From Conflict to Connection

  There is something about the ability--the experience, should I say--of allowing something unpleasant to appear in the mind that leads from a sense of discontinuity to one of connection. This "allowing the unpleasant" seems to come from a courage of recognizing that present moment "goes on being" even when we have encountered a personal setback or even a feeling of failure. When I morally "condemn" myself, saying that "I should not be this way", I subtly split myself up into two parts--accuser and accused-- and these two parts become at war with each other. But this is also a subtle defense: by making myself both the condemner and the condemned, I am creating a kind of false division. In fact I am both condemner and the condemned, yet neither, because neither exists as a distinct entity.

   The alternative is to simply experience both the shame and the desire to do better as a single whole: they both exist inside of me. Even the resistance to pain exists within me, and is inseparable from me. Knowing that present moment does not fall victim to the onslaught of moral condemnation, I have the courage to face pain, accept it, and transform it into future actions. And I no longer side with either the condemned or the condemner. They are just like the waves in a vast ocean of being. But to really and truly live this way seems to take an incredible amount of courage.