“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.”
—Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
It’s easy to set a goal and hard to reach it. Progress toward anything meaningful or worthwhile is fraught with challenge, obstacle and frustration. No one will make it out of this place without encountering the dreaded thing. Walking the path, one thinks all is well and then we encounter struggle, difficulty and challenge.
This moment is our teacher. How do we learn what we must so that we may proceed on the path?
In her book Welcoming the Unwelcome, Pema Chodron lays out a practice created by Richard Reoch, a well-known activist and Buddhist teacher: Locate, Embrace, Stop, Remain.
- Locate: How does your body feel when you encounter the obstacle. Where in the body do you feel constriction or resistance? Contact that place.
- Embrace the feeling, the contraction. Send any fearful, self-protective feelings the warmth of your compassion
- Stop the narrative: let go, interrupt, or look at your thoughts and stories directly. It’s not possible to stop thinking all together, but “go beneath or behind your thoughts to contact that sense of being hooked.” Connect with the raw feeling, and step beyond the story in your mind about what’s happening.
- Remain with the feeling that is still there. It may shift, or you may feel like it’s a struggle. “Just remain with that feeling of kindness or warmth, leaning in as much as you can.”
We might not be able to remove the obstacle, but we can change how we interact with it. We can work with whatever arises in the present moment with raw openness and vulnerability. Our path may change, we may be re-routed, but surely we shall succeed if our hearts are true.
For more details on the practice, check out Welcoming the Unwelcome by Pema Chodron.
—Jessica Lien, Prairiewoods development coordinator