Sharing our practice: you know when you know better?

Spirituality
#1

you know when you know better? but after a stretch of time, you crack open the door to see if things are different now, and that maybe your own state of mind needs to be updated? and then in rushes exactly what you’ve been so wisely dodging?

well, hello, that’s me recently! and i’m feeling the limits of my skillfulness around what is important to me: saying “no thanks” to what i want to minimize in my own life, neutralizing the chaos that i let in by opening the door to take that peek AND still keeping the people whom i love and care about in my life and in my heart–even when it challenges me and leaves my heart a bit shaky. this is my hope and ideal, and i am in practice with this, but i regularly miss my ideal and just feel like running the other way as a means of avoidance.

it is important to me to regularly revisit what we believe, to let go of what isn’t truth any longer and to bring ourselves into the present as best as we can, but it means that we are committing to living, to be best of our abilities, a life of unsettledness. and this unsettledness is unsettling, which isn’t very pleasant to experience in our minds or our bodies :slight_smile: in fact, last night, at around midnight, my husband walked with me for nearly an hour while i talked and tried to steady my heart; this was after a particularly challenging phone call with a loved one.

but really, what are our choices here? staying in the past, in what is not current or relevant, while it may be very grounding, it is much less wise and courageous. it is also limiting because you cannot grow or respond to what really is now, only to what once was. you lock yourself and others into “this” and “that” and there is no room for anything else. and then ours minds look only to validate that long-held belief, even at the cost of the truth.

i would love to have others share their own practice and thoughts around this. i am calling on my cyber sangha:D

your own,
nichole

#2

Dear Nichole,

This year particularly was a year where many doors that i thought I had closed and sealed off never to open again surfaced somehow in my life and i was forced to open many of them. Many were extremely painful and very old wounds were ripped open and at that moment I just counldn’t see any good to come from them, but I just knew i had to revist some of these doors and open them, it was an inner knowing that it would be for the best, although i couldn’t see the benefit immediatley always, but I just knew that something good will come from it all and much good, updating, revision and growth has come from this.

This year is now nearly at its end and many of those doors really surprised me, yes outdated patterns and thinking was updated and revised, some wounds were cleaned and some are still bleeding, getting rid of old stuff. I do think we know deep down even better than we think we know and our inner Self will follow that or flow in such a way that we revisit those old doors until we have come to really know that we know now better.

#3

To me life is a series of opening and closing of doors. When one door closes, another is there to be opened. There are boundless possibilities as we walk through that door. It is up to us, as individuals whether we proceed or go back. There is a song by a very dear friend of mine Mr. Will Ackerman called the opening of doors which captures this essence of possibility.

This year has been one of many changes. Good, bad and indifferent. I have struggled and through my struggle gained some wisdom. This has been made possible through looking at life as a series of doors. I always know I can close the door and open a new one. This has always helped me through difficult times.

#4

Sometimes, we can become too comfortable in who we are/what we do that any notion of change immediately takes us out of our ‘comfort zone’ (I am a living, breathing example). lol

I have allowed myself to become too complacent and I am stagnating there.

I just don’t know in what direction I want this change to happen and I am weighing up all the sacrifice vs achievement that will potentially occur.
Whilst I am busy doing that, I am still stuck…using uncertainty as the biggest excuse there is. :stuck_out_tongue:

We tend to be our own biggest critics most of the time, but is that really us criticising ourselves or something more?

#5

There are things about me which I know now at this age, are set in concrete.
They are not bad so need no change in an everyday sense.

I evaluate and change what gives me problems, (try to) and keep the two very separate. And then I separate the latter into past problems and current ones and try to address them.

But the tricky problems are the sudden resurfacing thoughts of old problems that I thought i had tackled, but obviously hadn’t.

It’s as if there is a box of past negatives, hidden from you…so i have given that some thought as to how to find them…where are they hidden?

I thought that if searched my memory for every bad aspect i ever experienced or ever did, writing a list, i might find this box of thoughts…but some must be things we don’t recall that are buried away deep…so im still pondering over this, now.

I know/think I had a pretty free from trouble childhood and youth…cant recall any bad…but is there some hidden? I dunno?..and if so, i would like to address it.

#6

I’ve split the off topic content of this thread to here.

Nichole,

For 2.5 years my heart was saying, “No thanks” but my mind was saying, “Yes”. I was in a relationship where I really liked the person a lot and thought highly of them, but in my heart, I knew they were not the right person for me to spend the rest of my life with. I finally said no thanks and, “In rushed what I’d so wisely been dodging.”

What rushed in? True love. That I hadn’t been ready for until then.

However, I’m in no position to outline a means for saying “no thanks” considering that one took me 2.5 years to do :smiley: