This was our classroom

As the EQ and Buddhism retreat dug deeper we learnt different meditations to help turn our reactions into appropriate responses, by cultivating time, and space, and self awareness.  To have self awareness of those button pushers, with time we can master them, if we are motivated to do so.  Clive talked about habits a lot: one of my favourite topics.   As physiological systems, being able to cultivate habits is both our greatest strength, and our greatest weakness.  They help us learn things quickly, but also help us take on unskillful things we later struggle to get rid of.

“Anything that takes us out of our habits is good,” Clive said nodding his head.  You could see every cell in his body emanating agreement.  Ultimately habits are reactive as they use pre-paved pathways which are normally filters, conditioned responses, deep seated beliefs, which aren’t necessarily real.  But if we are out of our habits, we can respond instead of react.

Suffering can become a habit and just like giving up smoking we can give up suffering.  This reminds me of one of my favourite quotes “some people are content to suffer.” But first we need to realize we are, realize we can change and then be motivated to do so.

“When we are lost in thought, in our habitual mode, we have left ourselves.  We are not there.” – Zencast