Pity, Overwhelm, Idiot compassion

This week and for the next while I want to start working on those things that obstruct change, that obstruct my ability to feel and sustain compassion for myself and others.

I'm going to do this in a systematic way.  This week look at the first near enemy of compassion: pity. According to Pema Chodron pity obstructs real compassion because it props up a story that we're better than someone. When we see another person as helpless, we don't see their strengths.

Another thing I might want to take a look at is self-pity.  This props up the story that I'm less than others and that I can solve my problems by appealing to pity.

Core Stillness

I'm beginning to see how the subject of my life is competence.

Every book I've been grappling with seems to be about that.  And every book I haven't finished seems to be about that. 

But I still don't really feel competent, and maybe that's why I don't seem to be able to finish them. 

It's like I'm missing some kind of core competency.  Maybe that competency is the ability to feel competent. The ability to notice the small actions I take to make my life and my son't life better. Or rather the habit of doing this.  Because I have the ability.  We all have the ability to notice the small things that we do. 

It's basic behavioural theory.  To assimilate something you need to continue rewarding it from time to time. And one of the deepest and most effective rewards is simple acknowledgement. 

One of my great accomplishments is meditation.  But it's not transformative if I don't bring it into my daily life. I need to stop frequently, throughout the day, and notice that I'm doing that to keep my life, mind and heart centred and present. 

An Adventure in Running Still

In my running I'm trying to focus more on accessing that ease that comes usually around the 3K mark.  The tendons and muscles loosen, my belly fills with oxygen, and that pole of energy keeps me in an effortless symbiosis with gravity propelling me forward.

I've also been using some slightly fluffy hypnosis tapes to imagine myself running freely with my pack of animals: horses, dogs, antelope. We're all galloping along in our prime.

The greatest challenge to this is shifting myself out of the obsessive, bickery mode I'm currently in because I have more work than usual and am feeling unusually stressed and overwhelmed.  If I could see more clearly how anger cuts me off from my smarter more competent self, shifting out of this would probably be more intuitive.

And then my running would become simply a deeper more energizing meditation.  Almost as through I were standing still, while moving.