CAUSES AND CONDITIONS

there are times when I can help and times when I cannot help.
I can do..... with how I am causing my own stress, own suffering, Just feeling bad is not going to help anymore. all beings are the owners of there karma their happiness and unhappiness depend on their actions
things come together for a reason, there is not always something to blame,

moral progress is when we stop blaming.all things arise essentially as they have to rise, that they come from the causes and conditions, we have to change the causes and conditions. we change what is causing suffering by changes causes and conditions.
peoples happiness depend on their actions.

Letting someone off the Hook

Is there a way of letting someone off the hook? I was listening to the pocket practice on Tricycle.... Forgivness and compassion.
It brought to my mind the ways that I my self have been feeling. Spurts of sadness, joyless, no laughter, just existence in my life. When the speaker asked the question "How can I let this person off the hook", my first thought was myself.,
how can I let myself off of the hook?
I have learned over the years that there is a cause of dukkha and when I find the cause of the dukkha then there is the cessation of dukkha. If I can not find the problem that is causing the suffering, then there is no solution to stop the suffering in my head.
My views, concepts, ideas of how I should be, or how I should look, or how I should feel are my causes of my suffering.
I have to go back to the beginners mind, see things new and fresh, an open mind.

Today for me is about letting myself of the hook..... Today I will be kind to my husband, today I will be kind to myself, today I will stop and not react, today I will help someone else, instead of constant thoughts of myself. Today I am looking towards a sense of freedom and joy that has left me for some time now due to my views, concepts and ideas of self, people, places and things. I will get out of my hole, my house at this time, and do something today. There is hope for my mind, because of knowing the cause and working towards the cessation of all my suffering.
I am my own worst enemy when left to my thoughts of myself.

Today I have plans to go and be with Zachary's grandma Barbara, she called and asked if I could help her with her medi-cal application for her husband to obtain help with his major medical expenses. The Doroughs are the most kindest loving human beings I have met in my lifetime thus far, they are the definition of giving, Barbara especially, she today even in the midst of all her sufferings, she still thinks of others. I get to be with her today and help hopefully with the task for Leons prescription and hospitalizations for he is now in a skilled nursing facility and most likely will not be coming back home.
My sufferings are minor compared to many people in my life today, I have to remember to be kind and loving to myself.
I love my sitting and being in the moment, in order for me to make some sense of my thoughts or to just let them be thoughts.
I do have a great life in spite of my minds way of thinking.
Today constant thoughts of others is my goal.

Gratitude

Today I had such an overwhelming feeling of gratitude....
My day started with a great meditation lesson, which reminded me that no matter what my perception of what is going on around me I can chose for it to not effect me.

As usual as soon as I get into the office, things were busy and out of control, my population I work with are schizophrenics, Substance abusers, and personality disorders and the list can go on and on, so another day at the office really.

We have a center that my members come to for groups and social gatherings so we may help them become more productive in their lives and become healthy in spite of their conditions.
Today we were having our monthly birthday celebration and a Thanksgiving feast, it was pretty amazing, watching and interacting with these individuals that mostly are without a lot of things not just material, mental as well.

pocket practices lesson 1 Suffering

Nothing can destroy my peace..... I am the one experiecning whtat is going on areound me, I have choices, I can chose to not be upset by it, I dont get to say a whole of what is going on around me, but I do get to say what is going on around me, my perception.

Only I can destroy my peace and I chose not to do so.
realization.................. committment........

Daily it always seems that something is disrupting my peace. Budha it is not what is happeing outside of ourselves that causes our suffering. "Dukha"

If we could identify the Dukha, we would at the same time see how to end that suffering.


I am so digging this retreat very precise clear and good direction..
My perception is my filter, I need to tweak the way I percieve things happeining around me. Today is going to be a good day in spite of the surroundings of my daily hussle and bussle. Only I can destroy my peace and I am going to chose not to do so Today.

Challenge of Change

Things are impermanent.
Take this law "everything appears and disappears".
Each breathe is changing.
watch thoughts, watch movements.
No mind state is forever.
Seeing impermanent nature of ourself.
Learning how to live in the world of how it is.

Attempt to change my relationship to my life experiece
what is my reactions

Active engagement
Skillful, beneficial, wise. Wisdom is something that is alive.
Proof is not in the pudding it is in the eating

When I am not skillful I am harming others.

Skill, wisdom and intelligence.


Bits and pieces of my readings this morning: I love Tricycle.com

Active engagement
"Skillful, beneficial, wise. Wisdom is something that is alive.
Proof is not in the pudding it is in the eating"

When I am not skillful I am harming others.

I am what I am, active engagement for me is being present of all of my reactions and non reactions. I can go out today and be nonskillful or I can go out today and be skillfull. Today I am going to work on the skillfull.
Skillfull for me is: Is it kind, is it true, is it necessary. I loved that when my sponsor would remind me that my reactions are not skillfull and I would have to go back and make my ammends and do the next skillfull thing, dont do it again.
I need to continue to work on my mind, and how I do that is go to meetings, do my meditation, and learn my skillfull vs unskillfull ways and learn to undo the unskillfull to benefit others in my life, no matter who they are, from my coworkers to my family to the lady at the grocery store, the proof definitely is in the eating, what I do with what I have learned all these years of my sobriety is how my skills out there in my daily living is the eating.

A Mind Like a Clear Pool

His Holiness the Dalai lama spoke to a gathering of Buddhist teachers in the West. He said, "It's important to know what Buddhism is.
Buddhism is a mental training to eliminate the afflictive emotions. So it is only when our physical, verbal, and mental effort has this motivation that it is Buddhism."

He advised: "First, study what Buddha said, and then experiment and gain experience. From that will arise a conviction that the Buddha's teachings do actually benefit you. At the same time, you realize that your mind cannot penetrate the deeper nature of reality by itself. From that will come an appreciation of the teaching of Buddha; out of that will come a sense of devotion."

Today my mind is like roots that are in the above picture.
So when I do practice the roots are visible yet flow like transparent. My mind is strong at times in affliction brought on by my own convictions, yet when I practice and the more I practice, my stuff is eliminated which does bring much ease and comfort. I know today that I am not able to contain,push out,eliminate the mental roots of my mind without my practice. I am grateful today for the knowledge, even if small amount of knowledge, that I do have in taiming my mind to a sense of peace and serenity in amongst all of the debris.

Family

I love both of my dads, they are and have been very special to me






I love both my mothers, my birth mother I owe her my life and unconditional love her always being there for me in spite of my destruction growing up,
my step mother for her always being there for my father, and loving him unconditionally, thank you Joann, I really do love you.














January 30th 2006 my life as family changed.
Family is very important to me, yet I stay disconnected. I am looking at my part today and what I can do to make it different, or less sad. I am very sad at how my family, the whole, has changed in so many many different ways.

It takes about ten years to get used to how old you are.
--Unknown

If it is hard to adjust to our age, how much harder it must be to realize we can't even run our own life with any degree of competence. Until we get used to that idea we will keep having living troubles. Accepting our incompetence doesn't have to take forever, though. The Third Step is a shortcut that requires no action, only a decision.

Once the decision is made to turn our will and our life over to the care of God, things begin to happen. We are likely to find ourselves being drawn to spiritual people. Maybe we'll read a book or hear something as simple as the lyrics of a song that speak to us in a special way. God is acting on our decision. And we find ourselves a great deal happier in God's care than our own.

I'm getting used to the idea that God does a better job of running my life than I do.


A reading from the book:
In God's Care by Karen Casey


I am reminded daily in my life today that I am hitting my head up against a big wall when I feel the need to control situations in my life, big and small.
Making a decision is something that I just in the moment at times completely forget to do, yes my impulse, reactions are there, they are not decisions. When I sit and give my thoughts over before I go and do a task, event, I feel the surrender happening in that instant, there is no tugging, no anxiety, I have made the decision to give it up. When I am in impulse, reaction, I feel so much anxiety, so much negative energy, it exhausts me. I get the reading above, my incompetence does not have to take forever, my practice, really practice, not just talk about it, does make a huge difference in my decisions of who is going to be in charge today, or that moment. I thank God daily for my recovery and my decision to continue in my practicing in my life most of the time, I am thankful for the tuggings, that remind me that I am not in charge, something greater and far bigger than myself.

Needing Transformation and doing the work

I read this this morning:
The possibility strikes you that this transformation of consciousness could actually become a permanent feature of your experience. You realize that you could actually spend the rest of your days standing aside from the debilitating clamoring of your own obsessions,no longer frantically hounded by your own needs and
greed. You get a tiny taste of what it is like to just stand aside and watch it all flow past. It's a magic moment.

Mindfulness in Plain English
Chapter 15
Meditation In Everyday Life

Meditation for me is a magic moment, any time I get to get out of my head is magic, I have to remember that it is the foot work "practice" that is going to help me to not be obsessed, or frantic. Practice is the key to releasing all my miseries.

Gaps and pig doo-doo

Mind the Gaps

If you start really paying attention to your own thought process—I’m talking here about the process itself and not just the contents of the individual thoughts that make it up—you’ll notice that thoughts don’t just go on and on continuously. There are little spaces between them. Most of us tend to habitually try and fill these spaces up with more thoughts as fast as we possibly can. But even the best of us can’t fill them all, so there are always little gaps. See, you might say that there are two basic kinds of thought. There are thoughts that pop up unannounced and uninvited in our brains for no reason we’re able to discern. These are just the results of previous thoughts and experiences that have left their traces in the neural pathways of our brains. You can’t do much to stop these, nor should you try. The other kind of thought is when we grab on to one of these streams of energy and start playing with it the way your mom always told you not to do with your wee-wee in front of the neighbors. We dig deep into these thoughts and roll around in them like a pig rolling in its own doo-doo, feeling all that delicious coolness and drinking deep of their lovely stink.
To practice “thinking not thinking,” all you need to do is ignore the first kind of thoughts and learn how not to instigate the second. This is easier said than done, of course. But get into the habit, and it begins to come naturally.

- Brad Warner, "Think Not Thinking," Tricycle Fall 2007

I can be the pig rolling in its own doo-doo.
Ok Joni practice practice practice.



I am in a place this morning of "Nothing changes if nothing changes" and stick to my part of the icky feelings that were brought on again this morning.
I know what I know from my own experience yet I continue to step under the butt-hole and keep expecting that the natural is not going to happen, and yet again it does.
I love my life, and love my willingness to be willing, change does not happen to all.
My thoughts are and do all come together because of my not letting them just be and clinging to them and making them something more then what they really are, just thoughts. I am today really trying to make a concious effort in not staying with the thoughts and grasping on to the feelings with those thoughts and moving on to something different, I love the gap concept. I really do believe and have experienced the exhaustion of holding on to those thoughts and adding to them over and over and over again. I do also have the "feeling" of just letting the gaps be what they are gaps and thoughts be what they are thoughts and the "energy that comes from that is peace and existence of just being in the moment. I THINK I am going to practice more on the latter, just being in the moments.
My moment right now is pretty good in spite of the poop. It really is nice to come to the other side, not smelling to bad, and learning from my experience.