If the Buddha Got Stuck_ A Handbook for Change on a Spiritual Path - Charlotte Sophia Kasl [7]
The final step, Let Go, means that we stop grasping at all that is temporal—mind, thoughts, body, life situation—and experience being one with aliveness that penetrates all things. Instead of being the “doer” we become an expression of life that flows through us. From this relaxed place creative ideas and clear answers will often arise and help you come out of confusion and longing and make the desired changes in your life.
This journey requires a readiness to be altered, surprised, and sometimes astonished. If you bring this willingness to these steps you will open the way to breaking free and getting unstuck. Everyone can do it—it’s a matter of following a well-tested path and persevering.
Buddhism and Self Help!
It may seem like a paradox to write a self help book from a Buddhist perspective. After all, Buddhism centers on transcending the self or the ego, not puffing it up or making it more concrete. Yet, as is often taught, you study the self in order to let go of the self. This book will help you realize the difference between self-absorption—the inflated ego—and self-awareness, which helps you to become conscious of the rise and fall of your thoughts, feelings, sensations, and desires. It will help you make connections about what creates tension and what allows ease, what brings happiness and what keeps you restless or detached.
Self-awareness has an expansive quality. It’s about observing and being highly attuned to the interrelationship of your thoughts, body sensations, and external events—like watching a passing show with a sense of amusement. Self-absorption, on the other hand, is serious, contracts our energy, has a false sense of importance, and keeps us walled off in our separate identity.
Some books teach that you can get anything you want, if you “believe in yourself” and make great effort. The Buddhist path is about getting past the turmoil and stress created by your demands and expectations so you can experience the natural essence of who you are. It’s not about making yourself feel bigger or gaining status or possessions; it’s about freeing yourself to be happy, receptive, and open. From this place, answers to life’s questions often arise spontaneously.
Many Eastern spiritual traditions include steps to follow on the path. The Buddha outlined eight steps for mindful, conscious living, which departed from those that came from his Hindu roots. The steps in this book build on each other and prepare you for the final chapter on letting go. So remember, while I include things the “self” can do, it’s always with the understanding that it’s a choice, and not a crucial one. It’s there for the taking in the interest of clearing out whatever blocks the way to becoming happier, more at ease, and more fully who you are. These steps are not intended to become another list of rules to trigger guilt, shoulds, rigidity, or an inner competition, but as a path to freedom. Whether you follow them or not, you are and always have been one with the essence of all life.
STEP ONE
Feel Your Longing, Notice Where You’re Stuck
1. Notice the Roots of Uneasiness or Being Stuck
Lose yourself
Escape from the black cloud that surrounds you
Then you will see your own light,
as radiant as the full moon.
—RUMI ,“IN THE ARMS OF THE BELOVED”
I’m going crazy in this relationship,” Angie said to me, her lanky body stretched out on the chair in my office. “I’m obsessed over Jack. I think our relationship is pretty good one minute, and the next minute I think it’s hopeless. My emotions come up and overwhelm me—I just dissolve and start crying. I keep questioning myself: am I being unreasonable?