I did not make this I have no idea who did but it is getting harder to find each time I look for it, so i decided to put it here for the future. This is a great comic rendition of the Death Bardos. Taken from the Bardo Thodol.
The problem with shiny is that it’s usually sharp. When I was a young boy around Christmas I became enamored with one of the glass ornaments on the tree. It was one of those thin glass red foiled ones. I ran up and grabbed it off the tree and in my excitement, and, zeal of the moment I grasped it very tightly. The sound was really what I remember most like thin ice cracking on a lake with that high pitch “Tink” sound. The next thing I noticed was the blood, pain, and, the shattered ornament in my hand. I have the scar to this day. It cut me deep in the fleshy part of my hand. The significance of the lesson was lost on me at that young age.
As I got older there was many more shiny distraction, Beautiful people, and things in my life I destroyed by grasping too hard at them. The lessons where all lost on me then, as well. It took me many years to realize the truth of attachment, grasping, and, the suffering that it causes in our lives. It took me many years to even see, that I needed to work on balance in my life.
Finally twenty seven years into life I had broken, crushed , and destroyed just about all the shiny in my life there was no shiny left for me to grasp. I was very fortunate to have had such a great opportunity to change my relationship to life and to walk a spiritual path. I am grateful to have had such great teachers that have taught me that the root of all suffering is attachment.
One of the greatest and worst things about this samsara is that all things are impermanent and depending on my relationship to this fact, it can either be a freeing truth or a bone crushing juggernaut of suffering, It is all my choice . I have the choice to train my mind, I have the choice to live the eightfold path today. I rarely grasp tight enough to break things now ( and for this I am extremely grateful ) but grasping and attachment will always be something I have to work on, I think that may be the point who knows. What I do know is that when I am practicing equanimity, I can serve the greater good in any situation without much work on my part. The work was already put in through daily practice before the causes and conditions came together. It is through a daily meditation practice That I am able to compassionately and skillfully react to situations in my life.
Non attachment is a hard practice and I am not so sure I am any good at it but I try and each time I get a little better.
Lean into your rough edges. That has stuck with me lately, it’s kind of been a ‘theme’ if you will. In the time I have been walking my path I have had plenty of opportunities to lean into my edges; many “Buddhas in disguise” moments and many opportunities for practice. However, there have been a few rather large moments in my practice that have really encouraged me to continue on, moments where it has seemed almost effortless. Moments in my life that point to the truth that the Dharma is working and I am ripening, just as the sutas say.
One of these moments was about three years into my practice. I had gotten a call from my mother and she explained that my cousin David’s wife Debbie had passed from a brain hemorrhage (she was only in her mid 40’s), and that David was quite understandably destroyed.
Now to truly understand the story you will have to know the history behind David and I. David was one of my abusers when I was growing up, and I had a deep and undying hatred for this man for many years. This hatred extended towards Debbie as well, as she had also been one of my abusers. Lucky for me, through the process of the twelve steps and my daily Dharma practice I was able to forgive them. Although I had forgiven them, the well spring of love and well wishing was not there for them in my heart – and understandably so.
So my mother telling me this news about Debbie, and David’s obvious suffering over it had a very unexpected effect on me. My reaction surprised me as much as I think it surprised my mother, because she knew the feelings I had towards the two of them. The first words out of my mouth were “Is he ok? Is there anything I can do for him?”. The feeling of empathetic sadness for this man washed over me and I felt nothing but love and compassion for him in that moment. I truly meant what had just come out of my mouth. This healing of the heart was effortless, I had only to meditate and try to follow the dharma as best I could and naturally it was this that came about.
Another one of these times happened ten years into my practice. I had just recently moved back to the Coachella Valley (where I had grown up) to take a job that was more in line with my spiritual goals. I went to one of the Insight Community of the Desert‘s weekly meetings and dharma talk. Larry Yang was speaking and it was a good meditation session. During the dharma talk, I thought “hey, i might know someone here“, scanned the crowd, and there I saw a man who I could just barely recognize as my ex father-in-law Jim.
Getting married very young and having a child at the age of seventeen was not one of the best life choices I have ever made, and I am sure this choice did not make my wife at the time’s parents happy either. Jim was always polite to me in a cold and curt manner but he did try and help me and Anne out when we were kids.
Jim is a Buddhist, and one of the ones that made a bit of a difference in my life although not through his actions but his examples. He held a weekly sangha meeting at his house and I remember a few times hearing them chant. Something in the sounds of the chanting deeply resonated in me. I was drawn to dharma in all its forms all my life. I remember asking Jim about Buddhism and he responded by handing me a Tao Te Ching. I have that book to this day. However, it explained nothing about Buddhism. Looking back and knowing Jim the way I did, it makes perfect sense why he handed me this book when I asked about Buddhism. I don’t think I would have wasted the time explaining it to me back then either, knowing that my mind state was nowhere close to where it needed to be in order to understand the concepts of the Dharma. Giving me a book to read that was very eastern philosophical and kind of esoteric (for a seventeen year old kid who was raised in the desert and sheltered from any sort of culture such as this) was a good way to put me on a path of some sort without actually having to put the time and energy into something he felt was a lost cause.
After the ugly separation of me and my wife and some very (what I felt at the time) unskillful and hurtful actions on Jim and Sandy’s (Anne’s mother) part, I was embittered with the family. Nine years later Anne and I were in court for custody and visitation of my daughter, and Jim wrote very scathing letters to the courts as to why my character was of poor quality and why I should not be allowed to see my daughter or be in her life. This left me feeling very angry and somewhat hurt.
Knowing that resentment like this can eat away my core and even kill me. I spent a full year doing metta and forgiveness practices with Jim and Sandy as the focus. After the year passed I had fully put down the resentment and gone on with my life.
So after seven years there sits Jim and his husband Jim across from me at this dharma function in Palm Springs and all I could feel for this man when I searched my feelings was love, compassion, and, gratitude for what he had done for me when I was younger. All this with no effort on my part and no reasoning, just pure responsive metta and mudita from my heart space. The feeling was amazing and encouraging, and it is times like these that I know that all I have to do is keep walking, and I know that if I put in the work, anger, greed, and delusion will naturally fall away.
I was fortunate enough to be invited to Monroe prison for their yearly prison sangha celebration called Buddhafest.
As I sat and interacted with the inmates while watching their loud and fun antics, I was filled with great joy. The joy I felt was brought on by the fact that this was the great truth about the Dharma in action, right there in front of me. Prisons, no prisons, walls, no walls – we are all somehow trapped in this samsara. If these men can find freedom from suffering, even behind bars, and under watch of guards, then we all can find freedom from suffering right here and now, wherever we are. This is the great truth of the Dharma. We can be free from suffering no matter what.
The Buddha taught only two things: the origins of suffering, and the cessation from suffering. We don’t have to be a prisoner to our emotions. We don’t have to flitter in the wind with every mood. This is true freedom.
The path is there, well laid out for us. The eightfold path is the path to true liberation from samsara – with or without enlightenment. Simply trying to follow the path will ease suffering in our life. We are all so lucky to have not only achieved precious human birth, but to also to have had great contact with the Dharma.
It is moments like this that propel me forward on the path. I know the Dharma works. I know it can end suffering in my life. All I have to do is the work.
On the last day of retreat with Noah Levine, he had the practitioners write something about our experience. This is what I wrote.
Day 1: Man, trees are really fucking tall!
Day 2: In this moment, it’s like this.
Day 3: Wait! It took seven years of sobriety, three years of daily meditation practice, two years of therapy, and three days of intensive meditation to figure that out? Really?!!
Day 4: Am I having a heart attack?
Day 5: My body knows what to do, I should trust it.
Day 6: It will never cease to amaze me how you can come to love and appreciate twenty five people – most of whom you have never met – in the span of six days without saying a single word to them.
Right Action in the Eightfold Path is the second ethical principle. It pertains to the body as a means of expression, as it really involves the body’s actions. The idea of practicing the Five Precepts in our daily life comes back to Right View. If we have Right View, and can see the correctness of the Four Noble Truths in samsara; the Five Precepts will then come naturally. We will want to follow them, knowing that they will lessen suffering for ourselves and others we come in contact with.
The First Precept is to abstain from harming sentient beings, particularly abstaining from taking life. Suicide falls into this category, as we are no less important a sentient being as any other around us. This brings up often the question of eating meat. The Buddha and his disciples where not vegetarians – they ate what was offered to them when they went on alms rounds. If meat was put in their bowl, they ate it. The exception to this is if the animal had been killed specifically for them; they would not eat it, as the animal would have lived if it had not been sacrificed to feed them.
The Second Precept is don’t take what is not freely given. So, do not steal – but more so than that, do not manipulate others to get what you want. Do not take it if it is not yours, whether you do it by force or by guile. Manipulating others to give you something means what you received was not freely given to you. Guilt, emotional blackmail, harassment, threats – they all fall into this category. It is not just the action of physically taking something which is not yours; it is also all the actions and mindstates that lead to you getting what is not offered.
The Third Precept is to abstain from sexual misconduct. Do not hurt yourself or others with your sexual actions. Lying or leading others to believe you feel a certain way in order to bed them, cheating on a significant other, and having sexual activities with a person who is in a committed relationship are all examples of sexual misconduct. The harm done by this one act can be immeasurable; not only do we cause suffering to the significant other, but to the children and other family members as well. The ripples and impact from this action can have lasting harmful effects, all due to one selfish act. The harm we can do ourselves with sexual misconduct can be grave as well. The guilt, shame, and general self-hatred that can be kicked off by heedlessness is only the beginning of our problems. If we act with reckless abandon with our sexual energies, it can very well mean death to others and ourselves.
The Fourth Precept is to refrain from false speech. Do not lie. This idea of honesty pervades all the precepts. It goes further than just not lying; sometimes it can mean having the wisdom to know whether to speak at all. I often like to run what I am going to say through two criteria: Is it true? and Is it useful? If what I am thinking meets both of those, then I will open my mouth. Harsh speech is to be refrained from as well. As speech is our primary form of interpersonal communication, it has the capacity to be extremely harmful when we are not mindful of what and how we say things.
The Fifth Precept is to abstain from intoxicating drinks and drugs causing heedlessness. I found this one to be very important on my path. For me, when this precept was broken, I would soon break all the others due to my heedlessness. It’s impossible for me to be mindful of myself and others when I am intoxicated. Heedlessness, i.e. being unmindful, makes the practice of Right Action impossible.
Right Action is the practice of reacting compassionately and kindly to others, to be honest and respect others belongings, to keep our sexual relationships harmless to other and ourselves.
I was recently asked how I have integrated my Buddhism with an idea of a higher power. The question was hard for me to answer. I have an idea of how this works in my life, a sort of abstract feeling of how it all goes together and it works well for me. However, I could not explain it.
Having an engineering background, I am of a firm belief that if you cannot fully explain and teach something in terms others can easily understand, then you do not have a full understanding of it yourself. This has sat with me the last few days.
When I first started this path I’m on, things were so different. I was new in recovery, scared, and had no real idea of what a higher power was, or what it was to me. I had my mother’s god, the one taught to me when growing up; he was loving and caring, but a bit vengeful when the rules were not followed and there was lots of hellfire and brimstone. Having broken so many of those rules, I had very little hope this god would help me. Lucky for me, this was wrong.
As my practice in meditation and the Dharma grew stronger, I started hearing more and more about this concept of being born with Buddha nature. That is, I am and always have been complete and have all I need inside. I just have to do the work to clear away the delusion and obscurations of that true nature. This however left me with a quandary: how am I supposed to look to myself in this path, when I was taught in order to stay sober I had to look to a higher power outside of myself?
This sat heavy with me for a long while. I spoke with others in sangha about this question, and was told to sit in meditation with it and the answer would come. The more I sat with the question, the more I realized the idea of separateness from a higher power is a delusion of the dualistic mind. There is no self! My answer was in the concept of Not-Self. If there is no separation of my mind, or the guru’s mind, or the mind of enlightened ones – or even the mind of all the Buddhas who have come before – then there is no separation of me from my higher power. There is no separation between me and you, just clouded perception; only an incorrect view.
This frozen view of self, this idea of a separate ego, it’s as if my mind is an iceberg floating in the ocean. Separate but the same. One day, one lifetime, I will have purified my view enough that this iceberg will melt and merge back into the sea. The sea was a part of me the whole time, only held separate through a frozen view. The true nature of the mind will be revealed to me; no more separation, no more frozen view.
Knowing this has allowed me to have an even greater communion with my higher power. I have a clearer path to understand what my higher power’s will for me is on a daily basis. I no longer feel the need to name or make separate my higher power, for it is in everything and everyone. I stopped looking for where it is, because nowadays I can no longer find where it is not. From the person going slow in the fast lane, to H.E. Garchen Rinpoche. All precious teachers, all ways, my higher power is speaking to me, teaching me, showing me its will for me on a daily, hourly, and minutely basis.
Should I forget, should I lose skillful view, I have only to stop, close my eyes, and count my breath. When I come back to the present moment, there is my higher power waiting patiently and lovingly for me to return. It never leaves, because it’s never gone. It is in everything and everyone including me. I have only to stop, be mindful and skillful in this moment for my view to adjust and my will to align with the will of the Dharma. That is, for me, to be of maximum service to all sentient beings.
One of the things I find hardest to keep up at times is my desire to meditate. I know the joys of a daily meditation practice. I know the benefits as well. Ten years ago when I started this path it was out of a search for relief. I was newly sober my emotions where completely out of control. I had developed clinical anxiety from the amount of LSD and Alcohol I had consumed over the last twenty seven years. So the motivation to sit was strong meditation was the corner stone of my life.
If I did not sit the anxiety would be so great I would not be able to function. My morose self pity of poor me and look at my life would get out of control and I would become miserably ineffective. I would be no use to my fellow man what so ever. So in pain motivation was always there.
After many years of steady meditation practice I seem to find bright shiny things to distract me. Projects, work, women, food, Facebook, You name it I can find it. So, manic enough, I can go a week without sitting. Once again I get all out of whack and I don’t even know why until I go to sangha for the week.
As I sit in meditation with my peers it becomes overwhelmingly obvious what I was missing all week. As I sit and count my breath and bring my attention on the now. I remember again that my primary goal is to enlighten for the benefit of all beings. Now as that is a lofty goal I know it will take much work and there is no time to lose. Yet still I will get distracted by all the shiny in this samsaric existence. I forgot it’s all an Illusion. Once distracted by all the shiny it’s not long before all I can see is the shit before my Bodhicitta is so low I forget how satisfying practice just for the sake of practice can be.
I am grateful for sangha it gives me the fire to burn through the darkness and be the light. The three jewels are the most precious things I have ever been given. Buddha, Dharma, Sangha what I am starting to see is you really can’t have one without the others. Each one of them leads to the other. From the Buddha came the great teachings of the Dharma and through the Dharma the Great community I am a part of was born.
In moments of silence I find deep and stirring gratitude.
Buddha, Dharma , Sangha The three jewels and man are they the three jewels for a reason. I say this because I am often reminded of this fact. Take Sangha I started out in the Theravada school of Buddhism. It is what first made since to me. I liked this idea of shutting up sitting down and meditating to uncover and clear away the delusion from my heart. I liked the fact at least from my limited view at the time that there was not a lot of ritual in it. There was a lot of emphasis on quiet meditation and the four noble truths and the eight fold path. I had a few friends that where of the Vajrayana school. I often would go to The Sakya monastery in Seattle to meditate and do Chenrezi practice. Never really committing to being one school of Buddhism or another, To me Dharma is Dharma it all came from one source there are just many different roads to the same ends. Or so I thought time went on and I kept up with the Sakya I really enjoyed the chanting, the mantra, and the visuals to me it seemed to prepare my mind somehow make it more fertile in a way for the teachings and for my meditation.
I took refuge there with H.H. Jigdal Dagchen Sakya and continued my weekly practice of Chenrezi sometimes I would show up for a Puja, Still not putting myself all in and not really identifying with that Sangha. It was odd because if you had come to my house during that time and looked at my practice space it looked like a Tibetan monastery with thangkas brocade and bowls everywhere.
My practice at home stayed pretty steady mindfulness meditation. Then I heard about ngondro the preliminary practices of this tradition. Something about this idea resonated deeply in me. The night after I had heard about ngondro I had a dream about someone reading me the Bardo Thodol. I remember waking up with a feeling of no time to lose. I knew I had this perfect boat to help me and other beings out of the sea of Samsara and I felt as if I was wasting it.
I told my friend about all this and she got me the book on the practices of ngondro from the sakya and went over how to do them. I started them as they can take years to complete. Over the next two years I did my practices on and off with no real resolve. It was not until I made a resolve to finish my practices in a very timly manner that I started daily practices of ngondro.
Now the more practices I did habitually the more I started to see the reasoning behind them and the more the path of Vajrayana started to unfold and make since to me. The more effort I put in the more Dharma bloomed in my mind. My view was adjusting and I knew this was my Sangha this was my school. I went to a Talk by H.E. Garchen Rinpoche a man who upon sight made me realize the truth behind Guru devotion a practice which up until that point I had an aversion to, due to my incorrect view. However merely upon seeing this great man I was put in an environment that had the correct causes and conditions for that view to be corrected. He said that it is our Karma that brings us to our practice not the other way around. That is my past lives the actions and practice in them is what has shaped my mind to be the vessel for the dharma I am to carry in this lifetime. Upon hearing that I knew it was truth. There was no need to explain no examples needed I just knew it was truth when I heard it.
So even though it’s all one dharma I found at least for me some roads are better to walk then others. Some ways of teaching and preparing my mind move me more than others. This does not mean one school or tradition is better worse or indifferent than any other it just means that my cup seems to hold this one better than others.
I have been given a great opportunity I have achieved precious human birth I have encountered the dharma I have access to not just one great teacher but three and I have a Sakya linage monastery not more than 20 minutes away from me. I am very grateful that I get to practice this profound path for the benefit of all beings.
In the ten years I have really been a committed practitioner of the dharma. I say it like this because most of my life I have been a Pseudo follower of the dharma but never really wanted to give up any of my shiny Samsaric Distractions drugs, sex, and alcohol you name it I liked it and wanted to keep it. So ten years ago I was at the end of my rope. I had truly hit bottom my life looked very close to a demilitarize zone and there was a lot of suffering. I had a moment of clarity where I saw things as they really where and I decide to make a change. I got sober.
Sobriety presented me with a new challenge I had to come to believe that there was something out there greater than me then I had to allow this conception of a higher power to guide my life. This was no small feat but with the help of guys who had done it before me and step work this came. At first I used my mother’s conception of a higher power as it was what I was raised with. Then it started to evolve into what it is today.
One of the things I had to do was pray and meditate. I remember the first Time I meditated I sat for about 3 mins it seemed like a life time my head was so loud it scared me and I was crawling out of my own skin. I decided then that prayer was enough and I needed not look to meditation too much. My karma had other ideas. The damage I had done to my brain through years of abuse had caused me to have clinical anxiety. That is I would have crippling anxiety attacks, to the point of complete disassociation and being in full flight or fight mode for no reason. This would happen three to four times a week and would last up to two hours. Sometimes a slow build all day then bang full blown attack sometimes just out of nowhere boom cold, sweat dry throat, fear and knowing I was going to die fearing it to my core. Making up all kinds of stories and reasons why this was going to happen. I would often fixate on death dying, what happens after, will it hurt, you name it. Anything that was completely out of my control and needed a level of acceptance, a level of acceptance I did not at the time have.
I went a doctor and he suggested I take a benzodiazepine this solution was completely unacceptable to me. I knew me far to well and I knew if I started taking a pill to cure my problems and change my perception it would only be a matter of time before I was drinking and using drugs again. He offered me the prescription and I told him no thanks. It was a hard decision to make the attacks seemed like they were destroying my life. I despaired about it for a while but came to the resolve that crippling anxiety attacks four times a week was still better than the horror and pain my life was before I got sober. I was not about to jeopardize my sobriety for any amount of “easy road”.
On one such occasion I was walking to my apartment and it hit me out of nowhere it was one of the strongest attacks I have had even to this day. The terror that filled me was unbearable I thought my heart was going to explode. My mind ran rampant with thoughts of death and dying and I knew this was it. I did the only thing I could think of in the moment. I had presence of mind enough to know that if I did not die here, this was going to end. So I sat down, closed my eyes, started to breath, and counted my breath it was a technique my friend Fa Jun had talked about at a coffee shop years before. As I sat there counting my breath the story in my head slowed and I started to notice that the attack albeit was not gone but somehow more manageable. Now I was just dealing with what was, my heart was racing, I was in a cold sweat, and I felt as if my throat was in the desert. However the story I was creating about all this physical phenomena was gone and that took most of the power away. I got up and looked at my watch it had only taken ten minutes to halt the attack to a point where I could walk and manage my life. By the time I made it to my apartment about five minutes later it was over and gone like a dream.
It was then I realized the immense benefit of meditation in my life. I started a daily meditation practice as best I could. I would close my eyes and count my breath in the morning sun while I filled the pools at the apartment complex I worked at. If I had an anxiety attack I would go sit down and meditate. This went on for many years prayer and meditation had become a cornerstone of my life. After three years I rarely had an attack and if I did it was easily managed once I identified it I knew what to do.
At three years sober I was able to locate my daughter and moved to Washington to be closer to her. This in itself is a whole story I will write about later. Once I moved to Washington I had left my entire support group in AA all the guys I had gotten sober with All the people that knew me I left it all to come out to Washington and be a dad.
Now at the time I had no worries about this because I knew all I had to do was go to meetings out here and find a new support group. No problem right? Well funny thing about attachment and the mind it seemed to me like they just did not do AA right out here. The meetings to me where horrid no one wanted to talk to me or even seemed to care one way or the other if I was new and needing a support group. I would share I am new and have expectations that someone would invite me to at least fellowship after the meeting and no one did. Looking back now I realize that I forget I am a six foot four two hundred and twenty pound man with a bald head and covered in tattoos. I am not the most approachable if you don’t know me. Plus with the problems I was having at home with my girlfriend at the time, that had moved from California to wa with me. I was finding it increasingly harder to go to the same meeting with any type of frequency to actually have people get to know me. So I did what any good Alcoholic does I copped resentment and stopped going to meetings for almost a year.
I still continued to pray and meditate, I still continued to read out of my book but this was not enough. I eventually got so miserable I started begrudgingly going back to meetings. It was not the same I did not like it but I got a sponsor and worked my steps again but something was missing. After about A year I was still miserable and unfulfilled I was doing everything I knew how to do and nothing was working. I knew drinking would not solve anything but I did not know what else would. I was once again at a spiritual bottom this time in sobriety. I was scared and in a lot of pain but this time I could not think of a way out.
One day I got a call from a friend and he told me a spiritual teacher I had great respect for was going to be in town doing a day long and a dharma talk and I should go. So I did I went to the Dharma talk and listened to Noah Levine speak of the Dharma and of a way out of suffering. It was all stuff I had heard before I knew of the four noble truths, I knew of the eightfold path I read a lot about the dharma and studied a lot in my search for a stronger meditation practice. This time however it really clicked and for the second time in my life I knew what I had to do. Bill Wilson stated in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous that if we did not continue to expand our spiritual practice we would drink. That’s what I had forgot to do expand my spiritual practice
The next day I sat with Noah at a daylong in Seattle it was painful to sit that long but I did it. We would sit thirty minutes and walk thirty minutes. Somewhere in all of this I had a huge revelation a feeling of this is what I need to do washed over me. Almost as if I had remembered what I was supposed to do with my life. It all seemed so natural and easy even the pain was just that, pain. It was what it was. Nothing was wrong it just was. In my life, in my practice, in AA, in my relationship, it was not wrong it just was. I had been labeling everything good bad or indifferent so long I was once again making a prison for myself with my own interoperations of event that where just happening.
After that day I threw myself in to spiritual practice with great zeal and somewhat of reckless abandon. I joined a weekly meditation group in Tacoma and did everything I could to help and make sure it stayed alive. I started meditating and going to a WAT that was out here I even started going to more meetings and actually bringing something to them instead of taking or having expectations of what I thought the meeting should be doing for me.
For the most part my life improved greatly. Internally I was feeling better I was growing spiritually and beginning to understand my purpose here in samsara. However my partner she was not feeling the spiritual wave. I tried everything I could to integrate her with my spiritual practice offered to bring her to the WAT to the Sakya an AA meeting anything I tried to get her to meditate with me, to no avail however. This simply was not her path and she did not like the idea of it taking my time from her. she already had to share my time with my daughter , work and AA this seemed to be the last straw and she would not have it.
Over the next two years my spiritual practice grew and my relationship declined very badly. Instead of dealing with this fact I chose to just do more spiritual practice in hopes it would work out. Eventually our fights got so out of control. I felt I needed to seek outside help and went back to a therapist for help with my anger and inability to deal with this side of things in an adult loving and compassionate manner. It seemed I could be kind loving and compassionate to all others in my life except for this woman who had been there for me so many times before.
I learned a lot from my Dr. Most of all I learned that sometimes things are not broken there just over and there is nothing you can do to fix them just accept it and move on. I eventually got enough courage up to end the relationship it was a rocky, bumpy, painful and awkward journey to say the least but it had to be done and I learned a lot about myself and my habitual habits along the way.
Through all of this my practice and reliance on the Dharma has grown.