Fear drives us to act in ways we wouldn’t normally behave.\u00a0 Fear pulls us towards our base actions of a fight-flight-freeze response.\u00a0 We operate in response to potential, or known, consequences in favor of our survival.\u00a0 Fear does not enable growth; it merely avoids immediate degradation of our status.\u00a0 Often, our decisions while acting under the pressure of fear lead us to make regrettable choices.\u00a0 The impact of this is a feeling of shame.\u00a0 We are ashamed of ourselves for the consequences of our decisions, and guilt arrives to make us feel the need to change the situation through atonement or forgiveness.\u00a0 Shame, however, prohibits us from growth as well. Shame’s purpose is to be aware that what we did wasn’t something we should do again.\u00a0 Shame is not a burden to carry for a long time.\u00a0 Unfortunately,\u00a0 shame is a feeling far too many of us carry indefinitely.<\/p>\n
When we watch a master perform, the action looks easy.\u00a0 The master, while practicing, is no longer ‘doing,’ they are ‘being.’ When we practice a new skill or task, we need to channel a great deal of conscious effort into the job itself.\u00a0 As we develop muscle memory, we require less active thought to achieve the same results.\u00a0 We are transitioning from doing something to being something.\u00a0\u00a0 Bruce Lee said it best: “You must be shapeless, formless, like water. When you pour water into a cup, it becomes the cup…” When we operate from a position of shame,\u00a0 we act only to remove the burden placed on ourselves.\u00a0 We can never be something; we will always be doing something.\u00a0 Shame prevents progress if not released after the lesson is learned.<\/p>\n
Attention is currency, and fear holds attention.\u00a0 There are bad-faith actors (many in the media) who wish to keep you in a constant state of anxiety.\u00a0 They will manipulate your desire to be honorable by convincing you to act against your interests.\u00a0 Your fear makes their profit.\u00a0 By devoting your attention to these doomsday hypotheticals and hyperbolic presentations, you spend less attention on yourself.\u00a0 We can not positively sustainably impact our environment if we are not sustainable within ourselves.\u00a0 Yes, we can engage in individual acts benefiting the situation, but that is doing something, not being something.<\/p>\n
Shinge Roshi teaches, “What is Zen? It’s both something we are\u2014our true nature expressing itself moment by moment\u2014and something we do\u2014a disciplined practice through which we can realize the joy of being.”\u00a0 Shame robs us of the joy of being by continuously guiding us towards negative self-judgments and denying us meaningful hope.\u00a0 We tell ourselves we don’t deserve things or are incapable of the things we yearn for most.\u00a0 To counter this downward pressure, people develop deeply rooted patterns of escapism – through their careers, vices, shutting down in front of a TV screen, etc.\u00a0 The actual counter to shame is kindness.<\/p>\n
As a young boy, I was introduced to a philosophy known as Animism.\u00a0 In short, this idea postulates everything has a spirit, including immaterial objects.\u00a0 The wind, your pants, your favorite chair all have spirits of their own.\u00a0 The moral of the philosophy is to respect everything.\u00a0 I am a fan of ‘treat others as I wish to be treated.’ When combined with Animism, I did my best to take care of all my things and the people I would encounter.\u00a0 Animism, like so many other prevalent thoughts, teaches us to be kind.\u00a0 His Holiness the Dalai Lama, a prominent Buddhist practitioner, explains flatly, “My religion is kindness.”<\/p>\n
What is Kindness?\u00a0 If our goal is to be something, not just do something, what does practicing kindness entail? It starts with how we treat ourselves, especially what we say to ourselves internally.\u00a0 What we practice grows stronger.\u00a0 If we practice feeling ashamed, scared, anxious, or angry internally, we become better at those things.\u00a0 Similarly, if we practice kindness to ourselves, we become kinder through practice.\u00a0 The point isn’t ever to feel ashamed but instead acknowledge our mistake and learn from it.\u00a0 We then practice kindness to ourselves and re-frame our internal discussion.\u00a0 We are not stupid; we didn’t think a situation through well enough. \u00a0One is doing something, and the other is being something.\u00a0\u00a0 We did something stupid; we are not dumb overall.\u00a0 The difference is essential.<\/p>\n
As we continue to practice kindness, we can work towards a larger goal: being present without pain.\u00a0 Fear, guilt, and shame are all fantastic tools to focus on the here and now, but frequently we take them beyond a learning opportunity into negative self-judgment. We focus on the pain we feel in the moment and either become stuck there or escape from the feeling, temporarily, through a distraction.\u00a0 Through practices of such things as forgiveness and kindness, we can still be present in the moment without the pain associated with the negative feelings we grow adapted to and endure.\u00a0 In general terms, we call this mindfulness.<\/p>\n
When we are practicing mindfulness, we acknowledge the moment without trying to render judgment.\u00a0 We become aware of where our thoughts and feelings lay and allow ourselves to decide our path forward. \u00a0\u00a0If that moment is one of shame, we can learn from our error and what the impact is.\u00a0 We can choose how and when to resolve it and let it go.\u00a0 By letting things go, including shame, we can remain in the moment without suffering because of it.\u00a0 By being in the moment we can improve ourselves through conscious action under it is no longer necessary to think about it.\u00a0 By being present without pain, we can stop doing and start being.\u00a0 Be kind to yourself; you’re worth it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Fear drives us to act in ways we wouldn’t normally behave.\u00a0 Fear pulls us towards our base actions of a fight-flight-freeze response.\u00a0 We operate in response to potential, or known, consequences in favor of our survival.\u00a0 Fear does not enable growth; it merely avoids immediate degradation of our status.\u00a0 Often, our decisions while acting under […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[338],"tags":[307],"class_list":["post-28122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-considered-thoughts","tag-307"],"yoast_head":"\n