Mindfulness and Life's Hard Stuff (Part 1)

What do you do when you can't calm the mind and strong emotions overwhelm you? Instead of trying to escape or distract yourself, mindfulness can allow you to open to whatever is present with interest and kindness. In the process, you can learn to face whatever arises without fear. (Part 1)

Transcript

Become aware of how you're sitting and just see about how you may want to shift or adjust your posture.

Think about how your body is aligned.

Maybe try to sense a little bit of equilibrium in how you're sitting.

Not be tight at all,

Be relaxed,

But at the same time alert.

If you feel comfortable you can close your eyes.

Just fully arrive right here.

One way of beginning any meditation is to gladden the mind.

To do so you can just sweep across the first,

The last 24 hours or so and see if you can call to mind some kindness that has been extended to you.

It could be something very simple,

Somebody opening a door,

Smiling at you,

Offering a simple word of encouragement.

Maybe sometimes just gazing into the face of your dog or your cat,

Something that brought you a feeling of contentment.

Just call that to mind for a moment and just gently relax into that feeling.

Let it sink in.

Savor it for a moment.

Sense that it feels good.

It makes you happy.

You might feel into where you sense it in your body.

Maybe it's just a relaxed feeling down through your chest.

Maybe it's a warmth around your heart.

Just dwell in this experience.

Just rest here for a moment.

And when you're ready in your own time,

You can gently open your eyes.

We're going to continue this week with our exploration of how to apply mindfulness in our lives.

And in the last session,

If you were with us,

I talked a little bit about how with mindfulness you can open up some space and pause.

Some people might even say you take a sacred pause during your day.

And in a moment you can return to a sense of stillness.

It's always there.

Just right in the background of our experience.

And this has a way of breaking these cycles of acting and reacting and like the habitual thought patterns and behaviors that we all easily fall into,

Which I was talking last time or some ways are evolutionary heritage these very protective fight,

Flight,

Or freeze responses that are overdeveloped in most humans and always make us feel a little bit on edge,

And how they're not the end of the story because if we just take this pause,

We again return to that feeling that even more fundamental feeling of who we really are.

That sense of stillness creating that pause and which is Victor Frankl said between the stimulus and the response in that pause is our freedom.

And like with many of these things,

It's,

You know,

It's a lesson we learn,

We can learn in our,

In our daily life,

And also as we develop a meditation practice.

These two universes are really one in the same.

And during the day,

I know for myself.

It's when the mind is idling when I don't have anything I'm engaged in that the mind will then automatically move towards one of these thought patterns.

And so in meditation practice,

The same thing happens.

We can open up body sensations.

So we can open up that space again that aliveness and that immediacy the freshness of this present moment which is just right here.

You get a taste of it you feel you just feel that it this calming and self regulating effective of that stillness of that pause of that openness.

The topic for today is more.

What do you do when that doesn't work.

And I have a poem I will read you.

It's,

It's really a prayer.

So,

It starts Dear God so far today.

I've done all right.

I haven't gossiped.

I haven't lost my temper.

I haven't been grumpy,

Nasty or selfish.

And I'm really glad for that.

But in a few minutes.

I'm going to get out of bed.

And from then on,

I'm probably going to need a lot of help.

So,

What do we do with what are sometimes called these persistent visitors that can come when we're trying to open up that space.

Or when we sit down to meditate that they come back again and again.

And we can feel powerless to try to focus our attention and to follow the instructions.

And,

You know,

They're often for me these little things that could be a sharp word and email that I read a couple hours ago,

Or some unskillful word that I utter to a friends,

Or to partner,

Or,

Of course they can be things from our deeper past the things that really color our experience.

And then there are uncertainties about the future.

Same ones,

Over and over.

I know when I first started meditating I came to realize that.

I think because I grew up in a household that was financially very insecure there's a lot of insecurity in my early years.

So I found that my mind was always going to budgets,

I would,

I would run numbers over and over same numbers over and over again in my mind.

Because of this feeling like this insecurity,

You know,

Concerned about insecurity,

Completely unaware that I was doing this for a long time,

As I was starting to meditate and then became suddenly aware of these habitual patterns,

Over and over.

Nothing,

Nothing new,

Nothing fresh in any of these thoughts,

Same ones,

Over and over.

And for those who have tried meditating.

We all know that it can be even worse when you're trying to meditate when you're trying to open up that space when you're trying to focus on your breath or your body sensations or what have you in some ways like they come in they seek you out,

They find you even when you're meditating.

And you and,

And every one of us can have this feeling like well maybe meditations not for me like maybe this is not my thing.

Or maybe I should join a book club instead or anything,

You know,

Because it's not working out.

The first instruction in these situations is always not to give up too easily,

Is to persevere to try for a little while because if you do,

At least for me what often I find is that if you keep coming back over and over again to these neutral anchors to the breath,

To the body,

That you can find after a minute or less,

That suddenly the storm passes,

Or seems to start to diminish.

And this can have really a transformative effect.

You know,

Because we start to learn that we can ride these waves,

You know,

That they don't need to carry us away,

That you don't have to calm the whole sea,

That you can actually ride these waves,

It is,

It is transformative to start to understand this in your life.

But also say that there are definitely times where this does not work,

That you have your bag of tricks,

Sometimes I think of it meditation,

They're not working.

And you feel sort of helpless up against whatever these persistent visitors are.

The instruction in that case is to take a u-turn.

And there's a phrase that captures this which is the only way out is in.

The only way out is in.

At that point,

You can try instead of trying to return to whatever that meditation object is the neutral object the breath the body is to turn toward this thing whatever it is that's calling your attention it's calling out to you.

So the question is,

Can you be with this thing.

In a skillful way.

Can you turn it for whatever this time is to your object of meditation itself.

And there is a technique,

Which I will talk through with you,

Which many of you may have heard of before.

And it's known by the acronym rain,

R-a-i-n rain,

And it stands for recognize.

Allow investigate and nurture.

I'm going to talk about each of these things,

Briefly.

So recognize.

This is the entry point.

And it often can be both in daily life and meditation practice that moment where you realize that you're about to fall into whatever this habitual pattern is.

You've done it 100,

1000 times before.

Whatever that groove is in your mind,

You're about to fall in there,

And you stop and you recognize what's going on.

And it can be in some ways the key to everything is that you turn towards this thing,

And you recognize what it is.

It is the first step really in trying to take control back.

And on the surface,

You know there's always something on the surface which you first recognize it could be,

You know,

The sense of stress or anxiety or upset.

That's the,

You know,

The surface phenomena that you're experiencing.

But then,

Often,

The reason that it has so much persistence and power over us because underneath that there's some deeper judgment that accompanies it.

And I think most of us have like our top five or eight or whatever judgments that are often recurring and for which we're some ways,

Always looking for this evidence could be that things never go the way I really want experience is just not satisfying.

I feel inadequate in some way.

I don't measure up to whatever the expectation usually it's mine,

Not so much other people,

Or just in general that there's something that's not right about me,

Or something that's,

That's wrong.

You know,

In some,

In some deep way.

So,

So in recognizing this first step.

It really is,

In some ways,

Recognizing what the,

What the lived experiences but what is,

What's the story that we're telling ourselves about this,

That makes it so powerful.

So the second.

The second in this process is the a of rain which is allow.

And this is also I think a radical shift for most of us,

Because when we these persistent visitors,

When they,

When they come to find us.

Against these negative experiences or feelings.

And so we distract divert.

This is,

This is a very common pattern and they have a second,

I have a second poem I want to share with you.

And the poem is called the present moment.

And it goes like this.

All I want is simply to be in the present moment.

And if I don't like the present moment.

I go get a cookie.

And that's it.

That's the end of the poem.

So we all have our favorite cookies.

It could be,

It could be the Ben and Jerry variety.

It could be the Netflix variety.

It could be the amazon.

Com variety.

So we all we all have we all have that thing you know that diversion that we had to quite naturally,

You know when we,

When we start to feel whatever we start to feel these things that the persistent visitors that that come with whatever this message is.

I,

I have a friend who went to India to pursue spiritual quest of sorts.

To become enlightened perhaps or to make real progress on the spiritual path,

And after he got back he he told me he said,

Well,

You know the problem with this trip was that I got there.

And I started these spiritual practices but I realized that I had brought myself with me to India.

And,

And because of that,

Things hadn't really changed you know,

There's a quote by Joseph Campbell,

That says,

Where we have thought to travel outwards.

We shall come to the center of our own existence.

And where we have thought to be alone.

We will be with all the world.

So,

So then the invitation in this a allow the experience is just is to be with directly that thing that hurts.

Can we can we gently say to ourselves,

Yes to whatever is happening.

Or,

Yes,

This to,

To allow and a word of caution is appropriate here in that this practice assumes that that you are safe,

And that you've done everything you can to alleviate any physical pain.

We need to care for ourselves first.

It's very important.

You can only,

You can only first meet those conditions before attending to whatever suffering remains.

As you start to allow the hurt.

You can also start to distinguish between what we can call pain.

And what we can call suffering.

And there's an equation that goes pain plus resistance is suffering pain plus resistance is suffering.

So,

There will always be in any life.

Some pain,

Things go wrong.

Bad things happen.

We get sick.

And naturally,

Then we have resistance to things that that don't go our way that we don't want this.

And the effect that this resistance has is really to amplify,

Whatever that is to increase the suffering.

There are many studies that are done with mindfulness practice and people who have chronic pain,

Pain that will never go away in their lives.

And what the studies report is that up to 90% of the suffering that people initially report can be eliminated as people focus on the actual sensation of pain,

Whatever it is.

And recognizing the difference between that and all of the emotions and feelings which surround it whether those are that,

You know,

This thing will never go away,

Or this is not the life that I wanted or it's unfair.

I need to escape this somehow.

If those can be separated from the sensation the actual experience itself,

There's a dramatic reduction in the suffering.

So,

Can we allow whatever is there.

These persistent visitors to just be there to say,

Okay,

To whatever this is.

And even allow it to be here for a moment.

Can you say to yourself,

I'm going to see if I can in this moment,

Be with this pain,

Or this moment,

Or this moment.

If you can,

Then I think something can open.

You find out that there's room in that vast expanse that opens that there's room,

Even for the pain.

And you can't allow the allow.

And the resistance in some ways is based on this notion this false notion that we can't.

We can't face it we can't be with it.

And when you realize that actually you can,

That has a way of empowering us that you,

You don't have to run,

That you can feel the experience for what it truly is.

This is the transformative effect of the allow in rain.

I will not be able to get to the eye in the end.

I'll do those next time,

I promise.

It's the really juicy part,

The eye in the end.

But let me,

Let me just perhaps close with this poem,

One last poem that talks about a little bit about this journey,

And it's a poem from Rumi it's called the guest house it's one of my favorites.

It says,

This being human is a guest house.

Every morning,

A new arrival,

A joy,

A depression,

A meanness.

A momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all.

Even if they are a crowd of sorrows who violently sweep your house,

Empty of its furniture.

Still,

Treat each guest honorably.

She may be clearing you out for some new delight.

The dark thought,

The shame,

The malice.

Meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,

Because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.

I notice we're almost at time.

So maybe we can just close by just taking another moment to go back inside for a second.

Close your eyes if you're comfortable doing so.

Take a long,

Slow,

Deep breath and pause into whatever is right here for you now.

Welcome,

Allow,

Say yes to whatever is right here.

Let's take a deep breath out to it.

And you can gently come back.

Open the eyes.

Welcome in the rest of this day.

Sensations,

The sounds,

The sights.

Thank you for your attention.

It's good to see you all.

And please come back for the I and the N.

It's the best part.

So we'll send an invite for the next one.

Thank you.

Reviews

Fabulous meditation at the beginning and then wonderfully informative and uplifting talk. Thank you for sharing here and many Blessings 🌻🐢🦋
PS I hope you also share the “I and N” part here too! ☺️