Yoga to Ease Anxiety
  • Home
  • Books
  • Class Plans, Essays
  • About Me
  • Blog

Simplicity, Patience, Compassion

3/10/2016

 
PictureLaozi, legendary author of the Tao te Ching, By Jean-Pierre Dalbéra, Paris, France - Exposition Clemenceau, le Tigre et l'Asie (MNAA-Guimet, Paris), CC BY 2.0
I have just three things to teach:
simplicity, patience, compassion.
These three are your greatest treasures.
Simple in actions and in thoughts,
you return to the source of being.
Patient with both friends and enemies,
you accord with the way things are.
Compassionate toward yourself,
you reconcile all beings in the world.

Tao te Ching, 67. Trans. Stephen Mitchell

I have been stuck in a loop. It goes like this: I find myself with a little spare time or energy, so I commit to a couple extra projects. (Extra for me is anything besides teaching and writing.) Then life happens and I find I’ve taken on too much. I “soldier” on, trying to keep my word and maintain all of my commitments.

Writing gets put to the side and, as the chaos mounts, I use teaching as my own refuge instead of maintaining that space for my students. The pressure continues to build as I deny I’m in over my head. Then, I hit the wall.

I break down, freak out, panic, cry, and, ultimately go into hiding.

In self-fabricated crisis, I drop the extra commitments like hot rocks and find breathing room. When anxiety ruled my life, I dropped everything, not just the extra. And I stayed hidden for months and years.


A few weeks or months after finding balance, I get asked to take on one more thing, then one more thing, then . . . and the cycle repeats itself.

Why do I do this? Because I want to be of service? Yes, and . . . I want to be important to people. It’s ego attachment par excellence. Freud would call it sublimation: I’m camouflaging my need for acceptance and approval with helping behaviors. And we all need these things; we all need to be needed. What I need to realize is that the work I love and feel called to do is enough.

Those actions that feel like a natural extension of my true self are enough.

The Tao te Ching is the wisdom text I turn to when I need comfort. “Tao” is a big concept referring to something like the Universal Flow. The Tao, while it can’t be completely captured in words, is described as living close to the ground, as flowing like water, as having great strength without effort.

Since I first heard it decades ago, I’ve been attracted to the Taoist concept of wu-wei. It mean, paradoxically, “inactive action” or letting actions come from a place of stillness. Nothing is contrived. All is spontaneous.

And to get there, we practice simplicity, patience, and compassion.

So, I’ve simplified. I’ve let go of projects that are not teaching or writing. I’ve removed the Facebook app from my phone. I leave my phone behind when I go places with my family.

I’m being patient and giving myself time to let the water calm and the sand settle so I can see more clearly.


And compassion? Well, for me right now that means acceptance, not berating myself for having fallen into the same pattern
again. And that might just be the hardest part.
 
I have just three things to teach:
simplicity, patience, compassion.
These three are your greatest treasures.
Simple in actions and in thoughts,
you return to the source of being.
Patient with both friends and enemies,
you accord with the way things are.
Compassionate toward yourself,
you reconcile all beings in the world.


Ruth
3/10/2016 02:02:15 pm

I love you so!
Yes, yes, & yes.
I am also doing my best to be kind to myself right now after follies & familiar patterns.
Why is it so much easier to feel compassion for everyone else?
Thank you for sharing & giving me a sigh of relief through your reminder that we all struggle with our own cycles.💕

essaytyper review link
11/30/2020 07:02:57 am

I sometimes find myself in the same situation as yours. I tend to take on a lot of projects without thinking if I will be able to finish them all. In a way, I underestimate the time and effort it will take to finish all the projects because at the time that I agreed to take on these projects, I am in a good mood. But, once I start the process of doing the said projects, there are instances where I will suddenly feel the need to procrastinate. I learned that I should take it easy and focus on finishing one project at a time instead of trying to finish everything all at once.

Stephen Mitchell
11/19/2016 10:31:09 am

Ended up here googling the last sentence of the quote found in my daily inspirational quote from Audri and Jim Lanford and seeing MY name attached to a link! Freaked out by the one comment being from Ruth as that is my mother's name! She passed away six years ago...
Also your travails mirror my own over the last year! Thanks for the insights!


Comments are closed.

    Yoga Talk

    Short thoughts applying yogic philosophy to our time on the mat and to everyday life.

    Archives

    August 2017
    July 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    May 2015

    Categories

    All
    Anxiety
    Asana
    Body Acceptance
    Brains
    Letting Go
    Love
    Modern Mystic Book Club
    Peace
    Philosophy
    Yoga Basics

    RSS Feed

Yoga to Ease Anxiety
© 2017 Amy Vaughn 
Proudly powered by Weebly