And Amy Poehler referencing Pema Chodron. There must be a bibliography for particular times in life and it appears we have been covering the same required reading.
Amy is funny, as she is supposed to be. Pema is... like sitting with the kindest person possible. And in listening to her I wondered how one gets to be like that. And I researched a tiny bit and here is what I found:
She had two failed marriages, and when her second husband came home one day and told her that he was having an affair and wanted a divorce, she picked up a rock and threw it at his head.
It was her rock bottom---not the second failed marriage, not the being left, but her response to it. She was leveled by her reaction, and began a journey of inner work, starting within her then-current religion and leading to where she is now.
All of the readings I've ingested by her center around our expectations about pain, and our response to it. Our habitual response typically being either one of two things:
1. withdraw. retract. hide in our shell.
2. revenge. throw a rock.
This is all of us, and this is typical, and all of her books are about: start exactly with where you are, and if you can catch one of fifty incidences of pain and sit in it, with it, you have made a leap.
(I swear this is related to the 4th of July---eventually).
The staying put is not to wallow or roll in pain, but to feel our vulnerability, how deeply we feel wounded, and hopefully in feeling this, can soften our hearts to understanding how everyone feels this. Sitting with the pain is an exercise of softening, breaking a wall, and instead of feeling alone, understanding how many others have encountered this exact thing.
She proclaims that the more one grows in this work, the more "opportunity" we receive to grow ever deeper in it. And that our teachers are often those we are in conflict with. The people we want to shrink back from, the people who we want to throw rocks at, whichever habit seems to be prominent at the moment.
"Be thankful for your teachers, because they are there to blow your cover." Our gratitude can be for those who somehow seem to trigger in us a strong reaction, as they are showing us something that is not yet healed.
An example for me would be a training I once attended for work. In a room full of educators, we were given a rating scale from 1 - 5, and a variety of circumstances to rate. Giving something a 1 meant we are not bothered at all by the circumstance. Giving something a 5 meant we are heightened, panicked, and on the inside at least, freaking out.
When the scenarios were read and our rated responses were given, the majority of the room rated one particular scenario a 4 or 5, and for me, this scenario was a 1. If zero were an option, it would have been a zero. It elicited nothing for me. No internal reaction. I was feeling pretty awesome for about 2 seconds until the next scenario was read, which for me was a 5. If 10 were an option, it would have been a 10. And I seemed alone in that response. The rest of the room rated it a 1 or 2.
It is like this in the things that trigger us. We can watch another complain or get upset about something that seems benign to us. But that circumstance is not our teacher.
Our teacher is the next moment we find ourselves either flinching and withdrawing, or picking up a rock without even thinking.
One final Pema point: the teacher is very often someone in our family or that we are in relationship with. The intimacy that comes with knowing and being known can also up the stakes to be schooled on what we have tucked away, or are "smiling over" until our cover is blown.
All this falls under "Drive all blames into one"
It doesn't mean, instead of blaming other people, blame yourself. It means to touch in with what blame feels like altogether. Instead of guarding yourself, instead of pushing things away, begin to get in touch with the fact that there's a very soft spot under all that armor, and blame is probably one of the most-perfected armors that we have. You can take this slogan beyond what we think of as 'blame' and practice applying it simply to the general sense that something is wrong. When you feel that something is wrong, let the story line go and touch in to what's underneath.How does this relate to America? To being thankful?
It did when I started, something about America Ferrera and her thank you letter to Donald Trump.
She said thank you. And her name is America.
But like a great idea at midnight that evaporates with 6 am sun, I don't know how that was going to go. And now I am going to bed.
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