Holding On. . .
I caught myself the other day replaying something someone said to me. Not a big moment, an argument or anything like that. Just a comment. For some reason, it stuck.
I kept running it back in my head. Over and over, reworking it, reinterpreting it and adding meaning that probably wasn’t even there in the first place.
It’s funny how the mind does that. It grabs onto something small and then builds an entire structure around it. The boom! And before you know it, you’re carrying something that didn’t weigh anything to begin with. The longer you hold onto things – silly, small or big and bothersome – the heavier it feels.
Being mindful of thoughts in a positive way reminded me of the many things we carry, the thoughts and the act of holding onto something so intangible. The ability to recognize and understand that energy, changes everything. We keep things alive like that – not the other person, the situation, the words or energies spoken or unspoken: Just us… holding onto it.
Buddhism talks about letting go, but not in a forceful way. It’s not about pushing thoughts away or pretending they don’t exist. It’s about seeing them clearly. Seeing that we’re holding something and realizing we don’t have to. It’s in these little invisible moments that we understand we don’t need to ignore things. We don’t need to fix everything. We just need to loosen our grip. When we do this, even a little, we feel it.
That lightness.
That space.
That sense that maybe we don’t have to carry everything that passes through our mind with such weight and momentum. That maybe as my buddhist instructor once told me – “stalls us out with stupor” is what we need to let go of, to accept and grow from.
So maybe what we need and I learned from my own instructor and path is this – Many will struggle to let go of their suffering because it is far better known than their freedom from it.
Peace and Love, Jim
#clinging #thedailybuddha #tdb
