Picking Ourselves Up

When we fall down, we have a distinct choice. We can either pick ourselves up or stay down and stagnate where we are. Those are powerful options that can determine how we feel about our lives.

In my own life there are both large and small moments where I know I had fallen down. But at the same time, in large and small moments, I found ways to pick myself up off the ground, dust off and move on. And in those experiences where powerful lessons.

An example that I can reflect upon easily is the fact that from the time I was twelve years old, until I was twenty I struggled with a fairly serious drug addiction. It runs in my family. In those years as I fell down into a kind of physical and emotional distortion, each time I stopped using, I felt like things didn't get any better. As a matter of fact in certain instances it felt like things got worse.

Just stopping the alcohol and other drug use at that time was not picking myself up. It was just not using. The picking myself up as it turned out was something that might seem kind of strange to most people. It was going to a Twelve Step Fellowship and learning to live by a set of Spiritual Principles. That was mostly Abstinence, hope, surrender, honesty, openmindedness and willingness to change. The solution to the problem was not what I initially had expected, some twenty one years ago.

It was though that process of picking my myself up from active addiction that I learned a lot about myself. And instead of waiting to so-called "find myself," I learned to decide the person that I was going to be, by actively and honestly engaging in my life. It's not a spectator sport.

One last example would be "falling down" when sitting on the zafu (meditation cushion). There have been times, when I've sat and my thoughts where like a raging wild-fire. There are days where I've had so many thoughts and feelings cluttering my mind that I feel my practice is hopeless and I just wanted to give it. It seems too far, too hard, too difficult, too nonsensical. It seems like there is no "real" progress.

But then one moment, one sit or one day later I pick myself up from my disappointment. Using faith, determination and courage; and then the entire experience changes. The clouds lift and I realize that in that struggle I learned something new about myself, that I may not have noticed before or maybe just forgotten.

When we fall down, it is our responsibility whether the issue is big or small to pick ourselves up. It is in our nature. No matter what, we don't give up.

Gassho,

Jaye Morris, Curator
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