Spirit Fire

by Donna Mitchell-Moniak

Most often we create our own suffering. Seeds sown in thought, word, and deed grow each day. Suffering is merely the direct result of things done and done with the sense of self at their core. “I want.” “I prefer.” “I wish.” “I hate.” “I think. “I love.” Each moment myriad of synapses fire, each predicated on one thing – ‘me’. My survival, my experience, my past, my reality, my memory, my feelings, my needs, my beliefs, my appearance, my senses, my pain, my happiness, myself.

The practice of self-reflection is revolutionary. Even more radical is the practice of self-stop. In teaching awareness over the last 20 years these two practices together with meditation have been given as tools of not just increased self-awareness but release from the designs of the self. We cannot change that which we do not know exists within us, therefore self-reflection is key. We also cannot fear that which we understand, and so, stopping the self from going down its habituated pathways of doubt, projection, manipulation, guilt, control, and pride (to name a few) bring the hidden and wily insecurities of the self, and its image of itself to the surface of recognition.

Self-reflection is a powerful tool. It is a mirror reflecting back to our mind’s eye the image that we have just projected onto someone else. For example, a person might label us “controlling”. The mirror can reflect the ways in which we seek control over our environment, others, the parts of our life, over the weather, and more. Equally the person’s words are their own mirror on control; that for them it was enough of an issue to mention it means that it is an issue in their self-made reality as well.

We are like water reflecting the moon beams at night. We reflect upon that which has sought to enter our sense of self as that which has played upon our surface, our beliefs, philosophy, truths, and that which is currently cherished or known. We might rise up in defense, in anger, or in fear feeling the waters that bring us comfort and stability to be threatened. We might retreat, succumb, or just see that someone else’s thoughts and beliefs are as cherished to them as those to oneself. They are all diamonds of light dancing on the surface of the water. But it is the surface they dance on and the night is dark. Partial understanding is the most any of us can have about anything. The mind by nature of analysis, limitation, and evidential reasoning can never know the fullness of existence, all truths, or even all possibilities.

A cultivated habit of self-reflection is the habit of no excuses, no blame. Self-reflection is a practice of seeing, feeling, owning what one is creating, harboring, nurturing, and not surrendering to Wholeness. Self-reflection, when cultivated as ceaseless and constant, is a failsafe check-back mechanism bringing us back to our self, our needs, our image of what is real, and the fear of our own falsehood.

Self-stop is more. Self-stop is an act of altruism, of compassionate wisdom. It is born of the understanding that our habits have been long in the making and have longer gone unrecognized as habits. Self-stop is empowered by the fact that our life patterns have become grooves of propensity, streaming us blind and ignorant down river ways of unmindful living, unconscious in action. Self-stop says “NO” to a habit generated only by the ‘me’ and says “YES” to Life, release, joy, and living.

We stop ourselves. We stop our mind from thinking the same thing over and over, or another equally negative thing in its place. We stop our emotions from churning the same hurt – as if we have become a person who self-mutilates, cutting open the wound that is healing. Stopping our internal drama, realizing that it is the ‘me’ that is screaming about something related to ‘me’ rivets one, pins one to the wall of the drama, and let’s one see how self-consumed we all can be.

If we are in pain stop what is giving us pain. If we are in mindless habit, stop being mindless, or stop the habit. If we are hurting others, stop. That hurt will come back, manifold and many times. And because it will come back when we do not remember the hurt that generated it, we will feel the victim, feel hurt, and cannot release ourselves from the very wheel that we set in motion.

Stop the ‘me’. The personal part of us is only a part. The lighted, illumined, spiritually mature aspect of us is more. It is the drama and loudness of the ‘me’ that is part of its strategy to hoodwink the very ‘me’ itself into the only thing it knows, being part and not being Whole.

Meditation is the tool that brings respite from what, at first, is the difficult road of self-reflection. When we stop long enough to see we are usually appalled by the quality of our life, how we live it, how we actually treat others and our self. Meditation is one of the few places of peace, honor, and gentility. Meditation becomes an invitation to the qualities of Wholeness, compassion for self and others, wisdom and understanding, as well as patience and commitment to stay the course of Wholeness. Meditation encourages union after self-reflection and self-stop have torn us apart. But some of the parts will have fallen away, or been tossed away, seen and understood as old, no longer pertinent, or just plain injurious to our self and others. Separatism and all its progeny – jealousy, anger, guilt, power, pride, arrogance, manipulation, alienation, lack of caring, inability to listen, inability to let go – can be washed away in the stream of meditative openness and grace.

We create our own suffering; either now or then, today or yesterday, present life or one long ago. Likewise, and gratefully so, we create our joy; and as we create it we create it with and for others. No one suffers alone. Misery loves company. But also, joy is not lived alone – it must go out to others, feel the lightness in others, sharing smiles like bubbles. The difficulty of self-reflection is only in the beginning, no different than learning anything new. What we become aware of within ourselves is only big because we have worked so long and hard to avoid seeing it. And the self-made drama of that first encounter with ourselves is only a dramatic experience as long as we make it one. It equally could be an intimate embrace, loving, encompassing, consoling.

Create joy. Create peace; within and in the world. To do otherwise is … not wise or fun.