I Wish To Be Free….
At Sunday Sangha yesterday I talked about a resolve I have made… an aspiration, you could call it… to which I am intentionally, repeatedly turning:
I wish to be free of this closed heart.
(I chose those words from a talk Phillip Moffitt gave at the Concentration Retreat I attended in August.) He said:
“We’re not practicing results, we’re practicing practice…. We are inclining the heart toward our deepest values.
“It can be just a slight turning of the heart. Like on an ocean liner, where the slight turning of the wheel of that big ship takes you to a whole different place.
“So the sense of the turning does not have to be dramatic because we’re setting this larger aspiration that’s not just for the immediate feeling.
“When we do that, we’ve moved the heart a little. We’ve said that this is our aspiration. We’ve confirmed that this is how we wish to be:
“I wish to be free of this closed heart.
“I may not be able to have an open heart right now. I’m not claiming that I can right now. But I can claim that it’s a value. Even though I’m not feeling the emotion of it.
“We often don’t feel our values in the moment. But we stay true to our values because our wisdom — as well as our compassion — has led us to understand that these are the appropriate values.
“So the wholesomeness of the practice, the skillful means of it, is what we’re learning, what we’re practicing.
“The results will come from all of the moments of karmic seeds of doing the practice.
“It’ll take whatever form, on whatever timetable it’s going to take. We don’t have to be responsible for that. And it’s such a relief — to not have to be responsible. We’re just attuning ourselves to our aspiration — our values — what we intend, moment-to-moment.
“We’re serious about it. We’re sincere. We’re not ‘shining ourselves on.’ But we’re not delivering. We’re not resulting.
“We’re practicing.”
***
That, I can do.