“Only by accepting the imprisonment of my temporal part can all of me, my virtual “being,” escape from this prison.” – Hubert Benoit, Acceptance and Attention, in Parabola Magazine, Vol 15:2 Attention.
There was a moment today, when I invited myself to accept my life just as it is – to show up for my limitations. I wasn’t exactly in a comfortable situation at that time, lying on a table with acupuncture needles in my body, but the instant was the instant, regardless of preferences; and, it did seem as good a moment as any, for meditation.
I summoned the five remembrances, pausing with each of them, feeling into my bodily responses of acceptance or rejection. It seemed reasonably okay for me to acknowledge that I will die, because I am not exempt from death; that I will grow ill (sometime before the moment of my death), because I am not exempt from illness; and, it was fine to acknowledge that I am growing old, and that I’m not exempt from growing old. By this stage of the contemplation, I was naturally feeling in contact with life in the raw.
Then, just before I invited the next contemplation (“There is alteration in, and parting from, what is dear and pleasing”)… briefly I glimpsed a vaguely familiar mental formation. It had a feeling associated with it, but what was more evident was the mental structure of it. It was very similar to another interior glimpse that I have from time to time.
That other one goes like this: I will see a Rolls Royce, and I want to have it in my life. And, because it is a ridiculously impractical longing – out of the question – it’s easy to see that it’s a longing. However, I have noticed that when I reject the longing with a critic’s voice, a vague pattern happens at that moment, and I’ve wondered: “What’s is that pattern (which comes in response to unkind rejection of the longing)?” It has become evident that it is a subtle thought happening, one that leaves a way to keep the longing. And, it has a special quality. I hadn’t resolved exactly what the content of that thought is, until today. It has become clear, though, that the pattern opposes the inner judge.
So, there I am lying on the acupuncture table, today, and that same pattern flashes by, as I am meditating. I recognise it as a simple resistance, a rejection of my process in that moment. But, what is the structure of that? So, I stay with the feel of that. I let it come, this resistance, and I feel into it. And it’s familiar, even if vaguely so. It has something like… “I’m not accepting being up against the wall.” As I stayed a while longer with it, it was clear that it was about being separated from what is pleasing. And, what is pleasing – entertaining the mind, and feeling ‘good’; rather than being with the five remembrances. This part of me is not about to accept the limitation of my condition, that’s for sure. Limitations like: not having the Rolls Royce, in one case; and, acknowledging that there will be separation from the pleasing, in this case. This particular sub-personality pattern gave me a subtle mental doing, so as not to feel trapped with (what it sees as) an unbearable reality. It felt a pleasant relief to see this pattern. I can’t wait for my next Rolls.
And, as I finish this report, I’m reminded of something someone said to me, long ago, that the point of practices like the Five Remembrances isn’t to indoctrinate yourself, to condition yourself, but to drop them into consciousness like experiments, to see what happens.
“…the thought of death is rather a powerful stimulus that brings me back to myself as the unique occasion for the search for the meaning of life…” – Herbert Guenther