Thursday 19 August 2010

Natural Perfection?

When I came across this teaching one of the questions that I had was "How is it possible that all of my thoughts, emotions and experiences are naturally perfect?"

It seemed to me that so many of my thoughts, emotions and experiences were obviously signs of my imperfection and the imperfection of others and the world in general. After all I became angry, sad, irritated, bored on a regular basis and I saw that this was the case for everyone else as well. I could see so much injustice and violence in the world and certainly couldn't see how this was an indication of anything other than the fundamentally flawed nature of life and human society.

The first thing that I began to see was how I always had a choice in every moment. It was always the same choice and didn't depend on what I was thinking or how I was feeling or even who I was with. This choice was the choice to relax for a short moment and to recognise the natural presence of sky-like clarity. As it became apparent that I did always have this choice, no matter what was going on, then it also began to dawn on me that every situation was perfect for me to make this choice. This was always the case no matter how I how I described what was going on.

This was amazing as for the first time there was something that was quiet incredible about my feelings of anxiety, nervousness or self-doubt. It was seen that they were in fact an opportunity to rely on clarity. They weren't something that I had to spiral down into a vicious circle of further introspection about but became opportunities to relax for a short moment. My confidence has effortlessly grown that I can in fact leave these so called afflictive states and negative emotions exactly as they are and that when I do this they really don't have the power over me that I thought they did. I began to see through the mass of belief systems and conceptual frameworks that I had built up around them and there was immediately a greater sense of ease.

2 comments:

  1. Hi Toby,
    The posts on your blog have been very helpful. Thank you so very much.
    With love and appreciation,
    -Leslie

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  2. really great pointer, toby. i very much like your blog. hope you write more.

    vince

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