A Small Punch in the Stomach

 

                Today’s blog post is not about what I thought it was going to about. This blog was to be the first of several parts called “Taking the Next Steps After Meditation,” and was to have been about how to utilize other types of practices for the purpose of making progress at a deeper level. I had written the introduction and 1,200 words of finished text.  About an hour ago, I brought the document up on the computer to work on the next pieces and found that all 1,200 words of finished text had completely disappeared from the document! 

                I always back everything up on a flash drive, but the back-up document was also missing the same text.  I must have accidentally erased the text, then saved the document, and then copied it to my flash drive. I checked my e-mail to see if I had e-mailed it to myself (an additional form of back-up) and I had not done it.  I tried everything I could think of to retrieve the missing words, but nothing helped.

                I felt totally deflated and I simply didn’t have the heart to try to re-write it, and in addition I was drawing nearly a complete blank on what the actual content was.   I couldn’t bring myself to try to reconstruct the old blog, but I realized that I could write about what I was experiencing in this moment—what is real for me right now.  That’s where my energy was.  I saw clearly that this was another “spiritual punch in the stomach”—not nearly as big a punch as my 6 days in a hospital that I wrote about earlier (Lessons of the Heart, Part 1, October 27), but just the kind of punch everyone receives in life on a fairly regular basis.   And the basic principles are involved whether it’s a big punch or a smaller one.

                It has been said that “You learn how far you have progressed on the path of enlightenment when you get punched in the stomach.”  This means that it is relatively easy to be grounded and at peace with the world when things are going well for us.  The real test of your progress toward wisdom is how you respond when someone “punches you in the stomach.”  Well, permanently losing a completed section of manuscript definitely felt like a punch in the stomach.   And I knew this was something I could write about, and that I needed to write about.  The words came easily to me.

                Let’s identify some of the elements in what happened with the lost text. 

                There is much in common between Buddhism and Taoism and I was able to use the Taoist principle from Lao Tsu of “not forcing” in dealing with this situation.  I didn’t try to re-capture and re-write the lost entry right away when my heart wasn’t in it.  I didn’t try to forcibly impose my will on the situation and try to bring back the past.  Instead, I tried to pay attention to the energy that was naturally already there and ride that wave to doing something constructive.  In the Buddhist tradition, this is called mindfulness—being in touch with what is going on inside yourself and honoring (not ignoring) what is there.

                Looking back on it, I also notice that I used a teaching from Eckhart Tolle.  He said “If your overall situation is unsatisfactory or unpleasant, separate out this instant and surrender to what is.”  This means surrender to the reality of what is true in this moment:  I had irretrievably lost something I had written—that’s the truth.  I accepted that this was my situation or, as Tolle wisely puts it I had practiced “Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it.”  [From The Power of Now.]  In doing this practice, I felt a sense of relaxation and peace, and also experienced better clarity about what to do next.

                I also borrowed another practice from Tolle:

Look at the specifics of the situation.  Ask yourself, “Is there anything I can do to change the situation, improve it, or remove myself from it?”  If so, you take appropriate action.  Focus not on the 100 things that you will or may have to do at some future time, but on the one thing that you can do now.  … But make sure that you don’t start to run [doomsday]“mental movies” [of the future] and lose the Now.  [The Power of Now.]

                I did this.  I did all the things I knew to retrieve lost computer content.  Another thing I could do in that moment was to use the immediate experience and energy in the present moment to write a new and different blog post.  

                I also remembered what the Buddha taught about opening to emotions.  I went into the body to really feel what I was feeling:  stunned, very sad, grief, disappointment.  I looked for where these emotions were manifesting in the body:  physical tension across my back and back of the neck, a constricted feeling around my heart, and so on.  I also noticed that I was not feeling any anger, self judgment or blame (“You should have been more careful, how could you have done that, etc”)  I just felt what I was feeling and accepted it. This helped the feelings to wash through me and not color the rest of the day.  Oh, and I didn’t crab at Sandy when she asked about something.  In fact, the impulse to do it never even came up.  Old mental habits really can be unlearned!

                In addition, I noticed the following.  Sandy and I had been planning on watching a video on DVD, a comedy, and I knew I wouldn’t enjoy it in my present condition.  I told Sandy I could tell that I didn’t feel in the mood for the video and told her what had happened a little while ago with the lost text.  Recognizing a shift in feeling is a central mindfulness practice.

                Maybe I will eventually try to write the blog I first started to write, and maybe I won’t.  I don’t feel like I need to figure anything out right now about what I should do next.

                Writing the above story has allowed almost all of the tension and sadness I was experiencing to wash through, and I ended up asking if we could watch the DVD later.  I enjoyed it!

 

PS  Upon completion of this post I e-mailed it to myself!  😀

 

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