Why we are here.
Under the cut is part of an email that my teacher, Terryann Nikides, sent to all the students one of the classes I'm in with her. I think its fairly brilliant, personally, so I'm sharing.
"If you are already looking to fix things then you are assuming that there is something wrong, with what I already am: in a state of perfection. What is already perfect is the moment we are in, even if it is painful.
Consciousness does not seek good or bad, pleasure or pain, but lives in the experience. If we seek to fix the experience that we are having then we will continue on the same path ...Fixing experiences rather than living them.
Our suffering comes from trying to change, alter, or fix what is. What is is all there is, more than this is what becomes the masks and filters that occlude our vision from seeing what is going on around us. Those masks are part and parcel of COMPARISON, JUDGEMENT, and JUSTIFICATION. All the components of the conflict of the mind.
The mind is virtually insane. We do not know where thoughts come from. We fall prey to the rantings of something we cannot control. We try to control the mind by limiting what we perceive. If we do not like what we perceive then we try to get rid of it. We try to change it or fix it so we can't have that experience. We try to further limit the way we see the world by becoming more and more narrow-minded rather than opening to the experience and opening the mind.
Our fears are exacerbated by our expectations and the need to control the outcomes. Rather than rolling with the experience, we have greater and greater resistance by conflicting more and more with what is happening on the outside with what is happening on the inside. And what is happening on the inside has its own conflict. Running back and forth between paradoxes, chosing one side of the paradox over the other. The mind shutting down to different viewpoints to minimize experiences. Running from pain to pleasure. Each time we run to pleasure we shut down the world around us. Fear increases.
What we are doing in our work here is to see the paradoxes we hold and bring to light all sides of everything, every experience. We are not trying to alter change or fix anything. We are here to shed light and experience life in all ranges of feeling, emotion, and experience."
-Terryann Nikides, May 8th, 2006
"If you are already looking to fix things then you are assuming that there is something wrong, with what I already am: in a state of perfection. What is already perfect is the moment we are in, even if it is painful.
Consciousness does not seek good or bad, pleasure or pain, but lives in the experience. If we seek to fix the experience that we are having then we will continue on the same path ...Fixing experiences rather than living them.
Our suffering comes from trying to change, alter, or fix what is. What is is all there is, more than this is what becomes the masks and filters that occlude our vision from seeing what is going on around us. Those masks are part and parcel of COMPARISON, JUDGEMENT, and JUSTIFICATION. All the components of the conflict of the mind.
The mind is virtually insane. We do not know where thoughts come from. We fall prey to the rantings of something we cannot control. We try to control the mind by limiting what we perceive. If we do not like what we perceive then we try to get rid of it. We try to change it or fix it so we can't have that experience. We try to further limit the way we see the world by becoming more and more narrow-minded rather than opening to the experience and opening the mind.
Our fears are exacerbated by our expectations and the need to control the outcomes. Rather than rolling with the experience, we have greater and greater resistance by conflicting more and more with what is happening on the outside with what is happening on the inside. And what is happening on the inside has its own conflict. Running back and forth between paradoxes, chosing one side of the paradox over the other. The mind shutting down to different viewpoints to minimize experiences. Running from pain to pleasure. Each time we run to pleasure we shut down the world around us. Fear increases.
What we are doing in our work here is to see the paradoxes we hold and bring to light all sides of everything, every experience. We are not trying to alter change or fix anything. We are here to shed light and experience life in all ranges of feeling, emotion, and experience."
-Terryann Nikides, May 8th, 2006