Leaning in helps us recognize the discomfort that is not an obstacle blocking the way but the doorway/threshold that can open the way. It helps us attune to the reality of interdependence that is more generous than the trance of separation – from which fear and polarization arise.
Leaning in is how we bring awareness to unconscious patterns and limiting beliefs, and inquire: What is love asking here?
At this time of global change, my reflections today are inspired by the 2nd Buddhist precept: “Not to take that which isn’t given.”
*Precepts are not rules for the conceptual mind to hold in rigidity or filter through the intellect. They are devotional inquiries marking the path of liberation. The Precepts help us to dust off me-centeredness, fear, and inadequacy from our collective perception lens.
Beyond the obvious reminder not to steal (land, material, money, someone’s ideas) this precept questions the consumption of stories based in fear and delusion. In this age of collective change and disorientation, how can this precept remind us of our spiritual agency? Alongside news of bombing, corruption, and weather on crack, how does this precept advise us to stay here —anchored in embodied presence — and turn towards our disorientation rather than try to escape it through story/drama? How does leaning in together affirm collective liberation, as more people are directly impacted by the polycrisis?
Decades of Zen investigation have made me a courageous force for healing. Not courageous as in always fearless — but trusting in the soft steadfast courage that is here when I don’t turn away, despite fear. I spend a lot of time facilitating groups, guiding collective grief and shadow work, mediating conflict, and helping people heal unhealed wounds that are mirrored in the relational field.
Part of my medicine is teaching people to lean into the alchemy of healing. Whether ease or discord are present, calm or storm, as we say in Zen, THIS IS IT. What is love asking of us here? What is mine to take responsibility for, to support collective healing?
In this age of unprecedented change, leaning in is a posture of trust, acceptance, and love — expressing the both/and of, I’m uncomfortable, and I recognize my spiritual agency. I trust the rightness of being of what is unfolding and commit to grounded presence. I’m genuinely curious about what is possible when I embrace what is as part of the total, unfolding present moment.
Whether navigating an interpersonal conflict/relational complexity or navigating a crisis, conscious response begins by taking a sacred descent down into our bodies, rather than ascending up and away into stories of reactivity, panic, or fear.
Before coming to practice, I spent a lot of energy denying/diminishing difficult feelings, and turning away from emotion and shadow. Conflict avoidance was one of my survival strategies. Subconsciously, I believed discomfort/conflict could only lead to loss. At some point in practice I began to realize that:
Our feelings do not cause suffering. Denying and repressing our feelings causes suffering.
When we turn away from the sticky stuff, we push it into the unconscious, the only place it cannot heal. By leaning into difficulty with generosity and curiosity, welcoming both the light and dark of our feelings, the sensitivity, perception, attunement, and discernment of our emotional body can open naturally.
The inner landscape and the relational field are sacred laboratories for healing. Our body-mind is an instrument for remembering, metabolizing, and transmuting. Collectively, I believe we need a reminder about how to tune this intelligent instrument.
When a difficulty arises in the field, instead of turning away and trying to dismiss or escape it as quickly as possible, we can pause and invoke the curiosity of beginner’s mind.
We can descend slowly down and into our feeling bodies, welcoming both our vulnerability alongside the stability of presence/awareness.
We can rest in not knowing…. And lean into our discomfort, willing to stay present with complexity and investigate compassionately, like a Zen detective.
We can listen — within and without — not just auditory, but energetic, tactile, receptive listening. This listening is free of extraction, agenda, or judgment. It welcomes what is with compassionate neutrality — pain, anger, unsettledness, fear, our projections onto another, our feelings about the state of our world. This listening is the most subtle form of love.
As we make room to feel, our attention can soften from a fixed narrative to the agility of the heart. This is a field of embodiment and possibility beyond words and story. By feeling — our tenderness, rawness, agitation, insecurity, vulnerability — our perception can unhook from the mind’s entanglements and begin to unfurl. We can root ourselves in the fertile soil of the emergent process.
This brings us back to the second precept: Not to take that which isn’t given also asks us to take (receive) that which is given.
The second precept advises us to be with what’s here, right now, devotedly and lovingly, and to be the agent that directs our own energy/attention. It requires a lot less energy, rather than more energy, to meet reality as it is.
Shadows and delusions that have blocked humanity for ages are coming up to be healed. Systems we have relied upon are weakening at the joints. Rather than panic or feed destructive outcomes, can we stay present with what we are feeling? Can we remember that there’s nothing to gain through dramatization? Can we recognize the harm in projecting an overlay of fear and panic onto reality?
What if the discomfort in our bodies is actually revealing the edge of our known capacity, and inviting us to stretch on behalf of Life? To recognize and step through the next threshold in our liberation?
When Hurricane Helene hit, it would have been easy for me to go to stories of absolute terror and panic. My home literally crashed down on me. I nearly died. And I lost everything. The catastrophe nearly took my life and changed the region where I lived forever.
I’m a privileged human with a strong spiritual practice and supportive community. There are people experiencing unfathomably worse tragedies in our world every day, and with far less privilege. But if I had told myself, in the hours and days leading up to this unimaginable catastrophe, “The worst is about to come”... If I had spent the days before the storm watching horror movies of climate catastrophe, I do not believe I would have even been available to meet the moment from grounded presence. I would not have been able to help my neighbors through panic attacks and injuries. If I had confused preparation with fear, I don’t believe I would have survived.
While I recognized, “I may be finished here… This may be it,” that wasn’t dramatizing the situation. It was moving right into peaceful loving acceptance. Through the grace I live in day by day, I was able to feel grace holding me through catastrophe.
From grace, I could recognize that I was not alone, but supported by allies in the visible, invisible, and ancestral realm in myriad mysterious ways, as we navigated a week of being trapped on the mountain. From grace, in the year that followed, I could trust life and my ability to meet the continual challenges, by leaning in with love. The uncertainty and disorientation of losing everything suddenly have not ceased, but the willingness to stay present and lean into discomfort and not knowing with each step has fortified me.
Pause… and consider for a moment how energy-draining it is to take that which is not given, by consuming stories based in F.E.A.R (false evidence appearing real)? Whether or not you know it, the imagination is a powerful force. You feed the pattern of whatever direction you pour your energy and imagination into. When you withdraw your energy from reactive or collective imaginal stories, that energy becomes yours.
In my investigations into the second precept, I’ve learned that I can only be driven to “take something not given” if steeped in a deep story of inadequacy, isolation, or insufficiency. The stories we need to rewrite collectively must arise from wholeness and must first be re-written on the self-protective walls of our psyche, our living fascia, our collective memory field.
As we continue to meet global uncertainty and disorientation in a changing world, let’s acknowledge that we’ve got a lot of healing to do collectively. How we use our energy each day matters. What we give our attention to matters.
I find these inquires helpful guides/essential for leaning in to the discomfort of the times we face:
What supports you to lean in with love – both to life’s beauty and to discomfort? To full embrace what is given?
Setting aside fears you might carry about the next moment, tomorrow, or next year…WHAT do you appreciate immeasurably about this moment, this day, this season of your life?
When you visit the unknown future, what do you want to imagine, on behalf of consciousness? For yourself? For our collective? For beings you will never know?
What seeds are you planting through the quality of your presence? What seeds are you planting through your imagination? Are you imagining obstructions to inner stability in this life? Are you imagining World War III? Can you be more conscious of the energy that you’re supplying to the morphic (shared memory) field? Can you imagine a peaceful path of human evolution alongside The Great Unravelling?
How do you metabolize your feelings through the instrument of your body? Perhaps through meditation/contemplation? Perhaps through devotional and embodied, elemental forms of expression? What supports you to stay embodied?
As more of us are and will be impacted directly by the polycrisis, how are you showing up for others in generosity of spirit? What supports you to lean in with love – both to life’s beauty and to discomfort? To fully embrace what is given?
Generosity is perhaps our greatest ally and superpower. I offer these reflections in service to collective liberation and with the hope that we can nourish the living spirit of generosity together, through this age of accelerated change and possibility.
For those who wish to go deeper, join me on retreat, online, or join the Fierce Compassion Sangha for meditation and embodied inquiry, please visit deborahedentull.com
This is such honest writing and your words are like a candle in the dark. Thank you