Willingness and the Radical Act of Saying Yes – Maya E.

Okay. Okay. Is the sound okay? You have to speak up. Okay. Okay. I'm just going to wait just a little bit for a couple of people to come back. I might not need these. Hi, everyone. My name is Maya, and I'm an alcoholic addict. I'm going to be speaking on the right effort and yesterday Judith talked about right effort and in the handout that we have of the triangle, right effort was the one that kind of fed into all of the other elements of the Eightfold Path such as wisdom, right view, right intention, concentration, practicing mindfulness both in our bodies, emotions, right meditation and then also ethical conduct, right speech, right action, right livelihood. And it's the energy that helps us realize the Eightfold Path. And I sometimes think of it as balance. I think of It sometimes as yin and yang energy. Judith says not too tight, not too loose. And I'm going to read you what Thich Nhat Hanh, how he describes it. And he says, okay, he often uses the word diligence, but right effort is the kind of energy that helps us realize the noble eighthfold path. If we are diligent for possessions, sex or food, that is wrong diligence. If we work around the clock for profit or fame or to run away from our suffering, that ist wrong diligence also. from outside it may appear that we are diligent but it is not right diligence the same can be true of our meditation practice we may appear diligent in our practice but if it takes us further from reality or from those we love it is wrong diligence when we practice sitting and walking meditation in ways that cause our body and mind to suffer our effort is not right diligence, and it is not based on right view. Our practice should be intelligent, based on the right understanding of the teaching, and it's not because we practice hard that we can say that we are practicing right diligence or right effort. So I think that you have kind of a feel about how right effort feels. And so the question I asked myself was, why do we want to practice the Eightfold Path or the Twelve Steps? And I think for me it was just to alleviate some of the pain that I felt for so many years and also a feeling of this constant dissatisfaction and really deep-rooted belief of unworthiness. So that's how I came to the Twelve Steps and how I come here to Clouds and Water. And Judith touched last night a little bit about suffering, and so I'm going to talk a little about my own personal journey. But when I came here for the first time, it was five years ago, And I came here because my sponsor supported me to come here, and she had been practicing meditation for many, many years. And when I came, I was so scared, but in a lot of pain, and I just needed to feel something other than the pain. And I remember Googling, like, losing your mind in Zen meditation, and that's what came up then. That's what I got. people who had stories about losing their mind it didn't occur to me to google like um uh seeking serenity or peace or the buddha nature whatever but so i i was very scared and i sat over there and i hid behind that pillar and um luckily the woman who sat in front of me i always tell this story but she was wearing um uh sweats and on the back of her sweats it said rebel or rebel they're both spelled the same way and so right away I was like how could she possibly wear those pants to a zen and I kept looking at that and and thinking and later I'm like could this kind be a message from the universe for me um so anyway but she um she kind of distracted me um from the intensity that i was feeling and so um at that point i had been sober for like 13 years and my program looked something like this i would i would go along in life pretty relatively well and then things would come up and then i would run to hazelden because i knew that's where i can get sober but also i could do a weekend retreat come out of there and then feel fine and then come back to the same old habitual patterns until i got really sick again and then i would go to um and i love hazel den and hazel then the experience there saved my life um but i was using it almost um as some i don't know um i was also in therapy um let's see my spirituality i was searching and um and but i didn't have a daily practice so i wasn't praying daily um i didn't have a sangha community um other than the aa community but um it's that part of the spirituality i never felt comfortable talking about i didn'T feel comfortable talking about god um and i don'T know why i just DIDN'T um i i was doing some yoga some body work um i at that time also quit smoking and, um, uh, a little bit earlier. And I was a member of nicotine anonymous and it was really there that I gave up kind of my last, um... uh, drug that I began to experience like a lot of fricking discomfort and, uh... and also, um ... kind of a deeper recovery. But the discomfort was incredible. So all the things that I was smoking over just would come up to the surface. Grief, well, I wrote them down here. So I'm going to back up a little bit. And also at this time, I was going to the Thursday night Zen Center for the meetings. And I felt like a sense of relief there sitting with people. And the language of Buddhism really appealed to me and it resonated with me. I just felt different about it. And let's see. Oh, and finally, for the first time ever in my recovery, I had a sponsor. So I had somebody that I was accountable to. This is 13 years after I became sober, you guys. So maybe 12 years. Um, and that's not a really smart way to do things. Um, so, um, so I'm here and, um、 I'm sitting and cooking and, um, I, all of a sudden, um,, I just felt, um., just so much sadness and I, It was horrible and I would just cry and cry And that was one of my worst fears Is that I would lose my mind and cry here And it happened And the crying really was Feeling the enormous amount of grief From my childhood And my childhood wasn't horrific But I grew up in Croatia And my family had to leave their lives here and come here for political reasons, and so it was tough. And there was a lot of sadness and grief in my family growing up. We didn't talk about it. It was just the way it is, and I just consumed it. And I was a really sensitive kid, and then I medicated that. And so then the other thing that came up as I sat there was a lot of shame and at that time so five years ago my finances were a mess they were crazy they were volatile they were like this the way I earned my living was less than satisfactory didn't come with ease I would work and then I would just burn out create chaos with my boss and then leave. Like, who needs you anymore, right? And what else? I had a lot of guilt about the way that I misused my sexuality, you know, in my teens, college. And when I was 19, I was in college and I cashed in my tuition and I wanted to go back to Croatia to connect with my family, my extended family. And I missed them. And a few family members were able to come to the States. When I got there, I was reunited with them and it wasn't really smart for me to go. I didn't tell my parents. I just took off and went and they were really scared for me. It was Yugoslavia at the time, and so there then I automatically gravitated towards my family members who were not healthy, and I met Mick, who was my third cousin, and he was a heroin addict, and she introduced me to heroin, and also a drug dealer, and television producer, and he was my third cousin and I ended up marrying him and my family was so hurt and it brought a lot of shame to them and it was a really difficult time so anyway, I'm going to skip over that but I think that a really big root of my shame is never, I never felt that I was good enough. And I would then overcompensate. And by overcompENSATING, I would really hurt people, mess up relationships, etc. So let's see. Thich Nhat Hanh talks about watering the seeds that are in our store consciousness so he talks about like watering the seed of anger you get angry at someone if you keep obsessing about it you're going to cultivate more anger on the same side you have the seed compassion and if you can water the seed of compassion the compassion in you will grow and I think my two big seeds were the seed of shame which really kept me isolated on that cushion a lot of pinks I did not want you guys to know anything about my past, or watering the seed, the acceptance of my Buddha nature and what was inherently good about me. So you can also think of this as living with intention um yeah so then um so that was me five years ago and um and I was in pain and slowly um uh I felt like just layers and layers of gook shit whatever just came off of me and I was able to like slowly emerge um and sometimes this did not look so gracefully and you can ask my sponsor who's sitting here um sometimes it was painful and i became defiant i was trying really really hard and this is the right effort so i would do things like schedule a 5 a.m zen sitting by myself at my home every day. And if I didn't make it, I would beat myself up. Um, I plan to eat mindfully and, um, and I don't, and that causes me to feel shame. Um. But really my biggest thing was that I was very much spiritually void and I didnít have a community. and um um and what my sponsor asked me to do is just to be consistent she said if you show up and if you sit um um you will have a much more rewarding life maya people like you they like it when you showup um and so i i've started doing that and um my life has changed tremendously and um oh let's see i don't know what else to say about that it's just it just has my life changed tremendously and um i i really am mindful about the speech that i use i am mindful about um um about connecting with other people i'm mindful that when my fear comes up to not water that seed of fear. And, you know, when Amy asked me if I would be the Eno, which is what I'm doing right here, my natural reaction was like, no, I couldn't possibly. There's no way. But I said yes. You know, I'm going to do this radical... Willingness. Radical willingness. and i wasn't even going to talk about this part of right effort but so how do we practice right effort um so we practice it by first preventing the unwholesome seeds that have not yet arisen from arising from within we also can practice right effort by helping unwholesome seeds that have already arisen to return to our stored consciousness. And the third way is by finding ways to water the wholesome seeds that, that have not yet arisen. Seeds like happiness, love, loyalty, trust, um, forgiveness. Um, and then the fourth way is bei nourishing the wholsome seeds that have arisen so that they then stay present and they grow stronger. So my seed of consistency is pretty present these days and I feel much stronger. So Thich Nhat Hanh said, our suffering is holy if we embrace it. And if we don't, it isn't holy at all. We just drown in the ocean of our suffering, so drowning in shame. One, we have a safe place to connect with each other, and that is here. And we can bring our suffering here. And we could also ask help from one another and from our teachers. And two, we need to believe that the healing is possible. And three, we have directions like Judah said. We have the 12 steps and we have the eightfold path. And we practice this and we practice it daily. And if we're consistent, huge changes can happen. You know, my drug of choice was heroin. I used, I think when I was at Hazelden and wrote out my inventory of all the drugs I used. I mean, the list was incredibly long. I was in shock. And the other shocking thing was how I misused my sexuality was even longer. But Thich Nhat Hanh says, Work together with a teacher and with a friend to transform your suffering into compassion, peace, and understanding. Oh, I'm sorry. Work together avec un enseignant et avec un ami pour transformer votre souffrance en compassion, paix et l'entendement et le faire avec joie et léman. and that is the right effort. And my therapist said, grab something from your altar at home that will bring you comfort or kind of transition you to... And I have a little card and didn't even know I was going to talk about joy but it says, I water the seeds of joy and that's where I am right now. I'm trying to cultivate more joy in my life and to have more courage to live life with more ease to um i um we my partner and i after a lot of pain cleaned up our finances we're now able to work at jobs we really love we're able to be of service um we um things are going in the right direction for me it it was a long path and it was bumpy and messy and i was really mean sometimes But I'm human, right? I'm sorry. And when my sponsor and I were working through my defiance and her desire to really help me, we both had to find our right efforts and I had to learn consistency and not to, I had to see what was the right fit for me. And my sponsor has a very strong practice, but she was willing to say, you know what? What works for me may not work for Maya and we have two different paths, but we have room enough in our understanding of love for each other to go that route. So, and how am I doing on time? You just did one effort. You switched the mind. Okay. So, and the reason I'm doing two of these is because I didn't manage my time well. So, okay. So I'm going to make right mindfulness very quick and Carol is doing mindfulness and emotions and Diane is going to be talking about mindfulness and meditation. And so what I know very quickly about... You don't have to be that quick. You can have until 10, 10. So that's 15 minutes. I don't know if you're going to do that. I don' t have that much material, Judith. so right mindfulness is at the heart of buddha's teaching and it has three parts this is my understanding we have mindfulness of the body mindfulness of emotions and mindfulness of meditation and as judith pointed out last night if you want a buddhalife you have to have all three of these working together. What I found in my meditation practice, and I now meditate with ease and with joy. I mean, it's like my saving grace. And I cannot even believe that that really happened with me. But I had to turn up the heat and really burn away the karma of the past and um and really feel feel and and the feeling um you know you can feel anger in your head but feeling anger in Your Body is a whole different thing and I think for a lot of us addicts we tend to live and at least I do from the neck up right and so and I think that has to do a lot with um just our the way we survived and the way We showed up in the world maybe from turbulent families or maybe from families that didn't communicate well so we were always using our minds trying to figure out you know what the heck to do and and also it's really uncomfortable to feel old wounds and old wounding and so we can rationalize it we can um you know understand um how to live the eighth fold path or understand um oh the right way to make an amends we can understand all of these things and we can meditate about those things and ask for inspiration but sinking into our bodies is not an easy thing to do and and that's kind of what I've been practicing. I find the easiest way for me to do so is to use my breath and I think also because of the past wounding, I try to focus on my heart and try to connect my body, my heart, and all the layers that still seem to be protecting something, but into my higher consciousness. And so mindfulness of the breath is really how I connect with my body. I also have in the past, I've done yoga, body work. But just learning how to sit with the uncomfortableness, I think is a great gift. So and I think our bodies really hold a lot of wisdom. And I think that's all I have to say. Thank you.