Fear: False Evidence Appearing Real: When Our Thoughts Scare Us

Fear: False Evidence Appearing Real

When our thoughts scare us.

Posted Dec 03, 2018

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I took a deep dive into fear this month.  Over this past year, someone I love dearly, a close family member, has been experiencing a physical symptom. We’ve been unable to get to the bottom of it; the doctors have not been particularly concerned and so we’ve resorted to just managing the symptom best we can. I haven't been particularly worried, assuming it was just one of the umpteen physical symptoms that come for seemingly no reason and then go for seemingly no reason, without our ever really knowing why or what it was all about. 

On a recent Friday afternoon, I was having a conversation with this person and she casually mentioned another symptom that she experiences. She had never brought this to my attention because she just assumed everybody felt the same thing. 

In that moment, I was slightly alarmed by the symptom she mentioned as it was definitely not a sensation most people have and certainly not one that people get on a regular basis.  It was also, I knew, a symptom associated with some pretty terrible things.  I said nothing about my concern but calmly inquired more into her experience, When does she get this sensation and what if anything brings it on and other questions.  On the outside, I probably appeared quite nonchalant, but on the inside, a small tsunami was forming in my chest.

Immediately following our conversation, I made a beeline to hell, otherwise known as Google.  I feverishly punched in her symptoms.  What I found was, not surprisingly, both horrifying and terrifying.  Her symptoms happened to be the first two on every list for one particularly dreadful and life-destroying condition.  And, as luck would have it, the third most common symptom listed as evidence of this particular disease turned out to be another symptom that my loved one had in fact mentioned experiencing over the last couple years, but which I had also dismissed and assumed would disappear on its own.

Within three hours of our initial conversation, I was disabled with enough information to be utterly consumed with fear.  I had three symptoms to work with now, and three symptoms which were the first three on every list describing the early signs of one particular horrifying fate.  Fear had not only arrived at my front door but had broken the door down and taken me hostage. 

The more afraid I became, the more frantically I researched the internet, reading everything available on the condition I had diagnosed, looking for anything that would give me a different list of symptoms or at least a list where her symptoms were further down from the top.  I read about treatments, now and future, trial studies, ways that people self-care once diagnosed, the psychological effects of the disease, how early one should start taking the medication, and what the final stages look like. I read testimonials from people living with the disease, everything I could get my hands on.  By Sunday night I had five Ph.D.'s in this condition.

I was in a state of panic, heartbroken, and truly unable to get okay.  If a moment of serenity appeared, I would remember the shock of what I knew, that this person I love beyond anything, beyond everything, had no future.  I would remember that I could never be happy again.  Each moment I spent with my family member that weekend felt like the last, weighted with melancholy and finality.

I was living a narrative of fear and despair, a narrative I had written in less than 48 hours.  I was sure that the worst thing I could ever imagine happening was happening. I wondered, how was it possible that I had spent my whole life working on getting comfortable with the uncomfortable, okay with the not okay of life, accepting reality as it is, and yet here I was screaming, No, this reality is the one reality that’s not okay!  This reality I cannot bear.  I was in a thought-constructed hell, which felt real, inarguable, and true. 

I was the only one who knew that she had all three symptoms.  Other family members knew of one or another, but I was the keeper of the full truth, the only one who knew the whole of it.  When I did finally break and tell another family member, he dismissed my fears as ridiculous, irritating, a case of bad hypochondria. I was to blame for my fear.  His impatience felt like an abandonment of sorts. I felt not only terrified but also deeply alone in my fear.  I couldn’t share my fears with the person whom they were about because I did want to frighten her; I couldn’t speak with anyone else in the family because they were angered by my fear; I couldn’t speak with her doctor about it because I didn’t want to set off further testing and thus speed the road to the eventual diagnosis. I was totally isolated; my thoughts had built a bubble of terror in which I was trapped and alone.    

Source: robert zunicoff/unsplash

And then something miraculous happened, perhaps because I couldn’t bear another moment of being so afraid, or perhaps just because. Grace appeared and I heard the following: Your mind is inflicting violence on you!  And what followed from there was simply, Stop! Stop! Stop! Something in me stood up for me.  I knew that probability was still on my side and the fear I was living might well be false evidence appearing as real.  

As a result of this realization, I was able to halt my mind’s projections into the future, to stop re-inventing and re-experiencing a reality that didn’t and might never exist.  I recognized that I knew nothing other than three facts and didn’t need to go one day or even five minutes into the future. I could decide to live right here, now, and construct no storyline at all.  Discomfort remained, a mild anxiety, but without the narrative connecting the dots, I was remarkably okay. With the sudden awareness of how I was torturing myself, believing my thoughts, I was able to disembark from my mind’s terror train.  I refused to participate in terrifying myself; I chose the freedom and self-compassion that comes with saying, and believing, I simply don’t know. That’s the truth.

For organizing and generating ideas, there’s no match for the human mind.  And simultaneously, for whipping up fear and creating frightening storylines that appear indisputable, there’s also no match for the human mind.  The tragic part is that by creating its narratives of terror, the mind is at some level trying to calm us down, to make sense of and know the unknown, solidify the impermanent.  The mind tries to protect us from the fear of what could happen by creating a certainty of what will happen, which paradoxically can feel less frightening.

In this recent episode, my mind was desperately searching to find proof for its wrongness, evidence that showed its thoughts were mistaken. And yet, the more my imagined storyline was confirmed, the more frantically I searched to find something else to explain the unknown. 

Our mind is often the perpetrator of unimaginable violence—on ourselves.  Our thoughts are the great instigator of terror, yelling fire over and over again when a hint of smoke is detected.  At some point, the suffering that we self-inflict can become too much and an act of grace or self-compassion occurs, when we say, Stop, stop torturing me.  Stop creating stories of terror… The truth is I don’t know, that’s all.  Life is challenging enough without adding any of our own terrifying storyline to it.  We can in fact choose to live in the questions, to not know, and not fill in the blanks.  When we leave the dots not-connected and sit with the fear that may or may not exist with what is, we feel a great relief.  Not only a relief from the self-inflicted violence of the terrifying storyline, but also from the need to close up reality and know—everything—even if it’s nothing we want to know.     

Just Because Thoughts Make Sense Doesn't Mean They're True

Trying to find peace with the mind is like trying to open a lock with a banana...

Carol came to see me with a serious agenda.  She and her husband had had a disagreement the evening before our session and Carol wanted to explain to me why her husband had said what upset her, and specifically, what in his personal psychology and history had made him decide to hurt her. She also wanted to lay out her theories on what was wrong with her husband in a more general sense and how she was going to explain it to him so that he would understand and be different.  Knowing what she knew about him, she was sure that once she laid out her case and helped him understand what was wrong with him, he would become different—and as a result, she would be okay once again.    

My client had come up with an intricate, psychologically sophisticated and comprehensive narrative about her husband’s intentions, resentments, methodology, and shortcomings, and tying in his familial history, present psychology, and relational style.  Carol’s presentation was a multi-layered, multi-dimensional, and multi-generational storyline. Most developed in her narrative, interestingly, was her theory about her husband’s strategy and intention to hurt her. 

Carol was suffering and I listened empathically as she constructed her clear case for why the experience with her husband had happened. And simultaneously, what she needed to do about it or explain to her husband so that he would understand why he was wrong, and would never do this kind of thing again.  I felt her pain and frustration; I also felt how her words and ideas were trying to keep her from feeling her pain, give her some protection from her heart’s hurt, make her pain manageable. And, I felt how desperately those words were failing her.    

Everything Carol said made perfect sense. In court, she would have won her case.  At the same time, I have been listening to her theories on her husband for many years, and also keeping her company in her suffering, as none of her well-crafted theories and/or action plans have changed how he behaves or how she feels about it.  I’ve watched as none of her theories and action plans have brought her happiness or peace. 

On this day, I felt we were ready and so I asked Carol to consider a few new questions in relation to her story and her experience. “What if none of the thoughts and intentions you’ve assigned to your husband are actually true—for him?” I asked.  And, “What if your thoughts only exist in your own mind but don’t really exist anywhere else?”  And furthermore, “What if your narrative, no matter how true and real for you, is of no value whatsoever in making you feel better?”

It was a risk to pull Carol out of her story.  At the same time, she had been telling me her theories on her husband for a long time and I trusted that she knew my re-direct was coming from a desire to help, and also that we’d given enough space and attention to the storyline of the moment, enough so that she would be willing to pull the lens back and examine the story-making itself.  I have learned from experience that asking someone to move out of their story before it’s received its due process is not useful or kind, but Carol and I were in a place to take a new turn in our journey. 

In this moment, as sometimes happens, grace graced us and Carol had an awakening moment.  Her paradigm shifted and it suddenly dawned on her that what she had considered to be the truth, not just for her, but for her partner too, might not be the truth.  She saw that her narrative could make utter sense to her, could be un-challengeable, and yet could have absolutely nothing to do with what her husband was experiencing. 

Her mind opened to the possibility that her idea (and certainty) as to why her husband was intentionally hurting her might be false, for him, or just an idea in her head.  In an instant, Carol literally unstuck from her most tightly held thoughts, she surrendered to the freedom of not knowing what’s true for anyone else.  Carol realized that just because she had a thought didn’t mean she had to believe it, even if it made perfect sense in her own head. 

It’s revolutionary and profoundly liberating when we grasp that our version of the truth, which not coincidentally always places us at the epicenter of what’s motivating everyone else’s behavior, may not and probably is not the truth for anyone else.  Tragically, in an effort to help ourselves feel better and make sense of our pain, to know and be able to control what hurts, we construct elaborate stories on why others are doing what they’re doing to us.  We lock in a truth, one that applies to everyone and everything, and no matter how painful that truth might be, we hold onto it, believing that knowing is far safer than not knowing. 

The narrative we are living and suffering however, is unreal and unnecessary.  It’s made up by our particular mind, with its particular wounds, conditioning, experiences, thoughts, and everything else we’ve ever lived.  In the end, we suffer alone, trapped in the certainty of our story, the story of what’s inside everyone else’s head—inside a pseudo-reality of our own damaging design. 

It’s also remarkable to discover that our theories on why what’s happened to us has happened, and what we need to do about it, that none of them, none of our beautiful, logical works of mental art, will ultimately lead us to peace.  If peace is what we want, our mind and its theories will not take us there.  Trying to find peace with our mind is like trying to open a lock with a banana.  The mind is simply the wrong instrument if peace is what we desire. 

That said, the next time you find yourself convinced of and grasping onto a storyline about how you’ve been wronged or any such thing, ask yourself, What if all my ideas on what’s true for this other person, the world, or whatever else is the protagonist of my narrative of the moment, what if they’re not actually true—for the other, not true outside my own mind?  What if my truths are only true for me?”  See if it’s possible to loosen your grip on the "big T" Truth. 

Paradoxically, when we give ourselves permission to not know what’s true, to turn in our badge as master-interpreter of everyone else’s behavior, surrender our throne as judge and jury of universal truth, blessedly, we discover the very peace we believed we could only find through our storylines and certainty. 

We get there when we get there, but usually, with enough mental fatigue and smart storylines under our belt; when we’ve tried long and hard enough to find peace through the mind’s gymnastics and found ourselves again and again at pain’s door, suffering within our brilliance and certainty, knowing so much but not how to be happy, we start to recognize our banana without having to shove it in the lock for too long. 

How to Quiet the Little Voice Inside Your Head

Did you ever notice the little voice inside your head that’s constantly running the play by play of your life—to you, the one who’s living it.  Did you ever listen in to your inner narrator, the one who’s unceasingly packaging your life, verbally preparing your experience for transmission to another unidentified listener?  I just went on an eight-day silent retreat and apparently my inner narrator didn’t get the memo that it was to be silent.  For the first five days, the little voice in my head didn’t stop talking, not even to catch its imaginary breath. With obsessive precision, it explained to me what I was doing, how I had transformed, and what spiritual lessons I had learned. Over and over my inner narrator repeated my experience to me, prepared it for sharing, and made sure I had everything wrapped up as clearly and understandably as possible. 

It’s an odd thing really: as we're having an experience, the little voice in our head is simultaneously describing, explaining, and commentating on the experience, providing a summary of it before, during and after its unfolding. 

Often, the narration of our experience is so integral to the experience itself, so uninterrupted and merged with it as to make us wonder if there could even be an experience without the accompanying report. If an experience happens without simultaneous inner acknowledgment, thinking about, and commentary, does it actually happen? 

It’s also interesting to notice that the little voice in our head is not without its own characteristics.  It has a certain language, style, and tone; it does its storytelling and commentary with a certain thematic and textural consistency. Like a Hollywood screenwriter, our inner voice tends to write in a particular genre, for example, tragedy, comedy, drama, film noir etc. Our commentator is a character with an identity of its own.

Did you ever wonder why our mind is telling us what we’re doing while we’re doing it, as if we didn’t already know? And, why our mind is so adamant about getting the story of our life figured out, written and packaged?  And finally, why we need to rehearse the tale of our life before we actually need or want to convey it to another person?

The mind believes that we are made of mind and mind alone, and that without its felt presence, we and all else would cease to be. If the narration were to stop and the mind was not experiencing itself through the act of thinking, then there would be nothing—oblivion.  A mind off duty, experience without the thinking about it, is tantamount to non-existence. The mind creates the story of an I; it creates an I as an object in our consciousness.  In so doing, it maintains both the experience of a self and the experiencer of a self, which it believes are needed to ensure survival.

In relentlessly narrating the story of ourselves (to ourselves), the mind is also attempting to make life, and us, into something solid, knowable, and constant.  By creating a main character called me (played by mind) who’s living something called my life, the mind attempts to transform the ephemeral, groundless, ever-changing nature of being into something that can be understood, managed, and in theory, controlled.  It takes what is really one unified process, life, from which we are inseparable, and splits it into two different things, a me and a life.  We then become the liver of this thing called life, and in the process, seemingly distinct and real.  We literally think our self into existence. 

And so, the questions beg: first, is there a downside to living with this inner narrator, and second, do we have to live this way, is it part and parcel of the human condition? Is there no alternative to a second-hand version of life, knowing experience only through the mind's description and commentary? The answer is a resounding yes, and no. 

Yes, there is a downside and no, we are not condemned to live this way forever.

The small downside to living with the play by play of your life ceaselessly running in your ear is that it can be intensely agitating and distracting. There exists constant noise in the background and foreground of your life, no silence to be heard, like having a mosquito (or buzz saw) resounding in your ear, one that you can’t silence and can’t ignore. 

But on a more profound level, the downside to the inner narrator is that it stands in the way of your actually getting to experience life first hand, in all its richness. You're relegated to living through your narrator’s description, which is really just a mental representation of the real thing, like getting a postcard of the Grand Canyon in place of being there, or a description of chocolate instead of a taste. The little voice goes on then to offer commentary on the narration, which is a representation of a representation, and you are now two layers away from the direct experience of living.

You might also notice that the voice in your head presents its version of your life as a truth. It reports your life story as if it were the actual reality existing in the objective world. It’s liberating, however, to realize that the narrator’s account of what’s happening is all going on inside your own mind and only in your mind. It’s not real in some objective sense, but rather another story about a story which begins and ends inside your own consciousness.

The good news is that you don’t have to live this way, with your inner narrator acting as a middle manager between you and life. If you’ve ever been deeply involved in an activity, you might have experienced what’s referred to as flow state.  In flow, we're so engaged in what we’re doing that we cease to be aware of our self. We're no longer the one doing the activity, but literally absorbed into the experience itself. We become the experience; we become life rather than the one who’s living it, and all notion of time and a separate Idisappears. And, while the mind has convinced us otherwise, what we discover is that when the mind is not there self-referencing, reminding us of our self, we still exist. We do not in fact disappear; the mind might temporarily, but we do not, which suggests that we are indeed more than mind. Awareness remains even when we lose the felt sense of our self as the one doing our life. And, interestingly, such experiences, the ones in which awareness of our self disappears, when there is only experience but no I doing it, are the ones that we later describe as wholly satisfying, blissful, and even divine.  The experiences in which we are gone are the ones that we most crave. 

The remedy for the little voice in our head is three-fold. First, we have to exhaust of it and become so fed up with the play by play as to decide that we’re not willing to listen or live by it anymore. Once that’s happened, we must start noticing our narrator and become aware of its voice as an object appearing in our awareness. And finally, we set a clear and fierce intention and desire to experience life directly, through our senses, now, and not just receive a report on it. We commit to diving deeply and directly into the ocean of life. 

Listening to the little voice in your head is a habit, granted a habit with deep roots, survival instincts, and lots of practice time, but nonetheless, a habit. With desire, willingness and intention, a habit, any habit, can be changed. Each time you catch the voice in your head describing or commentating on your life, practice a new habit, the habit of directly experiencing your actual experience. Each time you hear your little voice, first pause and celebrate a moment of awareness; the fact that you’re hearing it means that there’s another part of you, which is not merged with the narrator, who’s awakening—the you whom the narrator is narrating to. Next, intentionally shift your attention from your head (which is where our energy is usually focused) down into your body.  Invite your body to consciously relax. Take and feel a deep breath. From there, run a sense loop: see what you’re seeing, hear what you’re hearing, feel what you’re feeling, smell what you’re smelling, and taste what you’re tasting. Experience each, one at a time. And finally, sense your own physical presence, the feeling of aliveness in your body (not your mind). With this practice, the little voice in your head will grow quieter and less relentless, and the living will become more vivid, satisfying, immediate, and ultimately, real. 

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.

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.

Mindfulness: Has Your Ego Slipped Inside Your Witness?

Orange was the new black. Now mindfulness has trumped orange and is indeed, the newest black. Talk in social media is that everyone is practicing it, "doing" mindfulness, becoming spiritual people. Sounds good!  Becoming aware and conscious of what is happening in the present moment, both inside and outside our body, is a powerful and life changing skill. Mindfulness involves learning to witness our own thoughts and feelings, to observe them as they pass by, like weather or clouds moving through an open sky. The process of becoming aware of the words that our mind rattles out, as well as the feelings and sensations it belches up, frees us to be able to see our internal conditions without having to react to or be controlled by them. Mindfulness offers us a seat in the audience to the show that is our own mind. Or, put another way, a calm shore from which to watch the wild ocean that is the human mind. 

The point of mindfulness, ultimately, is to get free from the tyranny of ego mind, to unhook our being and our identity from the unstable mind. The goal is to be able to see what is happening inside ourselves, without ownership, judgment or reaction. And simultaneously, to lose our great belief in and reverence for the productions of our mind. When we are identified with mind, that is, believe that we are only our mind, we are constantly being dragged around by it, having to respond to and interact with each thought and feeling it generates, regardless of whether it is interesting, important or serves us in any way. Mindfulness gives us a seat from which to watch the movements of mind, its carnival of cravings, complaints and opinions. Without the need to react to everything the mind suggests, we are then free to choose where to place our attention, and consequently, how to live our life. Mindfulness allows us to use mind for the incredible tool that it is, but without needing to be the mind. Mindfulness helps us to discover the awareness to which our mind’s play appears. I think even our minds would agree to such an opportunity, at least as a concept.

While any toe dipped in the practice of awareness is beneficial, there is a trend in mindfulness, a habit if you will, which can interfere with and obstruct the full power of the practice. Without awareness of this habit, we can spend many years lost and asleep in yet another ego prison, another trap of the mind, and as a result miss out on the real gifts of mindfulness practice. Mindfulness is trendy; it’s hip. This is good news. But we must be careful that like other trends, this one does not get swallowed up in the next stream of orange, girls, yoga, tats and the like. With mindfulness on the radar, let’s not miss the chance to change what this powerful practice can change, namely, who and how we are.

The dangerous habit is this: The mindful witness itself is becoming yet another form of ego, a new identity, a new somebody that we wear with pride. That said, we must be mindful that the one who is becoming aware of the mind is not also being kidnapped by the mind. Take the following scenario… You become aware (through your mindfulness practice) that certain thoughts are arising within you, let’s say worry thoughts. This is a good step; there is a little space between you and your mind and you are witnessing what your mind is up to. But don’t rest yet… and don’t congratulate yourself yet either. What you may not be aware of is that the witness who noticed those worried thoughts has her own ideas about what she observed. For example, she may not like that such thoughts are arising inside you. She may judge and reject you as the person responsible for thinking such worried thoughts. Or, perhaps, she may feel pride and arrogance at being able to notice such thoughts, She may identify you as someone spiritual whose "got" awareness practice down. In either case, the mindful witness here is not a mindful witness at all, but rather ego mind hiding inside a new costume. This presence masquerading as mindful witness is not actually willing to observe mind as separate and autonomous from you, with its own random happenings-inside your awareness. This mind in a costume of mindfulness blames or congratulates you for its own output, and in so doing, surreptitiously merges you again with itself. The witness in this case is not an impartial witness, not true awareness, not a path to freedom. Rather, this witness is just a sub-structure of the very ego mind you are trying to observe, and liberate from. This witness will lead you down the same rabbit hole of mind and waste your time in the process, creating a whole new spiritual ego. The mind in its cleverness puts itself everywhere. It just does this; it is not your failing but rather something else to simply notice.

In our practices to observe the ego mind, we must remember and be ever conscious of the mind’s sheer brilliance and fierce survival skills. It doesn’t want to be watched. The ego mind will camouflage itself in infinite hiding places in an effort to avoid direct light upon it. It will mask itself as awareness, compassion, spirituality, wisdom and all the best places, all in order to keep from being seen, from becoming the object and no longer the subject. The mind will take on whatever traits it needs to in order to avoid a status demotion from our identity and the captain of the self-ship to just a worker bee, a tool that awareness can use when needed. Ego mind will take up residence in any location that is not watched vigilantly. So be vigilant. Don’t lose the chance that mindfulness practice offers, don’t go back to sleep inside another incarnation of mind itself.

In order to prevent the mind from posing inside the mindful witness, ask yourself a simple question again and again… and again. With each observation, each witnessing of something happening inside you, a thought, feeling or sensation, ask the following: Is there a feeling about the feeling, a thought about the thought? Observe this. And furthermore, Who or what identity is here now? Who is there witnessing what is being witnessed now? After some practice this way, you may realize that the mind is a bit like one of those Russian dolls, each one inside another. Behind each thought sits another thought, a thought about the thought, and another, and another, each a little harder perhaps to catch sight of. Behind each identity sits another identity, and another… and another. The place where they no longer come, where what is observed is no longer observed by an ego someone or something, when we are just eyes seeing, without reaction, without good or bad… this is the place towards which we practice. This is what warrants the buzz at the water cooler.

Mindfulness is an ancient and powerful practice and well deserving of all the attention it is receiving of late. Careful though, mindfulness is more than a social media trend, more that just an “About” entry on a Facebook page. True mindfulness is a challenge that requires the fierceness of an awareness warrior, but it is a challenge that is well worth the effort. Mindfulness practice requires not only becoming aware of what the mind is saying at any moment, but also of how that very same mind seeks to inhabit the ears of the one who listens. Simply put, don’t take your eyes or ears off your mind, not even for a moment—not even if it says it’s napping, it isn’t. When you become aware of the way the mind sneaks its way behind the eyes of the witness, and steals the seat of the one who is observing, then, you are indeed free—free to watch and experience yourself and your life radically change. This is mindfulness in its fullness.

We Are Using the Same Words But Are We Speaking the Same Language?

I learn a lot from the comments I receive on my blogs. I learn not only about what resonates and is helpful for people, but also about who we are and how we think, communication itself, which then teaches me more about what might be helpful going forward. There are some teachings that I re-learn week after week, which lead me to address them here as subjects unto themselves. First, through the interactive process of blogging, it becomes entirely clear that while we may all be using the same words, we absolutely positively are not speaking the same language. We use words to represent our thoughts, feelings and ideas in this culture, but the meanings that we attach to these words are always different for each person using them. We have different educations, memories, associations, experiences, traumas, preferences etc., and all of these differences affect the meanings and interpretations we attach to our words. Even this last sentence means a thousand different things to the thousand different people reading it. The problem is not so much that we are hearing different things in the same words, but the fact that we believe that we are meaning the same thing. This misunderstanding causes many of the problems that we run into in our relationships and indeed every form of human interaction. The assumption that what I am saying is that which you are understanding, is false. Even the simplest words (“I” for example) hold radically different meanings for each person. As a blogger, it is a fascinating experience to send bundles of words out into the universe and watch how many different versions of those words are actually received and responded to (often vehemently)—many of which (by no fault of their reader) carry no aroma of the meaning that was actually intended by this writer. This is of course is not unique to blogging, but rather the nature of language itself.

What then is to be done if we are all speaking different languages despite using the same words? Shall we stop trying to communicate altogether? This is not a viable solution as we still want to reach each other and be known, still want to dialogue and exchange ideas. Because the system is limited does not mean we limit our use of it. Rather, what is important is that we recognize and honor the limitations of language in the face of our desire to know each other, and keep all of this in the front of our consciousness. We must continually remind ourselves that what we mean with our words is probably not what another is hearing. When we receive feedback, in whatever form, that we not immediately react to another based on the assumption that what we said is what the other heard or more importantly, understood. Sometimes the response we are receiving is indeed about what we meant, but so often it is not. We can interrupt a large majority of the conflict that arises in our relationships just by recognizing and staying mindful of the infinite variations in meaning that exist within the very same words.

As a therapist sometimes it is easiest to work with clients from radically different cultures than my own. With someone whose culture is completely unknown for me, I have the luxury of making no assumptions. Because of our obvious differences, I easily accept that I have no way of knowing what they mean when they use a particular word or express a particular concept. I know simply that it is probably not what I mean when I use that word or concept. With clients who have lived an experience that feels familiar, come from a similar culture perhaps, I must remind myself continually that despite our similar history, and the use of similar words, I still cannot and should not assume that I know what they mean when they say what they say. It is incumbent upon me to always investigate further, so that I am not relating to myself, but to them, authentically. Some degree of assumption must occur as we cannot investigate every word, but the more that we can stay mindful of the assumptions that we are making, the less communication misses and hurts we will be forced to endure.

Even with our most intimates, those we feel really know us, we cannot assume that we mean the same things when we use the same words. And while this can feel daunting and isolating, it can also be deeply liberating. With this knowing, the world opens up; communication transforms from the finite to the infinite. How liberating to realize that there is so much more to be discovered in another’s words than what we know and assume—that thank goodness we are not limited to and trapped in just our own understanding and experience. How freeing to discover that what we know is just that…what we know, and that there is so much more to life—that our reality is just one of infinite realities! How incredible to be able to move outside our own box of mind, and return to a state of not knowing and total freedom, to be able to look and really see. So too, how profoundly unburdening it is to realize that we cannot and should not expect ourselves to know what another means when they speak our language, even though technically it is the same language. Why would we imagine that we could know what another means, about anything, without investigation? And even with investigation, can we ever really know? We have all lived different lives and that changes the meaning of all the words we speak. But, beautifully, we can always inquire, and what a rare and extraordinary gift it is to actually ask another human being what they mean when they say “X,” to give them the opportunity to be known, and for us to truly know them. In each word spoken by another, there is a universe to be discovered, if we are curious, if we really want to know another—not through our lens but through theirs. To remove our translation and listen freshly, how lovely! Like thoughts that go on in our own private mind theatres, the meanings for words and concepts are also part of our own private universe. When we are mindful and respectful of this, freed up from of our own private languages, what an adventure life can be!

Last-Minute-Itis: The Behavior Plague of Our Time

There is a technological plague afflicting our society. The scourge is called “Last-Minute-Itis.” To find out if you suffer from the disease, consult the following list of most common symptoms:

-Frequently texting friends at the last minute to cancel plans, often once the friend has already reached the scheduled location.

-Frequently cancelling plans with friends simply because you don’t feel like going or something else you would rather do came up.

-Frequently texting that you are “running late.”

-Forgetting to show up for scheduled meetings because you didn’t “put it in your phone.”

-Consistently leaving plans “loose” or unconfirmed until “firmed up” (via text) at the last minute.

When I make a date to meet with someone these days, in person, there is about a 50/50 chance that the meeting will happen, with most cancellations occurring within an hour of the appointed meeting time. Until I see my companion appear in the flesh (not on FaceTime) I expect my phone to light up with either a “Can’t make it” or at the least, a “Be there in 10” text.

It used to be that when we made a date with someone we kept it, unless something came up that made it impossible. When we made a plan with someone, we committed to a time and place in one exchange and didn’t need another dozen communications to firm it up. Furthermore, we got to the location at the arranged time—on time. Even if we did not want to go, we went because it would be rude and disrespectful to cancel at the last minute. It used to be that making the choice to carve out a slice of time to spend with another person held a kind of sacredness that we did not violate. Or perhaps, we just felt it was important to honor a certain basic level of manners in our relationships.

These days, we have thrown out basic manners. We cancel five minutes before we are supposed to be there because we don’t feel like going, or because something better came up. We know that we can get a message to the other person, so they won’t have to sit there waiting on us, wondering what happened, and because of this we don’t feel like we really have to show up. Interestingly however, we don’t call to say that we are bailing at the last minute (to really reach the person and apologize), but we make sure that they will know not to wait, and this somehow justifies our behavior.

I often wonder, how is it that we used to be able to get to where we were going on time and we no longer can? I don’t think it is that much harder to get places on time these days; in fact it might even be easier. And yet, no one seems to arrive on time anymore. We used to view being late as a form of wasting or at least not valuing someone else’s time, which was inherently not okay. Now, because we can alert people that we are wasting their time, it has become acceptable to do so—to show up when it works for us but not necessarily when we said we would. So too, we used to be willing and able to drop whatever else we were doing in order to honor an agreed upon time. Now, we behave like addicts who can’t put down the drug of distraction, our device, and turn our focus to getting out the door.

Technology has made bad behavior acceptable, and turned us into a society of disrespectful cads. It has created an environment where we treat other people, their time, and the time we spend with them as unimportant. Technology is training us to act on our whims and do what’s easiest—not necessarily what’s right. Our device gives us license to take the easy road and convinces us that we do not need to be disciplined or stick to our word. Technology has created the ultimate casual culture in which everything and everyone as casually disposable.

When the time

comes to get together with another person, no matter who that person is, there is a part of me that does not feel like going, because it is easier to stay home, I’m tired, or simply because it takes less effort to not relate than to relate. But more often than not, after meeting whomever it is, I am glad I went. Sometimes I am glad because something unexpected and interesting happened, or because I remembered that I really do like spending time with that person, or because just being out and in the world feels connected, or because I pushed myself through my resistance and didn’t succumb to what felt easiest. But I always feel good in some way—because I did not trust the mind (my own), which told me that it would be acceptable to cancel. We mature and grow when we exercise the discipline and discernment that it takes to push through our own resistance, and move beyond our momentary desires. Technology, sadly, is leading us away from such maturity and growth.

Furthermore, technology is causing us to lose sight of the sacredness of our relationships. I felt crappy after a recent cancellation, when a friend texted me ten minutes before we were to meet (after I had re-arranged my schedule) and said that she was cancelling because she had not slept well the night before but wanted a rain check… followed by a big XO and a frowning emoticon. This kind of behavior makes us feel like we don’t matter, not just our time, but our company. Technology is causing us to place value in our devices, but not our human companions.

Technological bad behavior is emblematic of our increasing inability to make a commitment of any kind. The fact that it is acceptable to bail in the final hour means that we no longer have to commit to anyone or anything. We leave our lives forever loose, with the option always present that if something better comes up or we change our mind, we’re out. We live in a constant state of “we’ll see.” Unfortunately, in order to feel grounded, we need some things to be set in, if not stone, then at least something solid. If you want proof of this, answer a child’s question with “We’ll see” and watch as they become immediately agitated. We adults also need to write some of our dates in pen not pencil. When we commit to something, we are agreeing to give up one (or more than one) thing in order to get something else that we want. The ability to make a choice is one of the most important skills in life. With the cell phone now making it acceptable to avoid having to make any firm choices, we are losing this critical life skill. The result of this lost ability is a growing population of young people who are perpetually “on the fence” between choices, inert, and paralyzed by the looseness and open-ended-ness that technology creates and supports.

Treatment for “Last Minute Itis”

The next time you make a plan with someone, see what it feels like to commit to the plan inside yourself, to the person, place, and precise time. Shut the back door that the cell phone opens. You may find that just by removing the possibility of a last minute text-out, by closing your options rather than keeping them open, you feel more spacious and relaxed. You may find that closing the gates to other options allows you to be more present and attentive to where you are. You may find that you feel more connected or warmly toward the person that you are meeting, just by having made the commitment to see them, and honoring your choice to spend time with them. You may find that you enjoy the anticipation of looking forward to something in the future that you have decided is going to happen. You may find that you feel more dignified as a result of committing to do something for sure and giving someone your word. There are infinite and profound benefits to making a commitment to do something and doing it.

The cell phone is causing people to become more insensitive, immature and self-involved. It is teaching us that it is okay to behave in a way that is disrespectful, undignified, and ultimately unkind. Leaving ourselves endlessly available, paradoxically, results in our being entirely unavailable—to others, and to life. Finally, such bad behavior is costing us some of the most important skills that we need to live well, and along with it, the chance to experience some of life’s greatest joys.

When It's Time to Give Up the Piano Lessons

My 10 year old has been studying piano for five years now, and for five years, we have been struggling to get her to practice. Bribes, threats, and bargains are the currency of necessity. I think there was one time in the five years, after a recital, that my daughter seemed to be genuinely happy about playing piano. She was proud of herself after that performance, and it seemed that she could see how her hard work had amounted to something that mattered to her. But that was short-lived and the next day, the same resistance returned. "Try another instrument," friends and teachers cheerfully suggested. And we have. I can say that I now know the sound of many different kinds of instruments, from woodwinds to strings, hitting the tile floor. I suppose it hasn't all been dreadful, though. Sometimes, when my daughter's friends come over, she likes to show them what she can do on the piano and that seems to bring her a sense of satisfaction. By and large however, the piano has been five years of one big cacophonous yelling match, with a whole lot of "Noooooooooooo's" and a sprinkling of slamming doors thrown in for harmony.

Challenge and discipline are good for children (and adults). Learning a difficult skill teaches us to push through frustration, and it strengthens the link between hard work and the joy of being able to do something well. True joy rarely comes without hard work, and we come to know this experientially when we do something hard on a regular basis. Taking on a challenge also teaches us to tolerate delayed gratification, to stay with something even when it is not fun, because of what will come later. We learn that there can be value in an experience, even when it is not pleasurable. Being willing (and tough enough) to keep practicing something hard gives us a sense of pride and inner strength. It connects us to ourselves in a very profound way.

When our practicing starts to deliver results, it is gratifying to know that we alone have put in the hours and offered up the blood, sweat, and tears that now result in our competence (and excellence). This process results in a deep sense of self-worth that is not transitory or grandiose, but rather firmly grounded in the connection between hard work and ability.

Furthermore, there are periods in every life when one has to do very hard things for sustained periods of time, with or without a payoff at the end. Life is a challenge. Practicing a difficult skill is like practicing life itself. It helps develop the ability to be able to make it through these hard periods, without going numb or going mad. In this way, activities that require discipline and challenge teach children critical skills that they will undoubtedly need at some point in their lives. The benefits of sustaining a practice in something that requires us to stretch to our outermost limits, to stay in it through fear, frustration, anger, boredom, all the mind plagues—to journey through a place where we don't think we will come out the other side, has profound benefits that are too numerous to mention here.

So, that brings me to the question at hand... for how long? For how long do we, as parents, keep pushing a child through their resistance? At what point do we stop forcing them to do something (that they say they don't want to do) for the sake of building important life skills and learning important life lessons? What is the tipping point when pushing through their resistance is no longer teaching them the importance of sticking with something hard, but rather becomes a lesson in ignoring their personal sonar, that inner voice which tells them what they really want to do? When does the forcing of a challenging skill stop being something that helps connect our children to themselves and become something that actually disconnects them from themselves and their truth?

I have reached my tipping point personally, in part because I think we are working against the truth of what is, and on a more basic level, because I do not want the disruption in our family life to continue. Also, I wonder if at this point, since our daughter is 10, if we are not just banging our heads against a wall. It is quite possible that she may not take anything important from all this struggle. If she never learns to play piano well, which she won't if she doesn't practice or practices haphazardly (so as not to lose TV time), then all of this battling, this disruption in our home, will have been for what? She will not earn the sense of accomplishment and self-worth, the link between hard work and joy that we were hoping for. I am beginning to believe that giving her the right to say "No," at this stage, may be more powerful in terms of teaching her a sense of her own value and strength.

I have asked my daughter if there is anything else that she would be interested in learning, something that would be a challenge and that she could practice at home on a daily basis. As of yet, we have not discovered another possible discipline, but that may change. Some people believe that we should stick with the plan, and that she should learn piano whether she wants to or not. To this mind, the ongoing conflict and familial dissonance contains a purpose that trumps the lived experience of it. Even if it's 18 years of fighting, she will get her vocal chords' worth of benefits from the experience. I, however, am not so sure and I wonder if we, like many families, are now just fighting over a concept, over an idea of what is good for children in general.

Here's what I know:

1. After five years of taking weekly lessons, my daughter consistently does not want to practice the piano.

2. When my daughter plays well, she feels happy and proud of herself.

3. After any improvement/success, she immediately returns to not wanting to play.

4. My daughter does not want to do the work that is required for her to play the piano well.

As far as I understand it, these are the what is-s. I am not interested in proving a concept, being right or winning the war. I am interested in giving my daughter the chance to build a deep, unquestionable, and very personal sense of her own ability, strength and toughness. Perhaps for her, these teachings will come from being so fierce as to have her "No" finally heeded by her two equally fierce parents?

Coincidentally (or not), as I write this just now, I am listening as my younger daughter bangs around on the same piano that my older daughter drops her clothes on. Without prompting, my two year old often climbs up on the bench to sing a song and play a melody that she creates. The truth is I love the way my older daughter hangs her clothes on the keys just as much as the lovely sounds wafting into my office right now. Perhaps after all the trying to give something that is not wanted, there comes a time to fall in love with what is. Perhaps that time is now.