Baby Bliss!

If you are a meditator then you should have or be developing the ability to let go of unhappy thoughts by steady daily practice without expectations. Meditators already know they are experiencing suffering in their own mind and they are not the one that they want to be. We must be careful when practicing because if we watch ourselves too closely, we might unexpectedly arouse unhappy feelings.

At the same time, we have made a commitment to become enlightened in order to become a benefit to all sentient beings and also because we want to change ourselves. You cannot both change and not change at the same time. The meditator makes a commitment to them self to change.

It is pretty certain that when you were a baby, you pooped in your pants. If you see the look on the face of a child while they are pooping in their pants, it is just bliss! Like that, when you were a baby, that was your stage of development. You must have had a great deal of pleasure just being who you were, the bliss pooper!

However, once you started learning, toddler you no longer felt it was appropriate to poop in your pants and your attitude toward your previous ways quickly changed. I don't have children, but I’ve been around enough to know that children will announce to anyone including guests in their strongest voice, “I don't do that anymore. That’s for babies! I’m not like that. I’m big! Now I am three!”

Like that, the meditator needs to have a safe way of saying, “I’m not like that anymore. I’m different now.” Even among friends and family…remember when you knew that you could pick a fight with your sister by saying, “Oogoo boogie” and they would get upset and cry? It was something you were good at, manipulating and teasing her. And now maybe that sister is a meditator. When you say “Oogie boogie” and she says, “That’s nice.”, you might think, “Why can't I get you going?” That is because she changed and now has choices. She could say to you, “OK, let’s pretend that I still am the way I used to be.” Or she could tell you, “I’m not like that anymore.”

Among family and friends, which one are you? Can they still get you going? Or have you changed? Or are you thinking, “My goodness, they really got me going there five minutes ago but I recovered my balance. In the future, they're not going to get me going. And this time it will no be because I put on a show of anger, deaden my feelings or force them to stop annoying me, but because I am changing.”