Have You Seen A Miracle?

8 months ago, there was someone in some incident that started bugging my mind as it came to me as a threat. In the natural tendency of wishing to fix the situation, I was trying hard to solve it, forcing it out of my awareness.

The trigger since then however appeared so often in my space, virtually, and every single time there was agitation and discomfort.

There was also a lot of fear whenever there's mention of name.

Each passing fear or discomfort was noticed, although there was not much I could do about it. There was at some point a glimpse of seeing myself as a victim, and each attack thought when I felt the discomfort was used as a counter attack to the person and the situation. As if to ask myself to be seen a victor. But it did not end there. It was seen over and over and over again, for 8 months.

But in each trigger I was asking myself how to see things correctly. The pain of fear and agitation. Was. Just. Not. Healthy.

One day, a random thought appeared to look through my mailbox. I found an email. Albeit unrelated, somehow the name appeared in the trail, and my mind played up the whole 'story' of how the relationship was formed and developed. And it occurred to me that all this time, there was judgment and jealousy towards my "object of trigger". And the 8-month-old incident was taken as an opportunity to victimize the person, although just psychologically. At the same time, it was used to justify my feeling victimized. The situation effectively became a scapegoat for me to release my angst.

In that instant, the glaring discomfort was just gone.

I tried to stare at the person's name, face, messages. And there was just no trace of anger or fear. I tried to think up the threat, but the story just did not hold up anymore.

Now this may sound to you just another entertaining story. Or a story so simple or cryptic it does not catch your attention. You may not even understand where I'm coming from.

But it is to me a miracle. Which has happened not just once, but multiple times in the last few years of my mindfulness practice.

The situation, the person, or the whole victimization process can be in any form. It does not matter.

What matters is whether and when we shift the direction from blaming and feeling justified, victimized, to the wish to understand. And along with it, the faithful observation without indulging in the story line. The happening may, most of the time, look the same. But the way we feel, perceive, judge, and think about it differs vastly. And the view behind the reaction is also 180 degree turned around. The objects become innocent, because the mind looking at it has changed. And because the cause and the effect are both in the mind and not the object.

The practice of meditation, to me, is just that. With the purpose of and willingness to correct wrong views, to see things without meanings and pre-conceived ideas. Although the ideas we have been brought up with are so deeply rooted and can play up in many forms, our job is just to undo, one by one. Faithfully.

And life becomes much more easeful and less unwholesome in the process. That is the gift greater than any riches.

In grace,
Linh
Newsletter 8 June 2021