My chihuahua, Max, is pretty high-strung. He’s never quite sure what he wants. He’s a picky eater, turning his nose up at food most of the time it’s offered him, but if the kitten comes near his bowl, watch out, here come the snarls. If he’s let outside, he stands at the door for ten minutes before he’ll finally saunter to a shady place to relax. And forget about snuggling. He wants to, but if you move an inch or pet him the wrong way, he’ll bolt.
They say pets mirror their owner’s personalities, but I promise you I’m not this way. I am Max’s fourth mother; I think most of his habits were adopted in his first home, when he lived with a toddler. In some ways, though, I think we have indecisiveness in common. We both have a hard time living in the present moment, enjoying it for what it is, rather than thinking about what’s to come or what has come already. But where Max is cantankerous and surly, I tend to be complacent and to “play it safe,” seeking to avoid conflict.
So I’m reading Pema Chodron’s book, Taking the Leap, along with David Richo’s Shadow Dance, hoping to glean some advice on how to live more authentically. These books have in common the teaching that a heightened awareness of negativity — that in others and in ourselves, can help us avoid getting stuck in it. They both point out that negativity is a response to fear, and that the only way to break the fear –> negativity cycle is to experience the fear, recognize it, live with it without avoiding it, and train yourself to react to it in new, sometimes counterintuitive ways.
For Chodron, the new ways are natural intelligence, natural warmth, and natural openness. It is fear that rankles our threatened egos, that makes us hesitate to do what we want, that coaxes us to avoid people and situations that make us uneasy, that entices us to hold grudges, and all these reactions to fear are triggered by shenpa, a Tibetan term meaning “attachment.” The first step, then, in denying our shenpa these self-destructive, indulgent reactions, Chodron says, is simply to recognize the times when it flares up and to choose to react differently. The more conscious we are of our decisions and reactions, the more natural it will become to react compassionately.
Richo’s focus is similar, but in Shadow Dance he takes the concept of embracing fear a step further. Our “shadow” is those things about ourselves that we don’t like or hope others won’t see, but it’s also those parts of us that are desirable but that we’re afraid to explore — cause they’re a smidge taboo or we’re just too fearful we’ll fail at them. The goal is to embrace the shadow parts of us so that we can begin to think clearly about what we truly want rather than what we think is expected of us. Being “all things to all men” may help us avoid conflict, but is it really helping us be true to ourselves?
In both of Yann Martel‘s well-received novels, there is a main character struggling to make sense of a traumatic time in their lives. Both use the personalities of animals to help them, for as “Henry/Yann” explains in Beatrice and Virgil:
The use of animals in his novel…was for reasons of craft rather than of sentiment. Speaking before his tribe, naked, he was only human and therefore possibly — likely — surely — a liar. But dressed in furs and feathers, he became a shaman and spoke a greater truth.
I’m looking forward to finishing Chodron’s and Richo’s books and leaving Max in my dust. He’s a cutie but he’s got issues, and I don’t want to start nipping at people when I’m faced with an uncomfortable situation.
Check out John’s blog on Pema Chodron’s Taking the Leap
Check out John’s blog on David Richo’s The Five Things We Cannot Change
Leo Tolsoy: Anna Karenina
