Category Archives: intention

banging my head against the same wall #1999 (at least)

star light bluecinderella via Compfight

I think it’s Maya Angelou who said, “The first time someone shows you who they are, believe them.”

Well, there’s this guy who has shown who he really is to me hundreds of times, and yet I have always chosen to believe something better or different about him. When does that kind of behavior on my part go from being blindness to abject stupidity? When is knowing enough to keep some psychic distance not good enough?

Today.

When I experienced from him perhaps the most self-centered and hurtful behavior ever. (And that’s saying a lot.)

I wrote to a friend who was out of the country and told her what happened. I said, if I am speaking to him again when you return, please have me killed. Really. Please do. Because this is a lesson he has given me in many forms, over and over again. Learn it already, Mary Ann. People don’t really change who they are unless they see the need for change and take action. There are, indeed toxic people in the world who are blind to the damage they do to others. He is one. Toxic. Yes, suffering from childhood wounds like the rest of us, and yes, deserving of compassion, but toxic all the same, and besides deserving of compassion, deserving of great distance.

deceptively simple

#1 First Train in the Preliminaries

Here is my  understanding of what is mean by the “preliminaries” in this first Lojong slogan: mindfulness meditation, but also these four reminders:

  1. Preciousness of human life
  2. Impermanence
  3. Karma
  4. Samsara  (and the futility of clinging to security/safety)

The fracture (the “break” I actually asked for) and its aftermath have been an experience I’m profoundly grateful for. It has opened my eyes to what is and brought me to a new level of gratitude for my life that is hard to express without sounding all trippy. I am not even going to try here. I will say:  I have never been lighter or more easy in my own skin or as a citizen of this world.

The four reminders resonate for me more than ever because of the experience of the fracture, but I want to be cautious about becoming self-satisfied. The preliminaries are deceptively simple. There is more work to do. More meditation practice, more training. There always will be. But I do feel as if I am in a new place with a new and very different relationship to my experience.