It is strange to wake up one day when you think your life is starting to go in the “right” direction only to find that you have rut a circle in the carpet moving in all the same directions. The last seven months I have imagined to myself that I was working on getting stronger and doing better things in my life. I was exercising, doing yoga, meditating, drawing, writing, doing self help things, eating better, and keeping busy. What happens when I stop? The world comes crashing in like a tsunami.
In the last few days I have had to admit to myself that I live in a constant state of distraction. This distraction lends itself to not being able to sit with myself and in all this pain I have been carrying around for years. I have some unnatural desire to be my own superhero. I want to save myself from myself, but that is not how it works. That road, for good or bad, is full of self-absorption and ego.
Three days ago I started reading Pema Chodron’s “Taking the Leap” which is a book that helps one to recognize the strength of old habits and fears and what they can do to you. More importantly, how it affects everyone around you and then the people around them etc. My one hurtful word or action is a ripple so far reaching you can’t even imagine it. If I stopped to think of that every time I did or said something, I might make different choices.
Today’s lesson was on shenpa or attachment. Shenpa is preverbal...that moment someone says or does something that tightens you up before you say or act after it. It is directly attached to the ego and who you think you are in the world and the more threatened you feel, the stronger shenpa gets. It is literally the charge behind your emotions. It finds us when we are in places of discomfort and restlessness and boredom,
Understanding this brought me to tears today. I am so full of fear, unnaturally so, and maybe because this particular type of shenpa is so familiar I can taste and smell it. It is not unlike the analogy of wearing destruction like your favorite blanket. You know it is wrong but it is so familiar and comfortable. It gives a false sense of security.
In Buddhism, I have always heard of renunciation which I equated to “giving up” this way of life I am living. I was deep into practice many years ago when I found out I was pregnant. It had taken me a decade to have a kid and I felt supremely attached to this child growing inside me. I eventually moved from the city to a place where being Buddhist meant you were somehow strange and evil and outside the community. I stopped daily practice. I went back to it time and again sad that I didn’t have the courage to renunciate life and walk a road that might make me open and free. Over the years I have practiced more readily. I have found ways to practice invisibly, afraid others would judge me.
Today, after 20 years, I learn that renunciation isn’t about giving up things and ideas and preferences, but it is the act of releasing the firm attachment to them. Pema writes that when we are able to let go a wisdom becomes accessible to us that is based in compassion for oneself and others that has nothing to do with our ego’s fears.
“Because of shenpa, you get attached to the self-image of failure”- Pema Chodron
Yes, yes I do.
The answer to this is simply Sit. Stay. Heal. Distracting myself from the pain of everything in this world doesn’t make the pain less, it makes it stronger and harder to peel back the layers to get to that sense of peace and openness. I have been running at a breakneck speed from pain since 2014 when my mother died. It has all tumbled and spiraled into something that has marred and ruined many friendships and relationships in my life. In essence, my shenpa has left me alone grasping to things around me for a sense of self. Fear is such a powerful emotion. It is innate in us for protection from harm, but when we manipulate it and hold it and cherish it, it can destroy possibilities of freedom.
Today, I sit with the pain no matter how awful it feels. I can’t run anymore.
Aleathia Drehmer
