my behavior

I was at the "park and ride" lot at the local mall. I'd just been dropped off by the van and was waiting for my wife to pick me up. I was standing in one of dozens of empty parking spaces. A man in a truck pulled into the space while I was standing there. I looked and he motioned me out of the way with his hand. I moved but as soon as he was parked I read him the riot act -- why did he HAVE to have the space I was standing in, what a rude person he was, etc. Taken aback, he told me that he'd "asked me nicely." Suddenly embarrassed I walked away. Far away.
At the drug store to drop of a prescription for my son. I was next in line. When it was my turn i approached and the clerk got onto the phone immediately. She stayed on the phone for about five minutes with no other helper in site. I'll spare the details, but I made a scene.
yesterday my teenage son arranged for his friend to come visit for a while. I don't like this girl's mother. Why? Not sure, I just don't like her. Instead of doing the usual thing these days which is either to just drop your kid off outside or just come to the door for a quick "hi" she walked right in with her daughter and just stood there, looking around. I tried to be polite but I know that I wasn't. My lack of interest in talking to her and my need for her to get out quickly must have been obvious.

There are more such stories. Every day all day. My more intense practice of the past year or so has brought my behavior into high relief. I'm getting curious now about the effects of my actions on myself and others. About just how much what I do effects my peace of mind. About whether or not I am too hard on myself as well. (though I often say to myself 'for a guy so into spiritual pactice you sure can be an *******). About models of enlightened behavior and if they really mean ANYTHING.
disclaimer: I am not in any crisis. I'm doing well.

I don't know if anyone else has noticed, but I find that things get particularly out of control just before an important realization. Not sure why that is Mike, but for me it seems to be the case. It seems like sometimes we are prone to put a brick thru someone's windshield just before experiencing a breakthrough of a different kind. - Like the old zen master said: "a lotus born in the fire is superior to a lotus born in the water"

Mike, I spent several days last week in that same state. The only thing you can do is be aware that it's an artifact of your practice. The first time or two that it occurs it's very concerning and destabilizing. Soon you'll get to a point where you'll pick up on the fact that you're in "that state" and relax a bit, knowing what it is. I can now figure it out about a day after it starts and there's an "Aha! It's ba--ack," kind of moment... and then life goes on.

no, but thanks for the benefit of the doubt
this is not a temporary state, this behavior is ME. always.
now, to be fair, I'm also noticing that I do a lot of really wonderful things as well

"this is not a temporary state, this behavior is ME. always"-telecaster

Welcome to the club. We are humans. We're beautiful and hideous all at once. You should see how angry I get when someone tries to run over me on the highway. It's okay, though. We do our best, getting better all the time, and ultimately we see that it's just stuff, arising and passing away within the field of experience. There's nobody home.

Karuna,

Kenneth

"no, but thanks for the benefit of the doubt
this is not a temporary state, this behavior is ME. always.
now, to be fair, I'm also noticing that I do a lot of really wonderful things as well"

Thank you, Mike, for being honest and open about this issue. Let me assure you, you are not alone. If you looked up the definition of ***h*le in Webster's I'm pretty sure my photo would be there as an illustration. Especially the last few days. I think in my case, my little journey through the Dark Nights is dredging up an awful lot of baggage that makes me feel not-so-good about "John".

I suppose the positive in all of this is that, two years ago I wouldn't even have noticed.

Growth can be painful sometimes, and as Kenneth notes, apparently even attaining the highest levels is no guarantee that our human-ness won't come barreling out at the most inopportune times and cause us and others to suffer...

I can dig it and I have no dobut that realizing the good things about yourself helped bring the awareness into higher relief! Hopefully you can find some humor in that, seems to be the way it goes -- priests having the worst nightmares and all of that. The greater the awarenss the greater the sensitivity.

Sometimes I fall back on the realization that I'm really too dumb to be the ultimate judge of reality, especially when it comes to deciding when something is a success or failure, or if someone really means to consciously insult me or a just a chain of events (like their boss, spouse, etc. was an a**hole and it is an artifact).

Seems like the real measure of problem behavior is how long it hangs around and colors events beyond the origin. If a little space can creep in, it doesn't latch on so tightly. I like to remind me that problem moods can fall away "like water from a duck'sback." Sometimes that helps



Saw this quote this AM: One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea

LIfe goes on... I'll stand by that

Oh, yeah -- your behavior isn't really you

Meditation is great, but you want to know what my real spiritual practice is? Driving in Nairobi. I figure if I can maintain my equanimity when I'm driving during rush hour here, then I'm a candidate for sainthood...

There was a useful 'heads-up' that I received from one of my past teachers: the assurance that 'the spiritual path' was going to involve 'unflattering self-knowledge.' several of my teachers, in fact, have referred to the phenomenon-- Adi Da called it the 'sunlight over the well' effect of contact with the guru: that all your personal creepy-crawlies would start slithering around when the sunlight of wisdom hit them. My Vajrayana teachers have warned that Tantric practice will crank up your neuroses full bore, and that it is the function of the Lama to enable you not to get torn up by them.

My personal experience is that I'd lived my life with my eyes squeezed tightly shut, as a defense against what I didn't want to know. Once I gained more confidence, stability, equanimity-- I began to take peeks. Just little flashes of insight: 'Just how important IS it to be 'right', Kate? Gradually, my enthusiasm/justification for these bad habits just fades, without my having to do battle with them. It's a lot like stomping around in some kind of mood and catching sight of yourself in a mirror: you pretty much can't keep it up when you see what it looks like. Another plus in the 'simply noticing' strategy, is that I don't feel like a conquering heroine, or a saint, who needs all sorts of acknowledgment for behaving less badly. It's a cleaner excision.

@roomy "unflattering self-knowledge", that's a very succinct way to phrase it. I'll add that in my experience, this isn't confined to unflattering actions but will extend to thoughts and memories.

Cheers,
Florian

I think this is a part of my practice that has been the most help to me and it's clearly the most visible part of my practice to other people. I can say, with sincerity and immediately, "I'm wrong." Or, "I made a mistake." And, "I'm sorry." That has enormous interpersonal value at home, at work... everywhere. In order to do that, though, you have to see through the fog ego throws in front of an honest self-appraisal, as roomy has so well said.

i find i struggle with the concept of selfishness...how much of others suffering can i handle/ why can't i take on more? who am i protecting? what am i afraid of?

how do you all handle this?

tim

"i find i struggle with the concept of selfishness...how much of others suffering can i handle/ why can't i take on more? who am i protecting? what am i afraid of?

how do you all handle this?

tim"

I think that these abilities will naturally grow as one gets more insight. As well, your fears and the nature of who or what you are protecting will reveal themselves at the right moments.
In other words, there is nothing to worry about. (easier said than done, I know)

I also suspect that this struggle has something to do with some strong family, cultural or religious conditioning. true?

Mike:

How did Ghandi and Mother Teresa do it...this infinite well of compassion, never turning anyone away...selfless.

Every patient that sits in front of me in pain, or suffering. At the end of the day i feel emotionally spent...how selfish is that? i think how can i take more on? why am i so sensitive? how can i dump this concept of self that limits me?

"Mike:

How did Ghandi and Mother Teresa do it...this infinite well of compassion, never turning anyone away...selfless.

Every patient that sits in front of me in pain, or suffering. At the end of the day i feel emotionally spent...how selfish is that? i think how can i take more on? why am i so sensitive? how can i dump this concept of self that limits me?"

You are a physician, nurse, chiropractor, massage therapist, etc.??

I know plenty of care givers and they are ALL spent at the end of the day. It's normal.
Why compare yourself to Ghandi and Mother Teresa? Sounds like a great way to induce suffering.
Plus, Ghandi and Mother Teresa are extreme examples and the chances that anyone else would be like them is quite low (so why suffer over it?)
And, both Ghandi and Mother Teresa have been criticized for all kinds of things and were both quite human in many ways.

I still think your conditioning is showing.

Thanks for sharing this, I am glad to find out I'm not the only one who's gone through this!

I went through a similar roller coaster several months back, where anger just kept coming up again and again, and I'd take it out (verbally) on complete strangers and on people I knew and cared about. I didn't want to be such an *******, but part of me felt as if I HAD to, as if keeping it inside was simply going to poison me. Looking back on it now, I am pretty repulsed by my behavior, but I was lucky enough to have some close friends around who kept me in line and to held the space for me to allow me to see my own behavior.

What I learned from this was that the anger was, as Roomy points out, going on all the time somewhere sort of subconsciously, and I just wasn't aware of it. The creepy crawlies, starting to move as the sun hits them. These episodes were brought on by a combination of more intense practice as well as various stresses building up in my personal life.

But seeing myself act this way often enough helped me to learn to recognize the source of those emotions, the little spark that sets them off, and to cultivate some conscious mindfulness around it in order to come to a better understanding of what it was and why it came into being.

By paying attention to these feelings and noticing how they felt when the first started, and by also having the knowledge of where they lead if I let them grow larger, I was able to come to an understanding that my response to the situation was simply inappropriate. The part of me that was supporting the growth of this anger simply didn't know any better. It had to be reached with the conscious mind, and given the information of cause, effect, and desire for a change for the better, and then it slowly began to do a course correction away from the anger.

(cont.)

I find that, like Mark points out above, these kinds of feelings are often messages, things we've sort of been given to deal with because we've developed to a level that we can understand them properly. And its never that there's anything inherently WRONG with us. The part of me that knew it was poisonous to repress these feeling was RIGHT, but that didn't mean the feeling weren't avoidable.

It's just that I was acting on incomplete information, and that, given the chance to examine my actions and the source of my actions, I was able to see this and counteract it. Done often enough, this can really help us to really start squashing all those "creepy crawlies" one by one.

Yeah, the reason practice is crucial is that, without actual equanimity-in-life, or the calm disengagement of 'the witness', the only alternatives to the apparently real ********* of our confused emotions is 'express, and damn the torpedoes' or repress and feel like a toxic waste containment site. But practice gives you at least a moment, a sliver of space in which a more accurate perception can flash. I noticed first that in the face of someone else's hard-to-take behavior, I'd have a sudden insight into what they really wanted to accomplish. Which made it possible not to flash back; which made it possible for the other person to yield a little toward me. And then I began to notice the same sort of thing about myself-- that my intentions and my acts were at odds. And what shone through in both instances was that we have a kind of original innocence with regard to what we want-- most of the time, anyway. The problem is that we're completely clueless about the means we attempt to use. Did anyone ever teach YOU that no one ever 'wins' an argument? Once you're capable of checking these things out, you can see that this is true: that we're trying to understand one another, and 'defeating' someone in argument completely obliterates any chance of mutual understanding-- or of wisdom growing in our lives.

"And what shone through in both instances was that we have a kind of original innocence with regard to what we want-- most of the time, anyway. The problem is that we're completely clueless about the means we attempt to use. Did anyone ever teach YOU that no one ever 'wins' an argument? Once you're capable of checking these things out, you can see that this is true: that we're trying to understand one another, and 'defeating' someone in argument completely obliterates any chance of mutual understanding-- or of wisdom growing in our lives. "

Yeah, well put! It's really a question of a simple exchange in information, except that we misunderstand our own information and represent it falsely, or exaggeratedly, or in some other manner, because we have the mistaken belief that it is necessary to put some certain kind of "spin" on it to be understood. But taking the one sliver of space and using it to see the processes objectively, mindfully, really can make all the difference.