Finding the Center Within: The Healing Way of Mindfulness Meditation. (33 page)
Read Finding the Center Within: The Healing Way of Mindfulness Meditation. Online
Authors: Thomas Bien
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ing that, since I am interconnected with others, I have not lost anything by this. For making the people around me happy contributes to my happiness. Also, by taking care of my own happiness and well-being, I give to those around me. So the apparently selfless act of giving contains a selfish element, and the apparently selfish act of self-care contains a generous element. The point is not just that it is better to give than to receive, but that both are part of the same overarching process. In reality, there is not one thing called giving and another called receiving, but a cycle called giving-receiving. No self helps us see these connections. It challenges the moralistic view separating selfishness and generosity, and opens up a world that is all one, or as the Buddhists would prefer to say, not two. In this world, there is no giver and no receiver, nothing given and nothing received. We are interconnected by countless acts of lovingkindness. Learn to Let Go
In a journal entry dated October 23, 1836, Ralph Waldo Emerson said this about the experience of bereavement: “My own faith teaches me that when one of these losses befalls me it is because the hour is struck in my own constitution, a crisis has there taken place which makes it best for my whole being, makes it necessary for my whole being that this influence be withdrawn.”
Death is not the only reason this can happen. Sometimes also for reasons other than death a relationship reaches the point where, for the well-being of one or both parties, it is necessary to let it go. When you are caught in a destructive cycle and you have done everything, tried everything, it may be time to call a halt to your connection to that person.
In couples therapy, I’ve seen people desperately try to find the love they need from their partner. Sometimes, the more frustrated they become in meeting this need, the harder and more desperately they try to force it out of their partner. At this point it is much better to step back a little, and simply try to see clearly: Who is this person I am trying so hard to please, to get love from? What is his true nature? Does she have the capacity to love me in the way I want to be loved? If you are honest, you may recognize that you are trying to get blood from a stone. This person may not have what you need.
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Sometimes when a friend becomes separated by distance, you are wise not to pursue a relationship too hard. Sometimes a parent is so disordered and abusive that the adult child must stay away if he is to have a chance to live any sort of decent life. Sometimes a son or daughter or sibling may be so psychologically disordered that a relationship with that person will only be destructive. These are sad truths. And while we think it good much of the time to try to avoid further disconnection and maintain the relationship, we know that sometimes this just cannot be. We would be remiss if, by not discussing this, we added to your guilt about it.
Even if you have reached the sad conclusion that a continued connection is impossible, you can still practice metta toward that person. Send her love and compassion. Release your resentment, anger, and sadness. And entrust her to the benevolence of the universe. Open to a Different Reality
Metta meditation, together with the practice of skillful listening, speaking, and doing, when pursued with a gentle, patient persistence, creates a new world. This new world is like a mirror image in which you must move the opposite way from what you expect. The things we do in this world are strangely backward. The more we grasp, the less we have. The more we give away, the happier we feel. Nor is this a matter of doing anything noble, self-sacrificing, or in any moralistic way praiseworthy. It is simply that you come to see that certain actions have certain results. Some actions create suffering. Some create happiness. Contrary to so-called common sense, reality is not divided up in such a way that my happiness and yours are at odds, with an increase in one representing a decrease in the other. In fact, since we are not two, there is no split in happiness, no collection of competing happinesses. I give to you knowing that it will increase your happiness, which will increase mine, which will again increase yours, and so on. I receive your giving knowing that it will help make me happy, which will help you to be happy, and so on. Every act of giving spreads like ripples in a pond and rebounds to us.
It is a little difficult to get one’s bearings in this topsy-turvy, upsidedown, mirror-image world. We need patience with ourselves as we slip 08 BIEN.qxd 7/16/03 10:00 AM Page 213
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back into old ways and try to separate out our happiness from that of others. But that is okay. It is part of the play of maya—of illusion—that human growth comes in this awkward, two-steps-forward, one-stepback manner. As long as we do our best to remain mindful, we see the consequences when we slip, and adjust accordingly. Kindness is “not two.” Just as it makes no sense to be kind to ourselves and separate this from kindness to others, so it makes no sense to practice kindness toward others, but be exceedingly unkind toward ourselves when our newfound insight falters.
Practice for Week Nine
1. Continue meditation (twenty-five minutes twice daily), a day of mindfulness, reading, walking meditation, and work with dreams. 2. Spend one or both of your daily meditation periods on metta meditation (pp. 188, 191). 3. In all of your interactions this week, focus on listening a little more deeply to others. Make a space for them. Use the exercises in this chapter to help:
• “Observe Filters” (p. 198)
• “Listen Actively” (p. 201)
4. Focus all week on right speech. Avoid spreading rumors, participating in gossip, or saying anything about anyone that you would be unwilling to say to her face. Concentrate on speaking only that which is useful, helpful, encouraging, and true. Meditate on the guidelines in this chapter and seek to put them into practice. Add your own insights to the practice as you learn from your experiences and reflection. 5. Focus on kind action, without seeking credit or recognition. This may be for the most part little things, simple and undramatic. Let the other car get in front of you. Be the one to empty the dishwasher. Straighten up. Show others your smiling face. 6. Focus this week on awareness of how others help you. Express this awareness. Tell the other person you appreciate it. Especially notice simple things: the sales clerk who is friendly. The kind word. The people who drive reasonably and courteously (instead of focusing on the relative few who drive aggressively, as we are wont to do). 08 BIEN.qxd 7/16/03 10:00 AM Page 214
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Week Ten
o
Your own treasure house already contains every thing you need. Why don’t you use it freely, instead of chasing after something outside yourself ?
—Ma-tsu (A.D. 709–788 )
Create a Vessel
Jewish mystical tradition teaches that while the divine light is everywhere, it is necessary to forge a container to hold it. Psychologically, this is a way of saying that the divine, the center within, must be consciously held. A personal journal provides such a container. Journaling is a powerfully healing practice, a way to take stock of your life, to gain perspective, to weave together seemingly disconnected and disparate strands. Whereas public autobiographies must maintain a public face and seek to make a certain impression or protect against misunderstandings, a personal journal is a private autobiography, where one can say honestly and boldly whatever one is thinking and feeling in the moment.
In your journal, you can listen to your life and tap out its secret 215
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rhythms. It is a place for total honesty about your life experiencing, including things you might normally condemn about yourself. While great journal writers of the past such as Emerson or Thoreau maintained a lofty, dignified persona in their journals, you can be free from that in private journaling. If you cannot be candid with yourself in your own journal, where can you be? Your journal is a place of freedom from the public self. It is a place to acquaint yourself with all that you are, including your less presentable aspects. In our fragmented world and even more fragmented experiencing, many of us feel a need for some container, some way of holding the fragments together. A journal can do this. Research has demonstrated that journaling has effects similar to, though not as large as, the effects of psychotherapy.
The process of journaling parallels psychotherapy. Like therapy, journaling requires a process orientation. That is, placing more attention on
how
things unfold than on the result. To benefit from keeping a journal, it is better not to expect immediate relief and profound insight each time you write. In fact, trying to force this out of each session is a mistake. Let it be enough to listen to your life, to explore raw, unvarnished thoughts and feelings. In itself, this is a unique experience. In itself, this is already healing. And as you do this over a period of time, you find a greater ease with yourself and with your life, a more accepting and open attitude toward yourself and others, and an increase in your capacity to unabashedly feel what you really feel and to feel it deeply and clearly. In your journal, you do not need to force your experience to fit into the categories of some prescripted and unexamined life story. Journaling is an experience of self-acceptance, of freedom from your public face.
Regular journaling cultivates a positive spiral of increasing awareness. At first, you record events and feelings of the day, trying to recall them clearly, with understanding and self-acceptance, exploring their connection, perhaps, with ongoing life issues and themes. At this point, your journaling does not affect the rest of your day—your day affects your journaling. What you experience during the day becomes the material you later record. As you continue, however, the effect begins to work in the other direction as well; your journaling begins to affect your day. During the day you become more sharply aware of your thoughts and feelings, knowing that you will write about them later. When you reach this point, a positive feedback cycle has begun. 09 BIEN.qxd 7/16/03 10:02 AM Page 217
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Manage Difficulties
If journaling can accomplish so much, why doesn’t everyone do it? Of course, for some people, the thought of picking up pen and paper and looking within is as appealing as scraping sandpaper over your tongue. For many, writing has simply become too aversive. The memories of critical teachers and others are simply too strong. But even for people who are otherwise comfortable with writing, there are roadblocks to keeping a journal. Three such difficulties are: (1) the slow pace of journaling; (2) the difficulty of finding the time for it; and (3) the temptation to let journaling become primarily a repository for negative thoughts and feelings. Enjoy the Slower Pace
Today when information speeds at incredible rates from computer to computer on the World Wide Web, even talking seems slow. Trying to connect with others can feel like trying to get Alice’s March Hare to stretch out his legs and have a leisurely chat. “I’m late! I’m late!” he protests, and there is no time to stop and talk. No wonder taking up a pen and recording your private thoughts, feelings, and images can seem quaint and cumbersome, like a horse and buggy in a space shuttle age. Yet it is this very slowness that makes journaling valuable. Like most of the approaches for increasing awareness in this book, it, too, is most essentially a way of slowing down, of allowing our monkey minds to calm and settle, of breathing more deeply, of sensing more clearly. The slower speed that makes journaling seem quaint is the very thing that gives it value.
If the slowness of writing is aversive, you can use your computer’s program that translates the spoken word into type. But you might like to experiment with the old-fashioned method first. In some ways, there’s no substitute for pen and paper.
Create the Time
The second problem, finding time, is an aspect of the problem of speed. For people who feel a constant pressure to do things quickly, journaling 09 BIEN.qxd 7/16/03 10:02 AM Page 218
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will seem like an extravagance of time. Some methods of journaling contribute to this problem by having burdensome time requirements. The psychologist Ira Progoff, for example, created a wonderful approach called “Intensive Journaling.” He initiated people into this process at special retreats and through the books he wrote about these retreats. It’s a good method, especially for a period of life transition, and if you are very interested in journaling as a technology for personal growth, you might enjoy Dr. Progoff’s books or even try a workshop. However, the process he describes is time intensive. If you keep your journaling process simple, it need not require large amounts of time. There can also be great flexibility—times when you write a lot and times when you write a little or skip altogether, according to your needs and the demands of your schedule. You don’t need to record every passing thought and experience. Just by attending to major themes, you can gain a great deal of insight. Avoid any hard, compulsive, or forced quality about your journaling. Let it be the emotional equivalent of stepping into a warm, bubbly Jacuzzi at the end of a hard day. One is unlikely to stick with any personal growth project that becomes heavy with pressure, guilt, or obligation.
But what if you feel like you don’t have the energy, even if you can find time? Even if your journaling is kept simple, at the end of the workday one can easily feel this way. And the thought of doing it in the morning before work, or cramming it in between work activities during the day, can seem unappealing or impossible. And there are times when it is, of course. Yet for many of us, though we say we are busy, we spend a lot of time on passive pursuits such as television. It is as though we have two modes: completely on and completely off. In the on mode, the mode we usually think of as our life, we are busy rushing and doing. This is the aspect of our lives we are thinking of when we say we are busy. When we come home, it is easy to take the path of least resistance. Now we are off duty. We want to do things that place minimal demands on us. Watching a
Seinfeld
rerun seems a lot easier than writing in a journal, meditating, reading, or playing music.
Examine Your Busyness
We have already discussed how our busyness connects with the myths of struggle and self-importance; if you feel that you don’t have time to 09 BIEN.qxd 7/16/03 10:02 AM Page 219
