Day Three continued (Section 26)

Meditator: I had a wonderful, clear insight but I lost it.

Barbara: At some level, that is a small seed planted, and it will take root and grow with the process. It will come back.

Meditator: I was able to watch the thoughts and calm them, but the physical pain in my back and hips continuously detracted. I was with the pain. I was with the diversion, but the pain was too much.

Barbara: I have two different things to say about this. First of all, I don't know if you meditate regularly at home or not. (Yes.) Do you sit on a cushion or on a chair? (Chair.) Okay, I would like you to sit on a chair after lunch. See if that's more comfortable. You need to find a position that's comfortable enough that you can stay there for the meditation period without a lot of physical pain.

In any position, physical pain will come up just because our body is changing, releasing energy and so on. Certain emotions come to the surface and ways that we've held our bodies around those emotions, so that the body may tense in unusual places around thoughts and emotions that are coming to the surface. So, we can't avoid pain, but we've got to be comfortable to begin with. If you start uncomfortable, it's not going to get more comfortable.

When there is very severe pain, it's fine to change your position. If you need to, you can lie down, just flat on your back with your knees bent, just lie back that way. You can get up and stand or walk. I noticed you were standing. So, there's a balance, finding a position that's relatively comfortable and then working skillfully with physical sensations, knowing it's never going to be perfect.

Okay, we'll have more time for discussion later, and I want to talk more about working with pain but we'll have lunch in a few minutes and now I want to talk about lunch. We're not taking a break. We're beginning an hour of formal eating and resting meditation. When you eat, I want you first to be aware of the food in front of you. Spend a few minutes with it before you start to eat, just letting gratitude arise in you that here's this wonderful food that nourishes you.

Do you have any idea how many people have died of starvation in the world today, just today? So, really be aware of this food in front of you and what a gift it is. Then, as you begin to eat, bring a fork full of food to your mouth. Chew it. Really chew it. Spend time with it.

At Thich Nhat Hanh's 'Plum Village' in France, people are asked to chew each mouthful of food fifty times. It's a challenge, especially when it's soup. Really be there with the food, and note pleasant, unpleasant. Notice when you reach for the next fork or spoonful. What's happening? The food starts to get stale in your mouth and you haven't swallowed it yet, but you want more of that fresh, good taste. See what propels the intention to reach for the next spoonful. Watch all the contractions of your energy, different levels of wanting and aversion. What if something tastes very good and something else doesn't taste very good? What do we do with that which doesn't taste very good?

So, eat very slowly, very mindfully. Be very present. We're going to eat in silence. If it takes you the whole hour to eat, that's fine. If it only takes you twenty minutes to eat, that's okay, too. You're welcome to rest. You're welcome to lie down and take a nap if you want to. People could go outside for a walk.

Please maintain the silence for your own sake and that of others. I know there may be temptation to talk if just two of you are alone in the garden. Note the desire to talk. How does that tension of wanting to talk feel in your body? Instead of talking, just be with the desire to talk. In a couple of hours, we'll be finished and you'll go home and you can talk there. So, we will ring a bell here at three o'clock and begin promptly. (Meals are following a typical Mexican schedule; thus, lunch was at two.)

(Lunch)

Barbara: I would like us to begin the afternoon with walking meditation for about ten minutes, and then, just very quietly, come in and sit. Walking meditation is not just a way of stretching between sittings, it is a meditation practice in its own right, and it has very real value. It may sharpen focus. Mind is less likely to wander off in walking, because the body and movement provide a clear primary object. That focusing can settle the mind. And because we just walk a path, up and back, up and back, after awhile mind stops looking for entertainment in the walking. So, let us begin by walking for about ten minutes in a circle, and then we'll come back and sit.

Yesterday somebody asked me, 'Through meditation, can we learn to levitate?' A thought from Thich Nhat Hanh. I quote him: 'The miracle is not to walk on air or water. The miracle is to walk on earth.' We'll walk.

(Walking followed by sitting meditation.)

May all beings be happy. (Bell)
May all beings love and be loved. (Bell)
May all beings find perfect peace. (Bell)

Before lunch we were talking about being with very heavy anger. During lunch, several of you told me you thought you had to get rid of your anger first before there could be kindness and compassion, and that's why you try so hard to suppress it or force it away. I want to share a short story of a personal experience with great anger. In the 1960s, in the southern United States, there was a nonviolent movement for civil rights for blacks and people of other races. There were many nonviolent demonstrations of different sorts. I spent some time there in the south in those years.

Once I was on a bus on what was called a Freedom Ride, that is, a purposefully integrated bus whose riders had the intention to nonviolently break down the racial barriers and test the laws that allowed segregation. People in cars came and forced the bus off the road, so it rolled sideways. It hit a large pole, so it didn't turn all the way over but lay half overturned in a ditch. People fell out of their seats. Then the people who had forced us off the road climbed up to the top where the windows now were. They had metal pipes and bricks. They broke the windows and they began to beat at us and throw bricks and stones. People were bleeding.

A woman near me, a black sister, was hit on the head with a brick and blood was running down her face. I was so filled with rage. Jesus said to love those who oppose us. The Buddha said hatred will never destroy hatred; only love will destroy hatred. In that moment, I didn't know how to love, because there was so much rage, so much hatred. I wasn't conscious of feeling afraid. I had done this before and felt I knew and accepted the risks. I was just outraged at this senseless violence.

After the man threw the brick at the woman next to me, I looked up at him through the window. In that moment I met his eyes and I saw his fear and his pain. Something shifted suddenly. It stopped being his fear, his pain. It just became our pain, our fear. Suddenly, I felt my heart open. The anger was still there, but it was no longer directed at an object. In that moment I could see how my anger wanted something to attack, some way of feeling safe again.

In that moment I saw that anger and loving kindness could exist together. I really saw that I had a choice. Anger could be a catalyst for hatred or anger could be a catalyst for compassion. I think it was in that moment that I learned not to be afraid of my anger. It's one of the most powerful lessons I've ever learned.

We do not need to be afraid of our anger or of any emotion. When we bring them into our heart, they stop being my anger, my fear, my pain. They become the anger, fear and pain of the whole world.

I would like to hear from you now about what's happening in your practice and what questions you have.

Question: This is a question that's been floating on my mind and I haven't been able to express it. It might be a very pedestrian question, but I need to clarify-I want to know if you can change people's lives even if they won't meditate. If they won't meditate, how can I help them?

Barbara: My experience is that we can help other people, and we do so on different levels simultaneously. In order to help other people, though, we can't be attached to helping. We can only help another if our own ego doesn't need to help.

For example, if somebody comes to my door and they're starving, I can invite them to sit down at my table, and I can offer them a meal. If they don't like what I made them and they say, 'No!' and walk out, it's their choice. I can only offer it. If my ego needs to have them take it, for whatever reasons, then service turns into a sort of violence.

Question: What if they won't come to you, because they don't even know. I am talking about my children. I want to influence, not interfere with them. It's like praying. How can I help them without them knowing? What I really want to know is with this meditation can you change things far from you, like praying for someone?

Barbara: You can pray for them, but they can only change themselves. It's like offering them the meal. They have to take it. The best way that you can change them through your meditation is through your own example of doing your own inner work, becoming more clear, calm and loving. They are likely to notice that and maybe to ask you about what you're doing. Everyone wants peace. When we see a happy person, we naturally want to know their secret!

If they experience certain kinds of pain and you always need to have them free of pain, then you deprive them of the consequences of their choices. As you become clearer and can allow them to experience the natural consequences without such fear, they are more likely to make more skillful choices. So that's another way you can help them.

Question: I know that, but this is related to another thing. Maybe it's prayer, not meditation. I want to be clear about where meditation stops and praying begins.

(Barbara notes that Aaron wishes to answer.)

Aaron: I am Aaron. Prayer is a form of energy work. In your deepest prayer, that totally selfless aspect of yourself offers loving energy which another may receive. Your prayer may actually bring together the energy of loving spirits, but even in prayer you cannot change another. Only they can change themselves. Your meditation gives you the opportunity to look at that in yourself which feels such anguish at another's pain. What is it in yourself that must fix the other, as if the other was broken? When you attend to that in yourself which is fear-based, you begin to relate, not to the other's brokenness, but to their wholeness. Your wholeness speaks to their wholeness. It is still their choice whether or not to listen, but here you hold a door open for them by your clarity and love. You stop trying to fix them or force them.

When your fear speaks to their brokenness, that is what answers. When your wholeness and love speaks to their wholeness, you give them the opportunity to open to their wholeness and, from there, to make more loving and skillful choices for themselves. That is all.

Barbara: Are there other questions or things you would like to share about your practice?

Question: My physical pain returned and I was with it, and tension arose, and from the tension a deep sadness came. I was able to stay with the sadness and experience it.

Barbara: It sounds to me like you're working with this very skillfully. You know there is no way to fix pain. Pain arises and goes, arises again and goes. Sometimes we know specifically what it's about. Sometimes it seems very general, or has a special quality like sadness. When we're present with it, it may open its secrets.

Throughout many lifetimes, not just this one, we've stored certain kinds of energy in our bodies in certain habitual ways. To illustrate, I'm going to make a loud noise now. (Shouts, 'Hey!!') Did you feel yourself tense? What tensed? Did you tense your jaw? belly? back? Different people react from different parts of the body. The tension occurs in different places and is stored there. If I were to walk up and push you, you would tense in a certain way. The next person might tense in a different way. We've stored energy in many ways.

Now, as we meditate, we're giving our whole body permission to open, to release some of those old patterns. As we move deeper into the meditation, our body almost goes into a reverse gear. First, it experiences the tension and brings it to the surface, and then it releases it. Sometimes we see people having what we call physical releases, where they might really start trembling. It's an involuntary movement. It's an energy release, really from the tissue/cellular level of the body. The only way to work with this is to be very loving, very patient. Sit with the pain as long as you can. Give yourself permission to move when you need to move.

I went through a period of time when I had terrible pain up and down my back when I sat. It started suddenly for no apparent reason. I had not injured my back, but as soon as I sat, there was pain. I found myself needing to lie down to meditate. I couldn't sit. I worked with this pain for weeks. Suddenly, in meditation, I had a very brief past life image of a woman who I had been. All I saw was myself as a mother with a baby. There was an opening like a cave mouth and a flat area, where the baby was lying in the sun. I had climbed up the hill above the cave to pick berries. Somehow my movement caused a landslide. There was just this brief image of the baby there and myself trying to hold back the rocks. I couldn't do it. For a little while, yes, but I couldn't hold the mountain back. There was no one to help. I couldn't go down and move my baby. If I let go, he would be crushed. There was nothing I could do.

So, I just let myself see that image, cry, and feel the real anguish and helplessness of that. And then I started to see how much my life had given me metaphorical landslides, things like somebody being angry at me or disappointed in me, and how I would try to hold back to protect myself, to protect another, how when I felt something pushing me my energy would tighten up as if I were holding back a landslide, and then my back would hurt. I could see that pattern in many different places in my life. I began to watch in my daily life how I literally tightened these muscles, and I realized, 'I don't need to do it that way anymore.' I asked myself, 'What if something feels like a monstrous wave pouring over me? Can I just let it pour over me?' As I relaxed and stopped trying to control what came up in meditation as if it were a landslide about to kill somebody, there was no more pain.

Slowly, what we need to learn comes up. We do learn it. Keep working the way you're working. If there's too much pain, then shift your position. Be very gentle, very kind to yourself. Other questions?