Is it difficult to make decisions or concentrate?

I could just be with my experience, and that left me with a deep sense of equanimity. Around this time, Cory intensified his meditation practice. When he first entered the monastery, he meditated the mandated fourteen hours a day and did so mostly in the meditation hall. Now he was meditating twenty to twenty-two hours a day, mostly in his small, dark room. He woke up at 2:30 a. One day during his final few weeks at the monastery, Cory woke up feeling unusually focused. Before he opened his eyes, he could feel every sensation running through his body like an electric current. As he slowly got out of bed, he found that he was not just moving, but observing his body move. During the morning meditation, his mind did not wander at all. Later, on his walk back to his room from breakfast, Cory stopped at a bridge and sat down at a spot overlooking a pond. I heard the mind, now quite muted, say something like, Aww . I didn't die! It seemed to be expressing disappointment. I smiled inside. The mind's thoughts were endearing. It was like listening to a precious, innocent child who had become upset over something good. At the time, at least to the mind's eye, it seemed that death had not come. That is, at least, I did not experience any departure or transition away from my physical body. I would describe what I was shown next as absolutely glorious. Everything in the room appeared very differently;

Our Unhappiness Is. We tend to connect our unhappiness with the guilt (of others. When we are codependent, unhappiness takes on a completely different role if we are feeling it in others or ourselves. In others, it is translated into an element that attracts us. We know that we can manage it, understand it, and that it would be a noble reason to be together and take care of those who suffer from it. While, if we perceive this same unhappiness within us, the result is completely different. If it is natural and necessary for us to take care of others, we experience as an unforgivable distraction the fact of taking care of ourselves. Dedicating time and energy to ourselves distracts us from what is happening in others, it distracts us from what we perceive as our main mission in life: living for others and through others. However, recognizing unhappiness in ourselves forces us to turn our attention to ourselves and we do not like that at all, but it goes beyond our will; When we feel unhappy, our whole-body folds in on itself, leaving out others to dedicate itself to its unhappiness. The trouble all began when Ludovico Sfroza, Duke of Milan, allowed French forces into Italy. In exchange for the Venetian territory, he offered to support the claims of the French over Naples (which was a separate kingdom then). Power was ceased from the Medici family in 1494 when the French, led by King Charles the Eighth stormed in with their troops. Florence was then led by a republican government. It didn't take a year, though, before good old Charlie was driven out by the Italian coalition. The great irony was that Sfroza himself joined in the league. Even so, it did not escape Machiavelli's keen observation that the French king was able to conquer Italy with almost no effort at all. For several years, Machiavelli served as a senior official in the Florentine Republic where he handled foreign relations and military undertakings. Many years later, King Louis of France worked with Pope Alexander VI and Cesare Borgia, to conquer the Romagna region. You need to understand that popes at that time were not kindly old men with bald heads who appeared in crowds and kissed babies.

On previous days, when Cory meditated at the bridge, he would feel peace and tranquillity, but nothing beyond that. But on that particular day, as Cory looked at the water, his concentration grew more and more intense, and then something remarkable happened: his sense of separation between himself and the pond vanished. Before, he always experienced himself as a distinct entity looking at the pond, another distinct entity. Now it was all oneness, non-duality, communion, he said. He felt himself surrendering to all that was around him. I saw clearly that the idea of the self--of distinction, of me, of an inner and outer--is just an illusion, he said, something created by the mind. It was like wisps of smoke from a pipe. The idea evaporates as soon as you cease to create it. When his mind stopped creating that illusion at the pond that morning, his heart burst open and a wave of compassion washed over him. When you become nothing, he explained, you realize that you are one with everything. Every thing was perfectly fresh and new. Each bit of it was very much alive. Anything that had appeared in form before still maintained its outer shape and form. However, now, there was an exquisitely perfect aliveness that simultaneously revealed itself brightly within every form. To my eye, the life of each thing, its life essence, visually appeared as tiny indescribably beautiful sparks of light. This life, this light, this spark, was within everything. I experienced a state of mind-blowing awe. Somehow, I was shown that everything was made of the same incredible life sparks. Every physical thing had within it this tiny, subtle, yet incredibly powerful and vibrant life. The walls had these sparkling bits of life within them.

This, however, is a luxury that we cannot afford as codependents. The luxury of paying too much attention to ourselves sounds like the risk of losing sight of others. For this reason, our first reaction to our sadness is to diminish it. If my sadness is not so important it will be less important to deal with it and even less to resolve it. Unfortunately (or fortunately), sometimes the unhappiness that we perceive within us cries so loudly that we cannot ignore it. And here, when the volume of our unhappiness is too high, our mind starts mocking and boycotts us. Our mind distracts us from our unhappiness by turning our attention to the faults of who generated it. I am unhappy because of you, of your fault, for the malice of one or the slander of another. Said in this way it does not seem negative, indeed it seems healthy attention towards the origin of something that made us feel bad, so understanding it should help us to feel better. In the reality of the codependent person, it does not work exactly like this, the narrative that is created is much more similar to: Look what you did to me, I am unhappy because of you, for what you said, for what you did, for what you don't have done. Sure, they were extremely religious. That said, they had money. They had power, and more often than not, they abused that power. They could mobilize armies and hoist their illegitimate sons into the seat of command, pretty much like what Pope Alexander did with his son, Cesare Borgia. According to Machiavelli, you could learn a thing or two from Pope Alexander. He said that the latter's ruthlessness and dishonesty is something that could place a leader at a great advantage. If you've read the Prince, then you'll know that it's basically a article about WWCD (What Would Cesare Do). Machiavelli saw Cesare as someone who had true potential for greatness. According to him, when you consider Cesare's personal attributes and his position in life, it makes you think that he was sent by God Himself to redeem the country. After all, power was handed to him in a silver platter.

When Cory returned home to Long Island a month later, his approach to life had changed. Instead of searching for a lucrative career, Cory now wanted to help other people find relief from suffering. He began to work as a mindfulness teacher. The emotional high from the experience in Burma began to wear off, but what he learned there remained with him. Once he started teaching, for example, he found himself striving to make more money and become a great teacher. But as soon as he recognized that his ego was taking over, he surrendered his pride and focused on his students. It's easier to let go of my self-focus now, he said, because I've seen so clearly what an illusion the self is. Scientists can actually see the mystical experiences of people like Cory unfold in the brain. Andrew Newberg, a neuroscientist at Thomas Jefferson University, investigates the brain activity of devoted meditators--including Buddhists, Catholic nuns, and Sufis--to determine what exactly happens during transcendent states. In one study, he and his colleagues studied eight experienced practitioners of Tibetan Buddhist meditation using a form of brain imaging called single photon emission computed tomography, or SPECT. The furniture had the life sparks in it. The things sitting on top of the dresser sparkled the same. The life sparks seemed to be inside of the forms in which they appeared, yet they seemed independent of those forms, too. It was the first time that I became conscious of seeing the inside of something and the outside of that thing at the same time. I was awestruck. Even now, my mind has no luck in trying to comprehend the totality of this experience. It is unable to speak accurately in words about what it felt like to see this. The life sparks appeared to be physically and gloriously separated from one another by some span of space. Still, they all remained unified in essence. I wondered at it all.