Pema Chödrön’s book, Taking the Leap: Freeing Ourselves from Old Habits and Fears, came to me exactly when I needed it. And I can’t recommend it highly enough. It is in no way, shape, or form dense or obtuse. It’s easily digestible, short in length and casual in tone. I’ve heard of Pema Chödrön’s name before, referenced in other books, or mentioned here and there in ways I just can’t place. It was with eagerness that I picked up my first Pema Chödrön book. And this book truly did come to me at precisely the right time. I devoured it in about 72 hours, before bed, at restaurants, at coffee shops and finished it finally on a bus from Chiang Mai to Pai, Thailand.
Lately, I’ve been feeling a lot of strong emotions. I’m feeling defensive, reactive, and quick to anger. This is not something I’m proud of. This is not the me I want to be.
Pema Chödrön speaks of a style of meditation practice called compassionate abiding. It’s about staying with the emotion or feeling and breathing in to it. The inhale focuses on keeping the feeling inside, giving it attention and warmth. The exhale focuses on giving the sensation some space, relaxing any tension you’re carrying. Pema Chödrön writes:
“Breathing in and leaning in are very much the same. We touch the experience, feeling it in the body if that helps, and we breathe it in. In the process of doing this, we are transmuting hard, reactive, rejecting energy into basic warmth and openness. It sounds dramatic, but really it’s very simple and direct. All we are doing is breathing in and experiencing what’s happening, then breathing out as we continue to experience what’s happening. It’s a way of working with our negativity that appreciates that the negative energy per se is not the problem. Confusion only begins when we can’t abide with the intensity of the energy and therefore spin off. Staying present with our own energy allows it to keep flowing and move on. Abiding with our own energy is the ultimate nonaggression, the ultimate maitri.”
It’s a wonderful reminder of the power of the breath, of the connection to the present, of the connection to the self. It’s also an opportunity stay with yourself. To not try to rush past what you’re feeling, to push away uncomfortable feelings to attempt to feel “better.” We tend to label emotions as “good” or “bad” based on how comfortable we feel when experiencing them. Happiness and joy is more comfortable than sadness and grief. Yet, all emotions are messengers from our heart. There is much to gain if we can sit, stay, listen, learn.
“Instead, we can acknowledge the powerful energy of our fear, of our rage—the energy of anything at all that we may feel—as the natural movement of life, and become intimate with it, abide with it, without repressing, without acting out, without letting it destroy us or anyone else. In this way, anything we experience becomes the perfect opportunity for touching our basic goodness, the perfect support for remaining open and receptive to the dynamic energy of life…. Anything we experience, no matter how challenging, can become an opening pathway to awakening.” – Pema Chödrön
Easier said than done, of course. However, Pema Chödrön expresses what I hope to work towards. I want to be able to accept all of my emotions as impermanent energy that is passing through me. It will pass. It will end. Pema Chödrön references Jill Bolte Taylor’s book My Stroke of Insight, which “points to scientific evidence showing that the life span of any particular emotion is only one and a half minutes. After that we have to revive the emotion to keep it going again.” I find a great deal of solace in that knowledge. If I am able to give my emotions enough space to breathe, to exist without warring against them, then maybe I can short-circuit the pattern of feeding the flames of that particular emotion. Maybe, just maybe—and with a lot of practice—I can begin to stop stoking the fire of reactivity and defensiveness. Maybe, just maybe I can begin to let it be, to let it go.
To read additional quotes from Pema Chodron’s book, Taking the Leap: Freeing Ourselves from Old Habits and Fears, CLICK HERE.
