Article
[…] You attribute any adverse effects of your counsel or actions to the ripening of the injured party’s karma, as purification, or as a mystery beyond ordinary comprehension. The patterns of self and self-cherishing have taken over the experience of mind nature and are only reinforced by it. In contrast, when you choose the red pill, […]
Article
[…] each moment is very important! Karma and Growth Our personality can be described as a complex adaptive system. It is the product of many forms of conditioning. Reactive emotional patterns established in our physical, emotional, family, educational and cultural development act as templates for future growth. How do these patterns come about? For our […]
Article
[…] someone who leaves a country or homeland because life is no longer tenable there. When you take refuge, you are acknowledging that a life based on habituated patterns is no longer tenable for you. You are prepared to set out into the mystery and rely on awareness, wherever that may lead you. Who takes […]
Article
[…] the transgression against me, you help me come to terms with the reactive process within myself. Yet it is still up to me to work through the reactive patterns that gave rise to that transgression. In the Protestant context, the picture is a bit different. With the elimination in all but name of the mystery […]
Article
[…] meditation, they find a freedom they never suspected was possible. What is freedom? It is the moment by moment experience of not being run by one’s own reactive mechanisms. Does that give you more choice? Usually not. When you aren’t run by reactions, you see things more clearly, and there is usually only one, […]
Article
[…] is arising and experience it as completely as possible without getting lost in it. Do I do anything to address the adversity? Well, as long as the reactive patterns are running, it’s generally better not to. If, in the process of practice, my relationship with the emotional reactions shifts, then I’ll be able to see […]
Article
[…] feel abandoned, bereft, heartbroken, and lost. At the point when prayer seems futile and hopeless, when we feel we can no longer tolerate the raging of these reactive patterns, something else begins to form. As one practitioner said, “Gates look like corners, until you go through them.” Unexpectedly, we leave behind the world of emotional […]
Article
[…] Jr. Freedom is not a state; it is a process. It is something you are, not something you have. In freedom, there is a continual releasing of reactive material as it arises in each moment of experience. The reactive process doesn’t stop by itself. As Gampopa wrote eight hundred years ago in The Jewel […]
Article
[…] emotional patterns. If you now repress the emotions, pushing them out of attention, two things happen. The higher level of energy in your system flows into the reactive pattern, making it stronger. The higher energy also flows into the repressing pattern, making that stronger. Both the reactive patterns of the emotion and the repression are […]
Article
[…] operate quite so quickly and just that little bit of letting go makes a difference. As we deepen our relationship with compassion, we become less and less reactive and more and more responsive. In Buddhist thought, compassion is the natural expression of the open, clear awareness that is our birthright. Meditation: Returning to the […]
Article
[…] future should be for us. Finally, we make efforts, again internally and externally, to be able to meet present circumstances as they are, without the prejudices and reactive tendencies that we have accumulated, or the expectations and desires we want to fulfill. Some of the best descriptions of what it is to live this […]
Article
The final challenge of habituated patterns is to question direct experience. How do we know? How can we trust this knowing, which is totally beyond the ordinary conditioned experience of life? Like Buddha Shakyamuni, we turn to no external reference and live in the knowing. We rest in presence, in the very mystery of […]
Article
[…] between two people means that they relate to each other. Before two people can relate to each other, they must remove the principal obstacles to relationship — reactive patterns. For present purposes, the reactive patterns are judgement, closing down, contraction, and feeling deficient. These four reactive patterns prevent us from relating to the other person […]
Article
[…] this confused state, our habitual patterns have a great deal of power, for there is no strength in our attention or mindfulness and we tend to be reactive and go with whatever impulse arises. This is exactly the kind of confused, reactive state that advertising and store displays are intended to cultivate. As an […]
Article
[…] teacher are three: To show you the possibility of presence To train you in the techniques and methods you will need To direct your attention to the reactive patterns that prevent you from being present in your life Everything else is extra and is usually based on the projections of the student, the teacher, or […]
