Category Archives: Break-through Insights
Thin line
Detachment versus not caring at all, and loving one self versus being egotistical.
In both cases there is a fine line between the beautiful and the ugly.
I have been pondering this question much, because my wife kept saying that detachment was important and that she truly believed that we both needed to take care of ourselves. It was not good if we depended upon each other. And this she said all the while she was working 60 hours a week, and if she got sick she would refuse my caring. (This too I found curious)
I have been struggling to reconcile the idea of detachment and being egotistical. Every time I read about detachment in Buddhism it immediately raised a conflict in my mind, because I was sure she was way of base. And what I was reading told me she was right.
But of course she was not right. She was being very egotistical. Because the very subtle difference is whether or not there is true compassion present in the equation.
What the Buddhist’s are talking about is being detached from the distorted perceptions the ego creates. This does not preclude compassion for the person you are trying to live with or a friend in need of help.
The sort of detachment my wife was talking about was in fact her inability to deal with emotions, stemming from childhood loss of both her parents.
Loving one self is also a very misunderstood concept.
We all know at some deeper level that it is wrong to love our selfs. “He is so hung up on him self”. And it is common knowledge that we will go straight to hell if we masturbate.
But it is ego-love that people are thinking about when they refute this. Along the lines of looking into the mirror an exclaiming “Oh how lovely I am. I love my self.”
In Buddhism that is not what loving your self refers to.
If a person you love is having a hard time you will sympathise with her. Maybe if she cries you will also feel the urge to cry. There is compassion, and you will try to listen to her pain, and help her in any way you can.
This is loving caring.
But often if you are in an ego state, and if you get the feeling that you are not performing as you should, you will give your self a really hard time. “Jesus I am such an idiot. I can never get it right.”
If you treat any of your friend or your girl friend the way you treat your self… can you image what would happen?
Loving your self is about treating your self the way your would treat your loved ones.
I understand now that there is at least two “people” present in me. My being and my ego. But I work with the idea that there are many more people present, and they all need care. There is the sad boy, and the quite one, and the one always yelling and trying to defend me etc. They all need care. I love them all. I cry with them, and I listen to them. This is love.
And acceptance is also a big part of this. I accept my self now. When I get a sad feeling, I try not to tell my self that I am a failure. I try not to make a judgement. Because if I keep telling me self that I must be happy all the time then there is depression right there for you.
On the subject of who I am
Not invited or controlled by me, on their own volition,
these thoughts are not mine.
Therefore they are not me.
Thus i am NOT what i think i am. Literally.
Breaking the code of fear
After reading Krishnamurti in January 2013 on the subject of fear, there were several days where it was so quiet inside my head that I started to get worried that “something had broken.” It truly transformed me.
And for a long period* after that, I got so much sympathy with myself that I was very labile for crying mostly.
But I could also see all fear quite clearly, without there being an ego-form yelling and making me restless. So I just had to hold myself. What joy and warmth. Even cried when I saw a fishing boat out on the sea. Even the banal was so beautiful.
* Several weeks.
Later amended. The quite in my head never disappeared. Now in summer 2013.
My path
I have found my self going through doors. Some may call it levels. They certainly were transformations. All the reading and all the thinking were just laying the ground for epiphanies that would totally change me as a person. So they were also cross-roads, because it made my life change radically.
Door #1 was to realize that there was suffering and it must stop. I had many physical symptoms like pain in my arms and bad sleep problems, etc. So to realize that I had a severe depression. Or rather my doctor humbly suggested that i think about this possibility. I declined the offered medication, and signed on a therapist. I bought a bunch of good (but scientific) books. One was a book written by Tara Bennet called “Emotional Alchemy“. The Buddhist message in it got stuck with me, only to resurface later when i realised all the counseling didn’t help.
Door #2 was to love and care for myself. How that sound easy. But it is truly a misunderstood concept. I realised that i had left my self behind. Through all the hardship I suffered through my sickness (meningitis) my divorce and my fathers death and from the fear of loosing my business as well because I was broken, I had also not been able to comfort my self. I did not know how. During my childhood no one ever showed me what compassion and comfort is. I had no internal cognitive models for this sort of crisis. I saw my self sitting there all sad and left behind. I took an oath NEVER to leave again. What ever happened in life, I would always be there for my self. I cried for several days. I just could not stop. But I also felt a tremendous relief. I had found a way HOME. For several weeks after that I felt a strange joy in my gut. And I couldn’t stop smiling. Very difficult to describe.
Door #3 was to overcome fear. The key insight I got about fear is, that there is the needle and the pain. One the cause and one the pain. And we always look for the cause, because we think we need to stop it. But if we are to reach deeper in our understanding we must instead look at the pain, not the cause, and thus realize that it is always something concrete we fear. Because we categorize we think for example; “I fear to get into a discussion with my wife.” So I try to avoid that. But we are wrong. With deep insight, I see that it is not really so. I fear the concrete; that a discussion shall develop like it did last Thursday when the children started crying or whatever it was. It is always concrete.
And last Thursday, is already old. In reality I do not fear discussions with my wife, I fear it will be like Thursday. BIG difference. In my case it had developed into fearing any discussions, when in fact I only feared discussions with my wife that I don’t even see any more. So that changed a lot for me. It became very quite in my head. I rarely have any monkey-brain activity any more. I think when I need to. I just am the rest of the time.
Door #4 was to accept everything and myself. I was much to often hard on my self. If I treated you like I treated my self, my guess is we would not be friends any more. And it was not something “I” could control. I was really thinking lowly things about my self. My self esteem was at the bottom. I have always felt there was something wrong with me, and I have always thought it had an external source. But it is MY opinion, that others think there is something wrong with me, and thus it is me who think there is something wrong with me. Therefore it is myself who has to accept myself.
Where does the belief come from; that there is something wrong with me? The reason is gone, now it’s just categorizing remaining. Now I try to accept everything. All is perfect. Everything contains everyone, and everyone contains me. Separation impossible. Just accept.
Door #5 was to love myself. Why should there be an object to love, to make the feeling a valid one. Why can’t we just love right out into space? Let love fill up your every cell and your whole being. What are you waiting for? What would you rather? Be rational or be filled with love? We fill our world with criteria. “If you do this, then I can not love you.” Love is the worst hostage to take. It is ourselves we take as hostage. Now I just love. My self and every other being, without checking if they are “worthy”. I don’t care because the feeling is happening in me. Like acceptance and many other things, you can not separate love for others and self. This is why in Buddhism that you keep hearing that “they” and your self is “one”. There is no separation. If I have compassion for my self, I automatically have it for others. Either compassion is there or it is not. It is simple. The second you start judging it is over.