No matter how many times I attempt to teach it, meditation and non-reactivity always elicit the same kind of confusion. No matter how many times I tell my students- thinking is not a problem, you can’t stop your mind from thinking– they get frustrated about thinking. No matter how many times I say, you can’t do meditation badly, they say they’re no good at meditation.
Likewise, when I talk about non-reactivity people get confused. They think I mean that they should not be sad about their loved one dying or that they should be peaceful about their boyfriend cheating on them, and then they beat themselves up for crying or getting angry. No matter how many times I say, see what is there and accept it, they misunderstand and reject what is there, because they hold some ideal of how they should be.
How do I know this so well? Because I did this too. For so many years I misunderstood the teachings and that caused so much suffering. More and more I come to understand the truth- non-reactivity is not the absence of difficult emotion, it is the acceptance of whatever sadness, anger, jealousy, joy or calm is there.
non-reactivity is not the absence of difficult emotion, it is the acceptance of whatever sadness, anger, jealousy, joy or calm is there.
The Video
Right now thirty men and women are midway through Citta Online- the online coaching program run by myself and my epic business partner Tanya Savva.
On Tuesday night’s live call, we tackled the massive subject of meditation and non-reactivity. As always, there was confusion about these teachings.
I made this video for our Citta Online students, but it was so well received that I felt I had to share it with everyone. It is a video that explains the subtlety of non-reactivity, not the spiritually-ego-charged ideal about perfection that most of us hold tight to.
I hope this video can help you to wake up to your-self. Wake up to all the ways you waste your precious time and energy berating yourself and creating self-drama that doesn’t need to exist.
We are all trying to be happy, be calm, be at peace. We all want to love and be loved. We say we’d give anything to have the life of our dreams. Yet, there is nothing we need to give. We just need to sit down and see each moment, and then accept it for exactly what it is.
With love,
Kate
