Rewire Me With Nancy Colier and Rose Caiola

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The Mindful Way To Stay Sane In A Virtual World

Do you compulsively check your emails? Are you always plugged in? Let’s face it: Our society has an addiction to technology.

In this interview, Rose talks to Psychotherapist and Author, Nancy Colier, about her new book The Power of Off: The Mindful Way To Stay Sane In A Virtual World, her story of being addicted to technology and what inspired her to make a change.

Nancy explains how to have a healthy relationship with technology and how to go from addiction to living a balanced healthy life in today’s digital age. During their conversation, Rose and Nancy talked about everything from the impact technology has on our bodies and minds to how to create a more empowered relationship with technology.

Are you ready to start your digital detox? Pick up the Power of Off and stay connected to what is truly meaningful in life.

Why You Should Stop Asking Google What to Do With Your Life

At the last minute my afternoon meeting was cancelled. And so, unexpectedly, I was presented with a substantial chunk of unscheduled time, five hours of open, unfilled space with which I could do whatever I wanted.

I immediately flipped open my laptop and started researching. Researching what?  Everything, anything, something that would interest me, something to do, something to fill the space.

After distractedly surfing through movie schedules and museum exhibits, I had a thought, “sound baths.” Within seconds, Google had delivered a page of options on the the new auditory class that meditation and yoga studios now offer. I inattentively skimmed through several descriptions and testimonials on the bath experience, as well as schedules for five or six studios that offered it. Rapidly scanning the pages, I wasn’t able to find a class for the day at hand. In the process however, I bumped into a link for the ten hardest workouts in New York City. Wouldn’t that be a great idea, I thought, and so I flitted through a whole host of kettle ball, circuit training, and boot camp options, none of which sounded remotely like something I wanted to actually do.  I am not sure what happened next but I found myself inside a list of vacation destinations with direct flights from New York.  Seems I had followed a link for easy family holidays that won’t break the bank. Inside one of the hotel write-ups was a description of a garden that sat on the sea, which reminded me of a neighborhood park that I had read about but not yet visited.  I found the park online and superficially perused its history and hours for visiting.  But then I remembered, I needed a new pair of sneakers.  And so I sped over to the Nike site and discovered that there were so many new styles, all of which were fabulous, that I couldn’t decide. The only pair I investigated further wasn’t available in my size.  At this point I went back to movies because I had a thought about a documentary on a runner.  But it turned out the film was way downtown and that didn’t appeal.  What then followed was a speed train through hot yoga studios, great city walks, dog parks for shy dogs, independent book stores, places to buy cooking supplies and kirtan performances…which is where I woke up. 

I shut my computer and took a deep breath, pulling the air down into my body.  “Stop” I said to myself. “Just stop.” I looked at my watch: I had been down the rabbit hole for two hours. Two of my five free hours were gone. I felt agitated, anxious, and paralyzed, entirely overwhelmed with possibilities but unable to move on anything. I was “twired,” tired and wired at the same time. I put my hand on my heart and felt the simplicity of stillness.

“Come home,” I said to myself. “Be here.” I then unhooked from all ideas of what I should or could do with the time and just felt into my body, felt my own physical presence. I took a few conscious breaths and invited myself to relax and land where I was, now. 

What happened was that I felt an immediate sense of relief and peace, to be allowed to be where I was, to not have to do anything at all, nothing other than pay attention to what I was actually experiencing. 

I then became aware of a longing to call a particular friend. I also felt the desire to take a walk, to be with myself and be outside. That’s what came, organically, when I dropped into my body and now.

One of the problems that technology is creating is a feeling that we should be constantly taking advantage of every opportunity available to us. And if we’re not, we are somehow missing out on life. We believe that there is something, somewhere inside Google, that will make this moment complete, some place else that is better than where we are, something more that we ought to be doing. We no longer ask ourselves, or let our selves discover what we want to do. Rather, we ask Google what’s possible or what we can do. The thing is, what we can do is often very different than what we want to do. We find, frequently, that what we want to do is much simpler than what we can do. And also, that when we listen in to what we actually want, from the body, the answer is clear and without ambivalence and confusion; it has a sense of “Oh yes, that’s right.” Unlike the “can and should do’s,” which leave us feeling murky and without the clear “Yes” that comes with truth. 

Technology creates an infinite number of choices. We can do anything at any time.  And yet, while we may delight in the idea of choice, research shows that when we have too many choices, we actually end up unhappy, deadened, overwhelmed, fatigued, and immobilized. With unlimited choices, we frequently end up making no choice at all.  And, if we are able to make a decision amidst the mountains of choices, we generally feel less satisfied with our choice and more concerned that another option would have served us better. Unlimited choices also cause us to shut down our creative thinking.  When presented with too many options, we often revert to the simplest choice or consider only one manageable variable in making our selection.  The more that technology beckons with possibilities, the more we humans are pulling the covers over our heads and finding ourselves frozen, in a perpetual state of too much and not enough.   

The issue too is that we are looking outside ourselves for our own truth.  When we have a free afternoon, we go looking to the internet, hoping to find something that will generate interest in us.  When we cook dinner, we go surfing on Instagram to find a picture of something that will tell us what we want to eat.  When something happens in our life, we post the experience to find out what it should and will mean to us. 

We have forgotten that we can know things through our own experience.  We have forgotten that the process of knowing can be one that happens from the inside out and not the outside in.

The next time you find yourself with a chunk of unscheduled time, even just a little (standing in line, riding public transportation), try living it in a new way (differently than I did) and creating a new habit.  Instead of immediately searching outside yourself, to your phone or computer, to find something that might interest you, something to fill the time, do this: drop into yourself, into now. Feel your body, the sensations arising, feel how you are in that exact moment.  Pay attention inside; notice if there is a natural longing or interest already present. If nothing comes, that’s fine, just stay still and keep attending. Practice not doing, not filling the time, not habitually forcing something into every open space as soon as it appears. In so “doing” you are, in fact, turning yourself, now, into a destination and a place to be. 

Next Avenue: Take the 30-Day Digital Detox Challenge!

Have you ever caught yourself checking your smartphone while you’re behind the wheel — even though you know it’s dangerous? Do text alert chimes routinely make you interrupt conversations with the person sitting in front of you? Tech addiction is not just an idea. It’s here, it’s real and it’s taking over our lives. 

I developed a 30-Day Tech Detox after a woman I know and respect — someone I consider wise and aware and thus immune to tech addiction — literally begged me to create a detox program for her and everyone else she knows. She wasn’t using technology only for work, which she needs to do, but craving it all...

Read more at Next Avenue: http://www.nextavenue.org/30-day-digital-detox/

Fox News Health Talk with Dr. Manny and Nancy Colier

With the seemingly relentless and inescapable noise and demands of modern-day devices, getting a mere five minutes of distraction-free time, and dare I say peace...

Tami Simon and Nancy Colier Podcast: Waking Up From Our Digital Addiction

In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon and Nancy have a frank discussion of the large-scale modern addiction to cell phones, email, and social media. Nancy offers ways one can recognize addictive behavior and how we can break out of compulsive cycles around technology. They also talk about parenting in the digital age and the importance setting appropriate boundaries when it comes to electronic media. Finally, Nancy considers the need for a "digital detox" and how it is imperative that we all set aside time to spend in silence. (65 minutes)

In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon and Nancy have a frank discussion of the large-scale modern addiction to cell phones, email, and social media. Nancy offers ways one can recognize addictive behavior and how we can break out of compulsive cycles around technology. They also talk about parenting in the digital age and the importance setting appropriate boundaries when it comes to electronic media. Finally, Nancy considers the need for a "digital detox" and how it is imperative that we all set aside time to spend in silence. (65 minutes).

http://www.soundstrue.com/store/weeklywisdom?page=single&category=IATE&episode=11933

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Breaking Up Our Dysfunctional Relationship with Technology

We can all agree technology has many advantages.

To list a few, technology promotes education, helps keep us safe, provides a closer reach to those who were once out of reach, saves lives, keeps us connected with instantaneous communications, and most importantly, allows a virtual window for some (you know who you are) to peek in on an ex-boyfriend or ex-girlfriend…just in case you find yourself curious as to how they’re doing.

However, in light of all of the advancements, “Houston, we have problem.”We can all agree technology has many advantages.

Spirituality and Health, The Power of Off

Scary as it is to admit, I once walked by my own children at the end of a workday, offering them just a quick nod on my way to get to my email, and it wasn’t as if I was expecting a note from the president.  I am not alone in this. For me, this experience, both acted out and witnessed by me, was a turning point. I suddenly woke up, perhaps by grace or some other force, and was in touch with what’s most important to me, my deepest... read more...

http://nancycolier.com/spirituality-health-power-off/ 

NBC Connecticut Interview with Nancy Colier, The Power of Off

Nancy Colier on NBC Connecticut, Digital detox with The Power of Off  

Nancy Colier, The Power of Off

What to Do About the People Who Blame You for Everything

My recent post, "When You’re In Relationship With A Blamer," inspired overwhelming feedback, both from people who feel they receive blame and those who think they’re blamers. (Encouragingly, many blamers expressed the desire to change their blaming habits.) 

The questions I raised included:

• How do we proceed when someone that matters to us assigns us negative intentions that are not ours? 
• How much energy do we put into trying to correct their ideas so as to be seen and known correctly? 
• How do we stay open, non-defensive, and emotionally intact when someone uses us as a place to unload their anger, guilt, and shame, and to successfully split off from their own negative feelings? 
• How can we avoid internalizing their negativity and experiencing ourselves as the bad object that they need us to be—so that their internal system can function smoothly, their identity can remain intact? 

The first thing to do when someone we care about blames or criticizes us is to examine our own behavior. Is there truth in what they are telling us about ourselves? What was your intention in this situation? If we find that there is validity in what they are telling us, we can take a good look at what they are pointing to, and try to use their words as a lesson and opportunity to grow. 

To honestly investigate our own behavior takes courage. To acknowledge that we could have acted with more awareness in a situation, or could have done better, is not the same as blaming or judging ourselves. We are all works in progress and all in the process of becoming more aware.

But when we are in relationship with a chronic blamer, most of us have already done this kind of self-examination. We have found that the blamer frequently accuses us of intentions and actions that do not belong to us, and often belong to themselves. Part of what makes being in a relationship with a blamer so challenging is that our intentions and behavior seem unrelated to how they view and treat us. We may show the blamer who we are, and painstakingly explain, again and again, our truth—that we are not what they have decided. But the blamer needs us to remain the bad one, and needs us to see what he or she sees. However, if we pay attention and take some distance from the accusations, we realize that we have been assigned a role in the other’s internal narrative and are playing a (negative) character for them in their storyline—all of which is about them and not us. Even when our behavior demonstrates a different reality than what the blamer claims, the blamer is likely to remain more committed to keeping his or her narrative intact than to seeing the truth. 

The great danger that projection presents when it comes from those close to us is it makes us feel like the bad person that the other person is relating to. Particularly when someone projects onto and blames us from a young age, we tend to take on the core-belief that we are bad—in whatever form our blamer framed it (I am the selfish one, I am the angry one, etc.). When we are young, we experience ourselves through the eyes of those close to us. We have not yet developed a private experience of ourselves that can refute the character they need us to be. We don’t yet have the capacity to separate who we are, in our own heart and gut, from the guilty person they see. Their delight or disapproval teaches us who we are. Until we understand and heal from projection, and discover a different experience of ourselves, we believe and/or fear ourselves to be their story of us.

The most critical practice to undertake when in a relationship with a blamer is to get irrefutably clear on who we are in our own heart—which only we can know. What is my truth?: This is the question in which we must marinate. The core of protecting ourselves from a blamer is establishing and continually supporting an impenetrable boundary between what we know about ourselves and what this other person needs to believe about us. This boundary requires that we be willing to dive deeply into our own heart, to discover our real truths—without distortion—with a fierce and unwavering intention to meet ourselves as we actually are. Our practice is to create a tether into our heart, and build a place inside ourselves where the blamer’s words cannot reach—where we know (and know we know) who we are. Rather than harming us, then, the other’s blame can then be used as a red flag, to remind us to return to our heart to discover what is actually so for us—separate from the other and their story. Their blame becomes the catalyst to direct our energy away from their narrative and toward our own inarguable truth.

It is heartbreaking when someone we love sees us in a way that doesn’t feel true or positive, but just because another person (no matter how much we love them) relates to us as bad or guilty does not mean that we are those things. We can mourn this person not knowing us, or not seeing us correctly—without having to become the object of their blame. Further, we do not need to convince the other of who we are to be who we are. We need not convince them of our innocence to be innocent. We can simply choose to reject their projections, to return them to sender, if you will. Their projections belong to them; we can let them pass through us. While we feel and grieve the gap between who we are and who they see, it is not a gap that must be, or in some cases, can be bridged.

While we can’t control what another person thinks about us or how they may distort our truth, we can most definitely control what we do with their thoughts. We can’t control whether another person will listen to or be interested in our truth, but we can control for how long and with how much energy we will attempt to correct their version of our truth. We can also control how and if we want to continue in a relationship with someone who chooses not to relate to who we actually are.

In relating with a blamer, some important questions to contemplate are:

1. When I search my own heart, is my intention in line with what the blamer is accusing me of? (Am I responsible in some way for what they are claiming and can I look at that part of myself?)
2. What is my heart’s intention in this relationship?
3. Have I tried to express my experience or my truth to this person?
4. Do I experience this person as interested in or open to my truth?
5. Am I allowing myself to experience the feelings that arise as a result of being unfairly blamed and/or not heard?
6. Can I honor and grieve the gap between who they are relating to and who I am?
7. Can I know myself as who I am even in the face of their need to relate to me as someone else?
8. Can I allow their negative projections to remain with them, and not take them in as my own?
9. Can I let myself be who I am and know myself as who I am, even with this person believing that I am responsible for how they feel?
10. Can I honor myself as innocent even in the face of the guilt they are assigning me?
11. Do I want to remain in relationship with someone who sees me in a way that is out of alignment with who I know myself to be? If so, why? 

A longing for others to see and know us as we know ourselves—and, of course, regard us positively—is integral to being human. And yet, we can’t always change the way another person relates to us, or who they need us to be for them. Fortunately, we can always change the way we relate to ourselves. No matter the narrative tsunami we face, we can always be that kind and curious presence—for ourselves—which wants to know what is actually true inside our heart, and thus to know us as we really are. 

Are You an Enabler?

I am an aware person--and--I was an enabler.

My path to becoming an enabler started out as most do, as someone trying to help, and thinking that I could. A dear friend who is also a relative came to me in trouble, having lost her job, about to lose her health insurance and unable to pay rent. An intelligent, honest and kind woman, she was not afraid of hard work and had always demonstrated a strong moral character. She desperately wanted to work and was trying diligently to find employment. When she first asked me for financial help, a short- term loan, it was a no-brainer. She’d never had trouble paying her bills, and there was no reason to think that she wouldn’t get herself out of this recent financial pickle. And so, without much thought, I wrote her a check…

Eight years later, she was still in that pickle only that pickle had morphed itself into a malignant sub-machine gun. For eight years she came to me for money on an increasingly frequent basis, with increasingly dire potential consequences, and with an increasing sense of entitlement. For the most part she paid me back although sometimes not for a long time, and sometimes after I had already loaned her more on top of what she already owed me.

Complicating the matter, she wasn’t just a relative and friend, she was also deeply involved in my children’s lives; she loved my children…and was also someone I loved, and still love. I didn’t want her to suffer as she was suffering or be tormented by the relentless fear and desperation she felt.

Also, I was in a position where I had a good job and some money in the bank; she had neither. I could help, which in my mind meant that I should help. She was in pain and also family after all.

Year after year she continued to ask me for money. But no matter how much I “helped,” her financial situation got worse. She was also growing more despondent and angry, more aggressive in her behavior towards me. She spent money that she didn’t have, assuming that I would cover her. Despite many frank and difficult conversations, nothing changed. Finally, despite great ambivalence, I told her that I could not continue to play this role in her life. I didn’t want us to resent each other. Difficult as it was, I laid down an official “no more” declaration.

Although I sounded clear outwardly, inside I was anything but. I felt terrible about the decision to stop “helping,” selfish, un-loving, and incapable of deep compassion. In light of my longtime Buddhist practice, I felt like a spiritual fraud.

She was on her knees, begging literally, and also threatening terrible things, if I didn’t rescue her. She looked like an animal with its leg in a trap, helpless and terrified, and enraged—at me. Looking at her face, white with terror, furious with desperation and humiliation, still I held my ground. It was one of the hardest things I have ever done, but some part of me knew I had to do it.

The result was that she acted out her threats and I believe, punished me for attempting to stop the cycle.  She stopped taking care of her life, on every front, and ended up homeless (except if I would have her) and ill, without health care, and without any community. I spoke with relatives and former friends, but no one was willing/able to help her.

As I experienced it, she was now my third child, my charge. In truth, I still loved her, and wanted her to find her way back to independence, to enjoy her life. Nonetheless, I also knew that I had been bullied into saving her, despite my decision to stop, but it would not happen again.

Two years later, back on her feet at least minimally, having never paid me back the large amount of money she now owed me, she asked again. “Just to cover her for a short time” was how she put it, as if it were a small and casual affair, with no history. The tone of the request was perhaps even more shocking than the request itself. But this time when I said “no” I was certain I would not waver. What followed however, I could never have imagined.

This friend and relative, whom I thought I had been (lovingly) taking care of for years, ferociously attacked me verbally and emotionally. She abused me with her words and anger, accused me of wanting to destroy her, of being a terrible and sadistic person, the antithesis of family. And, she blamed me, fiercely, for the impending consequences she would suffer as a result of my not fixing her life. As she saw it, I was not only to blame for what would happen to her but actually intended for her destruction. I had abandoned her, and my abandonment was the cause of the horrible pain she was enduring. Finally, she assured me that I would go down with her when she fell, that she would make sure of it.

It was nearly impossible to process—violent rage and hatred from a person that I believed I had been “helping” for nearly a decade, someone that I loved and that I believed loved me!

She continued to bully me emotionally for months, to make me know and feel her suffering. She made life extraordinarily stressful not just for me, but also for my children. Her fury was terrifying and seemingly bottomless. Occasionally, between rages, she would approach me with kindness, express deep gratitude for all that I had done for her, and acknowledge my generosity. Still, no matter her approach, wrath and hatred or gratitude and responsibility, I painstakingly continued to say “no.”

I had become an enabler. Realizing this truth was like waking up from a terrible dream. With my role named, I was suddenly able to change. What was it that allowed me to know myself as an enabler, finally, after years of co-creating this disastrous situation—all with the best of intentions?

Your Truest Friend Resides Inside Your Own Heart

As we age it seems that fighting with friends becomes less necessary or even possible. There are fewer matters worth fighting about and even fewer worth risking the friendshipover. That said, I recently had a real fight with a dear friend. The fight arose because my friend had decided that I had done something that in fact I had not done. It was an action that I believe would have been unkind and devoid of integrity. It was not only that I had not committed the act but also, that I could not have done it, as it would have sharply conflicted with my own integrity and internal wellbeing.

Unfortunately for both of us, my friend had taken pieces of reality and, as the human mind is inclined and skilled at doing, woven those independent truths into a larger story, filling in the gaps and constructing a cohesive narrative, which could have made sense but was in fact not true. My friend was suffering intensely with his false beliefs about me, and the proceeding story, namely, what those beliefs meant for our friendship. At the same time, I was suffering at the hands of his mind, being punished for a crime that I had not committed, and a belief about my nature, which was radically out of alignment with my actual behavior. And yet, no matter what I offered, my friend chose to stick to his false assumptions and write the final act of our friendship. I realized, after great strife, that he was more committed to holding onto his pain-inducing and friendship-annihilating story than to opening to the truth, and possibly, the feelings that the actual truth might bring. I came to understand that the truth, what had actually happened, was irrelevant at this moment. His fictional reality was real in his mind and body. Real, but not true.

With so much at stake, fighting naturally erupted. He fought fiercely for me to concede to his mind’s version of reality, and I fought equally fiercely for him to know the actual reality, and with that, to stop punishing me for a fictional crime, and erasing the truth of our deep friendship.

While fighting for the truth did little to shift my relationship with my friend, it was profound in how it transformed my relationship with myself.

When we fight, our tendency is to want to correct the other person’s version of truth, essentially, to get them to agree with our version. We explain our truth over and over again, in newfangled words and styles, desperately trying to create some consistency between what we believe to be truth and what the other believes. The internal dissonance can feel unbearable when our version of truth is in contradiction to another’s with whom we are involved emotionally, particularly when the truth in question implies something about our character or who we think we are.

When all attempts at truth-correction with my friend had failed, I had nowhere to go, no way to be heard or known correctly. The desperate efforts that had been focused outward, on getting him to change his beliefs, to see the truth about me, had not given me what I needed. It was then that I woke up: I remembered to turn my attention inward, and bring myself the loving attention, listening presence and understanding that I had been so desperately trying to get from my friend. I realized that I could not stake my own okayness and wellbeing on his changing his beliefs. Not only was that not going to happen, but it put me in a perilous and helpless position. I needed to be able to get okay with just my own acknowledgment of my truth and goodness. I made the choice to stop chasing what I needed and open to how painful it was to be misunderstood and misperceived, and possibly to also lose the friendship for reasons that were false. I gave myself the right to know what was true, even if it would never be known by another. I honored my integrity and strength in having made the choices I had actually made. I gave myself precisely what I needed to receive from the outside world.

It’s normal to want those we care about to share our version of truth. And yet, our tendency is to need external acknowledgment and validation in order to make true what we already know ourselves. The time comes however, when we need to start taking care of our own knowing, to provide acknowledgment and kindness to our own truth. When I turned inward and honored the sadness and loss in being misperceived, the truth of what I know actually happened, and the integrity of my choices, I felt known, loved and comforted. The attunement that I desperately sought from my friend, I received from my own loving presence. While I will always wish for my friend to know the truth, and me correctly, I am nonetheless able to bring myself the love and understanding, the wellbeing that I thought only he could provide.

In our search for an other who will hear and understand our truth with compassion, we consistently overlook our own company; we forget our own presence as a source of deep comfort and kindness, and blessedly, one that is always available to us. We need only the willingness and wisdom (and sometimes the reminder) to turn our attention inward, listen with kindness, and care about our own suffering. Particularly when we are in pain, searching desperately for comfort and relief from the outside world, we need to remember to flip the process. That is, to turn towards our own heart, listen to what it is carrying, and offer ourselves the compassion and loving presence that we are searching for outside. The experience of being deeply seen and cared about is ours to give—and receive—here now, when we decide to truly be with our own heart.

When Is It Time to Stop Fixing Ourselves?

Are you a self-help junkie? Even if you don’t have a stack of books on your bedside table with the newest ways to fix yourself, you still might be.  And it wouldn’t be your fault if you were.  We are conditioned from a very young age to believe that we need to become better, new and improved versions of ourselves, even if at first we don’t know exactly how or why.  But soon enough we have filled in the why-s with our shortcomings and failures and self-help provides the how-to-s in its unending methods for self-correction.  Armed with our story of deficiencies firmly in place and a surplus of paths towards improvement, we set off on our life mission, namely, becoming someone else.  And, we are proud of and celebrated for our mission. Growing and evolving, becoming a better person, it all sounds so virtuous.  Who would turn down such an opportunity?  

And yet, growing and evolving are too often code words for what is really "getting fixed" or correcting our basic unworthiness.  From the time we are young, we are infiltrated with the belief that the basic problem underlying all other problems is, put simply, us.  We are what’s wrong.  As adults, we search the globe for the right teacher; we attend seminars, buy books, hire coaches, consult shamans, and everything else under the sun, all in an effort to make ourselves into something good enough or maybe just enough.

But good enough for what or whom?  Did you ever wonder?

If we boil it down, we keep fixing ourselves in the hopes that we can, finally, just be as  we actually are.  Once we're fixed, enough, worthy--whether that means more compassionate, more disciplined, more grateful, more peaceful, more attentive, more informed, more important, more even-tempered, more spiritual, or whatever shape our more-s have formed into, then and only then we'll be entitled to feel what we feel, think what we think, experience what we experience, in essence, be who we are.

The fear that fuels our self-betterment mission is the belief that we are, at our core, not what we should be, faulty, broken, lacking, nothing, unworthy, undeserving, unlovable, or some other version of not okay.  To give ourselves permission to be who we are, give up the mission for a better version of ourselves would be tantamount to accepting our defectiveness and giving up all hope of fruition.  And that, of course, would be unwise, naive, lazy, a cop out, and despairing. To suggest that we stop striving to be better than who we are is not just counter-intuitive, but frightening and dangerous. Such a suggestion incites fear, scorn, anger, confusion, amusement, and an assumption of ignorance.

Self-help, while useful in certain ways, strengthens our core belief--that we are inherently defective.  Self-help starts with our defectiveness as its basic assumption, and then graciously offers to provide us with an unending stream of strategies by which to fix our defective core, which, once fixed, will award us the right to be who we are. The problem is that the strategies keep us stuck in the cycle of fixing--and more importantly, in the belief that we are broken. If you notice, we never do become that person who is allowed to feel what we feel, and experience what we experience.  We never do get permission to just be who and as we are. 

This is where spirituality enters, and offers something radically different than self-help. 

Most people think that spirituality and self-help are the same thing; they’re not.  In fact, they are fundamentally different.  We have tried to turned spirituality into self-help, another method for correcting ourselves, but to do so is to misunderstand and eradicate the most profound (and beneficial) teaching that spirituality offers.

True spirituality is not about fixing ourselves spiritually or becoming spiritually better.  Rather, spirituality is about freedom from the belief of our unworthiness, and ultimately, it is about acceptance.  Spirituality, practiced in its truest form, is about meeting who we really are, and allowing ourselves to experience life as we actually experience it.  In this way, it is more of an undoing than a doing. 

In truth, we need to take the risk that it is to lean back into who we actually are and to do that before we even know that who we are will be enough, or even that there will be anything there to catch us.  We need to relinquish our self-improvement plans before we believe that we have the right to stop improving.  The whole thing, true spirituality, requires a kind of faith, not a faith in a system, story or methodology, but a faith that trusts or a wisdom that knows that we can’t think our way into what we truly want, can’t ultimately make happen what we really need.  No matter what path we practice,there comes a point where we have to let go of the reins; we have to give up the quest to be good enough.  

What happens when we stop trying to change ourselves into something better is nothing like what we imagine.  We envision stepping off the self-help train and landing smack inside someone incomplete and unsatisfactory.  And yet in truth, the simple (but not easy) act of inviting ourselves into our own life, has the effect of placing us at the center of something so beautiful and extraordinary. Giving ourselves permission to be as we are miraculously creates a kind of love for ourselves, not so much for our individual characteristics, but for our being.  And not just for our being, but for the truth, whatever that is.  It is as if whatever we find inside ourselves, whether we wish it were here or not, it is okay and we are okay. Ultimately, we shift from trying to become lovable to being love itself.  And amazingly, from this place, the not-enough person we thought we were has simply vanished, or more likely, never was.

Try it out for a moment—this moment.  Just let yourself be.  Give yourself permission to have the experience you are having, whatever it is, with no story about whether it is right or wrong, good or bad.  Feel how you actually are.  It’s that direct and that simple.  No judgments allowed.  It won’t make sense... it takes a leap... so leap.

How to Deepen Your Relationship With Yourself

We all want to be happy which, at the simplest level, means that we want our life to be filled with experiences that we like and enjoy. There is nothing more inborn to the human being than the desire to want what is happening to indeed be happening. In service to this basic drive, we do everything we can to create lives that contain experiences that we want. The drive to create a life we like is a most healthy drive.

When we get what we want in our lives, there isn’t much that needs to be said or done. We might want to learn how to more fully enjoy the desired experiences or be more present or grateful, but such changes are fun and relatively stress-free. We are working with life’s good stuff, trying to figure out how to feel the good a little more intensely, or make the good stuff into great stuff.

But the question that every human being at some point in their lives needs to answer is not what to do with the experiences that they want, but rather what to do with the experiences that they don’t want.  No matter how hard we try to create a life that contains only what we want, life always includes the full menu. The fact that our life contains undesirable aspects simply means that we are human.

The question is not whether we can prevent unwanted experiences, we can’t, but rather how to live and relate to the experiences that we consider unwanted or painful. Can we live those experiences, in a new way such that they are not so painful, scary and derailing?

We have been conditioned to view unwanted experiences as personal failings. We believe that there is always something that we could have done differently to make that experience not happen, and if we could have done that thing, we would be a better person with a better life. But what if you were to choose to relate to your unwanted experiences as nothing out of the ordinary, simply a normal part of every human life? Could you throw out all ideas of the unwanted as representing some personal failure or success? What if the undesired aspects of life could just be what they are and not about your personal worthiness? What if you were to choose to relate to difficult experiences as opportunities to embrace yourself in compassion instead of assaulting yourself with blame?

In addition, we relate to unwanted experiences as dangerous to our wellbeing.  We believe that if we allow ourselves to accept or look into such experiences more deeply, we will be harmed. In truth, we have a choice as to what kind of relationship we want to conduct with our unwanted experiences, and ourselves when we are inside them. We can choose to turn towards the unwanted experiences, and get curious about the ways that our mind and body respond when in contact with the unwanted. As counterintuitive as it is to our conditioning, we can welcome unwanted experiences (when they have chosen to arrive despite our wishes) as fertile ground for discovery and enlightenment, a chance to get to know ourselves more deeply and truthfully, to honestly meet who we are. Could you get interested in whatever experience is arising in your awareness right now, to welcome the comfortable and the uncomfortable as equal opportunities for self-awareness and discovery?   Could you decide to turn your attention to the thoughts, feelings and sensations that are happening inside you even if they are not what you normally consider pleasurable?

We have a lot more choice than we believe in how we live our individual experiences. While we are conditioned to believe that negative experiences must be experienced negatively and positive ones, positively, we can shift this belief with a different attitude towards the purpose and meaning of experiences and what, ultimately, they are here to offer us. 

Try shifting your perspective for a day. You can always abandon the practice. Nothing will be lost. Imagine getting interested in whatever is arising inside you, whatever is happening in response to your present experience.  Choose to investigate your own experience, even when it is uncomfortable, and relate to it as an intimate doorway into your own mind and consciousness. You can opt to view all experience as just this. When all experiences are opportunities to deepen your relationship with your own being, to know your self, you can stop being so afraid of and rejecting of the experiences that you don’t want.

We will never stop trying to create experiences that we want. It is who we are as human beings. Until we are enlightened we will always prefer and wish for experiences that we like over those that we don’t. But when experiences do arrive at our doorstep (as they always will) that we have not invited, that we would never choose to bring into our house, it is best to find a way to relate to them without fear, and turn them into houseguests if we can. All experiences, welcomed, are opportunities to see and know the truth of ourselves more clearly. With this attitude, we can relate to our whole life, the sweet and the bitter, as enlightening, not necessarily wanted, but enlightening nonetheless, and in that light, meaningful.

How to Look Out for Yourself

There are times in life when things fall apart, when we lose something deeply important, something that made us feel connected, grounded or safe. Sometimes a lot of things fall apart at the same time. There are times in life, for everyone, when it feels like all our safety nets get cut, and we are stripped of everything that we considered our foundation.

A friend of mine recently went through a divorce. The end of her marriage came, as many do, with great misunderstanding and pain. The worst part was that she felt like her best friend, her ex-husband, had turned into someone she didn't know, and who seemed to hate her, which created great sorrow and feelings of helplessness. She was now a 50-something single woman with the sense that nothing in life could be counted on. If this rupture could happen when her intentions had been so good, with someone whom she had loved so deeply, and been so honest with, then the world was surely an unsafe place. There was no ground to be found, nothing to root her to a sense of safety. She felt entirely untethered, terrified, as if she were floating in a space capsule that had lost touch with its earthly command center. 

She had no idea how to move forward.

What my friend did next is what so many of us do when we are in a situation of profound suffering: She switched into action mode. She started making plans to meet the next man, to get back into life. She joined “meetup” groups, registered with dating sites, called everyone she knew to find out who they knew that she might like. She purchased subscriptions to magazines that listed social activities in her city, signed up for new classes, and got "out there" in every way. No “next” stone was left unturned.

How my friend reacted to her sadness and fear is very normal, very human. When we dive into fierce action as a response to suffering, we are really just tying to make the bad feelings go away, and thus to take care of ourselves. We want to feel better, so we set out to figure out how to make that happen. We feel powerless, so we empower ourselves with action steps. In fact, there is nothing wrong with—and a lot right—with doing things to make ourselves feel better when we are suffering.

And yet, my friend's very normal action approach misses one crucial ingredient: It does not allow our actual feelings (and thus our self) to be included in our experience. As we feverishly set out to change our feelings, what is left out of the process is feeling what we are actually feeling.

When we experience great loss or emotional trauma, we usually don’t know what to do, or how to make it better—what the path to better will look like and how it will come about. In addition to allowing ourselves to feel the sadness, helplessness, and fear that loss brings, it is also profoundly important to allow ourselves to feel what it is like to not have an answer, and not know how we are going to make the situation change and remedy our pain. We can remind ourselves that the situation and the feelings will change, as everything always does, but that right now, in this moment, we can give ourselves permission to not know what to do.

For we Type A's, and even Type B's and C's, allowing the feeling of not knowing how to help ourselves can be very hard and scary. And yet, permission to not know is a profound gift to ourselves and an act of deep self-caring. Sometimes, this alone can ease the suffering and take care of our pain, without doing anything else whatsoever.

Suffering, as awful as it feels to walk through, is our teacher. But it can only teach us if we allow it to be felt. Sadness, fear, not knowing—all the difficult emotions, when experienced, change who we are, which ironically is what we are trying to accomplish when we run around frantically trying to fix our painful feelings. When we allow our real feelings to be here, as they are, we offer ourselves a warm embrace and the kindness of our own compassionate presence. We agree to be with ourselves, keep ourselves company in what we are truly living.

While it is contrary to how we are conditioned in this culture to respond to suffering, the simple act of letting ourselves feel how we feel is the act that is indeed most helpful in both healing and generating change. Allowing ourselves to be sad soothes sadness. Allowing ourselves to be afraid calms our fear. Allowing ourselves to not know how to fix our pain soothes the anxiety of having to fix it. Allowing ourselves to be who we are, as we are, allows us to feel deeply self-loved, welcome in our own life, and not alone.

When we allow ourselves to feel how we feel, we find the company of our own presence, which will always ease our suffering.

Mindfulness: How Far Can You Go?

Mindfulness practice is like Russian dolls. Just when you think you have gotten to the biggest doll in the set, you discover that that doll too is inside an even bigger doll. In mindfulness practice, we are continually discovering thoughts behind thoughts behind still more thoughts, seemingly ad infinitum. The more evolved our practice, the further back (behind thought and emotion) we can travel, and the more layers of thought and feeling we can see before becoming identified with what’s arising. Ultimately, mindfulness practice increases our capacity to witness what is happening inside and outside of us, until there is no more self to do the witnessing.

The difficulty or limitation we often run into in mindfulness practice is that we put the brakes on too soon, close our eyes and dive into or become aligned with the material that our mind is presenting. Specifically, we witness an aspect of our mind but then we get caught in the next layer of thoughts, the ones that say something about what we just witnessed. What’s different about this second layer of thoughts is that we believe them, and thus are not able to see them as something separate from us. There is no longer an I to witness them.

Two cases in point:

A woman practicing mindfulness notices that as she walks on the street her mind never stops announcing its preferences and judgments about what she is seeing. Her mind shouts out “Wow, I hate that haircut, darn that’s a big behind, I wish I had that handbag, and on it goes.” She is not particularly interested in the judgments that come, but that fact doesn’t keep them from coming. Through her mindfulness practice, she becomes aware that her mind ceaselessly judges everything it sees. (In other words, she has a regular human mind.) Step one of her mindfulness practice is successful in that sense. But then, as a result of this newfound awareness about her mind, she hears new thoughts. The mind generates new material. The new thoughts tell her that she will never be a spiritualperson, that she is judgmental by nature and in fact hopeless and awful. At this stage in the process, she and her thoughts become united. She believes them. They are one thing. What she doesn’t do is move to the next Russian doll and see that these judgments of herself are just another set of thoughts that the mind is presenting. At this stage, when her thoughts become self-critical, she believes them, merges with them, and thus loses her perspective on them.

This woman is a classic example of what many people do with their mindfulness practice, namely, use it against themselves. This woman learns something about her mind’s nature and then silently, cleverly, the mind slips back into the driver’s seat and generates new thoughts about the person who would have such a mind, blaming the person for being the wishful thinker of such unacceptable thoughts. The witness however believes these new thoughts and doesn’t see them as the most recent incarnation of mind that they are. At this point, the mindful witness joins forces with the mind and the practice of mindfulness is suspended until further notice.

In a second example, a man who is attending a business meeting notices that his mind becomes very agitated and busy when a female colleague starts telling a personal story to the group. The thoughts he hears are angry and blaming of his colleague, for taking up everyone’s time with her nonsense. Using mindfulness practice, he sees these thoughts and is able to refrain from trying to change them or get involved. He is aware of having the thoughts without the accompanying anxiety and inner turbulence that has accompanied such thoughts in the past. But then his mind gets sneaky, telling him that he is an angry person, just like his father before him, and that he will never have a partner if he feels this way when women tell their stories. He believes these new thoughts and does not see them as just the next layer of thought that the mind is generating. Because he cannot see them as yet another (stepped up) version of his mind, he becomes afraid of them—afraid of his own mind. At this point, he is back to being a hostage of the mind and his mindfulness practice is derailed.

Behind every thought is another thought. As we go further in our mindfulness practice, we get better at seeing the thought behind the thought, without combining ourself with it. We have to keep our witness goggles firmly in place as the mind morphs into subtler manifestations of itself, and gets more and more difficult to keep track of and visible, out in front of us. The mind is a master chameleon and an expert at becoming whatever it needs to become in order for us to stop seeing it as separate from who we are. Mindfulness practice is an effort to see even that chameleon-like quality.

Furthermore, mindfulness practice is often practiced without one of its most important elements, namely, curiosity. The attitude that accompanies mindfulness is one of kindness and interest. When we learn something new about the nature of our mind, whether we want that to be its nature or not, we take the attitude of “Huh, wow, look at that, that’s what my mind does. Curious!”

Mindfulness practice is not conditional; we are not observing our mind in order to make a case against it or ourself. The eyes that are looking at the mind in mindfulness must be compassionate eyes, or at least neutral, understanding that this wild animal called human mind is after one thing, survival, which is synonymous with being in charge. Mindfulness practice helps us realize that we don’t choose the thoughts our mind spits up but we do choose whether or not to listen to or believe them. In truth we are the one the mind is talking to, the one whose attention the mind is trying to keep, but the mind doesn’t want us to know that.

When you reach the thought or feeling that you believe is the last one, the witness itself, the ultimate observer of mind, don’t stop there. Notice that you have stopped looking and pull the lens back yet again. Ask yourself, who (or what) perceives even that last thought, the one that feels like truth, who you are, or just what is? Get behind even that “last” thought or feeling, and then see where you are. There’s always further to go… until there isn’t, and you aren’t.