The Power of Process

When Liberation Becomes Necessity

Dec 12, 2024

Transforming the most vulnerable aspects of ourselves into empowerment is perhaps the most challenging and treacherous journey one can make, but truly, what else is there?

I am a survivor. I know suffering intimately. It has defined my life, my existence, but not me. I have always been here. I have always remained, present within the tornado.

Hurled upon the winds of pain and anger and grief and loss and imprisonment, I have waited and I have observed.

The nature of suffering is precise. Measurable. It can be used meticulously and brutally in order to control. That's it. Strange that the complex tapestry of human suffering can be contained in such simplicity.

The complexity is where the challenge becomes great, immense really. Stretching out in all directions through the ages, generations and generations of lives and memories and emotions. Vast oceans of sadness and loss. The great limitation of a single embodied experience of time.

And yet, through this limitation, we contain the capacity to experience the limitlessness of existence. To understand love and identity. And freedom.

To be present to ourselves and each other. So simple, so elusive, so absolutely true. And so truly, it becomes the only power that can stand before suffering incorrupted.

Freed From Rage and Sorrow

The Transformative Effect of Being Where You Are

To survive chronic pain and fatigue, rest is a strategy of survival. Knowing how to rest effectively is the difference between life and death. Rest may actually be the truest form of love or compassion.

I grew up with meditation. My godmother said I was born to it. I practiced it, utilized it, was empowered and protected by it, I observed. It wasn’t until much later that I realized what it truly is when it becomes necessary. When there is no longer a future fantasy to escape to. When the only refuge is here and now.

Like Siddhartha choosing to sit until liberation came, I had no more games to play. It was this or nothing. I leaned deeply into my practice in solitude with little witness. In my secret garden sanctuary, behind an unassuming fence on an ordinary street in an ordinary neighborhood in an ordinary American town, I surrendered the world and myself.

Changing the Survival Mechanisms of Consciousness and Leaning into the Unknown

Everything about your life so far has probably been about surviving in a certain society. We are trained to function within the culture we are in and given the tools that relate to that culture. So we are conditioned through life experience to behave certain ways for certain reasons.

We are wired for survival. This is what our bodies are designed for. I include the mind in the body, they are one whole being. We detect reality through our senses and process this information into complex experiences which we call life.

Over time, this becomes our conditioned state of being and we react to life from this state and then, we carry a belief that this identity is permanent. This idea of our conditioned identity as our self. And while it certainly is oneself and one’s lived experience, it isn’t entirely permanent and it isn’t entirely us.

It can be persistent and sometimes difficult to transform, however, our conditioned experience remains nonetheless, impermanent. Which means we do possess the capacity for agency in relationship with one’s sense of self and we can create space within our consciousness for this impermanence.

The Illusion of Absolute Constraints

In life, on the ground, it can get very intense. Things happen quickly and our reactions are almost immediate, relying on years of habit and experience. This is a good thing. This helps us survive. But this can also become a trap. Keeping us stuck in repeating patterns of thought, emotion and behavior.

Despite all our strategies, we experience less freedom and happiness than is possible. We bring survival mechanisms even into spiritual practice and we are largely unconscious of this. We don’t realize that we have the capacity to be aware of it.

While everything we experience is dependent upon the condition we are in, with awareness, we can see what ability we have to influence our situation. We can have greater clarity on when to act or when to not act, when to speak or when to embrace silence.

Life happens in the present moment, so the more we practice and develop our skill in awareness, the more we can trust and listen to our instincts as things are actually happening.

Deeper Understanding of Practice

There exists a way to navigate your life and your present experience skillfully that leads you essentially to freedom and happiness.

This process allows you to gain insight and wisdom on the way you're navigating things that you might not see otherwise, and these insights can help you change things in your life that you didn't realize that you had the capacity to change.

Meditation practice is extremely active, but it is usually accomplished by being very physically still. It's confusing because we are used to the idea that if we're doing something that means we're physically active or mentally active.

There is a much deeper rest than sleep. There is a much deeper awareness than awake.

Rest is the difference between life and death. We must sleep to survive. It is necessary. The current society I occupy in the United States of America in 2024 has greatly minimized the needs of body and mind. In an effort to transcend it’s humanity in the name of progress, it has created a grotesque ideal, like the Dr. Frankenstein, it has distorted it’s view of life and happiness in the name of attachment and suffering.

Through practice, one can train one’s attention to a balanced state of being. It can be challenging, but it is not difficult. It just takes practice. Like riding a bicycle or playing the piano. Over time, with dedication, it simply becomes natural. Let’s face it. Healing should be easier. It truly does not need to be so difficult.

The Nature of Change

Life happens in the present moment, it doesn't happen abstractly or conceptually.

In order to develop the agency that we have within our own lives to do things differently, we must become different. We must be different.

We must give ourselves the space to truly exist. This is something we must actively do. It does not occur by thinking about it. It happens by being it. Transformation occurs through the conscious observation of the present reality. This is how we each become our own authority, with harmony and balance, because only we can truly know ourselves.

As a fellow traveler on this path, I have observed and considered many things. I dwell within the ongoing nature of practice. Dhamma is process, that is life.

When we are able to accept everything. All of our life, all of reality, as it is, simply accepting, not judging, not holding on, allowing all of our thoughts and feelings to just be what they are, with gentleness and compassion, we open the door to liberation. Then all we must do, is walk through it.