The previous post was a theoretical consideration about suffering in our daily life – a topic that has been faced several times on this blog. It’s true: as many people state, that to overcome definitively this mental and emotional “disease”, one needs an external support, a guide… a teacher. But, a friend of mine states that finding a capable, genuine, sincere, thus a “true” teacher, is a “luxury”, and in some way it’s correct. Efficient teachers are rare even in this “hodgepodge” that is the contemporary marketplace of “spirituality”.
So, there is something that an individual who is sincere in his intent, but who does not have the possibility to meet a teacher with the capital “T”, can do by himself? Fortunately, the answer to this “delicate” question is: Yes! Something can be done. Always.
Little by little as a human being grows and, hopefully, matures, it could happen that he could experience an unbearable sense of discomfort and anxiety concerning what he considers the mistakes made during his life. It’s not a rarity to feel such discomfort: sooner or later we all experience it.
It’s the famous “sense of guilt” that is rooted, more or less, in all of us. And, in such situations, we fall into anxieties, desperations, and discomforts of every type. At once, it could happen that our life becomes dark, sad, even that we feel ourselves irremediably lost, and that we would make a step back in time, to the past to find a remedy. But this can’t be done. Maybe, we could remedy something in the present, but the time machine has not yet been invented, so a return to the past to change things is not possible, for now.
So, what now? What can we do to lighten the burden of the sense of guilt or of every other sense of suffering?
We could perform a little “joke” with our mind; indeed, an inner development is not only determined by intense efforts and dreadful sacrifices. We could imagine to be just newly born, rebirthed, right now.
Well, just a little step that is more than functional if used in a proper and sincere way. We could “imagine” to have come into this world and newly born, to open our eyes to this world for the first time in this marvelous dimension, but with the privilege of an advantage that the other new-borns do not have: we have a huge baggage of experiences and knowing, of which was most gained just through the errors made during our life that have been taught to us.
Indeed, if something useful has been taught to us by this conditioned society, it is the statement “you learn from your mistakes”. And this is a wise statement.
And, here enters one of the main topics of this blog: living the present moment, such as the first time we live it, as if we are for the first time on this planet Earth.
It seems a trivial practice, but it works! And, what is better, it can be done at every moment of our life, in every place, without external “special conditions”. With every inbreath, we feel that we are just born, fresh, unconditioned, and just a little bit wiser (don’t forget the advantage we have towards the other new-borns).
Using our breath, in the sense that we put our attention on this process, is more than a smart “trick”: the Ancient Knowing has cultivated through many centuries the art of breathing, especially in the East, and those who practice it can surely confirm that it is effective. Through the attentive following of our natural breath, we can free “energies” that are stuck from burdens, disharmony, unnecessary thoughts, and many other things. Once we free the energy we have at our disposal for our daily life, we can use it for more useful purposes rather than, in this case, blame ourselves for everything we’ve done in the past.
The wise Buddhist and Zen teachers said to put our attention on our natural breath with an emphasis such as THIS breath is the first and last in our life. Just one breath. It’s a very useful way to return to the “paradise” we have lost very many years ago, quiet our mind, achieving a peace from which we can experience the natural flow of the events without the translation of the same from our associative thoughts. This is an art that has to be cultivated daily, and every time we perform it, it will improve.
It is useful to remember that negative emotions are produced through the mechanical processes of our mind, through the associative “remembering” of similar experiences and the anticipation of what could happen. So, we couldn’t call them emotion in the true sense of the meaning: rather, they are reflections of our mind.
Every fear, sense of guilt, anger, envy, jealousy, regret, etc… might be fought without hesitation for the simple but true fact that the final aim of the life we all live should be pleasureble; not an egoistic pleasure, but a pleasure that is the result of living in accordance with the natural laws that govern our lives.
So, “feeling”, rather than “imagining”, to be just born right now, is a very fast and efficient way to get in touch with the most intimate and real part of ourselves, experiencing with our whole being a right way to feel an unconditioned pleasure, and overcome the common burden labeled by the “insiders” as “negative emotions”.