Tag Archives: Jamie Ridler

Wishcasting Wednesday

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from jamie’s post

What heights do you wish to reach?

In the Shambhala Buddhism tradition, “there is a developmental process for deepening and furthering authentic presence…called the warrior’s path of the four dignities,” (Shambhala Training Glossary). One of the four dignities is the Dragon. Sakyong Mipham Rinphoche describes the Dragon this way:

The dragon’s confidence is prajna, deep wisdom based on knowing how things are. The dragon knows we’re always trying to project a concrete world onto a fluid process, mistaking our ever-changing experience for a self. Like the elements, this kind of wisdom doesn’t need to be propped up. It is a direct experience of reality, empty and ungraspable.

As the wisdom of the dragon destroys our illusions, we begin to understand basic goodness, the unconditional purity and confidence of all. With this view, life itself becomes our source of energy, and the enlightened world begins to appear. The wish-fulfilling jewel of wisdom and compassion are liberated, and we can play in the blessing and magic of our everyday existence.

I wish to reach the heights of the Dragon, to soar in the sky, gentle and wise, above all my illusions and confusion and suffering, to “play in the blessing and magic of our everyday existence.” More specifically, if I had to guess, that might look like this:

  • Doing work I love, work I’d do anyway, for pay. To spend my days writing, making art, practicing yoga and meditation, engaging with amazing women, studying and serving. I would make a loving living, with the same quality of benefits and pay I have now. I’m not going to rush or push this, don’t need to force what I love to pay my bills, but I think that eventually it’s possible, and that I would be of more value to others, be more personally satisfied if this were how things were.
  • Yoga and Meditation Instructor Certification. These practices have meant so much to me, been so helpful, that I want to be able to share them, teach them, and want the proper training and wisdom to do so ethically and safely.
  • To reach my optimal physical strength and health, quickly and without obstacle. Resting when I need rest, practicing loving self-care, enjoying moving through the world in this body with minimal pain, breathing, walking, hiking, headstands in yoga, running, playing, eating, being nourished.
  • To be in a position to give, to help, to decrease suffering in the world.
  • Published and paid writing. Again, I don’t necessarily want to strip the joy from my writing by making it too work-like, but I also think there’s value in being recognized, validated for that work in these tangible ways. I don’t have a specific idea of what this might look like, but it would make me happy for my books to be a physical manifestation in the world, to be held in people’s hands.
  • Confidence. To manifest the funny, silly, brave, confident, open-hearted, generous, wise, gentle, kind, and creative women that lives deep in my heart. I want everyone else to know her like I do. They don’t all have to love her, I know she’s not for everyone, but I want her to be seen, to be known, to be realized and embodied, instead of a secret I kept, instead of a quiet whisper in the dark. To be confident in the way Susan Piver describes it, “the willingness to be as ridiculous, luminous, intelligent, and kind as you really are, without embarrassment.”

Wishcasting Wednesday

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What do you wish to walk away from?

Fear, worry, and anxiety. This is something to stop doing in general, to let go of no matter when or why it arises, but specifically there is one way this manifests for me in my life that is completely toxic: worry about those I love. The one thing I can count on, all of us can, is impermanence.  Everyone we love, including ourselves, is going to die, cease to exist, become inaccessible as a physical form, is finite and mortal. This is true, and fear, worry, or anxiety won’t change that, won’t protect me. And yet, I am constantly being triggered–any time the dogs are sick or hurt, any time Eric drives away from me in a car or I get on a plane, every time I hear yet another story about someone in my family making a bad choice, or see them struggling or sick. Their suffering is out of my control and a constant reminder of my biggest fear, that one day we will lose each other. We will disappoint and hurt each other. I will abandon them or they will leave me, one way or another we will be separated.

I wish to walk away from fear, worry, and anxiety, and lean into joy, soften to love, welcome and embrace reality.

Numbing. This is a response to fear, discomfort, lack of appropriate self-care. I feel the twinge of anxiety about a situation and I want to numb myself to that ache. I’m tired, but my mind is pushing, insisting, “keep working, keep doing, just one more thing and you can stop” and I want to numb out and release myself. There are better ways to cope, I know that and yet I don’t always make the best choices, sometimes slip into old, deep habits and ways of being. I want to know deep in my bones that facing reality, the vulnerability, discomfort and pain of the moment, even the possibility of getting my ass kicked by it is better than being numb. Brene’ Brown says, in Gifts of Imperfection,

[T]here’s no such thing as selective emotional numbing. There is a full spectrum of human emotion and when we numb the dark, we numb the light. While I was “taking the edge off” of the pain and vulnerability, I was also unintentionally dulling my experience of good feelings, like joy…When we lose our tolerance for discomfort, we lose joy.

I wish to walk away from numbing and into a full, wholehearted experience of my life.

Busyness and exhaustion. I get too busy and won’t allow myself to rest. When this goes on for too long, I become depleted and start to struggle in all kinds of ways, all areas of my life. Work is harder, even play becomes difficult. I become irritable, easily frustrated, and confused. Illness finds a way in. It’s more difficult to make decisions and my priorities aren’t clear. I get overwhelmed and stuck, or speedy and sloppy, accident prone. I make poor choices about how to care for myself. I push past my limits, smash myself to bits, eat too much of the wrong things, don’t get the exercise or rest I need, have a nasty internal dialogue, falter in my commitments and practices, abandon and mistreat what and whom I love.

I wish to walk away from busyness and exhaustion, and towards rest, play, stillness, calm, and self-care.

Criticism and judgement. This helps nothing, no one. Rejecting the way things are doesn’t change the way things are. Pointing out the weakness of others, highlighting their mistakes, focusing on their confusion doesn’t make you strong. Love and acceptance, equanimity, truly is the healthiest place/way to be. And you might think that if you are only critical of yourself and not others–which usually isn’t the case, typically if you are doing it to yourself you can’t help but pass it on, but if you were able to pull it off–this kind of self harm ripples out, is not self contained.

I was thinking about this yesterday when I was watching an interview with a woman who had struggled with an eating disorder and body image issues in the past, and described herself as “horribly fat” at a moment of her unhealthy past, but the number she gave is my current weight…what she labeled “horribly fat.” I am aware enough to know that numbers are relative, and that her “fat” number doesn’t make me fat, but what I did realize in thinking through it is that if you don’t practice kindness, gentleness towards yourself, even your past troubled self, you will find yourself inadvertently criticizing every person who is like that, now or still. Comparison, criticism, being unforgiving does so much harm, generates so much shame, pain, and suffering.

“If you judge people, you have no time to love them.” ~Mother Teresa

I want to walk away from criticism and judgement, and walk in a spirit of equanimity, compassion, and love.