Emotionally Available

Emotional availability is a simple principle or notion, but can be very difficult to follow through on. I can tell you how many times that I've been in a situation where I just "showed-up," physically but not emotionally or psychologically. I, myself have made it a point to look for those moments when I do that and make an effort to do something about it.

The perfect example that I can give is my brother. I some times joke that, "we are brothers by birth, but not brothers in Mind." If you could visualize a "Ying/Yang" symbol, that would be the perfect image of us. And despite the differences in personality, focus, affinities, we are still connected - even if it's by a thread.

When I focus on differences, I influence myself to not show-up emotionally. If I saw him, it would be incredibly easy for me to just turn around and walk the other way. But given that Zen practice is about so-called, "Unification," going the other way is not really a satisfactory solution. I have to look for the similarities, the things that I can appreciate.

Locating things to appreciate is again something that is simple, yet can be difficult. The point of difficultly means being able to enter a "neutral" space, and move past whatever thoughts are encouraging mental resistance. Put another way, it could be feelings of being slighted in the past, hurt feelings, low self-esteem and other mental obstructions.

In the process of practicing Zazen, it has provided me the opportunity to cut though the obstructions that I mentioned above. Zazen enables me to not take things so personally, to be "okay" with myself as I am. As Shunryu Suzuki, Dai Osho once said, "Zen is a good house cleaning for the Mind." It really can help us to remove the mental and emotional clutter and in doing so, the natural side effect is that we are emotionally available.

The benefits of being emotionally available are tremendous. We become so much more our truer self. The connections that once seemed "thread-like," can become far stronger like the cables of s suspension bridge. Just the fact of not having to carry that emotional baggage in and of itself makes Zazen worth. And despite this, there is so much more.

Namaste'

Jaye Morris, Curator
digitalZENDO