JawaharalNehru Cards resizedOne of the cornerstones of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is the concept of workability. The aim of ACT is for our clients to create a rich, meaningful, and vibrant life. Workability is how we determine whether a client’s behaviors are serving that end. Usually, people know when their behaviors are not working for them, but because they are often fused with their thoughts, they may have a hard time acting any other way. Instead of bringing them closer to the life they want, their behaviors are more or less a means of struggling with or avoiding painful thoughts and feelings. To demonstrate how this might appear in a therapy session I’d like to present the case of Samantha (Of course names and details have been altered to protect confidentiality):

Samantha is in her late twenties, single, no children, has her own apartment in a suburban neighborhood, a cat, a steady job for the last year and a half, an unused gym membership, and hasn’t been on a date in four years. She complains about her female co-workers being “fake” and “slutty” yet she secretly wants to be like them and to be liked by them. Any time an opportunity arises where she is invited to attend a happy hour with work people, she has an excuse not to attend. She then goes home and cries before opening a pint of ice cream and watching pre-recorded episodes of “fill-in-the-blank-reality-television.” (more…)

Woman in dimly lit roomI recently ordered Deepak and Gotham Chopra’s book, The Seven Spiritual Laws of Superheroes on my iPad. I haven’t been this excited to read something since I read Carl Jung’s book The Archetypes many years ago.

Both books address the archetype of  “shadow.” Both Chopra and Jung describe shadow as a force of the unconscious that can be destructive, divisive, and self-sabotaging when it remains unconscious. Shadow is that part of the human condition, that most mortals attempt to ignore or deny in favor of a self-perception inflated or deflated by ego, neither of which can be sustained without some form of self-destruction. We see this in the lives of adult politicians, entertainers, and sports heroes who have been in the media lately for crimes of passion, adultery, and exploitation. The denial and repression of shadow has allowed ego to “act out” in blatant ways. Because shadow was repressed they thought they would never get caught or that they were somehow above the laws that govern the rest of us. Denial of shadow sets humans up to be destroyed.

In Chopra’s book, “shadow” is explored through the journey of the superhero. The superhero wrestles with the forces of good and evil. In doing so, the superhero recognizes that he or she has a shadow that possesses some of the very qualities that their enemies possess. The superhero embraces their shadow by getting in touch with it, bringing it to consciousness, developing compassion for themselves and thereby others, all in the mission of transforming dark, evil energies into creative, light energies of consciousness.

Jung explored the context of “shadow” through mythology and dreams. Mythological and dream characters, like superheroes are removed from mortal boundaries and expectations. They exist in landscapes where anything is possible. Joseph Campbell identified distinct steps of the Hero’s Journey that can provide a metaphor for our own life’s struggles. Metaphor can penetrate resistance and help us to gain insight into our experiences because the hero’s journey is one we can relate to and learn from.

Like many of us, the superhero often comes from a life of adversity. Chopra wrote that shadow can be found thriving in “abject conditions such as poverty, poor leadership, an ‘us versus them’ mentality, repression, deprivation, social injustice, torture, self-righteous morality, suppression of desire, fear, and conflict.” He goes on to explain, that the “shadow energy within us is destructive, divisive, and self-sabotaging.”

Chopra identified shadow as the “diabolical part of our soul.” How can we recognize our shadow? Shadow usually lurks behind our criticism of others. It is that nasty voice that identifies and picks at other people’s flaws. The funny thing is that the flaws that we see in others are often the same flaws that we ourselves possess. It is much harder to recognize this in ourselves but often easily recognizable in the folly of others. For example, have you ever heard someone who is very annoying because they never give anyone else a chance to talk, complain and go on and on about someone they encountered who does the very same thing? That is shadow, the super-villain, making an appearance.

Chopra says that we can see our shadow when we are in the light of consciousness. But first we have to recognize our shadow behavior before we can bring it into the light of consciousness. Once it is conscious we have power to choose to “act out”–meaning to continue destructive behavior that cuts off a vital source of creative energy–or to consciously stop “acting out” and transform the energy for a healthy, well-balanced existence. If we choose to do nothing, shadow will pounce when we least expect it and throw our lives into chaos and suffering.

A dog patiently holds a leash in his mouth, waiting to be walked.This month our Paramita, or practice on the path towards happiness, is patience. The practice of patience involves a shift in our perspective. Buddhist teacher Sylvia Boorstein says patience “…remains present as long as the mind remembers that things end…when their conditioning causes end…” Conditioning causes are the elements that are coming together in this particular place and time that are causing us stress. In other words, have patience, this too shall pass.

Stress could, in fact, be celebrated as the only opportunity we have to practice patience. Of course, our habitual tendency is to react against stress rather than greet it with enthusiasm, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to do so. Try it sometime.

We sometimes object to the idea of patience, as if it will make us passive patsies and “someone will get away with something” (oh, no!). Holding this attitude, we ignore the depth of harm we do in our impatience, and also misinterpret the actual practice of patience. Patience isn’t standing by while harm is done to us or to someone else. It is not about letting someone take advantage of us or abuse us. Patience is the capacity to calm the mind under stress so we can see our way clearly. In an abusive situation, for example, patience can lead us to make a plan for our safety, and come up with an exit strategy that will actually accomplish our freedom. Impatience can lead to running out of the house without clothes or money or any support at all, and where does that end up? Not in a good place, usually.

What Does Patience Have to Do with Happiness?

Patience is the antidote to anger. If we are irritated or angry or even feel violent impulses, we can actually learn to wait until the feelings pass, which they will. Anger can be difficult to work with, because it so strongly compels us to action. We often feel we will have no relief until we let it all out. In truth, we always do harm when we act out of anger, whether towards another being, a circumstance, or ourselves.

Patience comes from having confidence, born of awareness, practice, and experience that the storm will pass, and that if we ride it out, all will be well again. I recently heard a woman on the radio describing her radical approach to conflict in intimate relationships; instead of “Never go to bed angry” she suggested just going to bed, and seeing if you are still angry in the morning. Given the impermanent nature of all emotions, this approach makes sense. If there is something you can do about it, no need to get upset. If there is nothing you can do about it, there is no need to get upset.

[fat_widget_left] The therapist who changed my life in my mid-twenties used to tell me, “The reward of patience is patience.” I didn’t find that appealing in the least, and I told her so. I may have said, “So what?” or “What’s that got to do with me?” I was impatient and had no interest in slowing down. I could not conceive of any possible benefit to patience. If it was its own reward, that meant nothing to me. Twenty-five years later, I think I may have finally caught on a bit.

When I put some effort into practicing patience in one area, such as in traffic or with a person I might find irritating, then patience is more likely to arise spontaneously, without effort, when I need it most. I was on an airplane recently that had been delayed by weather. We were two hours late taking off, and most of us were going to miss our connections. The man sitting next to me was extremely fretful and frustrated and tense, and I found that I was actually quite relaxed. We chatted a bit, and I tried to cheer him up, but I could see how deeply attached he was to feeling upset. He told me he traveled a lot for business and it was just getting worse and worse. I agreed that air travel has grown pretty unpleasant for most of us, but I noted to myself that, above all, we have the experience we create for ourselves. That day I realized that my efforts to develop patience had paid off—I felt patient without even trying!

What does patience feel like? For me it is relaxing, energizing, with a clear tone, like a bell, and a view that goes on as far as the sky. Patience is the willingness to stop stirring the water of the pond we are trying to look into. Patience sets down the stick and waits for the natural clarity of the settled water to arise. (Of course, as a teacher of mine noted recently, then we can see all the junked tires, tin cans, and skeletons down there on the bottom!)

Patience is trusting our natural minds to know what to do when we stop disrupting and distorting what is actually happening in the here and now, and practice mindfulness.

Now, I eventually ended that plane trip in a miserable heap, having missed too many planes to reach my destination and having a respiratory illness that forced me to make a last-minute decision to just go home. So, patience is not the answer to everything, nor is it guaranteed to stick around all the time. What stands out in my mind is the contrast between myself and that fellow steeped in anxiety on the airplane, and the knowledge that it is possible to feel calm even when our impulses drive us strongly toward distress. The reward of patience is, in fact, patience!

Five Steps to Cultivate Patience:

What other ways can you find to practice patience?

Kwan yin statueTo continue with the theme of the paramitas from last month, wherein we began with generosity, we will look at the practice of ethics or morality (Shila in Pali language), sometimes referred to as discipline.

Many of us have a negative response to the words morality and discipline (and possibly ethics), which can sound like something imposed, a should we never live up to. Some of us lose hope around these words, or like bad people, or self-righteous. In truth, discipline and morality are inner qualities that, when cultivated within a clear framework, bring a sense of peace and well being, from knowing we live a life of integrity and no-harm.

Cultivating Ethical Discipline offers the following benefits (and beyond):

In the Buddhist path of the paramitas, Shila has a specific structure. In most traditions, when a person becomes a Buddhist, they take five precepts as their vow of conduct. When we choose to practice the paramita of ethics/discipline, we use the precepts as the basis of our practice for developing these inner qualities.

We make an agreement with ourselves to do no harm to other beings, including refraining from killing insects. We agree not to steal, or take what isn’t freely given, including borrowing without asking. We agree not to lie, gossip, misinform, or otherwise harm with our speech. We agree to not harm through our sexual energy, including breaking our commitments or interfering with the commitments of others, participating in exploitation or fantasies that could harm others, and so forth. We agree not to drink to excess or take drugs, to keep from clouding our minds and obstructing clear-seeing.

These are ideals we strive for, not goals we punish ourselves for not attaining. As in training a puppy, beating ourselves into submission will not bring the desired results. Repeatedly offering ourselves clear, firm, and loving guidelines, until the new behavior becomes established, works much better. There are gradations in every field of human endeavor. I have managed to never murder a human I was angry with, but I still lose control when streams of ants flow through my kitchen, and I have resorted to ant-murder more than once. (My preferred approach now is to repel them with eucalyptus leaves scattered outside the house, but every so often they come in anyway and I break my vow again.)

I think most of us hold the intention, whether vaguely or explicitly, to live a good life, to refrain from harm, and behave well. The precepts give us a clear path for doing so, and a landmark we can refer to when we lose our way (which we all do, repeatedly, so be kind to yourself about it).

To integrate the precepts into our daily life, we can read the following aloud to ourselves each morning and see what arises throughout the day. People often think they know which precepts might trip them up, only to be surprised in practice. Keep an open, curious mind and see what arises.

Today I intend to:

There may be different precepts you would set for yourself, and maybe you will experiment with them. I encourage you to try these first, because they have worked for 2,600 years, and because most everything is covered: vowing to eat healthier food, have better relationships, do your practices regularly. It’s all here.

We may not know how to deal with a broken vow. Our parents may not have been consistent or clear in their rules and consequences for misbehavior, so we may only know how to beat ourselves up or feel guilty or bad if we do something that is out of integrity with who we want to be. There is a structure in Buddhism for working with moments or events when we fall short of our ideals. We all mess up from time to time, and we have to forgive ourselves and work through, or we will accumulate a burden of pain and guilt and shame that clouds our interactions and our experience of the world.

Making Amends
When, for example, we hurt someone with our speech or actions, we begin by allowing ourselves to fully feel the pain of causing pain. So often we turn away from this, or take refuge in guilt, rather than looking directly at what we have done, and why. If we can bear to see clearly the roots of our behaviors, and feel the results, it becomes easier to bring ourselves in line with what we generally intend, which is to do no harm?

Next, we do our best to mend the tear in our integrity, both with ourselves and with anyone we hurt. Our apologies need to be sincere and without expectation. If we require forgiveness or even acceptance of our apology, then the apology is attached to something other than our sincere regret. We can apologize from our hearts, freely, and allow the other person to do what they wish with that. It is not up to them to free us or grant us pardon. We are responsible for our own experience. This is our own work. Only we can complete it.

If there are other reparations to be made, we make them, without resentment or hesitation. If we break a window, we replace the glass. No story is needed about how bad we are for breaking it, or how mean they are for making us replace it. We trust our inherent morality to know what is right and we act accordingly.

We then vow to not behave in such a way again, and do our best to follow that pledge. We will, most likely, slip up anyway. So we return to the beginning of the process of amends and unravel it all over again. This is a lifelong process. Have patience.

Two yellow, fan-shaped ginkgo biloba leaves arranged on a white backgroundMindfulness-based therapy is an approach in which the principles of mindfulness are applied for therapeutic purposes. What does this mean? My previous article discussed basic elements of mindfulness:

While working with clients, I developed recognition of two main components that emerge from these elements of mindfulness: I call them the two pillars of mindfulness-based therapy. These two pillars—observation, and the cultivation of compassion, acceptance, and virtues—bring about change in peoples’ perspective, and consequently in
their lives.

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Observation

Observation emerges from the first four elements of mindfulness. It calls us to place attention to the process, to bring awareness to the way that thoughts come and go, appear, develop, and disappear. One is asked to acknowledge patterns of thinking, as well as the expression of emotions in the body, the subtle changes in body sensation, and the movement of the breath in and out of the body.

Even though the content of thoughts is there and recognized, the intention is not to engage with it, cling to it, or feed it. This is similar to the way that, in therapy, the past, traumas, and personal stories are important to acknowledge, but they don’t become the center and focus of the therapy. The focus, rather, is on what is happening now, how feelings express themselves in the body, and what triggers reactivity.

This approach allows release of attachment to “my story,” “my depression,” or “my anxiety.” Observation empowers the client to choose between letting thoughts, emotions, and even real-life events control his or her life, actions, and reactions, or, alternatively, to be more active and present in his or her outer and inner life and choose how to respond to challenges that present themselves at any moment.

Observation calls to bring awareness not just to destructive patterns, but also to positive and pleasurable thoughts, emotions, and events. Here observation allows for the positive to be part of the experience of life. While observing, the emphasis is still on the process and not the content: how does a positive experience feel in the body, how does the feeling change when awareness is brought to it, how do positive thoughts appear and disappear?

The Cultivation of Compassion, Acceptance, and Virtues

The cultivation of compassion, acceptance, and virtues emerges from the last element of mindfulness. This second pillar does call for attention to content. In this case, there is an attempt to focus on and produce positive thoughts. Clients are encouraged to wish themselves well while practicing Loving-Kindness meditation and reciting phrases with positive wishes. They are invited to look at and further develop their virtues, and to focus on the good in their lives even when it is small or hidden.

The more I work with people, the more I realize how much this pillar is crucial for positive change and growth. In this practice, it is not just about observing inner activity, but rather cultivating and expanding that which is already present. Even when one is not aware of having any compassion for their self or of having any virtues, we work together to discover positive elements that do exist and develop ways to integrate compassion, acceptance, and virtues in everyday life. I have a few clients who cannot feel any compassion for themselves, but through their ability to feel compassion for others, like kids and pets, we can work on slowly shifting the flow of kindness from the heart and direct it toward themselves.

Working with these two pillars in mind, I use two opposite powers to help a client reach balance. Observation helps to reduce negativity and unhealthy patterns of reactivity and behaviors, and cultivation of compassion, acceptance, and virtues supplies the positive energy necessary to help one grow. It helps increase positive attitude, self-esteem, trust in self, and healthy activities.

“For years it lay in an iron box buried so deep inside me that I was never sure just what it was. I knew it carried slippery, combustible things more secret than sex and more dangerous than any shadow or ghost. … I saw things I knew no little girl should see. Blood and shattered glass. Piles of skeletons and blackened barbed wire with bits of flesh stuck to it…The iron box contained a special room for my mother and father, warm and moist as a greenhouse. They lived there inside me, rare and separate from other beings. … I knew my parents had crossed over a chasm … The box became a vault, collecting in darkness, always collecting; pictures, words, my parent’s glances, becoming loaded with weight. It sank deeper as I grew older, so packed with undigested things that finally it became impossible to ignore.”
-Helen Epstein, Children of the Holocaust

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A woman doing yoga“It feels heavy right here,” Rebecca* said, crying and touching her chest, “like a huge rock is sitting on me. It’s like that old cartoon, where a boulder would fall off a cliff and pin the roadrunner to the ground—it feels like I can’t move.”  Rebecca, a 32 year-old successful marketing professional whose older sister had recently been diagnosed with a psychotic condition, had come to see me last year. She seemed lost in grief. Fluctuating bewilderment, sadness, fear, anger, tenderness, and love were tying knots in every part of her.

I thought that untying some of the knots in her body, with the help of mindfulness practices, might help her begin to lift the boulder.

Growing up, Rebecca’s sister had provided unconditional loving support which protected Rebecca from demanding, neglectful, and painfully critical parents. She had always relied on her sister to guide and comfort her; they had always been best friends. She said that now it felt like she was standing at the edge of the ocean, watching her sister sit on a raft drifting out to sea. She had been crying uncontrollably off and on for days. What made things even harder was that her sister sometimes acted like her old self, then became delusional again. Rebecca’s emotions were rising and crashing along with her sister’s state of mind.

Mindfulness of the Body: Body Scanning and Stretching

The first foundation of mindfulness is mindfulness of the body. It is cultivated with body scanning and movement practices, like yoga and walking meditation, anchored in feeling the sensations of breathing. A body scan involves directing one’s attention to different areas, one at a time, and focusing on the sensations in each place. A scan can begin with feeling the moisture on one’s skin, sensations of warmth or coolness, pressure or tingling. Then we scan the interior of the body, noting muscle tightness or ease near the surface and going deeper, where emotions express themselves as inner physical sensations.

Building brief body scans into a sustained stretch can begin to soften tight muscles—created from strong emotions—and release the mind from thinking for a while.

Prior to entering therapy, Rebecca had taken an 8-week course in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) from me. MBSR is based on the work of Jon Kabat-Zinn at the University of Massachusetts, and is taught in hundreds of hospitals, corporations, and schools in the US and around the world. Rebecca had done many body scans as part of the course. She knew how to locate and identify the physical sensations accompanying her emotional states. The following intervention was natural to offer, and easy to do with her.

Untying Knots in the Body

As Rebecca continued to cry, we talked about the benefits of recognizing and allowing her grief. But after 20 minutes of repeated bouts of intense sobbing, she asked me to help her stop. I asked if she would like me to guide her through some breathing and mindful stretching; she immediately said yes. We did a four- or five-minute sequence of stretches, while she remained seated on the couch. I guided her to stretch gently, to her limit, with each pose, holding it for 20+ seconds, and remembering to breathe. While holding each stretch, she scanned, place by place throughout her entire body, for unnecessary tension—inviting it to soften (without insisting) wherever she found it.

“Psychotherapeutic approaches that utilize mindfulness offer well-developed non-verbal exercises that enable the individual to dip into direct sensation beneath the veil of words that may often conceal the mind’s pain. This sensory immersion enables the individual to disengage from those bottom-up enslavements at the root of suffering….” (Siegel, 2007)

“Our poses can strongly influence our emotional states. For instance, because of the expansive inhalation and opening of the chest, backbending, traditionally a stimulating practice, can elevate a low mood. Exhale-intensive poses such as forward bends tend to calm an agitated mind. In any balance practice, both inhale-oriented and exhale-oriented postures are executed in order to create equilibrium in the body and breath and to gain emotional
harmony.” (Gerstein)

Untying Knots in the Mind and Heart

This practice creates a state of non-thinking in the midst of strong feelings. Non-thinking helps release habitual, reactive thought patterns as attention is redirected to the body—what is called the neutral ground of attention. If, in the heat of raw emotion, we give free rein to thinking or emotions, our familiar and deeply grooved cascades of mental and emotional activity take their usual course, often intensifying the emotions, or cordoning them off from awareness. Instead, if we direct ourselves to notice “what am I feeling in my big toe right now?” the cascade slows, or even stops, for a while. Awareness remains intact, and new, more balanced, and less distorted thoughts have a chance to arise.

When she sat up again after her last slow, deep forward bend, Rebecca’s face had softened, her breathing was quiet, and she said “it’s gone, the heaviness is gone.” She said she felt sad, but less afraid and overwhelmed. She began to speak with compassion for herself and her sister, while remaining more relaxed for the duration of the session.

Before ending, we rehearsed the practice again: she brought the feelings back into her awareness on purpose, then, increasingly independently, guided herself through stopping, breathing consciously, body scanning, and stretching/releasing tension.

Rehearsal increased the chances that she would remember to use breathing and stretching in the days ahead. Later, she reported with some relief that she had remembered and been able to stop and practice, and that it had helped sometimes. Directing focus away from thinking, and into the body, gave her a sense of independence in calming herself, and also helped her to use her considerable intelligence to understand her sister’s situation, and to face the frightening challenge of becoming independent of her sister for the first time in her life.

Practices like these are not intended to offer an easy fix for difficult emotions or life experiences. Mindfulness, at its core, involves observing things as they are and not fighting them. One formula used is Pain x Resistance = Suffering (PxR=S). Paradoxically, allowing ourselves to be with our pain, sadness, fear, or anger, frees us to go beyond them for a while. And, according to Daniel Siegel, when practiced enough, “… an intentionally and repeatedly created state can become an effortless trait of our being.”

Is prior training required for this intervention to be effective?

A person must be open to locating and feeling different body sensations. Not having this training is a limiting factor. In my experience, however, the breathing, stretching and scanning practice can lead to a similar shift in people who are receptive, regardless of having prior training in mindfulness.

*Names and identifying information have been changed for privacy

Resources:
Center for Mindfulness—Stress Reduction Program
Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Guided Mindfulness Meditations site

http://drdansiegel.com/

References:

  1. Gerstein, Nancy. (n.d.). How Yoga Affects Emotions. OmPlace.com. Retrieved from http://www.omplace.com/articles/Yoga_Emotion.html
  2. Siegel, Daniel J., M.D. (2007). Reflections on the Mindful Brain. New York: W. W. Norton & Company
  3. Siegel, Daniel J., MD. (2010). The Mindful Therapist: A Clinician’s Guide to Mindsight and Neural Integration. New York: W. W. Norton & Company

sand-falling-from-hand“Do everything with a mind that lets go. Do not expect any praise or reward. If you let go a little, you will have a little peace. If you let go a lot, you will have a lot of peace. If you let go completely, you will know complete peace and freedom. Your struggles with the world will have come to an end.”

– Achaan Cha, A Still Forest Pool

When we practice mindfulness, when we learn to notice thoughts without getting carried by their content, and when we learn to sit with pain or discomfort, we practicing letting go. Most clients who come to see me are holding firmly onto something—their story, their fears, losses, expectations, relationships, or possessions—even when these things cause them pain and suffering. We all tend to hold those things and more. Learning to let go can be an act of release and healing.

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The major part of holding takes place in thoughts: obsessive thoughts, worries for the future and regrets of the past, thoughts that form your life philosophy and beliefs about who you are and your journey in the world. There are three ways of mindfulness practice that cultivate letting go of the grip of thoughts.

Awareness and Exploration
By bringing awareness to the content of thoughts through inquiry, one can learn to identify themes and topics that rise repeatedly, note them, and simply observe them without getting involved in their content. This “scientific” observation approach serves as a way to let go. When you are curios about the phenomenon of thoughts, you naturally are less attached to the message that the thought carries. Observing the process of how thoughts emerge, develop, rise and fall, and appear and disappear helps to neutralize identification with the content of the thought.

Focusing on the Breath, the Body, or an Object
The basic method for practicing mindfulness is to focus on the breath. When the meditator notices thoughts coming, he or she just shifts awareness back to the breath. This gentle inner action of shifting awareness serves as a practice of letting go. When one notices thoughts, the tendency is to follow, to get engaged in the content of the thought, even if this engagement brings pain and suffering. Noticing the inner activity of thinking and choosing not to get involved, but rather to reconnect with the breath, is an act of letting go. You allow yourself to let go of the thought.

Openness
Physical openness: Holding means tightness. Holding with your hand means that you tightened and folded your fingers. When we hold sadness, anger, hatred, worries, and more, there is a tightness and closing in the chest, belly, and jaws. Adapting a sense of openness and developing a sense of wide chest, open arms, and open face helps to let go of the inner holding and tightness.

Mental openness: Developing a wider view of a problem, and seeing the relative place it takes in the whole tapestry of one’s life, helps to let go of the sense of emergency and magnitude of whatever one holds. Assuming perspective can apply not just to one’s life, but also to the general scheme of things and the place of the individual within the society, nature, and the universe. These forms of mental openness release constant hovering over the issue and give a sense of release.

Mindfulness is not Distraction
We all know of another way to let go, usually for a limited amount of time, the way of distraction. Distractions can be helpful sometimes to ease tension, anxiety, and pain, and as long as they are not destructive, they can be used. However, distractions are not part of mindfulness, and their affect is limited, with no cumulative effect of growth.

It is important to note that in the mindfulness methods, the idea is not to ignore a problem or avoid addressing it—it is about a choice between suffering and freedom. One can still choose to deal with issues that need to be addressed, but do it from a place of non-attachment. Letting go releases the energy that was captured by holding to be used for creative and meaningful changes.

Two tiny plants sprout out of rich soil.The thought manifests as the word;
The word manifests as the deed;
The deed develops into habit;
The habit hardens into character.
So watch the thought and its ways with care,
And let it spring from love
Born out of concern for all beings. -The Buddha

In the garden of our minds, weeds are the habitual patterns we perpetuate unintentionally, which choke out the new ways we are trying to cultivate. It is the nature of weeds to try to take over, as it is the nature of old ingrained patterns to rise up again and again. So we need to pay attention, and take care of the weedy stuff as soon as we can, to make space for the new.

Sometimes the space created by taking out weeds can feel scary. That’s okay, it is a good time to kick back and take a few deep breaths and a stroll around the garden to see what else is happening. What are those glorious bright flowers doing over there? Oh, those are bulbs you planted last fall, with faith and confidence (okay, maybe not so much confidence, but you did plant them). Now they are doing their thing. They are springing forth because when you planted them you ensured successful conditions, as best you could—considering timing, placement, and nourishment. Then you trusted the nature of the work you did and the nature of what you set in the ground, and voila—now you have daffodils.

Sometimes it takes a season or two for the blossoming of our intention to become apparent. It may take years, even decades, for that clump of well-placed daffodils to become a field and overtake the weeds by themselves. But it will happen. That is the nature of well-placed, intentional action and mindfulness.

Training the mind is like gardening. We select what to cultivate and set about creating the ideal causes and conditions for it to flourish. What we may not realize is that what grows is not only what we place in the ground of our minds, but the attitude with which we tend it. Gardening means attending to the daily changes that occur in our plot of land; in this case, what happens to our minds each day. If the weeds get high, there is no need for judgment, there is need for weeding.

When we notice old negative habits creeping in—the weeds of the mind, as it were—it does not serve to attack them. They were planted there early on, for good reason, so we can simply acknowledge their presence, accept that they will invariably arise as remnants of a former crop, and remove them with respect. Any time we till the soil of our minds to plant something new, we expose the seeds of old thoughts and behaviors to fresh light and nourishment. If we do not want to encourage the rampant growth of old habits, we have to pay attention (oh, how they spring up in a moment!).

But to reject them is pointless, and to approach them aggressively merely scatters the seeds of aggression and negativity. We can plant the seeds of patience, kind-hearted attention, intention, compassion, and wellbeing, even as we remove the unwanted habits from the ground of our minds. We can appreciate that these “weeds” had their place in our lives, that they kept us alive until we became able to choose something more useful.

Anything we are trying to change, can only be changed with kindness and awareness; self-hatred and rejection only recreate the conditions of fear that gave rise to the old habit in the first place.

Say you bite your fingernails from anxiety, a habit you learned for self-soothing as a child. No amount of scolding from a parent, no amount of bitter apple, no rejection of the habit ever freed you from it. The underlying anxiety was never addressed, and in fact was exacerbated through these tactics. What frees us from nail-biting, and anything else we developed to comfort ourselves in painful times (which is every habit we have), is both the antidote to the habit and the ache beneath the habit—love. Loving ourselves and our habits, accepting their presence in our lives, is the path through the habit to a new and more useful way of being.

As we learn to gently speak our truths, as we stand up for ourselves, as we attend to the present moment’s pain, we can move from suffering to health. We decide what to plant now. If you never liked kohlrabi, don’t plant it, but if you always longed for violets, now is your chance. Plant them where and when they are most likely to thrive, tend them by feeding and watering, weed lovingly, and enjoy the natural beauty of your mind.

empty hands mindfulness not knowingMy previous post discussed connecting with the inner knowledge that we gain through the practice of mindfulness. Besides knowledge, another quality that can be developed through mindfulness practice is not-knowing. I’d like to point out some  benefits of acquiring this quality and approach to life.

There are three kinds of not-knowing:

1. Letting go of what we know.

We tend to categorize our experiences through names, titles, and classifications, which we use to gain control over a situation. This tendency helps to capture a whole range of phenomena in a word or two. If we revisit the Garden of Eden we discussed in the previous post, Adam, in the name of humanity, gave names to all animals and birds. In this way he not only gained some superiority over them, but also a better way to relate to and communicate about them. Instead to describing a yellow-brown animal with a fierce roar, he can just say “lion,” and the image and qualities of a lion will appear. This categorization is useful for communication and understanding, but the price is generalization and reactivity.

When a person experiences anxiety, for instance, just calling the symptoms “anxiety” can bring a range of reactions such as fear, frustration, sadness, self-defeating thoughts, and avoidance. Through mindfulness and a not-knowing approach, the range of phenomena is explored with curiosity and openness: How does this feeling present itself in the body? What are the size, depth, and boundaries of the sensation? Are they changing?  If so, in what way?

In therapy, this genuine exploration serves as a way to bypass identification of clients with their diagnosis—both formal and informal—and come back to experiencing thoughts, emotions, and sensations as they are, without the kind of learned reactivity that, in many instances, spirals the situation down. All emotions can be approached in a fresh mind, allowing discoveries and loosening the grip of concepts.

2. Letting go of what we don’t know.

This type of not-knowing relates to the ability to not plan or predict ahead of time what is going to happen. In many cases, of course, one needs to plan and be ready. When planning becomes rigid and restrictive, however, it is time to practice not-knowing by trusting the process and allowing it to unfold in a creative, fresh, and innovative way. The tendency to want to know what will happen is tempting, but when we are mindful of every moment and allow not-knowing be part of how we live, we can try new things, like starting a business or a new career, embarking on new adventures, and developing meaningful relationships.

In any case, stability is only an illusion. The reality is that we don’t know what will happen next. Not-knowing connects us to things as they are and helps us to be released from the illusion of stability and security. In a way, being aware of the fragility of stability encourages innovation, taking risks, and exploring. This demands courage and strength, both of which are developed, in an ongoing cyclical way, as we allow not-knowing to be present in our life.

I teach an Interpersonal Mindfulness program, founded by Gregory Kramer, PhD, on how to bring mindfulness to speaking, listening, and relationships. One of the program’s guidelines is trust emergence, which encourages participants to dive into the unknown, trust the dialogue to be developed without having an agenda, and allow ourselves to not-know how the conversation will develop and how it will end. Trust emergence encourages new ideas, surprising discoveries, and opens the door to closeness and trust among the people involved in the process.

3. Living with open questions.

Every day, there are many decisions to make and questions to answer, from the most mundane (“What I shall wear today?”) to decisions at work and spiritual inquires about the purpose of life. Usually we are compelled to give answers—and they better be the correct ones. Without taking away the importance of having solutions and knowing the right answers, in many instances there is a value in just being with a question.

This kind of not-knowing calls for patience, humbleness, openness, centering, and inspiration. “Sitting with an open question” is one of my favorite meditations and I offer it to clients when appropriate. Living with an open question gives the freedom to explore, contemplate, and open an inner space that releases from tightness and holding. In a mysterious way, the chance to eventually come to an answer that makes sense and is satisfying increases tremendously.

This last sentence brings us back to the idea of mindfulness as knowing. You can see that those two contradicting statements—mindfulness as knowing, and mindfulness as not-knowing—are basically one. They complement each other and together represent the wholeness and richness of living mindfully.

Person sitting by window looking up meditating“Pain is inevitable; suffering is optional.” —Buddhist proverb

One morning when I was trying to leave a meditation group, I became agitated because others were “making me late” for another meditation group. I moved swiftly from blaming others to feeling shame at my imagined late entrance and fearing that I wouldn’t be able to find a place to sit. These worries, coupled with my anxiety about pain in my back and whether I could even sit, led to a meltdown.

I rapidly convinced myself that everyone (yes, everyone) would stare at me and shun me forever (yes, forever). I disconnected from the facts. I forgot that these people were my sangha—my community of Buddhist practitioners—and are committed to compassion for all beings (yes, even for me). They weren’t there to judge me. Like me, they were there to hear our teachers. But who needs facts in the middle of a meltdown? I found myself weeping as I drove, conjuring all kinds of judgment about what a bad person I was for falling apart. “And you call yourself a meditator! Tsk, tsk!” said the voice in my mind.

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As I drove along in misery, I somehow remembered I could drop all of these stories. Suddenly the thought arose, clear as a bell: “I am just crying.” That was the simple truth of the situation, the only thing that was actually happening. My relief was immediate and complete. By the time I arrived, I had settled. I blew my nose and entered the hall as the lamas were beginning their talk. I found a seat easily and was greeted warmly by friends sitting nearby.

As usual, all my suffering was for nothing. If more pain had come my way in that moment, fretting about it wouldn’t help. Fretting only leads to further disconnect from my heart and my strength. If no pain had come my way, then fretting would only waste precious time and energy. As Buddhists say, “If you can do something about it, no need to worry. If you can’t do anything about it, no need to worry.”

Creating Suffering

We all experience pain in our lives. Unfortunately, our attempts to manage pain often turn it into suffering instead of providing relief.

Some common ways we create suffering include:

Noticing Pain

Both physical and emotional pain can be effectively managed when we look directly at what is actually happening. We examine it, but we don’t reject it, cling to it, ignore it, or elaborate it. This perspective allows us to notice the true nature of pain: transitory, mutable, and impermanent. It is not solid and ceaseless, It has no story—despite our attempts to give it one. It appears and then dissolves over time.

We all experience pain in our lives. Unfortunately, our attempts to manage pain often turn it into suffering instead of relief.

It takes an open mind to perceive our situation clearly and accurately. It takes patience to sit and observe without altering, judging, or making assumptions. It can help to remember that we are never alone. Any pain or suffering we feel has also been felt by others. There is no one whose life is free from pain, who does not wish to be free of suffering, and who does not deserve compassion. We are all in this together.

Practice sitting quietly a few minutes each day without letting your thoughts or feelings run things. Use this time to wish for all beings—including ourselves and the people we find difficult—to be free from suffering. Practice mindfulness. This can help us learn to recognize which of our stories are creating suffering. When we recognize this, we may become more willing to drop them on the spot.

When we simply rest our minds on pain without aiming to alter our experience, we might notice that the pain changes. This can bring great comfort and reassurance. Pain is no more permanent than anything else. Headaches are not solid and unchanging. Neither are depression and fear. Through this practice we can gain confidence in our ability to work with whatever arises in the moment. We don’t need to cover the world with leather to protect our feet. We can simply wear shoes.

One thing is certain: more pain will come our way in this life. It is inevitable. But it is possible to choose whether we will turn it into suffering or simply leave it to arise and dissolve on its own. That is always an option.

Important Notice

GoodTherapy is not intended to be a substitute for professional advice, diagnosis, medical treatment, or therapy. Always seek the advice of your physician or qualified mental health provider with any questions you may have regarding any mental health symptom or medical condition. Never disregard professional psychological or medical advice nor delay in seeking professional advice or treatment because of something you have read on GoodTherapy.

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