WELCOME TO THE BRIAR PATCH
“In the middle way, there is no reference point. The mind with no reference point does not resolve itself, does not fixate or grasp. How could we possibly have no reference point? To have no reference point would be to change a deep-seated habitual response to the world: wanting to make it work out one way or the other. If I can’t go left or right, I will die! When we don’t go left or right, we feel like we are in a detox center. We’re alone, cold turkey with all the edginess that we’ve been trying to avoid by going left or right. That edginess can feel pretty heavy.” (Pema Chödrön, Six Kinds of Loneliness)
As summer draws to a close and several days of persistent rain foreshadow the coming months of cooler, wetter weather, I am seized with an urge to start a comprehensive end-of-season cleaning. This afternoon’s meeting with our landscaper prompted a radical thinning of planters that have, over a relatively short time, become straggly and unattractive. I then brought the urge indoors and packed up a pile of old clothes that have been taking up valuable “real estate” in my closet. Other puttering saw me dealing with random bits and bobs that ranged from culling my supplements cupboard to making appointments that I have been postponing as I savored the sweet-but-fleeting (if today’s weather is any indication) weeks of summer. What I’m now hoping to achieve by all this industrious activity is a (gentle) reset (or un-sticking) of spirit, mind and body.
Though today’s activity could be construed as a form of procrastination (I’m only just starting my blog at 5:19 p.m.), I interpret it as the instinct to cut away anything that chokes my personal growth. Taking stock of my inner landscape, I find some outgrown patterns of thought and action that are no longer serving me. Like weeding a garden, I consider doing such regular culling — both internally and externally — to be a necessary step if I am to progress on my spiritual journey, a journey which I define as one of transcending my lower, ego-dominated nature and learning to function from a progressively more altruistic, heart-centered and self-less perspective.
I don’t have to look far for these psychological or spiritual weeds; they can be found rearing their unwelcome heads as I review situations and events in my daily reflections. With humility and objectivity I can see how or where my own actions (and reactions) might have precipitated the interpersonal hiccups that happen, as John Lennon would say, while I’m making other (brilliant) plans.
Such hiccups can generate the emotional turmoil that Chödrön associates with the detox center but what I personally think of as the Briar Patch (of Br’er Rabbit and the Tar Baby fame. You can look it up.)
Chödrön writes:
“We hear a lot about the pain of samsara, and we also hear about liberation. But we don’t hear much about how painful it is to go from being completely stuck to becoming unstuck. The process of becoming unstuck requires tremendous bravery, because basically we are completely changing our way of perceiving reality, like changing our DNA. We are undoing a pattern that is not just our pattern. It’s the human pattern: we project onto the world a zillion possibilities of attaining resolution. We can have whiter teeth, a weed-free lawn, a strife-free life, a world without embarrassment. We can live happily every after. This pattern keeps us dissatisfied and causes us a lot of suffering.”
As Br’er Rabbit found out via the tar baby (I apologize if this fable has escaped your awareness until now), attempting to achieve resolution by controlling others or the world in general is a recipe for frustration and resentment at best, or, at worst, despair and disillusionment.
Suffice to say, this week has seen me battling a few tar babies of my own. Maybe you can relate. Thankfully, I consider the briar patch the familiar turf of my journal, my spiritual readings and practices, and a receptivity to what I call my divine committee, an intelligence greater than that of my limited experience and ego. This is a delicate and painstaking process of discerning what thoughts and feelings, words and actions are (or are not) serving my inner growth. The reward is a degree of clarity and self-awareness that help me rein in my lower nature, and work to create around me an environment of peace, harmony and ease of well being.
How does your garden grow?