Feeling Thoughts
Today is one of those days. You know the kind…my brain is just churning out a lot of thoughts that are good but really disjointed. So, for instance, as I was waiting for my post-yoga raisin toast to prepare itself via the magic toaster this was my train of thought:
I wonder why yesterday the toaster burned the toast and today, without touching the toaster or doing anything differently, the toast is perfect? Where did I leave my flip-flops? I wonder if an all-girls high school education actually made me more masculine than many men I know? I should take a shower. Almost done with IRB. That breeze is cool. I wonder how other people experience pain?
Literally…that was in two minutes. I walked home from yoga this morning; it took about 25 minutes and I had a lifetime’s worth of conversation with myself. Going in 25 directions. Whenever this happens I feel the distinct need to write everything down as quickly as possible. There could be good nuggets of something in there which only time will reveal. But despite this mental chattering, there was one thought I kept coming back to, I think because it didn’t originate in my brain.
In the 2 or 3 moments in between crazy shooting thoughts, I actually felt compassion. I’ve been reading this book by Pema Chodron called The Places that Scare You and I assumed it would be a lot about fear. It’s actually more about the opposite of fear, which as it turns out, is compassion. Who knew? Maybe this is where I’ve gone wrong all these years. Here’s a picture just in case you want to read (and you really should…what else are you really doing?)
Anyway I usually don’t feel ideas; I think about them, dissect them, think more about them, start to worry about them, get anxious about them, then am exhausted and can’t sleep. That’s usual. But, I’ve really been working on “heart opening”–I interpret it more as willing myself to feel things rather than approach them intellectually. It’s given more dimension to my ideas; we all think a lot about love or anger or hurt. We ultimately want to manage them, so we approach them as events and then get a plan to deal with them. But I’m learning that if we feel them, they actually have textures…things we can grip onto a little bit and push our edges. In other words, I think I’m learning that if we feel things, we can grow in ways that thinking about them cannot approach.
But, back to compassion. So, I think “heart opening” is working a bit. I was practicing feeling compassion which isn’t empathy or sympathy. In those, we place ourselves in the shoes of others (sympathy) or recalling when we’ve actually shared the experience of another (empathy) and felt with them. Compassion, I think, is the following step. In compassion we stay in our own shoes, recognize the place of another (be it filled with suffering or joy), and then love them as only we can. It’s not sharing the experience; it’s just opening our arms and loving, regardless of what happens to us or what we’ll get out of it. I think compassion is the act of giving away love unconditionally. We always approach that idea from the receiver’s end…I haven’t really even imagined what it feels like to give it. I think it’s a good thing.
So this is what I’m feeling about today. Even writing this down has slowed the chatter. And it makes me think that in order to give this…dude, you gotta tap into a kind of strength that you just have to trust you have…because I think it’s tough. You may hurt in the process. But its completely worth it, I think. I mean, I feel.
Ha-HAH. Caught myself there.