two core issues

I have two very core personal issues to share. I’ve seen these issues with more clarity and less clinging, so I want to record and share this struggle to clarify the conditioning in my life for myself and others. I can see this is a big place for me to be right now. I am learning due to truly practicing with the way my life is. That’s the way it is for every single human–the process of realizing our true being in actuality.

I’ll get on with it. Core Issue Two: I am not accepting all things to be as they are and working with everything as it is. I daydream about choosing something else for my life–some other job, some other profession, some other location, some other place, some other food, some other person, some other music, some other interest endeavor, or anything else than what and how I may be doing now in my life. I wish things were different with my father, with my brother, with my ex-fiancee. I am beginning to more clearly see the dreamy story of otherness that my conditioned mind repeatedly generates which makes me feel miserable. I feel miserable because I don’t have what my conditioned mind is thinking is better than what exists now in my life. So, I am seeing this mind running away from presence with dreams and desires of delusion. However, with this seeing of the habitual mind activity, I experience distance from the suffering because I am no longer just totally believing these dreamy thoughts of otherness. The story-esque otherness doesn’t actually exist and this conditioned mind is rambling on with gobbledygook that causes me to feel horrible and miserable and not accept what is actually happening in my life. This is the suffering of the illusion of separation which I am seeing happening more clearly. I am authentically practicing seeing deeply into how this egotistic-story-generating-conditioned-mind is a cause of suffering in my life. I am learning not to follow it’s grandiosity and to return to this very moment of present existence as it is. This is practicing deep acceptance of the greatness of the Way existence always and already is. Am I recognizing this Truth, this gentle brilliance of being OR am I infatuated by all sorts of ideas about how things could be if only things were different. I must return to acceptance in order to experience peace in living day-to-day life.

OK, that was issue Two; here’s the deeper Core Issue One. I want what I’ve felt I’ve never truly had–authentic deep human connection. I feel miserable just writing it here. This is very emotional for me, yet I remain focused to concentrate on seeing into this issue so that I may not suffer like this for the rest of my life. I can see that my suffering arises from the cloud of story surrounding what I may think of as “authentic deep human connection.” Let me put it this way, IF others’ and I connect only through the conditional framework of cultural worldliness and never seem to get to a synergy at the core and/or a miniscule moment of mutual aware recognition of our essential being beyond conditioning, THEN I think we failed to connect authentically. This may or may not be actually true. It is very important for me to see this way in which I view relationships with others. For example in my actual life, I have had moments of very deep mutual seeing into and beyond the typical culturally conditioned delusions of reality. This may or may not have been “authentic connection!” Which leads me to see that the way I am evaluating interpersonal activity and relations is wonky and conditional! If I think this way about life, then I am layering my thought-structure over what has happened, after the fact. This is dampening my experiences and creating suffering for myself and others. SO, I am seeing into my invovlement into part of the reason why I don’t seem to experience “deep authentic human connection” in life. I blame others’ all too often in their short-sightedness and clingings to their thoughts and dreamings, but I am doing this (too). Next steps in my practice with this issue is 1) more observing of my physical and mental activity in personal interaction, 2) softening my body, mind, and gaze particularly around others, 3) remembering that I am able to unlock this issue as a function of how I see into it and the directness with which I dispell the egotistic delusional beliefs, views, and thoughts that cause suffering for me and others.

attitude

How did I get this difficult attitude that is so harshly perfectionistic and critical of my own self? I know how, it was my defense mechanism in dealing with the harsh criticism and judgement that my father applied in his conditional parenting. I was smart, did quite well in school (and got some praise for that activity), and did what I was told to do (or else punishment). I’ve spent countless time relearning about my past and life such that I could arrive at and understand the answer to this question of how my ego conditioned self functions.

But the question for me nowadays is how do I move onward from the old habits that keep me in fearful avoidance of assumed and projected disapproval and punishment? Now that I am softer and more open to the subtleties of life, how do I flow with the energies and live fully, rather than resist, stress, depress, and struggle trying to make it through each torturous day of monotony?

I need an essential healthy attitude adjustment. I do not need a conditional repositioning of views and beliefs such that I can be what others may think is successful. That’s what I’ve been doing most of my life, trying to appease others’ expectations and act well, which drains me of all my good natural positive energy. I am watching this occur each evening I come home after working a job I just barely like (I consider myself lucky and am very grateful for this job at this time in my life, which isn’t an essentially good attitude). The FACT that my energy is so very drained each and every day is a massive warning.

Very deeply I actually, and even somewhat easily now, see the inherent essential goodness of all being. Of course, though, I like to call this The Great Emptiness of the Way, along with Zen Buddhists and Taoists. But each day, I get highly mired in the day-to-day muck of conditional existence. HAH! There! That is my attitude I must change if I am going to rest in deep presence and move from great emptiness in my life. I aspire to live this way more than anything else at all. I see this is my calling to live this way, though it’s manifestation and expression I do not know. I NEED to find the effortless effort of harmonizing with the Great Emptiness and Goodness of the Way things always and already are. My attitude (collection of beliefs, views, and thinking) needs to practically support harmony, not conditional living strategies that I learned in trying to appease parents, teachers, friends, etc.

TOWARDS THIS, I shall read a book I haven’t completely read yet. I will start the book over from the beginning. I acquired Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche’s first book, “Turning the Mind into an Ally” when I started meditating in 2003. As he is quoted on the back cover, “We can create an alliance that allows us to actually use our mind, rather than be used by it. This is a practice anyone can do.”

In my current practice of seeing myself as clearly as possible in order to move beyond the hard conditioned egotistic karmic aspect of my life, I am ready to embrace a thorough attitude adjustment that is harmonious with the Great Allowing Presence of the Way. Since I have experienced a great awakening in this vein at another time of my life (2005-6), I am already very aware that this can be the way in which I live my life. I am hungry for harmonious goodness and a warmly open attitude towards everything.