Helene Melancon
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Jen, a painful experience at 16 that you relate with great acuity.
« To a certain extent, we are who we are because of what we’ve lived. We can leave the past behind, heal from trauma, and everything else, but pieces of us are going to be imprinted with our experiences »…
I feel what you’re saying here talks about the sacred importance of acknowledging and remembering this in those we meet and, equally of importance, in ourselves, which is an arduous part to walk with sometimes. It talks about that tenderness in us that arises in the process, where, I agree, there can be a quality of the sublime . It creates a connection on a level that is difficult to describe with words. Thank you for sharing this <3.My deepest sympathies for the loss of your beloved “mum”.
You wrote « I have healed my depression now, not that I don’t get sad, but I don’t get lost in the sadness anymore. » It is a turn to recognize that change, the presence of that nuance in us.
I am touched by your words and the light they offer me. Thank you Dominic.Dear Betsy, thank you for highlighting your connection to others who, like you, feel alone. And in sharing this, your resilience in regaining joy and independence is palpable. You also wrote: “I still feel a loss”. I join you. I still feel loss in my life. I’ve come to realize that, after years, it’s no longer a matter of non-acceptance or lingering sadness. I’m thinking now of this quote I read earlier this week before meditating: “What is impermanent attracts compassion. That which is not brings wisdom”. – Stephen Levine
I’m sure there are many ways to perceive what he means by “that which is not”(impermanent). One that I like to tell myself is that the losses I’ve had are permanent, but that they bring me a certain wisdom: yes, I still feel these losses, and that’s why they remind me to be more attentive to my life, asking myself what’s really important to me in the moment and what deserves my attention. It always depends on our own story, but I find that this way of looking at things gives me a strength from the experiences of loss I’ve encountered.Kate, I was deeply moved to read your post. The relocation, the loss of landmarks, the absence and lack of loved ones.
“Based on what I had experienced in my family, I thought adults didn’t feel strong emotions. I was feeling sad and angry and fearful.” Thank you for sharing that Kate. It really resonated with me, when I was young I didn’t know what to do with strong emotions because most of the time they were prohibited within my close family.
Like you, I have found nourishment and understanding in the power of the very first meditation group I stepped in. This reassurance of “Oh I am not alone and it is normal (“human”) to go through this”. The pivot you describe in seeing the resource rather than the lack is quite helpful. And your ending, “I was born in North Carolina”, took me by surprise ! What a flash of insight.Hi Karen,
I feel how hard it must have been to be betrayed like that.
What’s more, it must have been so hard to be swept away from a job that was dear to you and where you had put all that energy. Painful to give up.
To read you describe your emotions – the indignation, the rage, the despair – and the mileage you’ve put on these trails while recognizing them as human turbulences being present in others and in you, struck me as a very clear vision of your compassion in action.
It certainly took a lot of strength on your part to let go, in order to start all over again somewhere else. Hats off to you.A broken house, a soulmate, a child.
My life is in good shape. Busy with work, friends, a house, a family. I am so young and unconcerned. Then comes the result I’d been waiting for: impossible to have a second child. The shutters of my heart close.
In the house, the wind blows through my flags of rage, emptiness, of not enoughness. Nothing else I know of but freeze and cry.
After numerous mornings, this word comes to the surface: “Non-avoidance”. What is already there lives. I observe myself trying to push the wall behind me. This leads to incursions to listen to how my body reacts, to feel the sincerity of my suffering, to let it be, as scary as it is. Little by little I become a soul companion to myself. It is a totally new way to relate to who I am. Up until then, difficulty has hit others closest to me, but this is the first time it hits me directly under the skin.
With time and help, I remembered my need to love, and to be loved. I remembered that it’s never too late for what is really important to us. That nothing mattered more than this defining need to expand my family. And that for it to exist I owed complete allegiance and reverence to the amplitude of what my heart was capable of.“Intelligence is the strength, solitary, to extract from the chaos of one’s own life the handful of light sufficient to brighten a little further than oneself, towards the other out there, like us lost in the dark”. Christian Bobin
After a year of contemplation, we decided to adopt.
I crossed gigantic waters and secret valleys to reach her. When I approached her, she was almost 400 days old. I was dazzled by the sunshine powder in her eyes.Now that this story is behind, I feel so grateful and in awe of how far we’ve come. What keeps filtering through is abundant. I see that by allowing how I felt I gained energy to stretch beyond what I was enduring. I learned that a potent form of love I touched is how to communicate with myself and others.
This experience made me very porous to the pain of others.
I felt compassion for all children, abandoned or otherwise, their invisible parents, those who would like to but can’t have any for so many reasons, all the others who are looking for or have lost their own.
I understand that no one is exempt from pain.
Again and again, I continue to learn from compassion how to show up for others.Since then in my house, the wind has taken its leave.
And when I hear my daughter giggling, I remember that she has brought back here a peace that has nothing to do with immobility !Kate, I appreciate so much the details and stories of your family lineage, Buddhist lineage, quads lineage. For me details and stories contain the salt and sugar of life!
I learn a lot from reading your essay, like ‘this is a wonderful practice session, I’ve never seen this one before.’
Like the archer’s arrow, this sentence points directly toward cultivate the wonder of being curious about life. Ahhhhhh…Thank you <3How beautiful the words of this song are, David, and how powerful it is for you to follow in their footsteps.
There is an affinity of heart, intelligence, spirit and courage in the odyssey of these human beings.
Here’s something to think about on my next walks to see if there’s a song that pops up in my memory that speaks of those with whom I feel a deep connection.
Thank you David for sharing this inspiring example.
Thank you Betsy for explaining that you touch your shoulder when you ask for blessings. I love the physical gesture. You mentioned this in our breakout group, and I tried it this week. It helped me practice while feeling the support of my lineage.
And also your flexibility to add those you feel closer to that day, or to include them all. I will try that as well 🙂To Donald.
With your transmission of the teachings in a setting of clarity and dedicated presence, I captured something of its source of light and I felt the desire to continue moving into the Dharma. You spoke to the wise and the fool in me, the impassible and the daring, the thirsty and the independent. You continue to animate, to breathe life into my search in the fertile furrow of the Way.
I honour your rigour and your sharpness.To the Ocean.
My sanctuary. You talk to me.
Of breath, receding from the shore and embracing it again.
Sometimes unnoticed. Sometimes the waves swelling. Sometimes the fury.
Deep waters, frightening yet compelling.
You talk to me. Of generosity, the treasures you offer in your belly and on the salty sands.
With you I learn to yield. To flow. To buoy. To give rhythm to my life’s movements.
I honour the force that makes life pulse within you.To Christian and Richard.
You both write about the beauty and greatness of paying attention to the little things in life, of humility, of the tenderness of flowers and the spirit of birds. I recognize in you the song of my mother, of my aunts Alice and Rolande, of my beloved grand-mother Blanche, through which I understood the message of never agreeing to stop being amazed.
I honour the finesse of your words.In you all, there is nothing that separates me from myself, from being myself.
From you all, there is nothing I hear that separates me from a reality I sense. You are part of my lineage and I am thankful. I arrive and I sit with you. We are together. I listen. I feel surrounded. I feel brave. A ship’s mast. In the nest of my heart you are.
Each morning you re-enchant my practice.
You help me part a curtain on the Unknown.
I ask for your protection and the peace for all beings.
May I continue to follow in your wake.“I don’t know the word for it, that space between seconds, but I’ve come to understand for myself that it’s the punctuation of my life. Between each word, each thought, each moment is where the truth of things lies. The more intent I am on hearing it, seeing it, feeling it, incorporating it, the more precise the degree to which I’m focused on my life and the act of living. I want to dive into those small bits of silence. They contain the ocean of my being and our togetherness. So if I don’t respond quickly, excuse me. I’m busy allowing the surf of consciousness to break over me so that I can stand on the coast of our unity and be more.”
Richard WagameseThank you for your reply on highlighting the profound transformation that happens when redefining our suffering and becoming aware of its multiple layers: the suffering due to an experience that happens and the suffering of desperately trying to force its course.
And you developed this with elegance in your essay, thank you for having embraced the 1st and 2nd Noble Truths through your own personal journey of divorce. It really helped me to further deepen them.
Hello Dominique,
Your illustration of the 1st and 2nd Noble Truths resonates with me and brings me a lot.
This passage:
“We will die, people we love will die, people will leave, moment to moment things will not stay the same or the way we want them to be. That is the way it is.”
Even though I have been walking around with these reflections on reality most of this week in my pockets, I have tears reading it from you.How moving it is to learn about this major loss of your beloved mother, your “rock”. I can so feel the imbalance and disorientation you share.
The break with a loved one is so so difficult. We are human beings who feel life physically!You write at the end: “I still have my mum with me in my heart and my mind, her energy lives on through me. She is gone and not gone at the same time.” The gift of this invisible bond you describe with her is a reminder for me that it develops and strengthens in us with awareness of our attachment, of non-acceptance, and the process of letting go. Thank you.
How touched I feel at the way we all so beautifully hold each other here.
Kelly, thank you. You shared very directly your struggle with this reading. It is said honestly and clearly. I felt less alone. It’s true it is a very dense text, and I especially had trouble with all its multiple ramifications. I smiled and recognized myself in your description of the lists, scratching my head. It was inspiring to see your capacity to put your finger on your expectation to understand, and to follow unequivocally how you felt in that moment, which led you to the part that was key for you and meaningful. Thank you for voicing this sincere point of view. In its own way, it helped me.
I choose to tell you a story, a very personal illustration of the Noble Truth of the Cause of Suffering.
“Tilopa instructs his disciple Naropa: «Appearances (of phenomena) do not bind you (to samsara) but attachment (to them) does. So, Naropa, cut off attachment».”
(from The Buddha’s Noble First Teaching by Tulku Thondup Rinpoche)Once upon a time … the sudden loss of my youngest sister. She was coming back home. Everything burned. She was 19, I was 26. She was the closest human being I had on the planet. Nothing to hold on to. Nothing inside me. Just. The. Nothingness. It broke the only Order I knew of when I was a tiny person : we die old and go to the sky. How? kept asking my 4 year old self. No answer. I figured people were elevated to the church steeple from where a trampoline sent them high in the stratosphere. At 26, I knew nothing of death. I was wearing her socks. Walking on the street I would recognize her from the back and in a flash, the impulse to run into her arms. I was dizzy. I was looking for her everywhere. All I could find were tangible companions : my sadness, my anger. I fed them. They turned into heavy canes and me, a limping animal. What else could I do? I did not give up my inability to swallow her passing away. Engulfed by the fear that surrendering, I would lose her again. One night I started to write to her. No longer in a field of thick thistles, on the white scene of the page she and I had a space. I loosened the jaws around my heart. A tipping point. I was mending a piece in the hole of the irrevocable.
Beyond the fact that I could not escape the reality that she was no longer here, and with my certainty that I was nothing without her, for years I missed her. No adjuvant to modify the past. Blinded and at the mercy of the hold that these muscular ideas of wanting her back had over me. I didn’t know how to go forward.But far be it from me to wallow here in the fading colours of the past.
The Noble Truth of the Cause of Suffering tells us suffering has an origin. We don’t want what we have, and we want what we don’t have. This impetuous need and not wanting to let it go causes a lot of suffering. An inner battle of the ups and downs in life, resisting the changes in our lives, it translates in many ways, as being fearful, angry, confused, jealous, disenchanted.
The loss of Kateri was a secret gateway to the spiritual path. To meditation. I entered through a door that was showing me a different trajectory to apprehend life. Such as Impermanence: a balm to my perplexity, my ignorance; a joy to uncover it lives everywhere and it is universal. Gently taming its existence, change in all its forms. Even though it entails a loss, is it always synonymous with “bad” ? The seed, the day, the seasons, us. I am grateful to the teachers I met, to their teachers, to the lineage whom I hear these teachings from.For a long time I wanted to be an airplane pilot. My heart kept nudging me elsewhere. Still, I think I became one. This story is my True North. Like a beacon, in the direction of the Refuge of the Buddha, the Dharma, the Sangha, I found solace. I found a sky to drop my suitcases of conflicts and emotions. I start with unpacking my thoughts. A sky in which, with non stop work of practice, recognizing where the turmoil comes from, approaching letting go. A sky to trace lines of love, of compassion in my life and the lives of others.
And I found a deep connection where to tend to the Infinite.I love poems so much, I’m delighted you shared yours here.
Instead of trying to translate nor understand, I let my heart be immersed and read it aloud slowly. Suddenly I felt the rhythm, the flow, the images.The way you illustrate the vastness of the ocean took my breath away :
“You are the ocean.
I am noting the receding echoes.
Me, I am occupying the monotonous shore.”And I didn’t know this poem of Rumi. What a gift.
Thank you Donna.