All That We Are Not

June 28 - Mark Nepo

"Discernment is a process of letting go of what we are not." -Father Thomas Keating

I can easily over-identify with my emotions and roles, becoming what I feel: I am angry... I am divorced... I am depressed... I am a failure... I am nothing but my confusion and my sadness...
No matter how we feel in any one moment, we are not just our feelings, our roles, our traumas, our prescription of values, or our obligations or ambitions. It is so easy to define ourselves by the moment of struggle we are wrestling with. It is a very human way, to be consumed by what moves through us.
In contrast, I often think of how Michelangelo sculpted, how he saw the sculpture waiting, already complete, in the uncut stone. He would often say that his job was to carve away the excess, freeing the thing of beauty just waiting to be released.
It helps me to think of spiritual discernment in this way. Facing ourselves, uncovering the meaning in our hard experiences, the entire work of consciousness speaks to a process by which we sculpt away the excess, all that we are not; finding and releasing the gesture of soul that is already waiting, complete, within us. Self-actualization is this process applied to our life on Earth. The many ways we suffer, both inwardly and outwardly, are the chisels of God freeing the thing of beauty that we have carried within since birth. 

I needed this one today. In truth, I need all of my readings and meditations every day, but I needed this one today. In this moment I am trying to move beyond what I am, and what I am not, in terms of how I feel about myself, and those around me. Labeling and naming things is human nature. It helps us to identify and understand our place within the world around us. If I am here, you are there. But where is the joy in that? Where is the freedom to experience life when you're busy labeling and sorting and feeling discouraged by your own assumptions and insecurities?

I told a story to my son yesterday:

It is said a great Zen teacher asked an initiate to sit by a stream until he heard all the water had to teach. After days of bending his mind around the scene, a small monkey happened by, and, in one seeming bound of joy, splashed about in the stream. The initiate wept and returned to his teacher, who scolded him lovingly, "The monkey heard. You just listened."

When I asked my son what the story meant, he said "You can only learn so much by watching from the shore. To really learn and understand, you have to get wet! And playing in it can be a lot of fun too!"

Yep.

The monkey didnt waste time and energy on the study, on the labels, on anything other than being present in the joy of the moment.

I know a few monkeys in my life. I aspire to be more like them.