. On the surface, there's nothing wrong with that request, but what happened to that child when it felt anger? If the parents said, 'No! No! You must not be angry. You must be polite and good,' then the child was not able to validate its feelings and it began to think, 'I am bad when I'm angry.' This didn't mean the parent didn't love you. The parent was simply teaching what it had been taught.

Some of you may have grown up in the difficult situations where the parent was actively verbally or physically abusive. Again, the child needed to be valued, so if the parent said that the child needed to be the victim, the bad one, rather than our first example of the good one, the child also learned to comply. Again, there must have been rage, but it wasn't safe to express it. So often that anger was turned against the self and fed this concept of unworthiness.

I'm going to use unworthiness here as example, simply because so many of you nodded with recognition when Barbara spoke of it. If it doesn't fit you, substitute any concept of the way you are which is uncomfortable to you.

Sometimes people have difficulty with meditation, because in meditation practice they give themselves permission to allow to rise to the surface many thoughts and feelings which they have suppressed, and it doesn't feel quite safe to let those out. You've spent an entire lifetime developing the habit of burying that which was discomforting and unpleasant, and sometimes that burying seemed skillful because it was your way of coping with an alien, uncomfortable environment. The child is, after all, a child. It does what it needs to survive and we must acknowledge and credit it for that, not condemn it because the choices were not the most skillful, but embrace it for doing what it needed to do.

These old, habitual mind states are now brought into the present. When we see them in meditation, we sometimes have the feeling that our practice asks us to get rid of those old habits. As soon as you start thinking that way, you're in danger. You're bossing yourself about and not hearing yourself. Meditation is not to do anything, but simply to be present with what is, to understand how things really are. With that understanding, the loving heart which is your essence-by that I mean it's not something you have to learn or develop in yourself. It's there, but it's been covered with clouds-that loving heart begins to be able to express itself, and the mind to hear and understand.

You order yourself about when you say, 'Here is anger. I must not judge my anger.' But if judgment arises, judgment arises. If you feel unworthiness and see that it's a result of anger and then you say, 'I must not feel unworthy,' that is also ordering yourself about. If unworthiness has arisen, myth or no myth, that's what the human is experiencing.

You are not to get rid of the unworthy feeling, not to get rid of the judgment or anything else, but simply deeply to see how such mind states arise. What is their real nature? And so we open our hands, as we demonstrated yesterday (holding a bird, we release it; open the hands and let it choose to fly when it is ready), with a willingness to release that which is no longer needed and let it leave when it's ready, not an intensity which says, 'Throw it away.'

There is a metaphor which many people find helpful. I ask you to imagine this scene. You have come to a beautiful lake on a hot summer day and your friends are all in the water swimming. You walk out on the dock, but you do not know how to swim. The sun is hot and your friends are all talking to one another as they float twenty yards out. Then, I come along and hand you a life jacket and say, 'Put it on.' I show you how to fasten it.

With some timidity, you climb into the water and realize, 'Ah yes, this really keeps me afloat.' You begin to paddle your hands and feet, reach where your friends are visiting with one another, enjoy the coolness. With the life jacket you feel safe. Each day you come down to the water and put on your life jacket, week after week, year after year. It becomes old, waterlogged, rotten. Still, you put it on. You think, 'Without it I will drown.'

Now, suppose ten years have passed and I come back. I say to you, 'Are you still wearing that? Take it off.' Shame may arise, but also a strong voice of fear that says, 'No! I need it.'

What if, instead of shaming you, I asked, 'Do you really need that anymore?' You might say, 'Yes!' I might say in reply, 'Why don't you try it and see. Get into the water. Stop moving your hands and feet and see if this life jacket still supports you.' Of course, when you do that, you're going to sink because the thing is rotten. 'Ah,' you realize, 'I know how to swim. I do not need this anymore.'

As soon as you know that you know how to swim, but have honored that which wants to be safe instead of belittling that which wants to be safe, and you understand that the old pattern in fact was no longer supporting you, then nobody needs to tell you to take off the life jacket. No voice within you needs to say, 'You should take this off.' Of course, you just take it off and let it go. There's no need for it anymore.

Your mind states, such as unworthiness and some of your fears, are just such life jackets. The behavior prompted by fear, such as the mind state of unworthiness or an attitude of aggressiveness or a tendency to be controlling, at some time supported you. We will not argue whether they were the most skillful choice at the time that they were beginning tendencies and not yet habits. Simply, they were the choice that was made and we honor the child for making the choice to survive whether or not it was the most skillful choice.

So, you understand this tendency to believe in your unworthiness or limitation, or tendency to be a controlling, domineering person, supported you once. What perpetuates it now has nothing to do with the present moment. It is old conditioning. Figuratively speaking, you know how to swim.

When you touch on these mind states with an attitude of, 'I must change that,' then there is strong resistance. For many people, at that point the meditation practice begins to fall apart, because they have some subconscious sense of where it's leading, and it's as if somebody on the dock was saying, 'Get rid of that life jacket. Shame on you.' This is the voice of the fear-self. It's a very ancient voice. There's little choice, then, but to escape, to stop meditating. It's too scary.

But, when you look deeply and with kindness, without any sense of 'I must change,' but just a willingness to see what is here, then, when resistance arises, it's simply seen as the voice of fear, no different than anything else. It's just another mind state. Resistance becomes yielding and workable, instead of a solid block of resistance.

Resistance takes many forms. It has two basic forms. The first could be called restlessness, an agitation of body and mind, where mind won't settle at all and where the mere act of sitting in meditation feels almost impossible. The other is the opposite-sleepiness, lethargy, boredom-drowsy, sluggish mind states, where it's very hard to pay attention.

If you remember that both of these mind states are simply the voices of resistance and that fear is the basis of it, this often becomes workable. There are very specific techniques for working with these mind states of sluggishness and agitation. I am going to put them aside and ask Barbara to explain the techniques involved in more depth this afternoon.

In working with resistance you must then be gentle, as I've just described. There's another force within you which can also help you work with resistance. It's really a meditation practice, one that gives you the inspiration you may need to find courage, to be present with your fear. This practice is called 'clear comprehension of purpose.' It's very simple. One must connect with one's deepest purpose and learn to move from that purpose.

There are several parts to this practice. First, there must be the acknowledgment of resistance, the acknowledgment of fear. Then, you ask yourself, 'What is really my highest purpose here?' Barbara sometimes talks about this, relating a story of when she began teaching. I do not often tell Barbara's stories, but it fits well here and I do not want to ask her to come out of the channeling state to tell it herself.

Her teaching partner, a man with many years of experience in meditation and teaching had invited her to teach with him. She felt new to this, not certain she was ready to teach meditation. She was afraid of making a fool of herself. So, she thought, 'I don't want to risk this. I don't know if I can do it well.' Part of her reluctance was not wanting to confuse others through her ignorance, but a larger part of herself understood that she was ready to teach it, that John said she was ready, that I said she was ready, that others whom she trusted said she was ready, and that the reluctance was a sign of her own personal fear. 'I want to be safe. I want to be comfortable. I don't want to make a fool of myself.'

So, she had to ask herself, 'What is my highest purpose here? Is it to keep myself safe? Is it to be comfortable? If so, then no way am I going to teach. But, if my highest purpose really is to share the beauty of these teachings with others, to help others find joy and peace in their lives, then I have to look at my own fear, make space for it, and go ahead and follow my highest purpose.'

This can be very inspiring. It's not a voice of judgment that says, 'You should not be afraid.' That won't work. Then, you just suppress the fear and still carry the fear with you into the teaching or whatever you are doing. But, if you can acknowledge the fear and work in your meditation to make space for the fear, then you may connect with your highest purpose and let yourself act and speak from your heart center, following your deepest truth.

You might find this works in a very simple situation, such as one where somebody has approached you in anger. You see the impulse rising in you to protect yourself. You also see the fear and pain in that person out of which his anger has sprung. In that moment you can ask yourself, 'What is my highest purpose? Is it to defend myself or is it to hear and allow communication and resolution?'

It doesn't mean that fear ceases. It means that you resolve a willingness to make space for your fear. Working in this way is very much a part of working with resistance, because you begin to understand that just because there is resistance doesn't mean you have to stop, that when you acknowledge your discomfort and touch on that deeper area of love, it becomes a very strong moving force. The more you practice it, the more fear becomes a shadow. It still arises, but it's no longer solid. It doesn't push you anymore. You learn to bow to your fear, to smile to it, and just to invite it to come along and sit here with you.