Navigating Past Negative Self-talk To Find A Safe Harbor

Our true nature is bliss but to come home to this safe harbor we have to face the siren's songs of doubt, fear, and self-criticism. Our inner critic sings this song of criticism and self-blame and if we succumb to it we are dashed on the rocks of self-doubt and limitation. How do we navigate past this Siren's island? This talk explores these areas and how to navigate past Siren's island by cultivating a kind and compassionate willingness to allow and 'be with' rather than fight or reject ourselves. References to Buddhist teachings and the life of the Buddha illustrate this process.

Transcript

I was talking with a client today who was saying that using some of the tools,

The ability to stay with difficult emotions and not succumb to the storytelling and not succumbing to the negative chatter in his head,

He's starting to come off antidepressants.

This is something he's tried to do a number of times in the past,

It's not always been easy,

But this time he feels he's got more resources to be able to support him in this process.

The metaphor that suggested itself was of Ulysses tying himself to the mast,

Going past the island with the sirens singing.

Awareness,

The mast of awareness that we tie ourselves to through our practice,

That ability to listen without reacting,

To feel rather than going into freeze,

Is central to this process of recovery.

Some of you might know the story Ulysses was traveling back from the Trojan War.

All the sailors who had ever passed the island of the sirens had always gone mad hearing their song,

Throwing themselves into the sea,

Swimming towards the song of the sirens,

Being dashed to their death on the rocks around the island.

And so Ulysses had his sailors pour wax into their ears and he was tied to the mast with instructions not to release him,

No matter how eager he appeared to be released.

To find his way home,

To come home,

Ulysses had to pass the island of the sirens.

And to come home,

He allowed himself to hear,

To hear this song.

And so it's like us,

When we want to come home,

When we want to come home to our true nature,

Which is truly free from suffering,

Our true nature,

Which is bliss,

We have to still face the siren songs of doubt,

Self-criticism,

Judgment,

Fear,

Anxiety,

Stress.

And it's only through our practice,

Tying ourselves to the mast of our practice,

That we can make our way past this challenging part of our inner journey.

And so as we go past the island of the sirens,

We hear them sing.

Whatever our negative inner chatter might be,

You are so useless,

You get everything wrong.

Why can't you get anything right?

You might as well give up.

It's not worth the struggle.

Just stop.

Don't bother.

Give in.

You're an idiot.

You get it wrong.

Look at you doing it again.

Give up.

Stop.

Surrender.

And if we succumb to the siren voices,

Then we are dashed on the rocks of self-doubt and self-limitation.

Now,

These siren voices,

The voices of our inner critic,

They arose from an earlier version of ourselves in the face of criticism from the world outside,

Or the perception of having failed.

Russ Harris,

Who writes The Happiness Trap,

He says our brain isn't a be happy mechanism.

Our brain is a don't get killed mechanism.

And so as we grow up and we notice that at certain times we make an action,

We sing a song,

Or we jump into the middle of something and it doesn't go right,

Or we get laughed at,

Or we feel ourselves to be a failure.

And then the next time we want to be spontaneous and move into action,

That little part of our brain that's all about survival says,

Oh,

Don't do that.

Remember last time?

No,

You made a fool of yourself.

Don't don't do that.

And so the voice of the self-critic is actually the voice of survival.

But it's an unfortunate internalization of the perception of failure or risk that then uses this very toxic inner chatter,

Telling us you're wrong,

You're a failure,

Don't bother.

And all of this takes us away from the possibility of being spontaneous,

Free,

Creative,

Energized.

And of course,

It can take when we are dissociating and wanting to avoid feeling,

Avoid the intensity of our feelings,

Then it can take us into depression.

So we sail past the island of the sirens,

Allowing ourselves to hear and to feel.

We need to learn how to lean in to those uncomfortable feelings,

Not dive into the middle of them,

Where it will all be too much.

But lean in,

Start to feel the edge of that anxiety that we we don't want to feel.

Lean in and feel the edge of that fear.

Lean in and feel the worry and the stress.

Using our breath to breathe into our body,

Breathe into the felt sense in our body of worry,

Stress,

Anxiety,

Fear.

The risk as we start to practice is that we hear that or Buddhism or spirituality says,

I am non-dual.

I am the universe.

I am awareness.

I am God.

I am pure consciousness.

And then we go,

Oh,

Great.

I don't have to be this crappy mess anymore.

I'm awareness.

That feels wonderful.

And there starts the path of spiritual bypassing,

Where we say,

I don't feel any of these terrible things anymore.

Or we start telling ourselves,

I am strong and confident.

I am powerful.

I believe in myself.

And we keep telling ourselves that in the mirror.

And then the little voice of the siren is singing in the background.

No,

You're not.

You're crap.

You can't get anything right.

You're even going to get this wrong.

And so we have this struggle.

Trying to use this disconnected,

Dissociated,

Positive affirmations.

It's like throwing glitter on the dunghill.

The dunghill of self-doubt,

Fear,

Anxiety,

Stress.

And as much glitter as we throw on the dunghill of all our negative emotions,

They still stink.

The only way to clear that out is to go into the Aegean stables and truly do our Herculean task of meeting,

Meeting ourselves where we least want to go.

Meeting the fear,

Meeting the anxiety,

Meeting the stress.

Allowing ourselves to be with it.

At the same time,

We start to notice that some of these narratives and stories that we tell ourselves,

The stories of failure,

Of not being good enough,

Of being rejected.

But these are all manifestations of catastrophizing.

Of telling ourselves the worst possible outcome that might happen.

The siren song of it will be a disaster.

It's all going to go wrong.

You won't do it.

It will fail.

You will fail.

They don't want me.

He won't want me.

She won't want me.

It's already over.

It's a disaster.

All of the catastrophizing that our mind does.

And as I tie myself to the mast of awareness,

And I experience all of that,

One of the tools I find really helpful is to simply say to myself,

I don't know.

I don't know.

Notice how often you have this sense of absolute certainty.

It's absolute certainty that you know the future as if you're some fortune teller,

Being able to know what will happen.

And then recognize,

Actually,

I don't know.

I don't know the outcome.

So I may as well stay in that place of not knowing and uncertainty,

Rather than grasping at the certainty of failure,

Which may or may not come about.

But when the situation occurs,

When I don't get that job,

When the date doesn't follow through,

We don't have a second meeting,

When I don't complete the assignment on time,

But then I deal with it in the moment,

In the now of this present moment,

Of this challenging experience,

I deal with it now,

Rather than spending two or three weeks catastrophizing and worrying and contemplating about that this may happen.

So telling ourselves,

I don't know,

In the face of those siren songs of catastrophizing,

Worrying,

Fortune telling.

Ajahn Chah,

Who is a teacher of the Buddhist tradition I trained in,

A teacher in Chiang in Thailand,

He had a saying.

He was talking about meditation.

And he said,

When you sit,

Let it be.

When you walk,

Let it be.

Do not try to be a meditator.

Do not try to be enlightened.

Resist nothing.

Grasp at nothing.

Until you have cried deeply,

You haven't even started to meditate.

So this spiritual bypassing is us refusing to cry.

Spiritual bypassing is this taking of this truth of resist nothing,

Grasp at nothing.

And then you go like,

Oh,

Right,

I'm just going to be a person.

So everything's fine.

I don't feel anything.

It's like,

Oh,

That person's just dumped me.

Well,

Everything's impermanent.

Everything ends.

But as a human being,

Until we are enlightened,

As long as we're in the realm of duality,

Experiencing ourselves as an ego,

There's going to be a self and an other.

There's going to be the perception of success or failure,

Gain or loss,

Praise or blame.

And there's going to be suffering within that.

Of course,

We can reflect that all of that is empty.

But the compassion aspect of wisdom,

The compassion aspect of the awakened consciousness meets that suffering with kindness.

And we acknowledge that hurts.

And then we lean into that feeling of hurt,

Noticing the siren songs of,

You see,

You're a failure.

You see,

We told you.

You see,

We said it was no point in even trying.

Just give up.

Just stop.

Surrender.

And so dissociation leads to freezing,

To shutting down.

And again,

Ultimately to depression.

Atinchar invites us to feel our feelings,

To acknowledge the feelings that are here,

To allow ourselves to cry,

To feel deeply.

Even the Buddha,

After his enlightenment,

Was met by Mara.

Mara was the personification of all the negative inner voices or the song of sirens,

You could say.

Mara is the voice of worry,

Anxiety,

Stress,

Fear,

Anger,

Greed,

Lust,

Jealousy.

All of these emotions that cause us to feel incomplete and unhappy.

At his enlightenment,

The Buddha saw Mara as being empty.

He saw through Mara.

He let go of the world of duality.

He stopped struggling.

He embraced the fact that these emotions were here,

But he no longer resisted them and no longer grasped at them.

And he was free.

He awoke to the undivided state of consciousness that was his nature.

Now,

You might think,

Well,

Great,

Now that he's enlightened and he's free from all of that,

He's not going to have any of those thoughts or experiences anymore.

But in the scriptures,

It says that from time to time,

Mara would appear to the Buddha and the Buddha would simply look at Mara and say,

I see you.

I see you,

Mara.

And with that,

Mara would disappear,

Crying out,

I have no grasp over the blessed one anymore.

I have no hold over him.

Now,

To me,

That suggests that if Mara is the voice of greed,

Anger,

Lust,

Jealousy,

Negative,

Unwholesome emotions,

The Buddha was still having unwholesome emotions.

The Buddha still felt at times anger or hatred or greed.

But instead of taking on the identity of the one absorbing into the feeling of anger or resisting the anger,

There was an open spaciousness to his consciousness that could just acknowledge,

Oh,

There's anger arising.

Like the sky,

Knowing that a cloud is arising within it,

The cloud no longer being the sky's identity.

Whereas for most of us,

When the cloud of anger arises within the spaciousness of consciousness,

We don't see the spaciousness of consciousness,

We see the cloud and we identify with anger.

Either anger that has to be dealt with,

Anger that we absorb into and we become anger,

Or anger that we're resisting and we're saying,

I don't want anger,

How do I get rid of this?

All the time forgetting that we are the sky in which that cloud of anger is arising.

We learn to turn towards that siren song of anger,

Fear,

Catastrophizing,

The self-talk that goes on constantly within our head.

We learn to bring a kind attention to it,

Tying ourselves to the master of awareness through our practice.

Learning to be the witness to these thoughts that are arising within us.

Learning to bring compassion to the parts that suffer and need kindness.

All the time with a cultivation of the wisdom aspect of knowing that this is empty,

That there is no fixed self here to experience these things.

They're simply arising as a flow of experiences.

And yet in the moment,

When this experience of disappointment,

Anger,

Sorrow arises,

I can turn towards it,

Hold it with kindness,

Breathe into it,

Give it space and release,

Release and let go.

So this is our practice.

And like Ulysses returning home,

We have to allow ourselves to constantly pass that island as the sirens hear their song and learn how to hear it without being drawn in by it.

And we hear it by practicing awareness and compassion,

In cultivating energy,

Focusing on our intention to maintain our practice,

To bring ourselves to that ultimate realization of our true nature,

The undivided,

Clear,

Spacious,

Vast,

Luminous light of consciousness that has the characteristics of bliss and joy and clarity,

Unity,

Until we relax into that natural state and wake up to our natural state.

Then we practice being with the siren songs,

Allowing ourselves to hear them,

Bring kindness to that inner chatter and inner dialogue,

To the layers of ourselves that have created meaning around who I am,

When I'm successful,

When I'm a failure,

How I get praise,

How I get blame.

And we keep bringing kindness to that we breathe into what's here in our body.

We bring attention to our heart and we use the breath to release,

Taking a deep breath into our belly and breathing out with a sigh.

Self-regulating this nervous system that can at times feel so jangled and scared,

And something as simple as resting your hand on your body,

Taking a long,

Slow,

Deep breath in.

Oh,

And a long,

Slow,

Deep breath out.

And this is how we pass the island of the sirens as they are telling us all of these calamities,

Catastrophizing worries,

Fears,

Anxieties,

Self-judgments and blame.

So I hope there's something there that can help you in your own practice.

Thank you for listening.

Reviews

Thank you for sharing your gift of knowledge. Of storytelling that ties it all In together. I look forward to more listening sessions 🌸

This is the first time I listeners to one of your readings. I am deeply touched by the way you talk about the sirens. Thank you so much 🙏🏽

This is a great talk that was insightful and very relatable. I will revisit it frequently to fully absorb it. I really appreciate your work, thank you 🙏

Thank you for helping me ❤️your gentle guidance felt comforting and I feel grateful fo learn and reflect ⭐️

Thank you so much. I especially liked the sky/cloud metaphor for thoughts coming into our consciousness.

A very helpful reminder of not succumbing to distractions or allowing myself to be dragged away from the present moment. Thanks, Nick. Really enjoyed that 🙏🏼

This talk was exactly what I needed today. A beautiful message Nick. Thank you. 🙏

I needed this friendly voice as I’ve had hard few days been crying numerous times. Listening to this track helped me settle down a bit and fall into a much needed sleep so thank you 🙏

Thank you for this talk. Resonates a lot. I recognise a lot of these traits in myself. Bookmarked to revisit 🙏

Love this new track by Nick about leaning into our fears, doubts and anxieties. Nick's beautiful voice is so soothing and reassuring. A great track to listen to in between joining Nick's weekday live sessions on Insight Timer.