Dear all
This week’s reading is pages 147-154 (from beginning of chapter to ‘To Your Feelings’)
In this section Darlene talks about connection and begins by saying that she believes that alienation and a lack of connection is our greatest suffering. By this she means alienation from our own bodies, our feelings and our creativity, as well as from people.
Conversely, Darlene says that freedom from suffering lies in re-establishing and strengthening those connections.
She lists the important connections in our lives as:
- our bodies and their sensations
- our sensory reality
- our yearnings and needs
- our feelings and emotions
- our creativity
- our fellow beings
- our activity and ability to be active
Many of these can be negatively affected by chronic illness.
Darlene notes that one of the most prominent coping mechanisms and, although this can work for a time, one of its side-effects is a loss of connection. We can to a degree shut out our pain and feelings but only by losing some of the connection to those things.
This loss of connection is not just problematic functionally, but it also makes us less whole, less vibrant and less in touch with what makes us who we are.
Darlene also talks about victimhood being another coping strategy in which we become passive in the face of what is happening. Both of these mechanisms (denial and victimhood) are natural human defences that probably all of us have used at some point or other in our lives, and Darlene notes that they can even be useful in the short term. However, the role of practice is to live in awareness rather than habitual patterns, and in connection rather than isolation.
The rest of the chapter looks at Re-establishing The Primal Connection to different parts of our lives, and this week’s section includes the first two of those - our body and breath, and our deep yearnings and needs.
Question Prompts:
Have you felt at times that you disconnected from part of your experience as a coping mechanism? How did that feel?
Which of Darlene's list of connections do you feel you need to work more on?
Wishing you all a healthful week.
Gassho
Kokuu
-sattoday/lah-
This week’s reading is pages 147-154 (from beginning of chapter to ‘To Your Feelings’)
In this section Darlene talks about connection and begins by saying that she believes that alienation and a lack of connection is our greatest suffering. By this she means alienation from our own bodies, our feelings and our creativity, as well as from people.
Conversely, Darlene says that freedom from suffering lies in re-establishing and strengthening those connections.
She lists the important connections in our lives as:
- our bodies and their sensations
- our sensory reality
- our yearnings and needs
- our feelings and emotions
- our creativity
- our fellow beings
- our activity and ability to be active
Many of these can be negatively affected by chronic illness.
Darlene notes that one of the most prominent coping mechanisms and, although this can work for a time, one of its side-effects is a loss of connection. We can to a degree shut out our pain and feelings but only by losing some of the connection to those things.
This loss of connection is not just problematic functionally, but it also makes us less whole, less vibrant and less in touch with what makes us who we are.
Darlene also talks about victimhood being another coping strategy in which we become passive in the face of what is happening. Both of these mechanisms (denial and victimhood) are natural human defences that probably all of us have used at some point or other in our lives, and Darlene notes that they can even be useful in the short term. However, the role of practice is to live in awareness rather than habitual patterns, and in connection rather than isolation.
The rest of the chapter looks at Re-establishing The Primal Connection to different parts of our lives, and this week’s section includes the first two of those - our body and breath, and our deep yearnings and needs.
Question Prompts:
Have you felt at times that you disconnected from part of your experience as a coping mechanism? How did that feel?
Which of Darlene's list of connections do you feel you need to work more on?
Wishing you all a healthful week.
Gassho
Kokuu
-sattoday/lah-
Comment