Pema Chodron Archives %- – Rock The Wrinkle

Have you been called upon to be a warrior?

Are you answering an inner urge to start over? To try a new scary path that no one else supports or understands?

To branch out on your own and seek new successes even in the face of huge odds?

If you’re a boomer and beyond, and you bravely decide to truly change your path, you’re going to encounter a lot of strange looks, shaking heads, and arguments about why it will never work. Yet if you truly know that your new path is where you have always wanted to walk, you must do it.

American Buddhist nun and teacher Pema Chodron touches on this in her book, “The Wisdom of No Escape.” She writes:

“When you really start to take the warrior’s journey—when you start to want to live your life fully, and you feel this passion for life and for growth, when discovery and exploration and curiosity become your path—then basically, if you follow your heart, you’re going to find that it’s often extremely inconvenient.

“Wholeheartedness is a precious gift but no one can give it to you. You have to find the path that has heart and then walk it impeccably. In doing that, you again and again encounter your own uptightness, your own headaches, your own falling flat on your face. But in wholeheartedly following that path, this inconvenience is not an obstacle. It’s simply a certain texture of life.

“Not only that, sometimes when you just get flying, and it all feels so good and you think, ‘This is it, this is the path that has heart,’ you suddenly fall flat on your face. Everybody’s looking at you. You say to yourself, ‘What happened to that path that had heart? This feels like the path full of mud in my face.’ Since you are wholeheartedly committed to the warrior’s journey, it pricks you, it pokes you. It’s like someone laughing in your ear, challenging you to figure out what to do when you don’t know what to do. It humbles you. It opens your heart.”

Now is the time. Listen to your spirit. The universe has quite a sense of humor—laugh with it.

Falling down a few times isn’t the worst thing that can happen to us.

Not trying is.

“Courage, above all things, is the first quality of a warrior.”

Carl von Clausewitz

It’s the start of the week, the month, and maybe a brand new season. We can look at it with anticipation and joy, or we can feel overwhelmed and even frightened.

Why can’t we get out of neutral and do the things we keep saying we will do? What if the months pass and we’re still just sitting here? Why does it seem like everyone else is making progress?

But then again, why don’t we boomers and beyond give ourselves a break?

Where is this critical voice coming from—the one that keeps saying we need to improve, to change ourselves, to transform our personalities into a lotus flower?

What if, for a moment, we considered how perfect we really are. What a miracle we are.

That maybe what is inside of us is just okay. That instead of hitting ourselves in the head with a block of wood, we should nurture our inner self and celebrate our spirit?

In other words, lighten up.

I like this notion. I like remembering that spirit made me and spirit lives in me. Way before teachers, preachers, or finger-pointers took hold of me, I existed. I shine. I live, breathe, and love. So maybe I’m just okay—without trying to become someone I was never meant to be.

In her book, “The Wisdom of No Escape”, Pema Chodron touches on these thoughts more than once. Her are just a few excerpts of her words:

“Loving kindness doesn’t mean getting rid of anything….we can still be crazy after all these years. We can still be angry after all these years. We can still be timid or jealous or full of feelings of unworthiness. The point is not to try to change our selves. Mediation practice isn’t about throwing ourselves away and becoming something better. It’s about befriending who we are already…if you throw out your neurosis, you also throw out your wisdom. Someone who is very angry also has a lot of energy; that energy is what’s so juicy about him or her…the idea isn’t to try to get rid of your anger, but to make friends with it, to see it clearly with precision and honesty, and also see it with gentleness….”

See it with gentleness. What a nice thought! Turn off the voices that tell you it’s time to develop a new personality. Put down the whip. Think soft instead.

Pema also says:

“Life’s work is to wake up, to let the things that enter into the circle wake you rather than put you to sleep. The only way to do this is to open, be cautious, and develop some sense of sympathy for everything that comes along, to get to know its nature and let it teach you what it will. It’s going to stick around until you learn your lesson, at any rate. The journey of awakening—the classical journey of the mythical hero or heroine—is one of continually coming up against big challenges and then learning how to soften and open.”

We’ve earned a little softness. We’ve endured a lifetime of struggle, pain, happiness, sadness, and just about everything else. So does it really make sense to think we’re doing it all wrong? I don’t think so.