Paul Garrigan's Blog, page 9

Compassion, Emptiness, and the Imaginal

The Two Arrows

Being human is a challenge. We all face times when things just don’t go our way or we are treated unfairly. Sometimes even getting our basic needs met can become a struggle. We experience periods of sadness, regret, shame, and anger over things that have happened to us. Then there is the fear of an uncertain future that we know will involve sickness, loss, and finally death.

“It is sometimes said that a quarter of the suffering we experience is born of uncontrollable events, and three-quarters is born of trying to avoid the first quarter.”

Christina Feldman

Resilience (the ability to adapt), courage, and inner-strength are key resources that help us face the challenges that come our way in life. We can easily tap into these resources when we feel sufficiently supported and encouraged. Some of this support and encouragement may come from the outside, from family and friends, but the most critical source is from within ourselves. We refer to this as self-compassion.

The problem that many of us face is that when things go wrong, instead of being nurtured by self-compassion, our mind is doing something else. The Buddha explained this situation using the parable of the two arrows.

Imagine you are walking through a forest, when out of nowhere, you are struck by an arrow. Here the arrow represents all of the unfavorable events that can happen to us. The best thing to do here would be to get to safety and tend to our wound, but this isn’t what often happens. Instead, our mind focuses on other things such as:

How unfair it is that we have been hit by an arrow – how it shouldn’t have happened.Blaming ourselves for not avoiding the arrow.Obsessively telling ourselves stories about what has happened.Denying what has happened because we can’t deal with it.Pretending we don’t care.

The Buddha described the above reactions as being similar to getting hit by a second arrow. At times when we could be comforted and strengthened by self-compassion, instead we are doing something that is increasing our pain and making it harder to deal with the situation. The first arrow is unavoidable (life won’t always go our way), but the second arrow is avoidable. Inthis post, we will look at how this second arrow is empty and that by gaining insight into this emptiness we can avoid it.

What is compassion?

“Compassion is the natural response of the heart to suffering when the heart is not preoccupied with self-interest… or if it’s to our own suffering, it’s the natural response of the heart when we’re not entangled in some kind of negative self-view, negative self-belief. And that natural response of the heart, when it comes into contact with the pain of the world, it wants to heal, it wants to alleviate, to soothe, to ease that suffering.”

Rob Burbea

The word ‘compassion’ is related to the Latin word ‘compati’ which can be translated as ‘suffer with’ or ‘be with suffering’. It means that when we are faced with discomfort, we turn fully towards it rather than turning away. Compassion should never be confused with pity which when directed towards others is condescending (e.g. ‘poor you’) or when directed towards ourselves is a type of avoidance (e.g. ‘this should not be happening to me’).

The words ‘compassion’ and ‘empathy’ are sometimes used interchangeably, but it is important to distinguish between them. We could say that compassion involves empathy, but it also involves other important elements such as wisdom. In fact, empathy without wisdom can cause harm.

Some people are described as empaths, and these individuals are so sensitive to other people’s emotions that their mood can instantly change depending on how other people are feeling. This means that if somebody is feeling bad, the empath can start to feel bad too, and so there is a doubling of the amount of suffering. The compassion we are talking about here doesn’t increase suffering, but instead is always a balm to suffering.

Compassion that causes harm isn’t real compassion. If our attempts at compassion are causing us harm, it means we have somehow gone off track. Remember, compassion doesn’t increase suffering, and there is no real compassion without self-compassion.

The development of compassion has been likened to a skill that you get better at by doing it. The risk is when we try to do too much too soon. If we were to suddenly try to face everything that we have spent years avoiding, it would likely cause us harm – we would be overwhelmed. This would be like going into a gym for the first time and going straight for the heaviest weights.

Why is compassion important?

It is compassion that gives us the ability to face the challenges that life throws our way. It allows us to connect deeply with our own pain, and by doing so, it soothes us and gives us the strength to move forward.

Self-compassion is the foundation for compassion towards other people. Difficulties arise when we try to express compassion without sufficient self-compassion. This can cause us harm and it can mean our efforts are ineffective. We will never know exactly what it is like to be another human being, but when we face our own pain, we develop a deep sense of what the other person is dealing with. It is this that distinguishes compassion from pity.

Compassion greatly increases our capacity to cope with things. Imagine adding a teaspoon of salt to a cup of water, it would taste salty, wouldn’t it? But what would happen if we added that same teaspoon to a bath full of water, or a lake full of water, it would become less and less of an issue. This is what happens with compassion, our pain lessens as our capacity to hold it increases. 

“The more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt. The one who does most to avoid suffering is, in the end, the one who suffers most.”

Thomas Merton

If avoiding suffering worked, conditions such as alcoholism would be viewed as a skill rather than an affliction. Carl Jung, the famous psychiatrist and psychotherapist, once described how all neurosis is created by our attempts to avoid legitimate pain. The problem with trying to escape our problems isn’t simply that it doesn’t work but that it makes things so much worse. Compassion gives us the strength to not only face our own problems but also the issues facing all of humanity. If we fail to develop compassion , life will always be a struggle, and this means not only increased pain for ourselves but also for other people too.

Compassion is the noblest of all human qualities (although we need to be careful about limiting compassion to something just we humans experience as there are plenty of examples of animals exhibiting a similar capacity). To feel compassionate is to feel good. One of the most wonderful things about this ability is it allows us to feel deeply connected to others, and this is something our hearts yearn for. It means we no longer feel so alone.

”So much of the time, we’re enclosed in self-interest, in being concerned for ourselves. And when the heart moves out to hold, to touch, to support, to heal another, we’re actually breaking out of that prison of self-interest. And it’s a huge relief, a huge relief.”

Rob Burbea

Compassion for others also means we get a break from our own concerns. When we are preoccupied with our own stuff, we are like passengers on an aircraft who insist on flapping their hands to keep the plane moving. Such useless activity becomes tiring, and the same can be said for the constant judgments and predictions our mind is making about our life. By focusing our attention on another person, there can be an incredible sense of release.

The benefits of developing compassion would include:

Obstacles to Compassion – The Second Arrow

It would be hard to deny that compassion is an incredibly powerful ally to have in life, so why is it that we don’t make more use of it? Why do we not always show ourselves compassion? Why can experiencing compassion for other people be so difficult at times?

We have already mentioned the second arrow, and it is this that not only increases our difficulties but also acts as an obstacle to compassion. It does this by putting us in a state of resistance towards what is happening – it is not possible to show compassion towards something we are resisting.

The second arrow works as an obstacle to compassion in a number of ways such as:

We have a story about how life should be, and when this story is challenged, we feel threatened, unbalanced, and fearful. We may even experience a sense of outrage (this shouldn’t have happened).We have a story about how we should be, and when we don’t live up to these expectations, we feel shame, guilt and self-loathing.We have a story about how other people should be, and when they don’t live up to our expectations, we can feel resentment, anger, and disgust.

“Large numbers of strangers can cooperate successfully by believing in common myths. Any large-scale human cooperation – whether a modern state, a medieval church, an ancient city or an archaic tribe – is rooted in common myths that exist only in people’s collective imagination.”

Yuval Noah Harari

In his book, ‘Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind’ the historian Yuval Noah Harari talks about ‘imagined realities’. He describes how so much of our thinking is based on things that only exist in the human mind (e.g. try explaining to a bear in Yellowstone Park that it lives in the United States). These imagined realities have made it possible for humans to cooperate on a huge scale (e.g. millions of soldiers become willing to fight for their country), and it is this that has allowed us to be so successful at taking over the planet.

We humans have an amazing ability to create stories and find meaning in things. This gives us a map that we can use to navigate our life. Things start to go wrong when we mistake this map of reality for reality itself. This creates a world that is in conflict with the world we inhabit and a ‘me’ that is in conflict with the experience of being me. Resistance arises when we insist that it is our story (our map) about what is happening that is right rather than what is actually happening.

We have become so hypnotized by our stories that we are now a prisoner to them – or as the poet William Blake once described, these stories have become mind-forged manacles. It can feel like our own mind  is working against us because rather than receiving comfort when things get hard, we get overwhelmed and plagued by negativity, doubt, and denial. We become disconnected from life, so it feels like we are all alone and overwhelmed.

The first step of escaping prison is to realize that we are in one. Next we need to understand the nature of this prison, so we can plan our escape. The way we do this when it comes to the prison of the second arrow is to gain insight into emptiness.

What is emptiness?

Emptiness is a way of looking that alleviates the suffering caused by the second arrow. It does this by showing us how our conditioned way of relating to life (our stories) means we are not seeing things clearly. We start to notice how we have been deluded by the second arrow, and this makes it possible to wake up (awakening) from this disillusion. The word ‘Buddha’ means ‘awake’.

We have a tendency to view ourselves and the world in a rigid way (e.g. ‘it’s just the way I am’ or ‘people just don’t like me’), but when we investigate our experience, we see this rigidity is created by the conditioned mind (the story-telling mind) rather than the nature of things. In other words, the problem isn’t so much life but with our habitual way of relating to life.

Please note that emptiness is not a claim that things do not exist, but that they don’t exist in the way that our minds tend to view them. It is also worth mentioning that emptiness is intended as a remedy to a problem rather than as a philosophy to be argued about or for us to adopt it as a belief system. In fact, Nagurjuna (who is considered the second-most influential person within Buddhism) wrote:

“The victorious ones have said

That emptiness is the relinquishing of all views.

For whomever emptiness is a view,

That one has accomplished nothing.”

Emptiness is a way of looking at things. It is therefore not recommended that we grasp onto it as The Absolute Truth, but more as a tool to make life easier. If working with emptiness doesn’t reduce suffering, there is absolutely no value in wasting time on it. Emptiness is an incredibly deep and profound teaching, but we don’t need to fully comprehend what others have said about it in order to benefit. It’s just like a hammer, you don’t need to know all about the history of hammers, the philosophy of hammers, or the mechanics of hammers in order to make use of this tool.

Once we have gained sufficient insight into emptiness, we can let go of this teaching because otherwise it just becomes another belief. Treat it as a medicine that we take for a limited time period until our ailment is cured. The Buddha described his path as like a raft that we use to get from one bank of the river to the other side. Once we reach the other side, we don’t need to take the raft with us because it can soon become a burden. Or, as they say in Zen, ‘if you see the Buddha on the road, kill him’ (i.e. don’t become attached).

To say that something is empty means that it lacks inherent existence. We divide the world up into objects such as trees, cars, buildings, dogs, plants, and so on, but none of these things can exist independent of other things. A tree depends on soil, air, water, and gravity just for starters. As the famous astronomer Carl Sagan once described,  “If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe”.

Show Me a Tree

If I asked you to imagine a tree, what would you see? Do all trees look like this one in your imagination? In fact, the word ‘tree’ refers to a huge range of possibilities, yet we can identify them with just this one word. Then of course is the fact that a tree isn’t a static thing but a constantly changing one from seed to sapling, and on to mature trees. Our word ‘tree’ is actually just a mind-created category for a process that exists within a much larger process. This means that without the human mind, there is no tree – therefor the word ‘tree’ is empty.

Our ability to carve the world up creates dualities that don’t exist outside of our mind. For example, our concept of ‘long’ depends on the concept ‘short’ – you can’t have one without the other. Imagine we lived in a world where there was only one possible temperature, what would happen to the words ‘hot’ and ‘cold’? Would they still exist? If not, where would they go to? Hot can’t exist without cold and cold can’t exist without hot so both of these concepts are empty of an inherent existence.

So far, this might all sound like pointless philosophizing, but the point is that our certainties about life, all of our stories, are built on shaky ground. If we can begin to see this, we can then develop a more fluid relationship with reality so that real and lasting well-being becomes a viable option.

Here is the most important point, everything we experience is dependent on the mind. This is not to say that things don’t exist outside of the mind (an argument which has been debated in philosophy for thousands of years and may never be settled), but that we only get to experience our mind’s interpretation of what is there. The fact that the objects of our experience depend on our mind for existence means they are empty of inherent existence. We suffer because we treat our interpretations (our stories or maps) as if they were real.

“Things appear to exist from their own side, without depending upon our mind.”

Geshe Kelsang

Emptiness of Self

We act as if there is a self that is separate from what we are experiencing and that this self has the power to control what we are experiencing. When this separate self fails to control what is happening, we experience shame and fear.

We view our thoughts as being created by this self that is separate from experience, but this becomes a source of suffering when we notice that these thoughts are often in conflict with one another (e.g. we want to eat less chocolate yet have an urge to go eat a chocolate bar). This belief in a separate self means we become troubled by the different agendas playing out in our minds (in psychology this is referred to as cognitive dissonance).

One of the key insights of the Buddha is that there is no evidence for a self that is separate from experience. This is important because it is our belief in this ‘I’ separate from experience that creates a sense of resistance or attachment to what is going on (e.g. this shouldn’t be happening).

One of the ways the Buddha demonstrated the emptiness of the self is his teachings on the five aggregates. The word ‘aggregate’ can be defined as ‘element’, and the five aggregates are a way of dividing our experience of reality into five elements (or five kinds of stuff).

The five aggregates include:

To give you an idea of how this all works, imagine you are blindfolded and you allow a friend to put a piece of food in your mouth. As the food (form) enters your mouth, you become aware of it (consciousness). You then notice a pleasant taste (feeling), as the food is identified as a strawberry (perception). You start remembering how your grandmother used to make tasty strawberry cake (mental formation).

The Buddha made two important observations about the 5 aggregates:

We have never experienced anything beyond these 5 aggregates.These five aggregates are automatic processes.

If what the Buddha observed is true, where is the self (separate from experience) in all of this? If all of these five elements of experience happen automatically, what would be the function of a separate self? If we look at our experience and can’t find a separate self, why are we so sure it exists? This is an important question because it is our belief in this separate self that creates the sense of what we ‘should’ and ‘shouldn’t’ be doing, and it is our failure to live up to the standards of this separate self that leads to shame and other negative beliefs about ourselves. It is this separate self that determines if we are worthy of compassion or not.

“Why are you unhappy? Because 99.9 percent of everything you think, and of everything you do, is for yourself—and there isn’t one.”

Wei Wu Wei

Our usual sense of self depends on the five aggregates. If those five aggregates were to disappear, what would happen to this sense of self? In other words, our sense of self is empty of inherent existence, and is therefore an illusion created by the mind. Important –  this is not to say that we don’t exist, but that we don’t exist in the way we usually think we do.

In order to navigate life, our mind creates the sense of a separate self, but this distinction between ‘me’ and everything else only exists in the mind. We experience the world as the five aggregates but rather than being separate from these aggregates, we are these five aggregates because without them we would be nothing.

“Buddhism views excessive self-centeredness as the primary source of suffering, causing us to act in ways that harm ourselves and others, from infidelity and dishonesty to murder, terrorism, and war. The habit of self-concern creates pain in our closest relationships, gives rise to greed and hatred, and torments our hearts on a daily basis. There is no way to a true and lasting happiness without seeing into and eventually overcoming this force.”

Guy Armstrong

The most common reason for why we withhold self-compassion when things go wrong is that we are too busy blaming ourselves for what has happened. We feel undeserving of self-compassion because we have failed to live up to our story of who we should be. This is a huge problem because we are trying to live up to the standards of a mirage. There is no ‘who we should be’, there is only who we are.

Sometimes we don’t see things clearly. We make mistakes – maybe even terrible mistakes that will have huge consequences for our life. When we are overwhelmed by a situation, or we are in physical or emotional pain, we are more likely to do things we later regret. We do have to accept the consequences of our actions, but it is cruel to withhold self-compassion because we have failed to live up to the standards of a self that only exists in our imagination. When we understand this about ourselves, it becomes much easier to feel compassion towards other people.

What happens to children who never receive support and comfort from their caregivers? What happens to the adult who doesn’t receive support and comfort from within? Could it be that our failure to provide self-compassion means we more easily become overwhelmed by life and therefore more likely to behave in ways that we later regret? For example, the person who eats for comfort, but feels full of shame about being overweight, is highly likely to turn to food for comfort in response to feeling bad.

The Three Characteristics of Existence

Another important emptiness teaching involves insight into the three characteristics of existence. Once again, this looks at how our ideas about life are in conflict with what we are actually experiencing. We start to see how the deluded mind goes into resistance against what is happening with thoughts such as ‘this should not be happening’.

These three characteristics are impermanence, non-self, and the nature of suffering. We have already examined non-self when we looked at the five aggregates, so let’s examine the other two.

Impermanence

Remember before when we talked about trees, and we described how a tree is more like a process than a solid thing. The same can be said about everything we experience. It is all changing, yet our minds create the sense of solidity and permanence, so we try to grasp onto things as if they were solid and unchanging.

One way this works against us is that we have our ideas about the way the world needs to be in order for us to be happy. We try to find lasting satisfaction in conditions that are always changing. Maybe we will be lucky enough so that one day everything falls into place and we can be happy, but this is only ever going to be a temporary situation. Things are going to change, and if we depend too much on things remaining the same, we are going to suffer. It is like we spend our lives building sandcastles close to the water’s edge and keep on feeling disappointment when our hard work gets washed away.

Our inner-stories create expectations about the way things ‘should be’, and we are constantly troubled because things rarely go the way we expect. Life refuses to conform to our map. Often this discomfort is minor enough that we can simply ignore it (e.g. a friend fails to compliment us on our new dress). It helps if we are in a good mood. At other times, the conflict between our stories and reality are so great that we start to feel overwhelmed and upset.

Our failure to see impermanence also means we give way too much significance to what is going on right now. So, when we feel bad, it can seem that it is going to be this way forever. We fail to see that our thoughts, our feelings, our body sensations, and our mood are like the weather and are always changing. If we try to attach to any particular mood, sensation, feeling, or way of thinking, we will suffer. If we try to resist any particular mood, sensation, feeling, or way of thinking, we will also suffer.

The Nature of Suffering

The third characteristic of existence is suffering. To put it simply, we suffer because we treat what is impermanent as if it were permanent, and what is non-self as if it were self. This causes us to cling onto these things in a way that causes us harm – it creates resistance to what is happening. The Buddha discovered that when we stop treating what is impermanent as permanent and non-self as self, we escape suffering. This is something that we can start to see for ourselves in meditation.

“We will realize that all phenomena are only deceptions; nothing is stable or permanent, but rather everything is ceaselessly changing and has the characteristics of impermanence, suffering, and not-self.”

Ajahn Chah

How Vipassana Meditation Leads to Insight into Emptiness

Knowing about emptiness, or believing in it, is unlikely to have much of an impact in our lives. It is only by developing insight into emptiness that things begin to change for us. This word ‘insight’ is a special type of knowing that leads to a permanent shift in how we relate to life. A useful definition of insight comes from Rob Burbea when he refers to it as ‘seeing that frees’.

Vipassana meditation is a tool for gaining insight into emptiness. It does this by allowing us to clearly see how our experience of the world is created. There are different ways of doing Vipassana, but here we will be looking at the Mahasi noting approach.  

Simple Mahasi Vipassana TechniqueBegin by noticing the rise and fall of the breath in the abdomen.Keep your attention on the rise and fall of the breath in the abdomen (if you find it useful, you can silently repeat the words ‘rising’ and ‘falling’.When your mind wanders away from the rise and fall of the breath, label the distraction as either thinking, seeing, touching*, smelling, hearing, or tasting.Keep returning to the rise and fall of the breath in the abdomen.

*’Touching’ includes all physical sensation and movement. Please note that our emotions are physical sensations that are being labelled in a certain way.

As you practice this Vipassana technique, you will start to notice that your experience is constantly changing. Your mind may return to an object like thinking or hearing many times over the course of the meditation, but each time is completely unique and never to be repeated.  This is what it means to see impermanence in action. As you continue to observe, you will notice how impossible it is for the mind to pin down what is happening into any kind of story.

Another thing you will notice while engaging with this technique is how each of the six objects (thinking, seeing, touching, smelling, hearing, and tasting) all just arise within your awareness – there is no ‘I’ separate from the experience consciously controlling things.

Finally, you will also begin to notice how suffering arises and ceases. When you are able to just watch the passing show without attachment or resistance, there is no suffering. It is only when the mind gets hooked onto one of these objects (e.g. by creating a story) or tries to resist one of these objects that suffering occurs.

As well as doing the Vipassana practice in formal meditation, it is also important to look for examples of impermanence, non-self, and suffering as you go about your day. The more you are able to do it, the sooner the mind will be able to resist the second arrow. For example, if you are walking to your car, notice all of the sights, sounds, thoughts, smells etc. that grab your attention. You will see that what you experience is unique and never to be repeated, and there is no way you could capture it with words such as ‘I walked to the car’.   

Imaginal Practices to Gain Insight Into Emptiness

Imagine four people and a dog walking down the same street at the exact same time in New York. One of the four is a criminal, one is a tourist, one is a local person, and one is homeless. Would each of these individuals be having the exact same experience/perception of this New York street? Would the dog be having the exact same experience/perception as the other four? If all five are having different perceptions, who is having the right perception of the street? Is there a right perception or are they all empty?

The fact that there is no right way of perceiving a situation means we are free to perceive in different ways. We can’t change what is happening, but we can certainly change the way we relate to what is happening. In fact, this is how compassion works. We start to see that when things aren’t going our way, but we respond with self-compassion, we experience something very different than what would have happened if we had responded with resistance and self-blame. 

We can use our imagination to change our perception. This is what we mean by imaginal practices. Tonglen (this can be translated as giving and receiving)  is a practice that comes from Tibet and is another useful technique for developing compassion.

Tonglen

Use your imagination to create the sense that you are pulling things into your heart as you breathe in and sending things out of your heart as you breathe out. Now choose a time in your life when you felt overwhelmed by things, and visualize this situation as best you can. Imagine that as you breathe in, you are willingly taking that pain into your heart, and as you breathe out, you are sending this old you comfort. You can visualize this old you being soothed as you do this . After you have worked in this way for a few minutes (as long as it feels helpful), consider the fact that right now there are maybe millions of people experiencing a similar type of pain. Imagine as you breathe in, you are willingly taking on some of this pain out of compassion, and you are sending these people comfort as you breathe out.

Compassion, Emptiness, and the Imaginal Key PointsCompassion (including self-compassion) provides us with the resilience, strength, and courage to face all the challenges that come our way in life.It is not really possible to benefit from compassion while we are resisting life.The cause of our resistance to life is delusion – we have ideas about how we should be and how the world should be, and this puts us into conflict with what is happening (in Buddhism this is referred to as the ‘second arrow’).Our ideas about who we should be and how the world should be are just stories that the mind creates to help us navigate life. We suffer when we mistake these stories for the Truth.Emptiness is a way of looking at our experience that helps us to see how we have become deluded by our stories.By seeing how our ideas about who we should be are empty (just stories), we are then able to reconnect with who we are with compassion.By seeing how our ideas about other people are empty, we are then able to reconnect with them with compassion.Through seeing how our ideas about the world are also just stories, we are then able to reconnect with the world with compassion.We never see what is happening, we only have our perception of what is happening. This perception is very much determined by the stories we habitually tell ourselves.The fact that perception is empty (it depends on the mind of the perceiver) means there is no right way to perceive a situation.Knowing that there is no right way to perceive means we are then free to perceive in more skillful ways such as with compassion.We can use imaginal practices (e.g. Tonglen) to learn new ways of perceiving.The fact that imaginal practices work provides further evidence that our perception is empty.

In my podcast, A Simple Path to Well-Being, I will be discussing these issues further. You can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, and all the other usual places where you enjoy podcasts. If you would like private coaching with me, please contact: info@paulgarrigan.com

Compassion, Emptiness, and the ImaginalYou Are Truly WonderfulNew Podcast – A Simple Path to Well-BeingHow Can You Have Trust When It Feels Like Your Life is Falling Apart?An Impulse of Delight. What Did I Get Out of Running a 100 KM Ultramarathon?

The post Compassion, Emptiness, and the Imaginal first appeared on Paul Garrigan Mindfulness Training.

You Are Truly Wonderful

You are the most wonderful person you will ever meet. There is not one person on this planet more worthy of your admiration than you. There is not one individual in this universe more worthy of your compassion than you. In fact, your ability to admire and feel compassion for others is merely a reflection of how wonderful you are.

You give yourself such a hard time, but the truth is that you are perfect right now. You always have been. In fact, it is your failure to see this perfection that is the source of all your problems. If only you would give yourself a break, if only you would lighten up on yourself, then you would begin to see the truth of who you are.

You are constantly trying to improve yourself so that you can be worthy of your own love but can’t you see that this is simply delusion? Rejecting yourself as you are right now doesn’t lead to love and acceptance, it just leads to further despair and alienation.

Your failure to appreciate your greatness means that when faced with loss and uncertainty, you can easily become overwhelmed by fear. This is because you don’t trust yourself. It is the price you pay for not seeing how wonderful you are. It means you face your terrors without the companionship of the ‘you’ that always has your back, the ‘you’ that has the ability to comfort you.

As you begin to realize how truly wonderful you are, you will experience an enormous sense of relief. Life will become easy. You will see that you no longer need to depend on teachers or teachings. You will no longer need life to be any particular way. You trust. Then you will be able to love without needing anything in return because you will already have everything you need because all you need is you.

“The one you are looking for is the one who is looking”

Francis of Assisi

You Are Truly Wonderful
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The post You Are Truly Wonderful first appeared on Paul Garrigan Mindfulness Training.

New Podcast – A Simple Path to Well-Being

There is a simple path to well-being where we relate to life with wonder, intimacy, and trust. At the core of this relationship is learning to live from stillness.

In this new podcast, I’m going to share with you everything I know about well-being. My plan is to outline the steps I took to develop this most wonderful relationship with life and to also reveal the mistakes I made along the way, so you can avoid them. I believe the search for well-being is at the heart of the human experience, and if we don’t have a valid path to follow, we can easily end up lost and in a world of pain.

One of the key things I want to share in the coming episodes is that well-being is less about doing stuff and more about letting go of stuff. I will teach you practices to help clear the mental clutter, but well-being is not something we do but something we come to see.

There exists the most wonderful stillness at the core of our experience. It has always been there, but most of us are too distracted to notice it. I want to show you how developing a relationship with this stillness (the peace that ‘passeth all understanding’) provides the foundation for well-being.

From stillness, we can see how all perception is empty (there is no right way to perceive the world) and that our problem isn’t life, but the way we relate to life. I found that by changing my relationship to the world to one of wonder, intimacy, and trust, I achieved the well-being I had been so desperately seeking for most of my life. This brought an end to my seeking. I now want to share this insight with you. You can now access this podcast, in all the usual places such as (click on the link):

iTunes

Spotify

Anchor

Google Podcasts

Radio Republic

Pocket Casts

If you have any questions or suggestions for the podcast, I’d love to hear them. You can always contact me at info@paulgarrigan.com or leave a comment below.

New Podcast – A Simple Path to Well-Being
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How I Stopped Worrying and You Can Too
Get Inspired Without Becoming a Slave to Spiritual Teachings

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How Can You Have Trust When It Feels Like Your Life is Falling Apart?

Wouldn’t it be fantastic if somehow we knew for certain that things would always work out the way we wanted them to? Imagine if we had some guarantee that nothing bad was going to happen to us in the future. Then we would be able to enjoy our lives without the fear that it could all be taking away from us at any moment. Life isn’t like this though, and trust is a harder proposition when we are facing an uncertain future.

Worry

For years, my response to an uncertainty was to worry. I did what I could to create some security but improvements to my life circumstances didn’t necessary lead to a reduction in my anxiety levels – it just meant I now had more to lose. I remember how the birth of my son raised my fear to a new disturbing level, and there were so many days when I felt crippled by the terror that I would let him and my wife down.

Going through periods of worry is a small price to pay (and I’d gladly pay it) if it somehow makes us better able to handle the future. The problem is that it often has the opposite effect. It can make us completely dysfunctional and so caught up in negativity that we can’t see a way out. It can easily lead to desperation and thoughts of suicide.

Desperately Seeking Reassurance

Living with so much fear isn’t fun, and like many before me, I desperately sought a solution. It took a while, but I eventually realized that chemically numbing myself with alcohol wasn’t going to work. This just turned my life from a bit of a nightmare to a total shit-fest.

I began investigating other avenues such as positive thinking, affirmations, rational thinking, magical thinking, praying/begging the universe, and self-hypnosis. I had also been engaging in a meditation practice for decades with the secret hope of eventually being able to transcend life and living out the rest of my days on a bliss-cloud. All of these approaches appeared to help in the beginning, but then something unexpected would happen, and I would be once again full of fear.

There is No Escape from Uncertainty

As William Blake so eloquently observed. ‘the fool who persists in his folly will become wise’. I eventually reached a point where it became undeniable that there is no escape from uncertainty. Life is always going to do its thing, and as the Christian mystic Anthony de Mello noted , the only sane response is ‘absolute cooperation with the inevitable‘. Everything changed for me when instead of trying to control the future, I began focusing on how I was relating to what is happening now.

I not only came to accept uncertainty, I began to adore it. I thought about our ancestors and their struggle to survive. How many people over the centuries had to face uncertainty, so we get to exist today? We are far from perfect, but I realized that all our best attributes as humans come from this ability to face such fears – without it, there would be no compassion, no bravery, and no progress. All of us humans play a part in the story of humanity, and it is our dance with uncertainty that moves the story forward. When I began facing my fears as a service I undertook on behalf of humanity, it all became so much easier.

Imagine a salesperson who was only willing to attempt a sale when the outcome was guaranteed . It just wouldn’t work would it. To be a good salesperson you have to love the hunt, and there is no hunt without the chance of failure. I would imagine those who succeed in this business aren’t the ones who fall apart when a sale is lost. Instead, they use this as an opportunity to improve their selling technique so next time they do make the sale. There is a way of relating to uncertainty that we could all benefit from.

How to Trust

Trust is not something we do, but something we come to realize. It is the recognition that we don’t control what is happening, but we do control how we relate to what is happening.

It is our resistance to life that is the real source of suffering, and when we stop resisting, we discover an unshakable peace – a peace that passeth all understanding.

There is a drive within humanity to survive and thrive, and we begin to trust this drive to get us through any challenges that come our way in the future. We start to see how we interfere with this drive when we become contracted by fear.

When we trust life, rather than resisting it, or trying to impose our will on it, everything changes. Our action starts to be governed by passion rather than fear. We access a wisdom and confidence that is way beyond anything we previously had access to. We can then see uncertainty as our most beloved friend ready to whisk us off on our next adventure. We get something better than being fearless (there is a thin line between being fearless and being reckless) – we stop being afraid of our fear.

If you are struggling with uncertainty about the future, why not consider some online sessions with me? I can share with you a way of making peace with such fears that has worked for me and many others. You can find out more by clicking here.

How Can You Have Trust When It Feels Like Your Life is Falling Apart?
An Impulse of Delight. What Did I Get Out of Running a 100 KM Ultramarathon?
How I Stopped Worrying and You Can Too
Get Inspired Without Becoming a Slave to Spiritual Teachings
How to Become Enthusiastic About Quitting Alcohol

The post How Can You Have Trust When It Feels Like Your Life is Falling Apart? first appeared on paulgarrigan.com.

An Impulse of Delight. What Did I Get Out of Running a 100 KM Ultramarathon?

Why Run 100 km?

It is 8 days since I crossed the finish line of the Run Road 100 in Trat. I achieved my goal. I did something that before seemed impossible, but what did I get out of it? What was the point?

It would be fair to say that I’m lazy by nature. I do work relentlessly when I feel passionate about something, but I struggle to get anything done when my heart isn’t it. I just suck at doing things I don’t want to do, and I’m no good at faking enthusiasm. I’m sure many of my old employers would have no trouble vouching for this.

If you had asked me a few years ago about what kind of motivation I would need to run 100km, I would likely have replied, ‘being chased by a lunatic with a machine gun’. I would not have been able to imagine willingly wanting to do it or why anyone else would want to do such a thing. Yet, somewhere along the way, I became the type of person who not only signed up for this challenge but also loved the experience.

An Impulse of Delight

There is a poem by W.B. Yeats called ‘An Irish Airman Foresees His Death’. It is about a fighter pilot in the First World War who is going on a mission where he will almost certainly die. He explains how his motivation for joining up as an airman has nothing to do with a sense of duty, legal obligation, or a desire for praise. The best reason he can give is a ‘lonely impulse of delight’ – he just felt driven to be there by an unexplainable sense of delight. My motivation falls into a similar category.

It is hard to come up with a rational reason for wanting to run such long distances (I looked online for what motivated other people to do similar things, and there reasons were usually vague), yet there is a motivation that is beyond the logical. Running has become a way for me to express my joy for life. It turns out my body loves being pushed, and I am on this incredible journey where I’m discovering that this body is capable of far more than I ever could have imagined. I have no idea what my limits are.

What Did I Get From Running 100km?

I spent more than three decades of my life trying to avoid any kind of pain, and all this did was lead me further and further into hell. I have since learned to run towards this discomfort because this is where life have cleverly hidden all the goodies.

My way of relating to reality has completely changed in recent years. I discovered an unshakable inner peace – a stillness that is even there when I sleep. A key part of my transformation has been a new relationship with physical and emotional discomfort.

It is easy to claim that I relate differently to discomfort, but for this to mean anything, it needs to be tested. Running 100km is further evidence for me of this incredible change.

There were moments during the race when I wondered if my body would hold out, but I never once thought about giving up. I kept moving forward with a sense of trust and appreciation for the experience. Instead of trying to escape the tiredness, aches and pains that occur when you are on the move for almost seventeen hours, I was able to be intimate with this experience.

Will I Run Another 100km?

In the hours following the race, a friend asked me if I would do it again. Despite feeling completely exhausted, my reply was ‘probably, yes’. I can see myself running another 100km race, and I’ve even found myself checking the racing calendar here in Thailand for options. I might even end up going for longer distances. The thing about an ‘impulse of delight’ though is you never know where it is going to lead you next.

Just a reminder. I offer awareness/mindfulness training online for anyone who is interested. This is the path I followed to develop well-being, and I’ve seen it work for many other people. It might not be enough to get you to run 100km, but it can certainly improve your life. Click here to find out more.

I made a video diary of my experience of the Run Road 100 in Trat, and you can view this below.

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An Impulse of Delight. What Did I Get Out of Running a 100 KM Ultramarathon?
How I Stopped Worrying and You Can Too
Get Inspired Without Becoming a Slave to Spiritual Teachings
How to Become Enthusiastic About Quitting Alcohol
Delight in the Pointless – The Cure for the Pointless Life

The post An Impulse of Delight. What Did I Get Out of Running a 100 KM Ultramarathon? first appeared on paulgarrigan.com.

How I Stopped Worrying and You Can Too

Worry destroys people. It sucks all the joy out of life and fill us so full of shame that we can’t even enjoy spending time with family and friends. Worry can make us so desperate that we turn to drugs, even though this only makes the situation worse, and it may eventually drive us to suicide.

I know how much pain worry can cause because it was such a huge part of my own journey. I remember in my early teens drinking a bottle a vodka in an attempt to calm my mind down. This soon became a habit. Things got so bad by my mid-twenties that I had a brief spell of being homeless.

Even after I finally quit alcohol, I still continued to have regular periods of intense worry. This would often involve taking to my bed and becoming completely dysfunctional. Then, 8 years ago, something changed (you can read my blog post from that time here), I stopped being a worrier.

How Things Have Changed

Many of us are facing a huge amount of uncertainty due to the impact of coronavirus. My last great battle with worry eight years ago was triggered by financial concerns, yet my response to this current situation could not be more different. There has been no worry, no sleepless nights, no self-pity, and no begging the universe to save me.

I remember something the spiritual teacher Krishnamurti once said that he didn’t care what happened to him. When I first heard this, I wondered if he might be depressed, but I get it now. What he seems to be talking about is the realization that it is not about what happens to us but how we relate to what is happening to us. If we resist what is happening we suffer, if we don’t resist, there is no suffering.

Stillness as the Anecdote to Worry

My episodes of worry would become so intense that I would want to die. I just wanted it all to stop. The only thing preventing me was that I didn’t want to hurt my family, and if I’m honest, I didn’t have the courage to see it through. Stillness is where it all stops. It was what my mind was so desperately seeking, but it does not involve a physical death. It is a kind of death, but only the death of the worrier who is replaced by a core of unshakeable stillness from where we experience our life.

I find it hard to talk to people about stillness. It is impossible for me to describe how important it is, how life-changing it is, and how wonderful it is . When I do bring the topic up with clients, their eyes tend to glaze over. I’ve realized that the only way to appreciate stillness is to experience it for a sufficient period of time. It is only by doing this that we can see it is the answer we were always looking for.

Stillness is always there, but it becomes more noticeable to us the less we resist life. Once we spend a sufficient amount of time in stillness, it becomes our natural resting place. This means that no matter what is going on, it is experienced from stillness and with complete acceptance.

Wu Wei – How Shit Gets Done

Right now, your body is performing millions of incredibly complex tasks that keep you alive. You are not aware of this work, and if you were to suddenly have to take conscious charge of these activities, you wouldn’t have a clue what to do and would begin dying right away. If you trust your body to keep you alive, why can’t you trust your mind to take care of the challenges that face you in life?

Wu Wei comes from Chinese philosophy, and it can be translated as ‘effortless action’. A similar idea can be found in Christianity when they talk about ‘taking your hand off the rudder’. It means that instead of trying to micromanage our mind, we trust our mind to do what needs to be done. I now look at my old friend ‘the worrier’ as like a clueless boss who comes into a factory and tries to micromanage everyone – this only leads to chaos and unnecessary stress.

As we become established in stillness, we start to trust the mind to take care of whatever needs to be done. Without any effort or stress, the right response to life just arises by itself. The biggest force in nature is the drive to survive and thrive, so we shouldn’t be surprised at how effortlessly our mind can do this (especially when the clueless boss isn’t looking over its shoulder).

How to Stop Worrying

There are many practices that will allow you to experience stillness. The key to escaping worry is to hang out in this stillness as much as you can until it becomes who you are. The way I teach clients to do this is by first bringing their attention to the five senses. Next, develop a sense of appreciation for whatever our attention is focused on. When we do this, even if it is only for a few seconds, we are not resisting what is there, and this creates an encounter with stillness.

A common mistake that beginners make when they come to the practice is they try to stop the thoughts. This usually leads to frustration and mean even more anxiety – i.e. we start to worry about not being able to stop worrying. We don’t stop worrying by physically stopping thoughts, we escape worrying by finding a refuge in stillness – then the anxious thoughts run out of steam because we are no longer giving them fuel

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Get Inspired Without Becoming a Slave to Spiritual Teachings

I would understand if followers of a guru felt a sense of relief as well as sadness when their teacher dies. It must be easier to adore a dead spiritual master than one who could trigger a scandal at any second.

I’ve been lucky in that I’ve never felt suckered by a spiritual teacher who later fell from grace. It must hurt. There have been a few that didn’t quite live up to their own standards, or failed to follow their own advice, but I’ve always been more interested in the teaching rather than the teacher.

I once feared that my inability to sit at the feet of a guru and gaze up with adorning eyes was a bad thing. Why did I have to be so cantankerous? Why did I need to question everything? Why couldn’t I just listen, follow, and shut up?

Then there is my inability to strictly follow a teaching. I prefer to adapt things to fit my own sensibilities. I see connections between the various spiritual paths and even completely different subjects! Perhaps I was brainwashed by those Burger King advertisements that repeatedly told me to ‘have it your way’.

The idea that there is one path that everyone needs to follow sounds delusional to me. Call me a heretic, but the way I see it, all teachings come from flawed human beings just like you and me. I don’t assume that because a person lived hundreds or thousands of years ago, it means they were somehow closer to the gods or to the Truth. It might be true, but I can’t know that, and because I don’t know that I can’t trust it.

I truly believe that each one of us humans is on their own unique journey. The Buddha’s last words were, ‘be a light unto yourself’, and for me, this is the best advice ever given by a spiritual teacher. Sure, the teachings are there to inspire us, but the answer we are really looking for is inside ourselves, and it looks different for each one of us.

I once made a vow to remain a Buddhist for the rest of my life, but I regretted this decision almost as soon as I made it. At the time I wanted to commit myself to something, but for me, a teaching is the wrong thing to commit to.

My loyalty had to be to my own well-being, and it was a mistake to put any teaching before that. As it turned out, Buddhism did play a significant role in my search for well-being, but my Buddhist vow went the same way as my Catholic confirmation vow, and I have no regrets about either.

I see spiritual teachings as something to riff-off, something to spark our imagination, rather than become a slave to. This way we can benefit from them without having to worry about defending them or become disillusioned with them. We can learn from teachers without become part of any cult. With this attitude we may even learn something from disgraced teachers who may still have had something interesting to say – after all, even a broken clock is right twice a day.

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How to Become Enthusiastic About Quitting Alcohol

Because you are reading this. I am going to assume you already have enough reasons for quitting alcohol (or whatever substance is currently messing up your life). You might think that this would be enough to get you to quit, so why haven’t you?

It’s a no brainier isn’t it? Once you realize that the cons outweigh the pros, the obvious thing to do is to just walk away. I bet this is what you told yourself you would do if alcohol ever became a problem.

Yet, if you are anything like I was during the final years of my alcohol enthusiasm, walking away is a lot easier said than done.

You May Never Reach a Day When Enough is Enough

The sad reality is that a alcohol can completely destroy your life and reputation, and take away everything you love, yet you still may not develop sufficient motivation to stay away.

As my own situation deteriorated, I reached out to the experts who talked about a promised Nirvana called ‘rock bottom’. This would be the day when enough would be enough, and I would then be able to walk away from alcohol and live happily ever after. I started to even use this idea of a ‘rock bottom’ as an excuse to go on a bender – after all, wasn’t I just speeding the process along?

The problem was that my life kept on getting worse and worse, and I noticed how many of my fellow travelers died before reaching this promised day when quitting would be easy. I could see the same happening to me. Thankfully, I stopped believing those who told me that I would need to keep on drinking until I was ready.

The Reason You Can’t Stay Quit

It took me two decades to figure out that fear is a lousy long-term motivation when it comes to giving up the booze. Fear of dying from liver disease, losing a girlfriend, or being homeless might be enough to get me to enter some type of treatment program, but it wasn’t enough to get me to quit for good.

The problem with fear is it only works when your back is against the wall. Of course, this meant that once things improved for me, my fear would vanish and my motivation to quit would disappear along with it.

I work in a rehab, and I’ve seen this happen over and over again. A person’s life turns to shit, so they become willing to change. They put in the work and things get better for them, but their improved situation often means their initial reason for quitting is no longer valid, so back they go.

You Turn to Alcohol for a Reason

I used to wonder if my own mind was trying to destroy me. Why else would I keep returning to alcohol after it had taken so much away from me. I now see that what was happening was anything but self-destruction.

That which was driving my alcohol enthusiasm wasn’t much different from the force that regulated my internal organs or ran my immune system. I could judge it as misguided, but my drinking was just another attempt by my body to be OK.

I stopped drinking for long periods (I once managed two years), but while my life outwardly improved during these sober times, there was still an underlying yearning for something crucial that was missing. Alcohol was the only thing that I knew that could get anywhere close to satisfying this yearning, so of course, I kept going back to it.

If you keep returning to alcohol despite the negative consequences, might it be because you are in a similar situation to how I was? If you see giving up drinking as some kind of sacrifice, what is it that you think that you are sacrificing? You might have different words for it, but is alcohol the best way you know to be OK?

How to Become Enthusiastic About Quitting Alcohol

You will become sufficiently enthusiastic about quitting alcohol once you understand that rather than it being about giving up alcohol, it is really about getting what you most desire. Once you firmly grasp this, and start taking action, the motivation you need to succeed will be there. At the end of the post, I’ll link to an overview of what this might involve.

I discovered that my drinking was a desperate attempt to experience well-being. I developed a relationship with life that gave me everything I was looking for in a bottle. I know that I’ll never drink again because it no longer has anything to offer me. Just like I never needed to motivate myself to go drinking, there is no longer any need for motivation to stay away from it. The same can be true for you.

Life is so wonderful when we are able to relate to it the right way. Each moment is a precious gift, and we don’t need a drug to recognize this.

Click here for an overview of the path I took away from addiction.
You will also find plenty more information on my YouTube channel.

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Delight in the Pointless – The Cure for the Pointless Life

What Was the Point?

1994 was a big year for me, although I would have bitterly disagreed with such an assessment at the time. I spent most of that period obsessed with the pointlessness of my life. I would write these drunken song lyrics (even though I didn’t have a note in my head), stories, and even suicide notes where the core theme was the meaninglessness of things.  You could say, I was a child of my time (as this was the same year that Kurt Cobain committed suicide) but perhaps mercifully for mankind, the only audience for my dark observations was the bin.

‘Here we are now, entertain us’

Nirvana

By 1994, I had become dependent on the outside world to provide me with meaning and purpose . This philosophy was summed up beautifully by Kurt Cobain when he demanded ‘here we are now, entertain us’. This dependency on life to keep me engaged  was a doomed project from the start. Just as a drug addict develops a tolerance to a drug, so too does the mind need increasingly bigger hits to stay interested in life. Which meant that by my early twenties, I felt jaded, cynical, and betrayed.  As the robot Marvin, from the ‘Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy’ summed up so well, ‘life, don’t talk to me about life’.   

The Well-Travelled Flea

In a desperate attempt to keep life entertaining, I would move from place to place. I traveled the world over the next few years. The problem was that while new scenery and culture could only temporarily reignite my interest in life, I would soon get used to it. The magic would wear off, and I would be back to square one.

As a monk once remarked, I was like one of those flea-infested dogs you will often see if you visit a temple here in Thailand who alternate their time moving around and scratching themselves. I would try to relax into a new place, but it wouldn’t be long before the old fleas would start to bite, and I would have to move again. It took me a long to recognize that I was taking the fleas with me.

I moved from place to place, from one group of friends to
the next, and from job to job.  All of
the time looking for the right situation that would fix me.  All I needed was to find my place in life,
and then all would be well. Of course, no such place existed. The problem was
me, or to be more specific, my way of relating to life.

My Biggest Mistake

One may know the world without going out of doors.

One may see the Way of Heaven without looking through the
windows.

The further one goes, the less one knows.

Tao Te Ching

My biggest mistake was my failure to see how the value of
each moment is completely dependent on how I relate to that moment. It is
not about what is happening but about my ability to appreciate what is
happening.

Before the age of seven, I had no difficulty delighting in
life. It wasn’t that my situation was particularly wonderful back then, I
wasn’t living in a pleasure dome or anything like that, it was just that I
related to things differently.

As a child, silly things like the noise made by a playing card spinning against the spokes of a bicycle was enough to keep me entertained for hours. That was all that was needed. Later, my adult self would view such activity as pointless, but by then my relationship with reality had completely changed.

The Fear of a Pointless Existence is the Enemy

Some might say (and I used to think this way too) that we
have to grow up, and part of this is the recognition that things need to have a
point in order for them to be worthwhile. There needs to be a rational reason
for doing things, and the rules about what ought to make us happy are there for
us all to see. Making more money, self-improvement, being a productive human,
and becoming more knowledgeable are all productive ways of using our time –
there is a point to such activities whereas delighting in the sound of a
playing card hitting a bicycle spoke just doesn’t fit the criteria.

The problem for me was that it eventually became obvious that ‘making good use of my time’ worked more like a distraction than actually offering a point to my life. I’m not saying that such things are bad, but after a while, they felt about as meaningful as a dog chasing his tail (at least the dog looks like he is having fun). I would develop a tolerance to the latest self-improvement project, and I would then need to find something new. The reward of a meaningful satisfying existence was always over the next mountain.

I had become hooked, and my addiction to ‘productive ways of using my time’ meant I was further away from a point to life than ever. It go so bad that I couldn’t even enjoy my days-off work because I needed to be doing something productive.

Delight in the Pointless

I’m glad to say that I no longer have any fear of a pointless existence. For life to be satisfying, all I need to do is relate to it in the right way. It is not the job of life to entertain me ( I now see such thinking as incredibly arrogant), but my job to appreciate what is there. There doesn’t need to be a point to anything – just the simple delight a child would experience upon hearing the sound of a playing card hitting the spokes of a bicycle. Everything I need to delight in life is already here, and it is not something that needs to be earned or justified.

As the poet David Whyte says:

The kettle is singing

even as it pours you a drink, the

cooking pots

have left their arrogant aloofness

and seen the good in you at last. All

the birds and creatures of the world are

unutterably themselves. Everything is

waiting for you.

Recent Posts

Delight in the Pointless – The Cure for the Pointless Life
How to Enjoy All of the Benefits of Alcohol Without the Drawbacks
Walk and Talk Videos
How Imaginal Practices Made it Possible for me to Adore Life
Becoming Comfortable in My Own Skin Using Friendliness Practices

How to Enjoy All of the Benefits of Alcohol Without the Drawbacks

I kept on returning to alcohol for a reason. It seemed to be
offering something that I desperately yearned for, and it was only be
satisfying this need a better way that I was able to break free of addiction
for good. What I so desperately wanted was well-being, and it turns out that
the real thing is far superior than anything I could have hoped for with
alcohol.

In this walk on talk video, I describe how I was able to
enjoy all the benefits of alcohol without the drawbacks.

Latest Posts

How to Enjoy All of the Benefits of Alcohol Without the Drawbacks
Walk and Talk Videos
How Imaginal Practices Made it Possible for me to Adore Life
Becoming Comfortable in My Own Skin Using Friendliness Practices
Using Insight Practices to Escape Worry and Negative Thinking