When things fall apart - Perma Chodron

[axa]

Hi all and especially Hops,

Would like to start a thread on this topic since I have, at last, started reading the book.  I have dipped in and out of it at times but picked it up yesterday and would like to engage with others about it.

"We feel we deserve resolution" - what a biggie for me.  I always want an ending, a tie up, neatly closed......... forget it. 

"always thinking that there is a problem and that someone, shomewhere, needs to fix it"

I feel many of us brought up by Ns are so caught up in this.  I know I am.  I think taking the road of the middle ground, not trying to fix, letting it be, is so difficult and it brings up for me a deep anxiety, boredom, restless that I want to get away from.  Years and years of running away from myself and into the arms of Ns, learning so little on route, but not nothing, I did learn some things.  I wish for the courage to stay with the restlessness and boredom.

"We want victory or defeat, praise or blame" Oh do I know these poles.  Always the extreme, my wish is to meet the middle ground and know myself there.

Just wanted to share these thoughts and would welcome comments........... writing this post has brought up real sadness for me which I will try and stay with.

Axa

[Hopalong]

Oh, Axa.
That's a really challenging book, isn't it?
It almost scared me, it challenged so many of my assumptions.

And I truly don't understand how Buddhists achieve the detachment...not going to set myself up to try, really. But at the same time, her take on reality was so revolutionary to read that it helped me even by SUGGESTING that my cornucopia of reflex reactions really are optional...

I think the result of absorbing her message might be, just being less excited about how we feel. Even if that's oversimiplified, I'm glad I thunk it.

love to you,
Hops

[isittoolate]

hi axa,

This sounds like how I have always wanted an answer. Regardless of good or bad, I wanted to know

if you have followed anything about the estrangement from my daughter, you will understand that I wanted to know WHY?

Her husband started it, and she went along with it. 1991

I dug the answer from her this year, 2007, SIXTEEN years!

Izzy

[axa]

Hops,

Think you are right about the excitement thing.  It is the source of my addiction I believe.  Yesterday, I wrote of a sadness I felt, tried to stay with it but sabotaged myself, before I knew what I was doing I had consumed lots of food, filling the hole AGAIN.  I lost awareness completely.  Staying aware and staying with the feeling, not being distracted is such a challenge.  Avoiding the pain, when I know that by feeling the pain I will be released.  We are so programmed to take the old way, struggle, struggle, struggle

Izzy,

Yes I have been following your journey with your Daughter and admire your courage.  I have come to the conclusion that death is the ending, other than that anything can happen

Bean,

Thank you for your kindness

Besee

Loving kindness, don't have that as yet!!!!! must keep reading.

xx

axa

[moonlight52]

Buddhism

Mindfulness is the aware
balanced acceptance of the
present experience(be here now)
it is not more complicated
than that.
It is opening to or receiving
the present moment,
pleasent or unpleasant,just as
it is without either clinging to it or rejecting it.

Just as Hops says how do they do this it is so difficult
but knowing and opening to the understanding we have a choice.

[spyralle]

Hey Axa,

You have inspired me now.  I have this book under my bed.  Mum told me to buy it when I first came here but I still haven't read it.  I'm thinking I need to unearth it and give it a go.  It's quite timely reall because I'm thinking of going on a spiritual retreat and I thought I'd look for something that involved Buddhism.

Spyralle x

[axa]

Oh what a bad buddhist I would make.  Would hate to tell you what I stuffed into my mouth today to keep down the sadness.  It is exploding out of me like lava these days and I keep running away from it.  Life gets in the way.  Want to take time out and scream and cry but cannot make the time for it because of commitments I have made.  I think I have a lot of fear going on also.  Just wanted to say these things

axa

[Hopalong]

((((((((((((Axa)))))))))))))))

It's a wave, a crash, a jolt.
You have so much happening. Change is hard, even when it's good change.

Be patient with yourself and kind and love yourself through, just one hour at a time ...

(I'm overeating too. Not glad about my body now but trying not to berate myself either.)

from one bB to another,
love,
Hops

[axa]

Hops,

Think I will go for the fattest baddest buddhist award!!!!!!!!!

axa

[Hopalong]

Buddha was fat

   And happy 

Hops