Navigating The Troubles

Every life has plenty of troubles, even the luckiest of lives. In this session, Catherine quotes Viktor Frankl who reminded us that when we cannot change something we are challenged to change ourselves. Catherine and the group then discuss being a skilled navigator of one’s troubles as opposed to being beaten down by them.

Transcript

Welcome to In the Deep.

I'm your host,

Katherine Ingram.

The following is from a Zoom session broadcast from Australia on May 2nd,

2021.

It's called Navigating the Troubles.

Victor Frankl said,

When we are no longer able to change a situation,

We are challenged to change ourselves.

When we are no longer able to change a situation,

We are challenged to change ourselves.

We have the capacity to respond in different ways.

Now,

We have all heard this in Dharma circles,

Said a thousand times in different ways.

We've heard it so many times.

It's the basis of the serenity prayer,

To accept the things you cannot change.

But I find it very calming to hear it said in every possible way,

Just to be reminded,

Right?

Just to be reminded,

Just to hear the Dharma,

Hear the truth of it.

We are confronted with lots of situations in our world,

Grand and small,

Gigantic troubles and small annoyances and everything in between.

It's life.

Big things happen in lives.

Gary and I were just on the phone talking about the day that Vesuvius erupted.

I mentioned that one.

You're a medieval Italian person going about your lovely business,

Maybe doing some art or making a pot or planting a seed or harvesting something.

Vesuvius erupts and in pretty much no time at all,

Everyone is dead and made into statues of ash and bone.

Things happen,

Big things happen quickly sometimes.

More often though,

It's a slow steady drumbeat of troubles that go on.

It's life.

Very few lives escaped lots of troubles.

It may look like some of them were luckier than others.

That may be well true.

It's pretty clear that almost everybody has quite a fair share of troubles.

Now,

The difference between being a good navigator of the troubles and being someone who's actually beaten down by them,

That difference is all about how you're playing it,

What you're doing with your attention along the way.

I feel lucky actually to know so many people who are inspiring in that they live with hard things,

Ongoingly.

Yet,

They're light.

They're light in their heart.

We just had a retreat in Victoria.

One of my friends on the retreat told me afterward that she had woken up on the last day out of a nightmare.

But she said,

I felt totally peaceful,

Which was kind of this weird dichotomy she experienced.

She felt peacefulness,

Like a ground of peacefulness from having been in the retreat and having habituated in a certain use of her attention.

She felt this kind of ground of peacefulness,

Even though she had a nightmare.

This is what I often mean when I say coexisting awareness.

There's a lot of nightmares going on,

And they're real.

A lot of them are real.

They're not just nighttime visions.

A lot of them are daytime horrors.

That's true.

Yet,

One can have a set point of ease,

Of acceptance,

Of not falling into the abyss of whining,

And kicking our feet,

And shaking our fists at the sky,

And saying that we know better how it all should be,

Even if we do.

But we're probably not going to get our way.

This is all by way of saying another simple way is to say choose peace.

Fighting with the things that you can do nothing about,

Lamenting,

And complaining,

And being angry,

Is only going to harm you.

It's only going to steal away your precious moments of this life.

You're free to do it.

I'm not saying there's going to be some punishing God that's going to harm you.

But it's just,

I said last night,

How are you going to spend your moments?

How does one wisely spend your allotment?

You don't know how long that's going to be.

However long it is,

It's very finite.

Finite number of heartbeats,

Finite number of breaths.

I'm quite aware of the general frustration running around,

Fear,

And so on.

I'm very aware of all that,

And honor it,

And acknowledge it.

I feel some of it as well.

But I'm also keenly aware more than I think I've ever been of the preciousness of the time,

And of what the priorities really are.

Hi,

Catherine.

Hello.

Hi,

Dear.

Your opening remarks reminded me of something I heard this week,

Which was,

If something is not worth doing,

It's not worth doing well.

That really hit home with all the topsy-turvy-ness of my journey,

That I take so much on.

I do whatever I take on as well as I can,

But so much of it I shouldn't even be taking on.

I think,

Especially now,

I do feel like I'm tantruming.

I know mindfulness.

I know how to get these spaces.

I know that there are other aspects to myself,

But I really default.

Maybe there's just too much,

And I default to the tantruming,

And the frustration,

The depression,

And everything else.

This is what I'm being hit with,

And I thought that I'd scaled back,

And it feels like I've just begun scaling back in terms of what I can take on.

Yeah.

You've only just moved.

A move always has a thousand extra balls in the air,

So maybe just give yourself a little bit of wiggle room,

A little bit of time to have this chaotic phase,

And then find your rhythm.

Having the intention,

Which it seems you do have,

Is the first step.

You need to be aware that there's something out of balance,

Something that needs to be redressed,

And give yourself a little time to accomplish that.

And then I would say it's going to take some initial discipline to be a caretaker to yourself,

To really carve out times for walks in nature,

And sitting in a chair in your yard staring at the sky.

All of that has got to be put into the program.

One of my girlfriends runs this big seminar business.

Of course,

Right now,

And for the last year and a half of COVID,

It's not been operating,

But she used to fly all over the world all the time.

She would be in four countries a week,

Like do a seminar,

Fly the next day,

And do another one the next night.

I don't know how she did it,

But she used to sometimes show me her schedule,

And when we would be trying to find a day to be together.

Her schedule would be blocked out for months on end,

But some of the days had big X's through them.

Those days were called rest days,

Which actually could also mean that she might go to the movies,

Or she might do something spontaneous,

Or she'd go on a tour of something.

But those days were completely nothing went on them as though they were marked in the schedule,

Which they were.

If that's a trick that can work for you,

Where you actually have blocked out either a time per day or a day per week.

One of my other friends,

Big businessman,

He died in his 80s a few years ago,

But he ran several businesses.

He was a busy man,

But every Thursday was his silent day for many years,

Even when he was running all these businesses.

Thursday was his silent day.

He would send faxes and things on that day.

He would communicate as needed,

But you couldn't talk to him.

He didn't speak on that day.

It's an imposed shutting down and an imposed unplugging.

But maybe that's what's needed in your case,

Because your tendency is to say yes to things.

When everybody gets used to the fact that you have these carved out times,

Then they won't be expecting you.

They won't take it personally that you're not showing up in those particular times.

I talked about it at the recent retreat,

Actually,

About how in another type of world,

Or maybe another time,

We wouldn't be in as much need of a silent retreat,

Because life would have been a lot slower.

There would have been a lot less to do.

People were not plugged in at all.

They had their own rhythms that were more commensurate with natural rhythms.

They were able to live in quieter ways,

Especially those people who had an interest in these kinds of things,

Say in ancient China and in Asia and in India and places where there was a thriving understanding and honoring of people who were what we would say are dropouts.

It was a tradition.

It was a tradition in India,

In fact,

That when one had gone through schooling and then householding,

You were perfectly free to become a sannyasana and to travel the trains for free and people would give you food.

Yeah,

And you could live out the end part of your life.

That was a very honored tradition for a long,

Long time.

I don't know if it is now.

My point being that in those days and in those cultures,

Maybe they didn't need to take a full break and go away somewhere where it's going to be completely silent.

But in ours,

We do.

Whether it's in a simple schedule of one's own or in the larger context of running a big scene and having family and kids and business.

So many people now live going from one thing to the next to the next to the next until they go to bed at night.

For those people,

They come to a point where they actually feel like they're going to hit a wall and they do hit a wall.

Then sometimes they then turn to pharmaceuticals to get them through.

They have to use all kinds of pharmaceuticals to just exist in their lives.

I think for most modern Western type people,

Retreats are truly necessary for your mental and physical health.

But my thing,

In addition to that,

Is to try to mitigate these crazy lives that we tend to live in the West and put in little mini retreats,

Little simulacrums of retreats throughout your ordinary life.

Be absolutely confident and bold in doing that and saying that's what you're doing.

You could say Saturdays,

I'm off.

It's my silent day.

It's a great idea.

It's a great idea.

It's something that I can do as well.

Yes.

Also,

Like I said,

When everyone knows that that's the plan,

No one gets hurt that they're being shunned.

Thank you.

Catherine,

I have a question that the balance between what you were just talking about,

About the traversing between what's happening in your life on a very local level and choosing to stay with that and disconnecting from the wider world.

Just overnight,

I've been wrestling with it,

Really.

If we all disconnect from the bigger world,

Then who's taking care of the bigger world if we're not paying attention?

I probably can figure out intellectually,

It is about getting the balance right so we can contribute but we don't get overwhelmed that flow back and forth.

I would just like to hear some views on that,

Please.

It would be really helpful.

Thank you.

Yes.

Well,

Of course,

It's not an either or.

My premise is that the clearer you are as a vessel to help out,

The better it goes and the more effective one becomes so that your job in very great part would be keeping your own calm,

Your own peacefulness,

Your own clarity of mind,

All of which requires a type of relaxation and a type of using your attention so that you don't become another body on the pile that has to be taken care of.

You become like the Doctors Without Borders.

You can sense that those guys,

They are coming from a very clear,

Quiet space inside.

Now,

At some point,

Any one of them is,

It would be fair enough for them to hit a wall as well if they've been working 17 hours in triage.

But obviously,

There's some way in which humans can keep going and do very good work,

Very beautiful work because their internal landscape is calm.

This is not a contradiction in terms of a way of life.

It's an enhancement to be able to find ways that are just creating much more ease inside of you,

Much more space,

Much more of a sense of,

Well,

You get a lot more energy for one thing because your energy isn't being drained by your own internal panic and your resistance,

Which is incredibly exhausting.

So my experience,

And because I've also interviewed a lot of people who were running big movements based on Gandhian ideals and were using all of the methodologies of mindfulness or love practice or whatever their particular tradition was,

To keep themselves on point,

Aligned,

Coming from a lot of compassion,

Coming from very big understandings of how humans are,

How the ecosystem is,

And so on,

Living in systems theories,

Systems understandings,

I should say.

That was so effective in so many cases when these movements erupted on the stage against massively huge powerful forces who were trying to oppress them.

Yet,

In many cases,

They prevailed,

Not always,

But many.

So I would just say to you,

This understanding and the deepening in it is a way for you to be more effective in your work.

At the same time,

There develops a quiet acceptance to how things are going,

Whether or not they're going the way that you preferred.

It's not that the quiet acceptance deters you from continuing on.

It actually allows you to continue on because you're not burned out in disappointment and anger.

I've seen so many people over the years be very burned out.

I've known so many activists and a lot of them get burned out on anger.

Anger just is extremely destructive.

It can be initially a great energy source to get you going,

The kind of righteous anger,

We got to change this,

But you can't sustain it.

It's hard on everything.

It's hard on your mind and it repels people around you.

These are the reasons for this kind of deepening.

It affects every person you interact with.

It,

First of all,

Affects you.

It makes your life easier.

It makes your life more joyful,

More tender,

More compassionate,

More generous,

More appreciative,

Etc.

It's also a fragrance that goes out into this troubled,

Fearful world.

This fragrance is very,

Very welcome and it's going to be more so with time,

My prediction.

I would say that you don't need any kind of conflict.

You won't become a blob,

A vegetable that is not helping out.

The deeper you go in this,

The more elegant your actions will be.

Thank you.

That's beautiful.

Deep,

Wise.

Thank you.

Spot on for me.

That just sings in my soul.

Thank you.

Okay,

Dear.

I'm just loving hearing,

You know,

Everyone's perspectives.

It was about choosing peace and that I didn't used to believe that a person could do that.

And then I believed a person could do that,

But I couldn't do it.

And then it just took a long time for me to finally begin this practice of choosing the piece.

And it's snowballed since doing that just a year and a half or so ago,

It's just snowballed into this transformation and gratitude has become the primary practice in my life and the recognition of just choosing that piece and resting in that calm.

And I wonder if that's like,

When you talk about the finite heartbeats and breaths,

I wonder if that is part of the wisdom of age as well.

Maybe not everybody gets to that,

But if people start thinking about the finitude of breaths,

They might change their priorities a little bit.

And I think that was part of what happened to me.

But of course,

Part of it was your teachings and other mindfulness practices.

And it just,

Once I started and really went wholly into it,

It just snowballed.

So yes,

It's so true.

It becomes a habit and it's a habit that is extremely welcome and it reinforces itself,

Which is great.

And the reason it reinforces itself is you realize,

Okay,

This is the easier way,

Right?

I can either keep banging on a subject that is making me upset in my head that I can do nothing about,

Or I can choose peace in this very moment.

And cruise on.

And it's like,

The more you do that,

The more you tend to do that.

And I'm never ever,

Ever talking about reaching some steady state.

I don't believe in that.

It doesn't need to be a steady state.

It just needs to be a mostly ease,

Mostly letting go of that which goes.

Mostly accepting what one cannot change anyway,

And letting that acceptance even go deeper and deeper about all kinds of things.

Now to your point about the age thing,

And I think you're right,

I think with age does come an increasing awareness,

Of course,

Of the limitations of time.

And one can always say,

I mean,

Being such a long time Dharma student,

Starting when I was really in my late teens,

But really starting to do serious Buddhist practice when I was 22,

We heard a lot about death and keeping death over one shoulder.

And we were no strangers to the concept of death.

But when you're that young,

It's very hard to viscerally sense it.

You kind of hear it as a theory.

You see evidence.

But it's very hard to really understand it the way you do when you get older.

It is true.

But I do feel that all of that intellectual preparation had an effect.

I've never struggled with the believing in the fact of it,

That I've never,

It's been so obvious for so long that that is what happens.

But it is becoming more integrated as a felt sense of just the how quick it all goes.

And there's that poignant sense of wishing we could impart the knowledge of what comes when we're older to younger people.

Of course,

People have been trying to do that for millennium,

But eventually they'll believe us.

And in the meantime,

Though,

These practices,

These understandings and what you said about gratitude,

Those will definitely see you through to a much,

Much happier life.

And I think the more people we,

As we age,

We see more people die.

And that brings it home every time more.

The more we see the suffering of others and the more we see the death of the people that we love as we age,

It becomes more and more visceral,

As you said.

And I was pondering,

How do we share this with young people?

And I just think it's human nature that we can't necessarily.

And maybe that's better in a sense,

Because we don't want them to be going around with this cloud on their head.

If that's how it affects them,

Which it might.

So yeah,

I mean,

It's all,

It's just the evolutionary rollout.

But I do think,

And I have met many younger people who I've sensed had the wisdom of someone much,

Much older,

And who really get that this is,

That these,

You don't get them back.

You don't get them back.

You're spending down.

And there's no interest accumulating anywhere.

We're spending down the days.

And it's good to really know that and celebrate them and let your attention be guided by your own wisdom.

And again,

Not every moment.

My attention indulges all kinds of nonsense every day.

But I'm usually aware at some point,

It's like eating junk food or something.

And usually at some point,

It starts to feel,

Ugh,

And I have all my own tricks for moving it around.

This past week was my birthday.

Like that I said to Gary on the phone,

This is getting serious.

It's like,

You know,

We're not in middle age.

Right.

And I heard from lots of people on Facebook,

Which I don't usually even look at,

But I do look at it around my birthday because old friends are writing,

You know,

And I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings by just simply not responding.

But one of my friends wrote to me something like,

He wrote something like,

I can't figure out how to find what you're up to.

Meaning he can't find anything on social media that tells him what I'm even doing.

And I realized how absolutely averse I feel to engaging in that kind of activity,

Like recording my special moments or any moments or whatever.

Like I definitely cannot be bothered.

It's not how I want to spend my time.

I don't have any quarrel with those who do.

And I see that people enjoy it and they cake up with each other and their families and their friends and so on.

I do wonder about it for the younger people.

But anyway,

For myself,

I couldn't possibly care less about doing anything like that.

You know,

I'd literally rather be staring at the sky.

I'd way rather be staring at the sky,

Laying on my couch,

Staring at the sky and the birds.

It's all about how you choose to spend your time and what is it being very tuned into the movements inside oneself in any given activity.

And that's another thing that I feel either age or some kind of immersion in this perspective has given me is I have a very ping Sparks book that shows a certain kind of