Sharing to encourage. I am somewhat beginning to intentionally work with this specific framework, so I have a long way to go, but a few years ago, I used to have panic attacks a lot. Couldn’t go to work sometimes, etc.
Excluding many details here, but one night, as an attack began, my intuition said to be one with it. So I let go and let the panic be the panic, but I just watched it, without the usual letting it control me. It’s a fine line, but I was one with it while also knowing it wasn’t me.
Anyways. What normally took hours, took only an hour, maybe a bit more. The next night it happened again. This time it subsided in thirty minutes. The next night, it was five. The next night… well, I’ve never had a panic attack since.
I have other stuff I need to deal with, but I owe the dharma, the lineage and practice gratitude for that!
Amazing testimonial, Jesse. Thanks for sharing your experience. I experienced incredible panic from my teen years though to my early twenties and these embodiment-focused methods really helped reframe panic as just intense sensation.
There is a practice in the Christian tradition called Lectio Divina, or "divine reading." The focus of the practice is on reading scripture or other spiritual teachings as part of a living—and potentially transformative—conversation. One often reads a particular passage multiple times to keep the conversation going.
This is all to say: my most consistent spiritual practices are Christian...I've been walking around with a physical print out of this post in my bag for several months...I keep re-reading it and underlining different parts and drawing designs around my favorite bits...the micro-practices suggested are quite powerful in the midst of a full life...there is just so much richness here. Thank you. Thank you for the good conversation.
I find this whole framing incredibly liberating. That XYZ is something ABC does. Even dying is something bodies do. When I say this in my head, I feel immensely relaxed.
This points to how good we are at grasping and narrowing, but at the same time how fragile it actually is. The moment you generalize, trying and failing is something people do, suddenly the grasping weakens significantly, at least for me.
Anxiety as a reaction to openness is also nice. This reminds me of my notes from a retreat:
"""
The message of Mahamudra: Our nature is a clear, spacious ground of awareness. And we begin to recognize that is the nature of everything. Weather becomes splendid Dharma weather etc. The difficulty is that some parts of us cannot cope easily. We find it intolerable, in a way. A bit threatening, challenging, intense. And we respond by contraction. There is an existential side to it, which has a subtle emotional part, which is existential anxiety. Ego rebels against the existential threat of spaciousness. It shines too bright, in a way. Ego grasping, contraction. The emotional tone is the underlying uncertainty. You can experience it as the restlessness of being. Suffering of pervasion is this.
We are activated to respond. There is a natural movement in this. To relate, in order to feel I exist. We just move towards whatever. Senses as well. As long as I feel, I am here. I just need something to reaffirm. It’s often something worrying. I have something to worry about, I am good.
Sharing to encourage. I am somewhat beginning to intentionally work with this specific framework, so I have a long way to go, but a few years ago, I used to have panic attacks a lot. Couldn’t go to work sometimes, etc.
Excluding many details here, but one night, as an attack began, my intuition said to be one with it. So I let go and let the panic be the panic, but I just watched it, without the usual letting it control me. It’s a fine line, but I was one with it while also knowing it wasn’t me.
Anyways. What normally took hours, took only an hour, maybe a bit more. The next night it happened again. This time it subsided in thirty minutes. The next night, it was five. The next night… well, I’ve never had a panic attack since.
I have other stuff I need to deal with, but I owe the dharma, the lineage and practice gratitude for that!
Amazing testimonial, Jesse. Thanks for sharing your experience. I experienced incredible panic from my teen years though to my early twenties and these embodiment-focused methods really helped reframe panic as just intense sensation.
There is a practice in the Christian tradition called Lectio Divina, or "divine reading." The focus of the practice is on reading scripture or other spiritual teachings as part of a living—and potentially transformative—conversation. One often reads a particular passage multiple times to keep the conversation going.
This is all to say: my most consistent spiritual practices are Christian...I've been walking around with a physical print out of this post in my bag for several months...I keep re-reading it and underlining different parts and drawing designs around my favorite bits...the micro-practices suggested are quite powerful in the midst of a full life...there is just so much richness here. Thank you. Thank you for the good conversation.
I find this whole framing incredibly liberating. That XYZ is something ABC does. Even dying is something bodies do. When I say this in my head, I feel immensely relaxed.
This points to how good we are at grasping and narrowing, but at the same time how fragile it actually is. The moment you generalize, trying and failing is something people do, suddenly the grasping weakens significantly, at least for me.
Anxiety as a reaction to openness is also nice. This reminds me of my notes from a retreat:
"""
The message of Mahamudra: Our nature is a clear, spacious ground of awareness. And we begin to recognize that is the nature of everything. Weather becomes splendid Dharma weather etc. The difficulty is that some parts of us cannot cope easily. We find it intolerable, in a way. A bit threatening, challenging, intense. And we respond by contraction. There is an existential side to it, which has a subtle emotional part, which is existential anxiety. Ego rebels against the existential threat of spaciousness. It shines too bright, in a way. Ego grasping, contraction. The emotional tone is the underlying uncertainty. You can experience it as the restlessness of being. Suffering of pervasion is this.
We are activated to respond. There is a natural movement in this. To relate, in order to feel I exist. We just move towards whatever. Senses as well. As long as I feel, I am here. I just need something to reaffirm. It’s often something worrying. I have something to worry about, I am good.
"""