Tracy Cochran

May All Beings Be Free

Happy Interdependence Day!

What if our true freedom consists in opening to an experience of our connection with life? For a short time every day, usually in the morning, after meditating, I spend a little time practicing as if there is no separation between the attention going outwards into activity, and the attention that moves inwards towards being and oneness with what is.  Can we really experience a state of being one with everything in the midst of life?  One way to do this is to experiment with living as if we are about to die.  Whatever we are doing–walking, talking, eating, do it as if you are doing it for the last time.  Abandon all hope of escape from the bare truth of your life. Allow it to be just what it is, mysterious, unsolved. Abandon all striving for it to be different than it is.  For a short time, forget that you ever had a head full of ideas and a heart full of aspirations and anguish about what could be better.  Just walk (or whatever you are doing) bearing witness to what is, outside and inside yourself.

This little experiment can give us a glimpse of a new way of being.  Not to spoil it for you, but it can bring a new freedom–an understanding that hat we are welcome to be here in life, not just on the meditation cushion, but in all our quirky particularity.  This doesn’t mean go around throwing rocks through windows. This doesn’t mean there is no such thing as right and wrong. It means notice that all the while you are walking along, thinking about being right or wrong,  you are also part of a greater wholeness.   Notice that creation plays itself out in our lives ,  outside and also inside.  So much is happening!  Everything is a gift.  Notice as you shift to listening and seeing that there is an expansive awareness in us that can receive life this way.

Notice that this awareness is free.

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Tracy Cochran

Responses

  1. Liz Avatar
    Liz

    TC wrote, “I have a hunch that being receptive has to do with agreeing to fill the role you’re in…”

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    This is an interesting thought to consider. Often people use the word “accepting” but you used the word “agreeing” and you used the phrase “to fill the role you’re in.”

    There is a tremendous difference between acceptance and agreement. I have no choice but to sometimes accept the role I have been given but do I agree?

    Today, I was reading about Deng Xiaoping. He survived the Long March, fought the Japanese, only to fall out of favor during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. His own son fell out of a window while being tormented by the Red Guards and emerged from the accident a paraplegic. Yet after Mao’s death, Deng survived and rose to power.

    But here is the question: Did Deng agree to play his role or did he accept his role until circumstances changed?

    And it need not be Deng, what about Nelson Mandela: Did he agree to play his role on Robben Island or did he accept the situation?

    Of course, it need not be so dramatic. It could be the most ordinary of moments. Do I agree or accept?

    Yes, it is more empowering, I think, to agree. Agreement implies choice whereas acceptance reeks of a sort of submissive defeat. So, yes, I think you are on to something. By agreeing, we have complete control over our thoughts and senses. We are not victimized by circumstances but willing participants in the moment.

    When I started writing my response, I thought I disagreed with your statement. But after some time gnawing over the use of a word like a dog with a bone, I think you may have spoken a truly brilliant idea.

    Like Epictetus, you are encouraging a complete empowerment of the individual by demanding that no outside force can control a person. So, imagine changing that oft repeated prayer:

    God grant me the serenity
    To agree to the things I cannot change…

    Quite different…So, here is my question to the Parabola community?

    Do you agree to your role or accept what you cannot immediately change?

    Reply
  2. Margaret Pierpont Avatar
    Margaret Pierpont

    This is wonderful. I am struck by how often we are promised that something–from a skin cream to a mediation practice– will “change your life.” Why do we feel that our lives need to change? It seems we are really expressing the desire to have our lives, to be in them as they pass.

    Reply
    1. Tracy Cochran Avatar
      Tracy Cochran

      I have the same question, Margaret. Why do we feel our lives have to change. Here’s another one: Where does the desire–or maybe passion is better–come from to embrace our lives as they are. It’s always such a shock (to the conscience?) to encounter an artist or great spiritual master who does just that. As a friend mused to me recently, it seems that our lives should be…fulfilling…but they just aren’t…there are all these hindrances….

      Reply
  3. artxulan Avatar
    artxulan

    What is being spoken about here, being/Being, is quite difficult to talk about. Right away I challenge Tracy’s words “By agreeing, we have complete control over our thoughts and senses” This is total non-sense. If we could really see for a moment that we live our lives as little more than automatons we could know that we have control over nothing at all. Certainly not control of our thoughts or emotions; and even much less so of our physical movements. The body learns and does movement for us. If anyone has ever practiced the Gurdjieff Movements they will have discovered that our thoughts, our emotions and our physical movements are far from under our control.

    Lest all of this sound a bit far away from being, acceptance and agreeing I hasten to say that it is not. There is something miraculous that humans have been gifted with. I call it Attention. There are different levels of Attention. Ordinary attention by way of which we spend most of our lives can agree or accept and live under the illusion that we are ‘doing’. The real hope comes from moments when we are quiet enough to be free from this ‘spell’ and then a miracle happens. We see the truth of how we are. Thought, emotion are happening by themselves. But then the miracle is not quite over because in the moment of quiet, when Attention is present, doing is done for us. In that moment real acceptance is possible. I see the mechanical thoughts, the mechanical impulse to manifest. And because I am to some extent present, I AM a higher, finer quality of attention. I am not pulled downward into the density of my ordinary attention. How to find and stay in the Attention which is of a different density and a different world?

    When I AM a higher Attention (higher consciousnes)I can taste my being. The sound of a bird, the wind, the color of leaves of a tree, sunshine are absorbed and in some still unknown way seem to reflect the State of my Being.

    Reply
    1. Tracy Cochran Avatar
      Tracy Cochran

      I didn’t say “by agreeing, we have complete control over….” anything. That would be nonsense. I appreciate the rest of your comment. I can relate.

      Reply
  4. John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers and Friends: 70th Birthday Concert [Blu-ray] (2003) | bluerayplayers.info

    […] May All Beings Be Free […]

    Reply
  5. artxulan Avatar
    artxulan

    I apologize Tracy. I mistakenly attributed the words to you when they actually came from Liz.

    Reply

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