Working with Change

Daily Reflection
Life is about change. Change is all around us and is continually reoccurring. Today I want you to think about how you respond to change. Do you embrace change? Do you struggle against it? Do you lie to yourself and say, "oh, things have not really changed." Do you mourn the change? How does change affect you?

In your journal today, reflect on some of the major changes in your life - a move, a birth, a death, etc and think about how you responded to this change. Try to answer some of the questions I ask above and also think about these questions - did I handle this change harmoniously or did I cause myself suffering? How can I best work with change in my life?

Swami K

Suffering

Daily Reflections
There are a few people in my life right now that are suffering. It is mental suffering rather than physical and the suffering is due to changes that have taken place in their lives. I find myself waking up each day asking - are they still suffering? How can I help ease their suffering? As compassionate givers, we want to help others that are suffering but we tend to want to solve their problems for them. What they really need is for us to just listen and to be there to support them through the pain. This can be very challenging for us to accept, particularly if the suffering goes on for a long time. What we have to remember is that they are exactly where they need to be in their lives at this moment. They are learning something that will help them move on to the next stage in their lives.

In your journal today reflect on how you approach others that are suffering. Do you give them advice, tell them what to do, listen, be there, get frustrated? What approach best works when you are suffering? Do you prefer it when people try to help solve your problem, when they just listen?

Swami K

Day 12 - The River of Life

Today’s Tarka Practice
I have one more story to share with you this week. This story is taken from Goswami Kriyananda's Beginner's Guide to Meditation.

"Once upon a yogi time there was a man who owned a little donkey. For many years, the donkey carried huge baskets of salt that weighed him down and made him tired. One day, by accident, the donkey slipped at the edge of the river and fell in. When he emerged, he realized that his burden was greatly lightened because most of the salt dissolved in the river. The man was angry but accepted the loss of the salt as an accident. The next day the donkey passed the same river and remembered how light his burden had been made the previous day. So he threw himself into the water and came back out, his load greatly lightened. This went on for a few days until the man realized what his donkey was doing. But he said nothing. Some days later, the man stacked huge piles of cotton on the donkey and together they started their trek. Coming to the river, the donkey thought himself very clever and again fell in. But this time the light cotton quickly soaked up the water, and when the little donkey emerged from the stream his legs buckled under him, and he understood the ways of the river of life."

While there are many different levels to this story and many things to reflect upon, today we will focus on only one of those themes.

For today's journal, think about your misconceptions about life. It is easy to think that once we take care of the problem, life will run smoothly. However, this is not the way of life. Life can be easy sometimes and challenging sometimes. We can solve one problem, have a break, only for another new set of problems to begin. Write down your expectations about life. What you expect to happen and what actually happens may be completely different things, so it is good to be aware of the nature of life, particularly, the nature of your life.
Shanti

Day 19 - Can you Control Your Suffering?

Today's Tarka Practice

Many of the great eastern religious traditions tell us that suffering is optional. Is it? Do we truly have this much control over how we feel? Both the Gita and the Sutras tell us that we do have this kind of control - that we can control our suffering and that we cause ourselves to suffer. We are told in these ancient texts that it is our thoughts and attitudes towards those thoughts that cause us to suffer. If this is so, then we can learn to control our minds, change our thoughts and change our attitudes. Is this true? What about someone who is mentally ill or someone suffering through a great illness, like cancer? Are they still in charge of their own suffering?

For today's journal entry, I want you to reflect on your attitudes towards suffering. Try to answer some of the questions that I pose above and write down how you feel about each one. Talk about how much control you feel you have over your own life. Try to think of some examples from your experience in which you were suffering and were able to change your attitude in order to allieviate that suffering. Also, write down some examples of when you were not able to change your thoughts and attitudes and continued suffering. What was different about each of the situations you wrote about?

Shanti