Pushing the switch

Rehashing past painful experiences is like sitting next to a switch, a button to push on and off. Push button on. He did that, she did this, ohhhh, it was so awful. Here is something solid and rigid, plastic, hard. Sometimes just an elbow accidently hitting the switch can do it. Then pain seems to come out of the blue. What a sad way to show I exist, existence in projections and illusions, past hurt. Push the switch, I can be in pain. The mind and the emotions get enmeshed. The mind thinks shame, wrong, bad when it sees emotions. The mind panics, lets emotions run the place. Mr. Mind thinks there is a cure for these uncomfortable feelings, hurry, scream, run, water the seeds of the emotion, make it stronger. The Pebble knows, ask the Pebble, drop the stories, give the emotions space to be. They come with the territory. Hear them, smell them, taste them, touch them, see them. Out of them will come wisdom. Rest in the river.

"So our practice of meditation, if we follow the Buddha's way, is the practice of passionlessness or nonaggression. It is dealing with the possessiveness of aggression: 'This is my spiritual trip and I don't want you to interfere with it. Get out of my territory.' Spirituality, or the vipashyana perspective, is a panoramic situation in which you can come and go freely and your relationship with the world is open. It is the ultimate nonviolence." The Myth of Freedom, Chogyam Trungpa