"From Separation to Wholeness" this Sunday with Jean Haley

Dear Community,

Sunday 10am Community Practice & Discussion with Jean Haley: "From Separation to Wholeness"

From Jean: Last week we explored the possibility of meeting whatever arises in our minds with responsiveness and attunement, rather than judgment and aversion.  This is what Mark Epstein, in his book The Trauma of Everyday Life, calls “making our minds like that of a mother.”   

When we can hold our moment-to-moment experience with a mind like a mother, we are better able to see how we create suffering. One of the things we might notice is how we create narratives about what we are experiencing, making it about “me” and separating ourselves from others.   

Ajahn Sucitto calls this the process of “differentiation” in which we objectify others and react with desire or aversion.  It agitates the heart/mind and stands in the way of peace – our own and others.   In his article Healing the Cracks, Sucitto provides a detailed description of how this happens.

He suggests that rather than blame ourselves for this human tendency to differentiate ourselves from others, we might just make space for it and meet whatever arises in our minds with empathy.  

Can the differentiation process . .  . be handled with some care, as part of what we have to live with?   Could we not get overwhelmed, and integrate rather than disintegrate?  What could do this? 

In a word, relationship is the key.  With awareness, we can integrate differentiated experience.  We can relate to it with grounded empathy:  to feel and not be shaken.

We don’t have to know who we are, or who someone else is.  To end suffering, we need to relate to what arises empathically.  Such empathy is a gift to our hearts, all living beings and ourselves; and we can cultivate this.

Please join us on Sunday to explore the process of differentiation – the process of making “me” and “you”, “us” and “them”, “this” and “that” – and how we can get free. Registration and Zoom information available here.

With metta (loving-kindness),
Minneapolis Insight

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