We have all
experienced emotional pain in one form or another. A five year old concludes that his mother and
father are arguing because he has done something wrong. A nine year old is told that she is fat and
ugly. An eleven year old is told, that
if he would only change, his family would be a happy place.
How many of us
have been made to feel stupid by someone’s attitude or comments toward us, or
by the fact that, in school, reading, writing, math or P.E. did not come easily
to us? How many of us have been abused verbally, physically, or sexually while
in the care of someone who we were
supposed to be able to trust? How
many of us have lost a significant person or pet in our lives and have somehow
felt responsible for those losses?
How many of us
have felt shame about having freckles or red hair or being over weight or too
skinny, for wearing glasses or braces or for having asthma or skin problems? How
many of us felt that our brother or sister was the more favored in the family. How many of us felt that we were never able
to emotionally connect with our mother or father and felt that the distance we
felt had something to do with who we were?
All such experiences create pain in our lives as we travel through our
childhood into adolescence and onto adulthood.
So, how do we move
from experiencing the pain of such experiences to suffering? We suffer by
attempting to make sense out of our experiences. We create story lines and come to conclusions
about ourselves. The little boy who felt that he was responsible for his mother
and father arguing was doing what a five year old does. The world of the five year old is very “me”
centered. It never occurs to him that
there might be something else going on between mom and dad about which he is unaware.
He has concluded that he has done something wrong and feels responsible for mom
and dad's upset, when in fact, his parents were arguing because his father had
bounced a check and their mortgage payment did not clear the bank.
Our road to
suffering is the result of our having created storylines that are our attempts
to make sense out of our life experiences and relationships. We all have them
in our lives and they are all, for the most part, negative in their depiction
of how we view ourselves. Our inner critic serves as a testimonial to this
process. How many of us have experienced
this inner critic? The impact of such story lines will linger long into our
adulthood and will follow us to our grave, if we do not become aware that such
a process has been a part of our lives.
How do we begin to
become aware that we have been creating such storylines? We first need to begin
to recognize that this has been what we
have been doing. We need to begin to
observe our inner conversations that we have with ourselves about what ever it
is that we find ourselves reacting to in the moment. We need to begin to
observe our thoughts and emotional reactions as they occur, moment by moment.
In creating story
lines, we stockpile one story line on top of the next. We begin to look at life based on what we
have concluded about our experiences in relationships with others. We relate to a new experience based on our
previous painful experience. This creates anxiety in our lives. Anxiety is often defined as anticipating that
we are going to meet something we are afraid of in the future. The painful experience we have had with our
father or classroom teacher is what we anticipate we will re-experience with
our new boss. The pain we experienced in
not having our emotional needs met will be what we anticipate our experience
will be in relation to someone with whom we might find ourselves becoming
close. In doing this we are looking at
the life from the past and are not experiencing the present moment. We also tend
to mind read others behavior and anticipate the worse. This is what our suffering
is made of.
Adyashanti has written: “Suffering occurs when you believe in a
thought that is at odds with what is, what was or what might be.”
The way we begin
to change this pattern is to begin to realize that 85 % of our lives has been
spent reliving the past or in anticipating the future, believing things about
our selves that are not true, essentially living a lie. As we are able to come to this awareness we begin to see how
our reactive thinking has created our view of ourselves, others and the world,
in which, we have experienced life.
It is important to realize that we share this
life process with every other human being
on the planet. And we all share this
need to move from rehashing the past and rehearsing for the future to being in the present moment, in the now. This is true regardless of whether we are
women, men, regardless of our racial or religious background, regardless of our
sexual orientation, regardless of what language we speak, whether we are rich
or poor, young or old.
How do we move
from the past and future into the present moment? It is difficult shaking ourselves free from
our ways of habitual thinking. We first need to realize that we are not our thoughts. It is our thoughts that cause us to feel as we
do about ourselves and other people. Instead, we need to realize that we are
the witnessing, observing awareness
that views our thoughts, our reactions, fears, anxieties, anger, depression
that creates our suffering. Eckhart
Tolle has written: “We are awareness disguised
as people.”
How do we get in
touch with this awareness? We can
access this awareness by being in the present moment, in the now, by being in
touch with our next breath, our next heartbeat.
Without our next breath, or heart
beat, we would cease to be. Jon
Kabat-Zinn has written: “The past and
future are only concepts…we only have the now.”
Anytime we find
ourselves reacting to something or someone, anytime we are reliving something
from our past or anticipating something in the future, to realize that, at that
instant, we are not in the present
moment. Once we acknowledge this, we are in the present moment.
This is the beginning of a new way to
differentiate our unconscious reactive mind from who we really are. We are the awareness that is able to witness
and observe and be aware of what our unconscious reactive mind is doing.
This process of
being in touch with the present moment and our awareness takes some getting use
to. Usually we simply react according to
our story lines. So, to stop this habit,
we need to PAUSE and check in with
ourselves, to periodically stop and ask ourselves what is going on inside of me,
now? We need to ask ourselves what am I
thinking, what am I feeling? How does my body feel, how is my body reacting?” As
we begin to get used to this checking in with ourselves, it becomes more of a
natural process, more a regular part of our daily life experience.
We can also take
some time each day and allow ourselves to just sit and get in touch with our
breathing. Our breath can serve as an
anchor point in our getting in touch with the present moment. When we do this our reactive mind often goes wild. Our thoughts may go everywhere. This is often referred to as experiencing our
“monkey mind.” Each time we catch
ourselves being caught up with our “monkey mind” we can acknowledge that this
is what is happening, and we return to
being in the present moment.
Having thoughts is
a natural aspect of the sitting and getting in touch with our breath. We will also experience feelings and physical
sensations. The worst thing to do is to
fight against or make judgments about our thoughts, feelings and bodily
sensations. What we resist, persists. Instead, we need to simply
acknowledge them, allow them to be what they are and return to our next
breath. This process is a simple
description of what a meditation experience is all about. It is a process of bringing our awareness
into the present moment, without judgment and by being in touch with our
breath.
Another way to get
in touch with the present moment is to bring our awareness to the next step that
we take, while walking, or to be aware of the washing of our hands, the
temperature of the water, the feeling of the soap as it touches the skin of our
hands. We can bring this degree of awareness to any of our daily activities and
by so doing, we return to the present moment.
What is special
about each one of us is that, in addition to our being the awareness that is able to witness our thoughts and reactions,
we, each are also a source of compassion.
Compassion has been defined by Shawna Shapiro as “the ability to feel empathy for suffering of the self or
other, along with the wish to act on these feelings to alleviate the
suffering.”
Typically we are
critical about ourselves, our thoughts, our actions, our abilities our bodies
and the list goes on. By continuing to
be critical of ourselves, by judging ourselves as not being okay, we are doomed
to relive our suffering. Instead of bringing judgment to what we have been
thinking and feeling, we have the capacity to bring this compassion, this
ability to feel empathy for our suffering, along with the wish to act on these
feelings to alleviate the suffering.
Tara Brach has
written: “ Our suffering becomes a gateway to the compassion that frees our
heart. When we become the holder of our
own sorrows, our old roles as judge, adversary or victim are no longer being
fueled. In their place, we find not a
new role, but a courageous openness and a capacity for genuine tenderness, not
only for ourselves but for others, as well.”
Our compassion is the antidote to our judgments and our suffering.
We have within us the
capacity to hold our suffering as a mother would hold an uncomfortable, distressed
infant. For us to be able to acknowledge what is going on within ourselves, to allow for what
we are going through, without judgment, for our suffering to be held in an embrace of empathy and compassion, is what “frees our heart.” In this, we are able to move on and to begin
to heal from the suffering that has kept us stuck in living with fear, anxiety,
shame, guilt, anger, and with a sense of not
being good enough.
Part of getting beyond
judgment, is to realize that we have done the best we can with what we have had
to work with. As a child we thought and made the
interpretations that a child would make.
As an adult, we have the option to continue on with the storylines of
our childhood or to, instead, embrace our true nature, our awareness to observe
our suffering with compassion and human kindness and to embrace our suffering. This allows us to be one with our experience
and over time, by doing this, the suffering diminishes and we begin to
heal. We begin to no longer react to
what we experience as we once did. We
move from living in the past to living in the present moment.
Another
realization that is available to us is to view others behavior as being their attempt to do the best that they
can do with what they have had to work
with. If they had more to work with,
they would have responded differently to us and, maybe, would not have caused
us the pain that we have experienced.
Why would a father tell his son that if he would only change, the family
would be a happy place? What would
possess a parent to refer to their child as ugly or stupid or fat or dumb?
All such
expressions, on the part of adults in our lives, reflect the pain and suffering
that these individuals were experiencing,
or they would not have behaved as they have. That does not excuse their
behavior, but it puts their behavior into a perspective that says, in fact, we were not the problem; instead it was their suffering that was our problem. In truth, their behavior really had nothing to do
with us, it had to do with their issues and them.
The gift that we
are able to experience by living in the present moment with awareness and
compassion is present on two levels: By
bringing our awareness and compassion to embrace our suffering, we are able to truly
be present with ourselves. “As our trust
in our basic goodness deepens, we are able to express our love and creativity
more fully in the world. Rather than
second-guessing ourselves, rather than being paralyzed by self doubt, we can
honor and respond to the promptings that arise from that goodness.” Tara Brach, Radical Acceptance
On another level,
by being present with ourselves we are also less reactive in relation to those
with whom we come into contact. By reducing the conflict within ourselves, we
are able to reduce the conflict between ourselves and others. Outer
peace in the world begins with our achieving peace within ourselves.
Tara Brach goes on
to say: “When we are not consumed by
blaming and turning on ourselves or others, we are free to cultivate our
talents and gifts together, to contribute them to the world in service. We are free to love each other and the whole
of life, without holding back.”
This approach to
addressing our suffering was deeply influenced by the work of Jon Kabat-Zinn of
the University of Massachusetts General Hospital. He has brought about the
integration of Buddhist psychology with western medicine. His work with Mindfulness Based Stress
Reduction has been implemented in hospital programs, corporations, school
districts, and health education programs all through out the United States and the
world.
Corporations such
as Google have seen the power of this bringing of awareness into the present
moment without judgment and have adopted Mindfulness as an integral part of the
their creative decision making process as a corporate community.
Medical facilities
like Kaiser have incorporated the bringing of awareness into the present without
judgment into their Health Education Program in addressing the suffering that
is inherent in anxiety, depression, anger, stress, and couples communication
courses for Kaiser Members.
Others who have
been profoundly influential in the introduction and practice of this approach
to awareness include the following with a listing of some of their writing on
the subject:
·
Jon
Kabat-Zinn: Wherever You Go, There You
Are / Arriving At Your Own Door / Full Catastrophe Living
·
Jack
Kornfield: Follow the Path with Heart /
The Wise Heart
·
Thich
Nhat Hanh: The Miracle of Mindfulness /
No Death, No Fear
·
Rick
Hanson: Buddha’s Brain
·
Eckhart
Tolle: The Power of Now / Stillness
Speaks / A New Earth
·
Bob
Stahl: A Mindfulness-Based Stress
Reduction Workbook
·
Bob
Stahl and Steve Flowers: Living with
Your Heart Wide Open
·
Adyashanti: True Meditation / The Way of Liberation
·
Saki
Santorelli: Heal Thy Self
·
Tara
Brach: Radical Acceptance / True Refuge
·
Shawna
Shapiro: The Art and Science of
Mindfulness
·
Anam Thubten: The Magic of Awareness
Jim Farwell M.A. /
M.F.T
farwelljs@yahoo.com
