We had the third meeting of our Taking the Leap Meditation Book Group at Yoga Bliss yesterday.  We came together for gentle yoga practice, meditation and discussion of the next three chapters in Taking the Leap:  Getting Unstuck, We Have What We Need, Rejoicing With Things As They Are.

In our movement practice we followed the shifting fluid energy of sensory experience moment to moment, observing how thoughts can distance us from direct sensation.  We practiced labeling thoughts lightly as pleasant, unpleasant or neutral and returning to direct sensory experience.   We tried recognizing our distractions with an inner smile.

We explored two forms of meditation: formal sitting  while entraining our awareness on the breath and the Transmutation Practice Pema describes in Getting Unstuck:  ” . . . a formal practice for learning to stay with the energy of uncomfortable emotions – a practice for transmuting the poison of negative emotions into wisdom. . . .  It has three steps:

• Step One.  Acknowledge that you’re hooked.
• Step Two. Pause, take three conscious breaths, and lean in.  Lean in to the energy.  Abide with it.  Experience it fully.  Taste it.  Touch it. Smell it.  Get curious about it.  How does it feel in your body? What thoughts does it give birth to? . . . It’s a process of staying awake and compassionate, interrupting momentum, and refraining from causing harm.  Just do not speak, do not act, and feel the energy.  Be one with your own energy, one with the ebb and flow of life.  . . .
• Step Three.  Then relax and move on.”

We shared our reflections on the meditation and the readings.  It was interesting to explore how each of us recognized shenpa in ourselves and in others.   Both instances challenge us to pause the impulse to respond.  Our shared stories included some serious and some ordinary life situations.  Several students described using the pause to quiet themselves and make a true connection with the “other” person involved in the conflict. What makes a person “other” and what kind of presumptions do we bring to the interaction?  We don’t hold the same expectations of a child or a homeless person.  In the pause we might make eye contact and connect on a deeper, more primal level.  Sometimes just feeling heard and seen can diffuse tension.

I had an opportunity to practice with an ordinary situation when my hard drive crashed last Saturday.  It’s humorous now.  It wasn’t then.  You’ve probably had a similar experience.  It starts with the uneasy feelings that arise while staring at a fixed computer screen that doesn’t change no matter how many buttons you push.  The sinking feelings start to grow as you realize you need help.  The anxiety mounts when you learn this is not a quick fix and you may have lost your information.  The adrenalin surges as you obsessively consider the hours of work required to restore what you’ve “lost.”  The despondency that emerges with acceptance.   Then breathing the freedom and relief when you can really let go and move on.  I think I did Step Two alright.  Step Three took a while; I had to go back and visit Step Two multiple times.

I was a lot like Pema’s seven year-old grandson when facing a frustrating situation.  When he considered what Star Wars guru Obi-Wan Kenobi would do in his shoes,  he could momentarily gain control of himself.  Yet the “story line” seemed to regain momentum again and upset ensued pretty quickly.  Pema observed that it’s like this for all of us initially.  She says that “we can contact our inner strength, our natural openness, for short periods before getting swept away. . . a huge step in interrupting and weakening our ancient habits.  If we keep a sense of humor and stay with it for the long haul, the ability to be present just naturally evolves.  Gradually we lose our appetite for biting the hook. . .”   I’m certainly willing to keep trying.  I’ve learned a bit from seven year olds.  I can get their jokes.

In We Have What We Need Pema says that we’re always getting a fresh start.  We don’t have to let our his/her-story define us.  She says “in this very lifetime, I have what it takes to change the movie of my life so that the same things don’t keep happening to me.  It does seem that the same things keep coming back to trigger the same feelings in us until we’ve made friends with them.  Our attitude can be that we keep getting another chance, rather than that we’re just getting another bad deal. . . . The truly wonderful aspect of living this way is that it leaves the space wide open for a completely fresh experience free of self-absorption.”

I enjoy fresh experience.  I remember a busy day working as a corporate tax consultant in downtown Seattle.  I played “hooky” and sat on a park bench at Madison Park Beach.  The sun warmed my face the breeze cooled my skin.  A poem came to me – no trying – just arising like a fish, swimming freely, off the hook.  (You can read, Touch, if you want!)  I doubt that writing poetry is what Pema is trying to teach us.  Yet her description of our lives being a “a work in progress, a process of uncovering our natural openness, uncovering our natural intelligence and warmth” seems to ripen into creativity as well as awareness and compassion.

She acknowledges that “there is no one easy answer for how to be free of suffering . . . The main tool . . . is the practice of sitting meditation. . . . to return again and again to the immediacy of our experience, to the breath, the feeling or other object of meditation . . . a complete openness to things just as they are without conceptual padding. . . . The attitude toward meditation . . . is one of relaxing.  With no feeling of striving to reach for some higher state. . . ”  In our discussion, we observed that treating oneself as an object to be improved is yet another form of subtle aggression that ripens into more suffering.  Whew!  I am so ready to lighten the load of “self”  especially “self” improvement.  Maybe that’s where Rejoicing in Things As They Are comes in.

In this chapter Pema talks about making friends with ourselves.  In a friendship that is based on knowing all parts of ourselves without prejudice.  As in any valued relationship this requires caring and commitment, the willingness to participate.  “This involves, fundamentally, learning to stay present, but learning to stay with a sense of humor, learning to stay with loving-kindness toward ourselves and with the outer situation, learning to take joy in the magic ingredient of honest self-reflection.”  Here is what I find key:  “When we can shed the light of compassionate attention on our actions, an interesting shift can happen – this . . . becomes a seed of compassion for all the other people just like us who are caught in fixed mind, closed mind, hard heart.  We let this recognition connect us with others.”

It is very reassuring to know that I’m not alone.  It is a great pleasure and solace to contemplate the many, many kindnesses people show me every day.

I’ve put together a list of “homework” suggestions including “mindfulness” practices, questions for reflection and next week’s reading.  You can find the homework at:

Breathing and smiling . . .