36"x36" Mixed media " Across The See" |
Rather than just being with whatever was I was using my experience in the world to determine something, using my emotional life as some sort of guiding compass. This underground current that I suspect stirs in all of us wants to weigh and measure and tot up a score. How am I doing? We may only notice the measuring by the feeling it leaves. It goes on at Olympic speed, mostly under the radar.
24"x24" mixed media "Travel Plans" |
In his book "The Tibetan Yogas of Dream And Sleep" Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche tells us that these emotional reactions I'm thinking about arise from "karmic traces". He says, "All moods, thoughts, emotions, mental images, perceptions, instinctive reactions are governed by the workings of karma" (karma simply meaning for every action there is a reaction). Act with anger once, the seeds of karma for future anger are sown. And ditto for everything else.
His explanation offers me information on where these "emotional" responses of mine come from, feelings that feel so puzzling sometimes. Their arising is based in past action and contains no conscious intention for how I might want to live my current or future life. In a way, if I don't consider this I am held hostage by my past (both from this life and past ones, if you care to see it that way).
So as the week wound down I realized that it was unlikely that I could cart this barometer off to a thrift store and get rid of it. But what I could do was see it for what it was, a very unreliable measuring tool that I could simply see and choose not to use as a barometer. Maybe it's more like a laugh meter or an alarm button or a kitchen timer reminding me to wake up? How about you? What's in your internal measuring chest?