Taking the Leap: Freeing Ourselves From Old Habits and Fears by Pema Chödrön

Author:Pema Chödrön
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: Self-Help
ISBN: 9781590306345
Publisher: Shambhala Publications
Published: 2009-09-08T10:00:00+00:00

8

UNCOVERING NATURAL OPENNESS

Nothing is static and permanent. And that includes you and me. We know this about cars and carpets, new shirts and DVD players, but are less willing to face it when it comes to ourselves or to other people. We have a very solid view of ourselves, and also very fixed views about others. Yet if we look closely, we can see that we aren’t even slightly fixed. In fact, we are as unfixed and changing as a river. For convenience, we label a constant flow of water the Mississippi or the Nile, very much the way we call ourselves Jack or Helen. But that river isn’t the same for even a fraction of a second. People are equally in flux—I am like that, and so are you. Our thoughts, emotions, molecules are continually changing.

If you are inclined to train in being open-endedly present to whatever arises—to life’s energy, to other people, and to this world—after a while you’ll realize you’re open and present to something that’s not staying the same. For example, if you are truly open and receptive to another person, it can be quite a revelation to realize that they aren’t exactly the same on Friday as they were on Monday, that each of us can be perceived freshly any day of the week. But if that person happens to be your parent or sibling, your partner or your boss, you are usually blinded and see them as predictably always the same. We have a tendency to label one another as an irritating person, a bore, a threat to our happiness and security, as inferior or superior; and this goes way beyond our close circle of acquaintances at home or at work.

This labeling can lead to prejudice, cruelty, and violence; and in any time or place when prejudice, cruelty, and violence occur, whether it’s directed by one being toward another or by groups of beings toward other groups, there’s a theme that runs through: “This person has a fixed identity, and they are not like me.” We can kill someone or we can be indifferent to the atrocities perpetrated on them because “they’re just hajis,” or “they’re just women,” or “they’re just gay.” You can fill in the blank with any racial slur, any dehumanized label that’s ever been used for those we consider different.

There’s a whole other way to look at one another—and that is to try dropping our fixed ideas and get curious about the possibility that nothing and no one remains always the same. This starts, of course, with getting curious and dropping the limiting stories we’ve created about ourselves. Then we have to stay present with whatever is happening to us. What I find helpful is to think of whatever I am experiencing—whether it’s sadness, anger, or worry; pleasure, joy, or delight—as simply the dynamic, fluid energy of life as it is manifesting right now. That shifts the resistance I have to my experience. Because I’ve been practicing this approach for

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