#520 – Where do you go for refuge when life feels unbearable?

In the Buddhist tradition, only three refuges provide true liberation from suffering:

• Buddha––awareness, presence
• Dharma––truth
• Sangha––love, spiritual community

In modern life, though, whenever reality doesn't meet our expectations, we tend to look elsewhere for relief.

Listening to this Tara Brach talk yesterday, I realized my Ego has often pushed me into the following forms of "false refuge:"

• Striving for perfection: wanting to be the "perfect mother," vegan long-distance runner, meditation student...
• Planning for the perfect outcomes in the future
• Receiving external validation––a high salary, many likes on my posts, accolades for my accomplishments...
• Maintaining my weight under a certain (arbitrary) number
• Feeling victimized by circumstances––a judge and a prosecutor who refused to see the truth, a medical board that dismissed my allegations, a doctor who ignored my "no"
• Blaming circumstances and others for my "lack of success"
• Feeling victimized by and blaming myself for my "lack of success"

While engaging in these behaviors seemed to appease me, it was a short-lived peace. I could only feel okay while in the act of blaming, or seeing a certain number on my bathroom scale.

Of course, that's a false peace, because those thoughts change nothing in my reality. My life stay exactly as difficult (or easy) at one weight or another; blaming or not blaming; being perfect or imperfect.

Why do I do it, then? Because my Ego, in its small-mindedness, believes that overwhelm and lack of peace come from the outside, and therefore, the "cure" is out there.

It doesn't know that I, as the owner of my experience, craft it from the inside.

What "false refuge" will you stop going into, to find true freedom in yourself?

Love,

Carolina