Fence Sitting (D5)

A dear friend and I have started a tradition of passing a journal back and forth each time we see each other.  It is an interesting exercise, and for someone with a Myers Briggs Temperament Inventory of INFJ an absolute thrill.  As I was contemplating what to write over the last months since I have seen her I came across something that Jack (Kornfield) told me that is a powerful reminder in my life.

"Yes, this too"

So what does this mean, yes this too.  It means to approach everything we encounter in our life with equanimity - or spaciousness and stability.  Somehow, hearing Jack's voice, the soft, gentle low and slow voice, Yes, (pause) this too, allows me to soften and open when challenges come into our life.  For most of us, our first reaction to anything good is to grasp and when we don't like something is to push away.

Both are forms of attachment, which result in suffering.  So the idea is just to soften, and open to the experience, without reactivity, without judgement.  Just to be there with yourself, with whatever presents itself.

In meditation, one quickly finds there is the mind and the watcher of the mind.  The poem:


Come sit down beside me,
I said to myself.
And although it doesn't make sense,
I held my own hand as a small sign of trust.
And together I sat on the fence.

By Michael Leunig

is another way of settling inside yourself, allowing yourself to be with whatever arises.  Attachment research suggests that our nervous system calms when we are held or when another is with us.  Tristan once asked me how to help people stop suffering when they are weeping.  My answer was simple.  I told him, do the one thing that people need the most, and often get the least.  Just be with them.  Just show up without trying to change anything, without trying to make it better.  Just sit with them, or yourself, in equanimity.