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.

Are You Addicted to Your Smartphone? Tips for Breaking the Habit

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 and quiet, can seem near impossible.

We are living in a time when there is no distinction between “on” and “off” or public and private time. Whether we realize it or not, we no longer have space to ourselves.

Even at home, the world floods through our cellphones, laptops and tablets, and our attention remains on call— essentially, we are always in “on” mode. Consequently, our nervous system has become locked into a state of perpetual fight or flight, and we are “twired” all the time—tired and wired—with the prospect of relief nowhere in sight... Read more... http://www.foxnews.com/health/2016/11/06/are-addicted-to-your-cellphone-tips-for-breaking-habit.html

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.

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 Overcome the Fear of Feelings

I recently attended a panel discussion on the topic of happiness. Early on in the dialogue, one of the panelists addressed what he considered the mistaken way that most people think about happiness, namely, as a state that is free from pain or difficulty. He explained that we need to view happiness as a state in which all feelings are present and welcome, not just positive emotions. He went on to say that it is important to be able to sit with our feelings and feel what is actually happening inside us, even if it is hard stuff. While not new or revelatory, this is a profoundly true and important teaching, and one that I have also spent a lot of time writing about. What was revelatory however, was the follow-up question from the American journalist/moderator.

Upon hearing his suggestion that we “sit” with our real feelings, the journalist immediately jumped in to ask the following: How realistic was it for most people to be able to "just sit around” and feel their feelings? Was this not an issue of class in that the higher socioeconomic classes could spend their time contemplating their sadness while the rest of us regular folks had to get to work? How possible was it, really, for the average person, to be with or in their sadness, “sitting still” when things needed to get done? After all, didn’t we all need to get out the door and earn a living? 

The word “sit” had lit this moderator on fire, and in her response, morphed into “sitting still” and “just sitting around.” She was, seemingly, quite angered by the audacity of this author to suggest that we could feel our sad feelings in addition to our happy ones. As strange as it was to hear where the moderator went with his suggestion, her reaction is in fact common. In this culture we are afraid of feelings that are not happy, and conditioned to believe that feeling anything other than pleasure will prevent us from being able to go to work, live a normal life, or take care of ourselves. Allowing difficult feelings to be present will not only prevent us from basic functioning but will also endanger any positive feelings that might exist.  Happiness is an all or nothing condition. The underlying belief is that feeling our feelings as they really are will lead us to be fixated on our navel (the much maligned body-part associated with sad feelings), crying and eating chips on a dirty couch. A real life, one that includes going to work, buying groceries and being normal, and a state in which we feel our real feelings are two entirely separate things—and cannot coexist. We hold the subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) belief that anyone who has the luxury of feeling their feelings must be independently wealthy and able to devote their entire life to their own struggles. And, if we are not already self-indulgent, self-absorbed, and unemployed, the privilege to experience painful feelings will lead us to become this way.

This journalist’s line of questioning clearly exposed the degree of fear and helplessness that we experience when in the face of challenging emotions. Given that difficult feelings are a part of everyone’s life, it has always amazed me that courses on learning how to be with and soothe such feelings is not required curriculum in every formal education. It is a real life skill that everyone needs. The idea that we could actually feel difficult feelings and still be strong and content is not only not taught, but instead we are encouraged to believe the opposite, that if we do allow ourselves to feel what’s inside us, our dark feelings will overwhelm and swallow us, never go away, and take us out of commission for life. And so we spend enormous amounts of energy trying to stay away from the harder feelings, fending them off, papering them over, keeping ourselves from feeling anything that we believe could disable us.

In truth, feeling our true feelings is not contradictory to living a functioning life. Quite the opposite. The more we allow our true experience to be felt, the more energy and attention we have to devote to our functioning life. We are no longer using up our energy and focus trying to push away the feelings that we don’t want and are afraid to feel. In addition, when we actually feel a feeling, we discover that no matter how strong or hard the feeling is, it has a natural life span and can only remain with intensity for a short time, far shorter than we have been led to believe. Feelings, when felt, actually pass through awareness and then ease, on their own. They may return but they will pass again, in contrast with the thoughts that we generate about the negative feelings, which continue unceasingly. Furthermore, feeling our feelings takes no effort, other than the slight effort that it is to give ourselves permission to feel them. And yet, even with no effort expended, the simple act of allowing what we feel, what is already there to be felt, has a profoundly satisfying and relaxing effect. When we stop having to fend off what we are not supposed to or allowed to feel, running from our truth, we can then relax into the embrace of our own company, and settle into our own real life.

The belief that we stay strong by ignoring our difficult emotions is false. Thinking that we must ignore how we really feel in order to make a living, be productive, get off the couch, or just plain take care of ourselves, leaves us in a state of constant fear. Every life contains happy feelings and sad ones too; such is the human condition. If we are afraid of our sadness and don’t believe we can manage or live a life with it, then our life contains a constant presence that is a threat to our basic wellbeing. As a result, we are in a state of perpetual weakness.

We are at our strongest, most high functioning and confident when we have the ability to experience whatever is passing through our feeling sky, without having to run from it, pretend it’s not there or force it away. We are most warrior-like when we learn to co-habitate with the full range of feelings, contradictory as they often are. We find our deepest confidence when we know (from lived experience) that feelings come and go and we can survive them, and will become a little bit stronger with each passage. We discover our most profound caretaker, inside ourselves, when we stop defending a single-pointed happiness, which always excludes another part of our story. We are at our most content and healthy when we give ourselves the blessing that it is to relax into what we actually feel, and live in our truth. Allowing ourselves to sit with our feelings, the ones we like and the ones we don’t, does not only not conflict with taking care of ourselves and conducting a real life—it is, in truth, our best means for taking care of ourselves and the very essence of a real life.

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.

Mindfulness For the Uncooperative Mind

Mindfulness is hot, and like all hot topics, it comes with a lot of truths and a lot of falsehoods. Teaching mindfulness, I hear the same questions arising time and again, misunderstandings really about what mindfulness is and what it means as a practice or way of life. Indeed, most of the obstacles that we believe stand in the way of living mindfully are, in fact, not obstacles at all.

The Big Three: Misconceptions about Mindfulness

#1  Mindfulness is not for the everyday Joe—not applicable to a regular life.

As one client expressed, I have kids, which means that I am constantly planning for then… camps, holidays, dinner recipes, weekend babysitting, etc. etc. I can’t just be here in the now, it’s not practical for real life. Mindfulness doesn’t apply to my always-planning mom existence!

Many of my clients arrive with the belief that having to do anything that involves or is about the future disqualifies them from being mindful. In truth, mindfulness simply means being conscious or aware of what is happening inside and outside of you right now. Being awake to life as it is unfolding. Planning for the future and attending to the past are necessities in modern life, and neither has anything to do with being mindful. While the contents of what we are planning may be related to the future, the planning itself is something that is happening right now. Perhaps we are making an airplane reservation—the airplane will take off in the future but conversing with the agent, experiencing sensations in the hand holding the phone, receiving thoughts about what you are hearing, taking in sounds from the room, feeling emotions about the upcoming travel, all of it and a thousand other events are all occurring right now. Making plans, with mindfulness, simply means paying attention to the experience of making plans, being awake to what it is like for you to live this moment of planning. The subject of the moment is irrelevant; the moment itself is always happening right here and right now. Nothing can ever be happening in any time but now. If at this moment your body is breathing, then there is a present experience available to you, and thus mindfulness is possible.

#2  Mindfulness means focusing on my breath or meditating, which isn’t always possible in everyday life. Hence, mindfulness is a step away from or out of life. A client put it this way, when a strong emotion comes up, like when I get really angry at my boss at work, I can’t always just check out of the conversation and start listening to my breath or chanting om. Mindfulness, for this reason, is not really viable in real life tough situations.

The truth is, practicing mindfulness does not require checking out of life, but just the opposite, checking into life. When a strong feeling such as anger arises, mindfulness simply means paying attention to what that anger feels like in the body, how it manifests, what thoughts and stories accompany it, everything that is happening inside and outside you as you experience the anger right now. Mindfulness means witnessing that strong emotion with full presence, watching the weather of anger erupt in the sky of awareness. Sometimes it does help to come back to the breath, just for a moment, to get grounded in your body and not spin off in the storm of mind, but this is not necessary for practicing mindfulness. Mindfulness means staying here where you are—with whatever is here in the present moment, and meeting your direct experience, your life, as it actually is.

#3  I can’t be mindful with this mind, my mind as it is; if and when my mind is different, calmer perhaps, then possibly, mindfulness can happen. Many people believe that mindfulness requires a certain kind of mind, a baseline of peacefulness or tranquility, and that their mind as it is is far too wild to practice such a skill.

In fact, mindfulness does not depend on any particular kind of mind and certainly not a calm one. If mindfulness required a calm mind, it would have died out as a practice a long time ago. In the same way that meditation is an investigation of your inner world as it is, right now, without preference or judgment, similarly, mindfulness is just an honest look at the way your mind, your direct experience, and your life is at any given moment. You are not more mindful if what you discover is that you like the moment you are living and no less mindful if what you become aware of is not pleasing. Mindfulness only means that you are noticing, becoming conscious of and dwelling in your direct experience, not pushing it away, or if you are trying to push it away, noticing that too. Mindfulness is not about what you find when you drop down into yourself, but that you do drop down into yourself, and that you do so with an attitude of compassionate curiosity. If, in turning the lens on yourself, what you notice is that your mind is judging your experience unkindly, then mindfulness would entail bringing an open and kind curiosity to that unkind and judging mind. And so it goes. There are no right answers in mindfulness, no better things to discover under the lens of your own attention, and no better kind of mind to practice with. The only things needed for mindfulness are a mind to practice with, a willingness to try and stay present, and an interest to meet yourself and your actual experience.

The next time you hear the thought that mindfulness doesn’t apply to you, with the way your life is, your mind is, your circumstances are, notice that thought, and maybe the feeling or sensation that comes along with it. Pay attention to what it feels like in your body to be listening to that thought. Before you know it, the you who can’t practice mindfulness will be practicing mindfulness in its most authentic and powerful form! 

Are You Feeding On Your Pain... Past Its Expiration Date?

Intimate relationships include pain, at least every intimate relationship I have ever been in or witnessed. And most, if we’re lucky, include pleasure, too. We cannot change the fact that pain is included in intimacy, but how much pain we endure is, in part, up to us. As a therapist and a wife, I think a lot about how we can decrease the pain that we experience in relationships, and increase the amount of joy and gratitude that we feel.

Once we’ve been in a relationship for some time, most of us have written a plethora of stories about our partners: we have many ideas about what they do that we don’t like, what their problems are, why they are the way they are, how and why they hurt us, and on it goes. Basically, we have figured out what’s wrong with them. Some of our story lines we share with our partners and some we don’t. We could fill volumes with the convictions we have compiled on our partners, most if not all of which we believe to be the truth. Our story lines have a lot to do with what increases our pain in relationships.

When difficulty arises with our partner, we might feel hurt, angry, frustrated, or perhaps a cocktail of all three and more. We might feel intense pain for some time. But then, oddly, we do something which intensifies and extends that pain. You could say we throw gasoline on the fire of pain. The incident or fight is over, in real time, but not for us, not a chance. We’ve still got a long way to go with the story of it. The hurt might have passed, its shelf life in our body over, but we opt to spend days, weeks, sometimes even lifetimes rehashing it in our minds, crafting new stories filled with our partner’s crimes and our grievances, breathing new life into what is in fact ready to pass. If our pain were a child, we would be nursing it long into its adulthood.

The shelf life of most intense feelings is quite short. A strong feeling, which is not fed by our thoughts about it, can pass through us in a rather short time. It is our mind that, counter-intuitively, does not want us to let go of our pain. The mind desperately wants us to pay attention to our pain, and to how any new hurt fits into the larger script that we have written on our partner and the relationship. Perhaps it is the mind’s effort to figure out the pain, to make sense of what seems nonsensical, not understandable. Or maybe the mind believes that if we allow the pain to pass when it has come to its natural end, it is not enough somehow, that we haven’t done the pain justice if we do not extend it by way of our own continued attention. Perhaps the mind believes that we further punish our partner by holding onto and ruminating on the pain they have caused us. Or, maybe the mind wants us to keep chewing on the pain simply because the mind loves a problem; a problem for the mind is like an extravaganza with which to entertain itself. In truth, spending more time re-thinking and rehashing our pain does not serve our pain, or us.

When we start paying attention to our mind, we see that it is always beckoning us to reenter the story of our pain. Something amazing happens, however, when we make the choice to refrain from taking the mind’s bait, resist engaging with such thoughts. Our relationship gets a whole lot better, and feels, suddenly, like it’s happening in the present tense, like we're meeting our partner freshly. I am absolutely not suggesting that we deny pain when it is felt intensely and directly, in the body, but rather that we choose not to extend, intensify and freeze it, keeping it alive in our mind when it (possibly) might not need to be there. Pain is a truth, but if we don't feed it, it has a natural life span. It is we who (often) make pain immortal.

To this end, it is important that we notice when we are actually feeling okay, not in pain, not resentful, not hurt, and we still choose to jump on board a thought train to pain. It is important that we become conscious of this habit to get back in the saddle of hurt. It is an odd choice really, but one that we all make, until we don’t anymore, until we become aware that we are choosing it. 

The next time you catch your mind inviting you to dive into the negative story line of your relationship and your partner, to again crack open the great tome on their failings, politely decline the mind’s invitation. Return to where you are and the breath about to happen. By simply decreasing the amount of time we spend telling ourself the story of what’s wrong, we can profoundly improve the experience we have in our relationships. The more we can refrain from stoking the fire of how we have been hurt, the more room there is to discover how we actually appreciate our partners, and to see them in the moments when all is well. The less we obscure our present moment with the history of our scars, the more possibility there is for new relationship skin to grow.

We need to pay attention to what is actually true for us; to meet ourself and our partner, as freshly as we can in each new moment. We need not go looking for past pain, need not dive into every pain story the mind presents. Simply by choosing to decline the invitation to engage with old pain, we end up feeling a whole lot lighter, happier, more present, and available to love.

Being In the Moment When We Don't Like the Moment

I always giggle when I see the photograph that accompanies blogs or articles on “being present.” The image, nine times out of ten, is of a person (usually a woman) sitting cross-legged on a beach, looking out at an ocean or other body of water, with the sun setting or rising in front of her. The implication is that this peaceful beautiful scene is what presence feels or looks like.

The truth is, if life were a beach at sunset we might not have to work so hard at being present “in” it. If what we were hearing was the lapping of the waves against the sand, we might want to listen to the sound of now.

But what happens when what we are hearing is the siren of the ambulance directly behind us when there’s nowhere to change lanes? 

If what we were smelling was the fresh salt air coming off the sea, we might want to breathe in what is here. But what happens when we are smelling the cleaning solution the gym attendant is spraying on the machine we are using, even though we are the only one in the place? 

If what we were feeling was the warm sand against our toes, we might want to dip into the present sensation. But what happens when what we are feeling is the cold wet slush soaking our pants as the bus wheels past?

If what we were seeing were the pinks and blues of a glorious sunset, we might want to keep our eyes open to what’s now. But what happens when what we are looking at is a homeless person hunkered down for the night under filthy blankets on an icy sidewalk?

How can we be “in” the present moment when we don’t like the present moment?

Life includes experiences we want and ones we don’t. We are better at being present in the ones we want, and we need more practice staying in the moments we don’t want. Many people ask me why we would even try and be present in the bad moments. Our assumption is that by agreeing to be present in what we call the bad moments, we are somehow agreeing to them, surrendering to them, and giving up all efforts to change them. We believe that, in order to keep things good in our life, we must brace against, ignore, and reject anything not good. This is an incorrect assumption with profound consequences.

Agreeing to be present in the hard moments is simply agreeing that what is happening is happening, and that we are in it. We accept that this is what we are living right now, whether we like it or not. We say, “Yes this is so and yes this is hard.”

This “Yes,” this acceptance, is fundamentally different than “Yes, we want this.” When we accept what is so right now, we give up the fight against what is supposed to be, and the idea that what is happening should not be happening, and certainly not be happening to us. When we give ourselves permission to be “in” the moments that don’t feel good—which may even feel like hell—ironically, we experience a kind of wholeness. There is a profound completeness, you could almost call it a joy, in being able to experience life fully, in all its presentations—even the ones we despise.

Furthermore, as long as we are “checking out” on the moments that we don’t like, we are an extra step away from being able to change them. It is counter-intuitive, but until we fully accept what is happening we cannot move on; we reject what is and as a result, what is gets stuck. When we settle into, and accept our starting place, we plant our feet in the place from which we can launch change. Scary though it may feel, agreeing to be here doesn’t mean agreeing to be here forever, it just means agreeing to be here in this moment, right now.

The fact is, whether we agree to being here, in “it,” or not, “it” still is; our rejection or acceptance of “it” does nothing to “its” is-ness. When we are present in the hard moments, we are released from the primary cause of suffering, which is refusing to be where we are, rejecting our very life. Joined with the moment, we stop wasting our energy, futilely demanding that what is so not be so. When we enter where we are, pretty or not, we can at least stop bracing against our life, stop expending the effort that is required to keep us out of now. Once in the moment, inside our actual experience, we can begin the constructive work of creating change.

It is also important to remember that when we settle into the more challenging moments of life, we do not lose awareness of how we feel or the desire for change. We don’t suddenly become unconscious.

We still don’t want it to be the way it is, but that not wanting is simply included in the “what is,” along with the wet slush and the ambulance siren. Our dislike of the moment is part of and not a contradiction to our presence. Being able to be in the moments we don’t want is a challenge that requires different skills than being in the moments we want (which also takes skill). Experiencing what is, as it is, along with our dislike of it, forms a base of compassion for ourselves—that we are living this hard moment and it is painful and we want it to be otherwise and it is what is so right now. All are true—all at once. This self-compassion, of diving into the whole of what is, regardless of the difficulty that inspires it, is always healing and always carries the feel of a loving embrace.

Life presents all of us with the opportunity to be present “off the beach”—on a small scale, when the skies open up and we have no umbrella; on the larger, as we sit with our parentdying in the hospital, or any one of the infinite human hardships we face. Life gives us endless chances to practice being “in” what is when what is is not what we want. To be able to be “in” the moment in all its forms is to experience the full depth and scope of our human existence. To embrace what is happening, how we feel about it, how we wish it weren’t so, how we are going to try and change it and everything else, all at once, without having to reject any of it…this is what it means to be fully alive! Even when we are not at the beach, we are here, tasting life, and that in and of itself is the real gift!

Because You Feel It Doesn't Mean You Have to Be It

Mindfulness, halleluja!  What liberation, to become aware of our own mind. With all the recent attention on mindfulness, we are getting better at being able to watch our minds in action, notice the thoughts it generates, the stories it tells us. We are starting to understand that it is simply the nature of the mind to fire thoughts, randomly and ceaselessly, whether we want to hear them or not. The fact that this happens is not our failing, just the nature of the beast called mind. So too, we are starting to realize that thoughts don’t necessarily contain the truth… or even anything particularly interesting.

Thoughts may not always be true, but emotion… now that’s an entirely different thing… or so we think! Emotions must be taken very seriously. Emotions arise out of our lived experience, and thus must contain some fundamental element of truth. When we start observing our emotions however, we realize that emotions fire almost as randomly as the chatter we call thoughts. One moment we are flooded with icky feelings, suddenly back in a story from middle school. The next moment the channel changes and a new movie plays. For no reason, we find ourselves in a tsunami of bliss as the image of summer camp wafts into consciousness. 

Emotions follow thoughts and are made of thought stories (that we believe) about whatever experience we are re-living or imagining. Our emotions are made of bundles of thoughts, and contain the truth that our thoughts have written. We relate to our feelings as fixed and entirely trustworthy entities, and yet, like weather moving through the sky, our feelings are often as unreliable and changeable as everything else our mind puts out. When we stop romanticizing our emotions, as fundamental truths that arise out of the all-knowing heart, we can notice them as another byproduct of our wild and temperamental minds.

Further complicating our ability to put our feelings in front of the witness, we believe that our emotions are fundamental to who we are. We think that if we feel sad, we are sad, if we feel unworthy, we are unworthy, and so on. The combination of our belief in the truth of our feelings along with our propensity to identify with them, makes emotion the hardest aspect of the mind to become mindful of, the trickiest play of the mind to get behind and see clearly.

In order to be mindful of our emotions, some part of us must have the ability to watch our feelings, be with our feelings, and feel for them… all without actually becoming them. Can we relate with our sadness without feeling entirely sad, be with our sense of unworthiness from a place that doesn’t share the unworthiness? This would imply that some part of us could remain separate from and larger than even our strongest emotions. You might ask, If I am not made of my emotions, then what am I made of? Yes, maybe I am not made of my thoughts, but how could I possibly not be what I feel? What else if more fundamental to me?

The process of gaining perspective on or un-sticking from our emotions is further complicated by the fact that we are emotionally attached to our emotions. As a friend described, My feelings contain a piece of my heart. I feel like my feelings are my children, I guess I love them in some way. Noticing our emotions would mean that we would have to let go of them just a little bit, at least enough to be able to be with them. Being with our feelings can feel like we are abandoning our children, severing the merger between us and them. Indeed, this sense of loss can present a real challenge.

In truth however, we can best serve our strongest emotions by offering them our own kindness and compassion, and loosening our stranglehold on them (and thus theirs on us). In order to bring true comfort to painful feelings we have to be the larger parent to the wounded-ness in us, to be with our feelings, but not of them. We experience a deep sense of relief as we create a little bit of space between us and our feelings, allowing our feelings to absorb our company rather than our identity.

We want and need a separate grown up, a compassionate presence that can protect and lead us out of our suffering, even as our suffering is screaming for us to stay in it and as it. Sometimes, we need something or someone to represent a different possibility, to sit beside us and not be where we are. We can be that something or someone for ourselves. Our emotional pain, young as it often is, lacks the wisdom to know that we do indeed need to unstick from it a little bit, to be just to the side of it, in order to actually make it feel better. First, we must be mindful that such emotions are happening within our awareness, and second, we must bring our empathic company to that which we witness. Such company is a gift of kindness to ourselves, and not the abandonment that we mistakenly believe. This awareness is the more evolved wisdom that both blooms from and gives life to genuine wellbeing.

Mindfulness includes not just awareness of thought, but also awareness of our deepest emotions. At the farthest end, awareness can include even the very sense of the “I” who witnesses such phenomenon, but more on that later… Practice mindfulness not only with your What’s for dinner? thoughts, but with the emotions that you feel most attached to and identified with. Ultimately, having some space between yourself and your feelings liberates you from the deepest bondage of the mind. The good news is that you can in fact feel your feelings, the energy that they contain, without actually having to be them or be swallowed by them.