Day Seven

I am beset by thoughts of the past. I remember Jack Kornfield saying that meditation is not a place to practice psychotherapy, yet I try to gain some insight so that I can return to concentration. Perhaps it is better to be very very firm and come back to the stone, but I am wrestling with unpleasant feelings, and have no gentle return yet. These feelings, of anger and regret have something to say and that is why they are there. I don't want them but there they are. The notion that I am not the ego seems only a notion and incomplete when dealing with feeling. I reflect that my feelings are resultant from some combination of the idea of me in contact with others. I am not separate; and so there must be a broad consideration of issues.

The stone is a refuge from entanglement, a base from which there is a freedom to move my attention about, to not be overidentified with me and my feelings. The Serenity Prayer comes to mind; what can I change about the past? What can I let go of? How do I move forward when something heavy is still carried? I experience letting go as the opposite of moving away from. In that acceptance, regrets become so many little stone monuments, some noble, some ugly, pretty when covered with grass, harmless and helpful in the cemetary of the past near my home.