Last week, I asked you if you were really and truly ready to understand what it means to "be woke." Have you been thinking about it? There is no better time than now to wake up from the dreams of delusion that govern the majority of our day to day lives.
Awareness is not automatic. It is not reflexive. It requires attention and cultivation, and a willingness to engage with discomfort as your brain begins to process what it might mean to accept reality. Otherwise, in the name of "self-care", a very broad term that occasionally thinly veils abject self-centeredness, we might be cultivating avoidance instead of awareness. Psychologists report that avoidance is related to anxiety, and that it is quite common. In finance, aversion to reality among investors is known as the "Ostrich effect." Our daily avoidance often amounts to simply numbing out by playing pretend, eating, drinking, rationalization, addiction to work, and refusal to engage with facts over feelings.
Putting things off, assuaging one's own fears with half-truths and platitudes,spiritual bypassing, and related phenomena might seem easier than making the decision to stay alert, pay attention, watch keenly, speak up, and be present for what is happening. Our world is not really set up to encourage us in our awareness. In the age of the Internet, when attachment, aversion, and indifference are merely a click away, we can follow our whims regardless of where they lead us. Our knee-jerk reactions can swiftly lead us down the path of obsession, down the path or avoidance, down the path of rage, or, with awareness, we can step off the intensity express and start walking down the path to enlightenment.
Cultivating awareness of how, why, and to what we are reacting and responding in stress situations is one step in cultivating overall awareness. Enlightenment is the individual's capacity for total, limitless awareness, which perceives everything exactly as it is. The ability to see what is, and accept the reality of it, does not mean that we should allow oppression and persecution to stand while we bliss out listening to mantras on our headphones and congratulating ourselves on clear seeing; it means that we know what is happening, we know where we stand, and we know that we are ready to take compassionate action as needed to alleviate suffering.
In a universe made of suffering, where we are each veritably soaking in the suffering of our own lives and others, to truly "be woke" is to refuse to turn away from suffering in any form. It is easy to start cultivating your awareness of suffering among people with whom you agree. It is much harder to cultivate awareness of the suffering of the people with whom you rigorously disagree. Plus, when you work to cultivate that particularly difficult awareness, it is possible that you may engage in spiritual bypassing by removing your focus from the reality of their suffering and instead focusing on your own tepid, temporary version of "love and light." That's not the same thing as incisive awareness of the reality of their situation.
When we cultivate awareness, truly, we begin to see that our opinions aren't actually very reliable. We begin to confront the stories we have been told, and the stories we have been telling ourselves. The fact is, lack of education begets suffering, but education itself can also force you to confront unpleasantries and therefore cause suffering. Poverty begets suffering, but so does wealth in that it ripens one for paranoia and greed over time. Loss begets suffering, but so does an overabundance when one is unprepared for it. Pain and stress cause suffering, but so do ennui and boredom and cynicism.
The key to acknowledging the reality of suffering is to acknowledge that all beings, regardless of their circumstances and privileges, experience suffering and wish for that suffering to end. From this point of acknowledgement, we are free to then address the causes of suffering. We can address the suffering of the oppressed, and we can also address the suffering that caused people to become oppressors. We can address the needs of victims, and we can also address the needs of perpetrators, who may be mentally ill, or might have been victims of abuse themselves. We can address the suffering of the poor who constantly experience fear and pain over their basic survival, and we can also address the suffering of those who, burdened with more than their fair share, have become cold-hearted and callous, effectively limiting their ability to participate in the act of being human.
Not all methods of addressing suffering are gentle, and this is why we must assiduously avoid spiritual bypassing, because the alleviation of suffering is not merely about how we address emotions and feelings, but rather is about how we address the causes of suffering. Seizing power from a dictator will certainly make him and his followers feel unhappy, but it will ultimately alleviate his suffering, and the suffering of many others. Sometimes, compassion is a splash of freezing cold water upon the cosy warmth of privilege.
Chasing the Invisible
How much time do you spend each day thinking about the past or the future? Do you find yourself ruminating upon past problems and reflecting on past joys wistfully? Do you find yourself worrying about what might happen, if you will be alone, if you will be ok in the future? These thoughts arise unbidden from the landscape of the mind and provide us with the majority of the narrative we pay attention to daily.
The past is tricky, because unless we spend at least some time reflecting on what has happened, we are unlikely to learn or retain valuable lessons. Yet, every one of us has experienced the ways that sad memories and depressing or regretful thoughts creep into our consciousness and drain our life force. If you find yourself rehashing old arguments and conversations, thinking about what you could have said in order to "win" the discussion or gain situational favor, then it is likely that you are not getting the best possible lesson from your reflective time. If you do not have reflective time in your life deliberately set aside, it's even more important to pay attention to how rumination crashes into your daily life with a painful force, threatening your ability to be present.
The future is also tricky. Though you might consult oracles, make plans, coordinate schedules, save money, and create certain conditions in your life, you cannot ever really be sure of what will happen. All it takes is one single instant for everything to shift, for plans to fall away, for the whole fabric of life to change shape. In light of this, you must not get too attached to your mental fabrications of the future. Yet, you still must plan, because if you do not acknowledge that winter is just around the corner, and if you fail to store food sensibly, you will starve. Without any plans at all, the future is chaos. This is why it's important to pay attention to things like social security, the rising sea level, and health care contingencies. If you do not set aside the time to pay attention to these things, they, too, burst unbidden into your mind at the most unlikely and inconvenient times, like when you are just getting ready to sleep, or celebrate a birthday. And what good can you do about them then?
Without proper deliberate attention to reflection and planning, without the time put aside to attend to these things, they begin to dominate your life, swinging like a wrecking ball and derailing your intimate relationship with the Here and Now. Think about how much of your day you spend chasing the invisible: ruminating, rehashing, planning, and dreaming about what may come. It adds up. How much time? An hour? 6? More? How much of your day is spent in a time and place other than here and now?
When you find yourself chasing the invisible, yet again, don't judge yourself too harshly. Just notice how your human, animal self is seeking a comfort that it will not find in the past or future, and turn your attention instead to the wonder of Here, Now. It is possible that you will find everything you might be trying to fabricate if you do this.
Steady Through
You're at your desk trying to finish the report that is due by the end of the day, but the phone keeps ringing, there are emails and texts popping up like mad, you're distracted because you're worried about that scratchy throat that's just beginning, you're dreaming of your big escape this weekend for some quiet time, and, oh wait, there's the phone again.
Your kids have been screaming at each other nonstop for three days, all of your laundry needs to be re-washed because the cat peed in the hamper, you've got your period, the argument you had with your partner still hasn't worn off and the feelings are right below the surface, you can't find your wallet, and you forgot it was your mom's birthday. Again.
All of the bills are due four days before payday, the doctor's office has now sent three notices that you need to pay for the test you thought was covered by insurance, you're pretty sure you have a cavity and need new glasses, your phone warranty expired just before you dropped it last week, and the airline fares to go visit your family for the holidays just keep going up before you get a chance to buy your ticket.
For many different reasons, it's easy to get overwhelmed. Work, family, finances, email, and even social activities can pile up, causing irritability, anxiety, jitters, imbalance, and worry. These difficult emotional states have a tendency to not stay put within the echo chamber of the mind. They want to go out into the world. They overspill their borders and start to seep out, touching and tainting everything in reach. These emotions lead to snapping, withdrawing, avoiding, blaming, and getting cranky about even things that usually give us joy, like someone's silly joke.
It's easy to think that our external circumstances determine our emotional states, and to some degree they do. Our external circumstances, if nothing else, provide our minds with things to latch on to, complain about, resist, and avoid. But the choice to do any of those things is still a choice. The emotion arises automatically, but we do not have to follow it when it starts to run away with us.
Instead, we can stay steady through. We can acknowledge that, yes, things are difficult right now; yes, I am feeling annoyed; yes, I am overwhelmed; yes, I am afraid about the future. But then we can choose to persevere, to continue doing what must be done step by step, and in doing this, we dissipate the negative emotional response instead of clinging to it.
However, when the emotion arises and we choose to follow it, we will be led through an exhausting obstacle course, wherein everything and everyone becomes just another problem on the pile, whether that's true or not. When we reach this state, even helpful and generous offers from others feel like a burden, and this can cause us to deny ourselves one of the greatest things one human being can give another: help.
Down through the center of your being, starting at the crown of your head and reaching down through and past your tailbone, is a shaft of light. When stress, daily drama, and expectations start to beckon you to go cycling through a new wash of negative emotions, just retreat into that shaft of light for a moment. When you are bathed in that light, the light of "Now," see if you can find it in you to choose your responses to your emotions rather than feeling overcome by them. Everyone experiences overwhelm sometimes. There's no reason to judge ourselves for it. But there's no reason to latch onto it, either.
Take the Time
"I don't have the time."
"I've been too busy."
"I have other obligations."
Every day, it is tempting to blame our schedules and obligations for the lack of time to spend in devotional activities such as meditation, altar-tending, communing with nature, or personal divination. After all, there are so many things that we have to pay attention to: work, home life, family life, community obligations, and more. Each of these is a major distraction from dedicated spiritual activity, right? It's hard to find the time to do the small things that give us spiritual centeredness and consolation when we have so much going on. It's hard to find the time for self-care when we have so many duties. It's hard to find the time to still the mind when we are saturated in a world of nonstop communication.
This is the story about time that we tell ourselves when we realize that yet another day has passed without a visit to our shrines or a session of seated meditation or that walk we planned to take so we could listen to the trees. So often, we sacrifice spiritual self-care to another, more seemingly vital, activity. And, let's be honest, sometimes we sacrifice spiritual self-care so that we can sit on the couch and watch a TV show or play on our phones. It's not always work that takes a higher priority than our spiritual lives. In fact, sometimes we build up our spiritual activity in our minds as "work" and then we seek to escape it instead of fulfilling it with joyful hearts.
But what if you took the time, nonetheless? What might that change in your mind? What if you could remember that the spiritual activities that you think of as "work" actually refresh and rejuvenate you? What if you wove spiritual activity so closely into your life that it became as natural to you as brushing your teeth or eating food every day?
What if you did not wait until it's too late?
For the next week, try this every day: attach one aspect of spiritual practice to a non-negotiable daily activity. Bring your child with you to the shrine to recite one single hymn or light a candle. Take 5 minutes of silence in the morning right after you put on your clothes. Spend three minutes in quiet gratitude at the start of each meal. Recite one mala of OM MANI PADME HUM during your commute, quietly or internally if you have to. If you have to walk to the mailbox, take the long way and talk to a tree. Append your practices to your obligations, and therefore sanctify those obligations. See what happens when practice is woven into life instead of separate from it. See what happens when you choose to control your time rather than letting it control you.