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Our Own Worst Critics
Seph
Veteran
I can clearly remember the day! No, the moment.
It must have been decades ago. I was sitting in my friends' backyard having a beer on a beautiful summer afternoon. Their backdoor exited into a block concrete "patio". Patio's not really what it was. It was big enough to have a BBQ, but that's it. It had painted black metal railings and concrete steps that led down to their grassy backyard - where I was sitting. Two garden homes shared this concrete stepped exit.
As I sat and sipped my beer I watched their neighbour's young son playing and climbing on the patio/steps. He wore only a diaper.
He hung his legs over the concrete edge, in an attempt to climb off the ledge rather than use the steps, but his legs weren't long enough to reach the ground.
Totally disconnected from the scene - and apparently indifferent - I simply watched. I knew what was coming. The weight of the boy's legs would drag him over the edge, he would painfully scrape his soft belly on the rough concrete edge, and he would cry.
I sat - detached - and watched my prediction play out like a premonition.
I didn't intervene. I simply observed. There was a great sense of calm in me... which was peculiar.
I remember that moment so well because it was that incident that convinced me, all those years ago, that I lacked compassion.
But the part that never made sense to me was my profound sense of calm and being at peace.
It has only been very recently, in this past year, when I 'reconnected' to this memory. I recognized the person in the memory, where I don't think I have ever recognized that person before.
Maybe because I've only recently been introduced to this person through my practice of meditation.
The Watcher.
That aspect of me that is simply aware. That part of me that watches. In meditation he (it?) is that which observers the thoughts. He is always calm and serene.
Although I could never have recognized him all those years ago, I believe that is who he was. On that day, I had a lucid (traditionally non-meditative) moment.
~
This is important because that same moment was when I had judged and condemned myself as lacking compassion. It had shaped my perspective of myself every since.
It's odd how a condemnation like this can steal your permission to grow, isn't it?
I'm not convinced that I lack compassion. Sure, I can work on my compassion more, and I have my moments when I can be insensitive and self-serving... but we all have these dark moments.
Had The Watcher not been 'dominant' and 'in control', I've no doubt I would have lunged forward and caught the child.
I suppose the lesson here is that we must be compassionate and forgiving to ourselves at times.
This may seem like an unimportant or petty story, but its ramifications to me are significant.
I believe compassion and solace are intrinsically entangled through dharma. (The Dharma Entanglement)... and if I allow myself to believe I am devoid and hopeless in one of these 'traits'... only serves as a barrier and an obstacle.
It must have been decades ago. I was sitting in my friends' backyard having a beer on a beautiful summer afternoon. Their backdoor exited into a block concrete "patio". Patio's not really what it was. It was big enough to have a BBQ, but that's it. It had painted black metal railings and concrete steps that led down to their grassy backyard - where I was sitting. Two garden homes shared this concrete stepped exit.
As I sat and sipped my beer I watched their neighbour's young son playing and climbing on the patio/steps. He wore only a diaper.
He hung his legs over the concrete edge, in an attempt to climb off the ledge rather than use the steps, but his legs weren't long enough to reach the ground.
Totally disconnected from the scene - and apparently indifferent - I simply watched. I knew what was coming. The weight of the boy's legs would drag him over the edge, he would painfully scrape his soft belly on the rough concrete edge, and he would cry.
I sat - detached - and watched my prediction play out like a premonition.
I didn't intervene. I simply observed. There was a great sense of calm in me... which was peculiar.
I remember that moment so well because it was that incident that convinced me, all those years ago, that I lacked compassion.
But the part that never made sense to me was my profound sense of calm and being at peace.
It has only been very recently, in this past year, when I 'reconnected' to this memory. I recognized the person in the memory, where I don't think I have ever recognized that person before.
Maybe because I've only recently been introduced to this person through my practice of meditation.
The Watcher.
That aspect of me that is simply aware. That part of me that watches. In meditation he (it?) is that which observers the thoughts. He is always calm and serene.
Although I could never have recognized him all those years ago, I believe that is who he was. On that day, I had a lucid (traditionally non-meditative) moment.
~
This is important because that same moment was when I had judged and condemned myself as lacking compassion. It had shaped my perspective of myself every since.
It's odd how a condemnation like this can steal your permission to grow, isn't it?
I'm not convinced that I lack compassion. Sure, I can work on my compassion more, and I have my moments when I can be insensitive and self-serving... but we all have these dark moments.
Had The Watcher not been 'dominant' and 'in control', I've no doubt I would have lunged forward and caught the child.
I suppose the lesson here is that we must be compassionate and forgiving to ourselves at times.
This may seem like an unimportant or petty story, but its ramifications to me are significant.
I believe compassion and solace are intrinsically entangled through dharma. (The Dharma Entanglement)... and if I allow myself to believe I am devoid and hopeless in one of these 'traits'... only serves as a barrier and an obstacle.
0
Comments
Have you ever noticed that when someone dies, people always haul out that person's "finest moments", as if that defined them. I look the other direction, with a belief that we're only as good as we are at our worst. And so, being our own worst critics allows us to aim for substantive improvement in our humanity.
Another way of looking at it...
Your watcher is simply a cerebral indulgence. It can serve worldly or spiritual interests and anything in between.
Physicality is it's active counter balance.
The manifestation of Compassion requires a connection and co operation between those two states whereas our own ego/identity finds it's own purposes best served by working towards keeping them in a dissociative state to each other.
Your impotence at manifesting the compassion of preventing the child's approaching accident was just the result of the ego doing it's job.
Our job in a Buddhist practice is to stop feeding our own conditioned responses to all phenomena so that we can awaken from our ego's projections of it's own delusions.
There is no real "you" in there that is compassionate or not. There is only the inertia of conditioning which hinders compassion from being itself.
This is just another version of Body & mind are one.
A Buddhist practice where different versions of that same truth keep unfolding..
It is part of child development to assert ones capacity to 'be naughty'. To this day I mourn that butterfly.
You have a thousand and more forms, they live and take flight, they are stomped on by life's toddlers and tiddlers. You are not the moments, not the memories, not the attachments, the mourning or each morning.
You are.
Get get it. I think I always have.
Great post! Thanks.
It simply, and in the simplest of ways, observes. It does not analyze or interpret. It does not assess or judge. It does not see a situation as good or bad; benevolent or malevolent.
Because of that, the watcher cannot take compassionate action.
(On a side note, I must make careful distinction between Pity and Compassion. Pity feels sympathy for another's plight and pain and suffering. Compassion does something about it.
Generally Pity avoids Suffering (even another's), fearing that it is somehow contagious. Compassion understands that Suffering is a choice - whereas Pain is inevitable - and holds no fear to take action.
Therefore, Pity is passive where Compassion is active.
The Watcher, by its very nature and non-judgmental state, cannot have/express compassion.
I have never experienced the watcher taking action (although as I said earlier, I don't have alot of experience with the watcher).
The one thing that I do know of the watcher is that is sees clearly. It is the most lucid 'facet'. Although everything that I see and experience is through the 'filter' or lens that is 'me', I don't think the watcher suffers from delusions. Ultimately I think the watcher isn't a separate entity, or distinctly different aspect or facet. I think it is that rare state when you perfectly slip into Mindfulness.
Yes. That's a better way of viewing it. It shouldn't be personified. It's just a state of mind.
~
After giving this a bit of thought today, I think I understand the watcher better.
Although it manifests itself in my consciousness as a different persona, I think I personify it simply because of the alien-ness of it.
It is only a state of mind. I think, in my practice of mindfulness meditation, it is actually having "achieved" or "reached" that state. On hindsight now, I don't suppose it is what I expected. Maybe I was expecting or "looking" for something else.
The first time I stumbled across it (and was aware of it at the time) was a little over a year ago during my Taekwon-do black belt examination.
I was going through all my Tuls (patterns - similar to the Katas in Karate). These Tuls can (and do) act as a form of moving meditation (Jung-Joong-Dong).
Although the examination was a brutal test of physical and mental endurance (3-1.2 hours), I fell into this state of only being aware of the perpetual Now.
Although I was aware of the physical exhaustion and fatigue and pain, it didn't really register as such. It's difficult to explain. Words evade me. I experienced the exhaustion, fatigue and pain, but my state of mind didn't judge them as bad... or good... or as anything for that matter. I didn't suffer.
That is "the watcher". It is me entering that state of Mindfulness.
Wow. I don't think I've ever recognized it as such before.
(...sorry for rambling on guys....)