I can't help but feel like the current election climate is a metaphor for life at the moment: patience, patience, patience. Covid: patience, patience, patience. And our relationships: patience, patience, patience. This is all really too GD much patience for my 'take-charge and get it done swiftly' personality. I am struggling under the weight of it all, but have nothing left to do but just be... patient. Sigh.
I have been thinking about zen and finding loving compassion towards H. You quoted this on my thread:
Originally Posted by may22
So I am struggling a bit here to reconcile these two things-- empathy for him and -- I don't know what emotion is tied to the way he's treated me. Anger, I guess. Frustration. I think I need to do some loving-kindness meditation practice, maybe.
Can I ask an existential question? Are you motivated to find loving-kindness because first and foremost you think that would be good for your R and/or H?
Emotionally evolved people like yourself might immediately respond 'of course not! It's for my sake, I want to be an enlightened human.' This is a place I was living for a long while. I should be more kind and accepting, I should have less feelings/anger/sadness, I should be more compassionate, I should be more zen. But it was kind of superficial if I really dug into it. I wanted to do those things for somewhat selfish reasons: I wanted my H to love me again, I wanted my M back, I wanted things to go back to 'normal'. I wanted to be enlightened. I wanted to be 'bigger' or 'better' than H.
Compassionate, loving kindness wasn't blooming within me from the inside-out; uncontainable, naturally overflowing onto others. It was something I was trying to apply externally. And therefore of limited supply.
You have done way more work on yourself in the zen/mediation practice than I have, so you may come back to this and say 'no, it is authentic and uncontainable.' Beautiful.
I found that I had to experience a lot of other emotional releases before the authentic compassion flows freely. Anger? Frustration? Sadness? We are societally constructed to believe those are 'bad' emotions and must be swiftly executed. But when I really sat with my sadness, or my anger without judgement, just feeling those emotions and letting them take me where they will, I was able to let them move on naturally without a fight.
This was a huge part of my process towards detachment: I had spent so much time with each of those emotions, I was no longer afraid of them, they couldn't control me any longer. They gave up their real estate within me and that allowed the space for compassion to blossom.
And before I come across as too preachy perfect, I had a HUGE bloom of rage this morning that came out of nowhere (haha, who are we kidding: elections? homeschool burnout? being a LBS?). I almost cancelled H coming over to the watch the kids while I took one to the dentist because I was afraid of what I might say or do to him. But I let that anger take me over for a moment, it went to some really, really dark places and then just when I thought it would be there forever, it moved on.
This is a really, really long way of saying that I believe it is OK to feel anger and frustration and sadness, that they are cultivars of compassion. And those emotions won't hinder your growth or the blossoming of M 2.0, unless any of them take permanent residence in your soul. So maybe make friends with them and witness their value as equal to compassionate kindness?
You are amazing, here's hoping we don't have to wait too patiently for at least one positive answer in our country
