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May 31 - June 6, 2023
When we stop trying to force pleasant feelings, they are freer to emerge on their own. When we stop trying to resist unpleasant feelings, we may find that they can drift away by themselves. When we stop trying to make something happen, a whole world of fresh and unanticipated experiences may become accessible to us.
The moment in which we notice aversion emerging in response to our identifying some event (such as a sad feeling) as unpleasant becomes a defining moment, a critical point at which mindfulness can open up new possibilities. For one thing, by bringing a friendly non-judgmental awareness right in close to the body sensations that accompany the unhappiness, we can immediately make wiser use of the information implicit in the sensations and feelings themselves.
If we can infuse our attention to our bodily experience with the approach qualities of interest, curiosity, warmth, and goodwill, then not only will we be in greater touch with sensations and feelings in each moment, we also will be directly countering any effects of aversion and avoidance that may be present.
As with so much of what we are learning to do, cultivating wholesome and kind intention and motivation is just as much a part of meditation practice as learning how to focus our attention in particular ways.
Gently asking “What is this?” when we encounter an unpleasant experience keeps the mind from leaping in with “I hate this—get me out of here!”
One way is to take advantage of the obvious but remarkable fact that whatever we experience in our lives is always (and always has been) experienced with the activity of the breath in the background. This means that, if we choose, we can seamlessly weave awareness of the breath in with awareness of any other aspect of our experience.
We can cultivate awareness of feelings from different angles: pay attention to the moment and see what sensations arise, or notice a particular pleasant or unpleasant feeling and pay attention to the thoughts, other feelings, and sensations that are present along with it.
As you become more practiced at reading your physical barometer, you may find that you start to notice subtle variations that offer you detailed and early information about how you are feeling moment by moment, long before you are aware of this in your mind.
The point of recognizing when situations evoke unpleasant feelings, or when our contracted bodies tell us we have already reacted with aversion, is so we can then learn how to respond more skillfully. Can we learn how to be with an unpleasant feeling in a way that is not going to get us trapped in obsessive preoccupation, endless cycles of rumination, and thus persistent unhappiness and depression?
Intentionally holding something in awareness is already an affirmation that it can be faced, named, and worked with.
Once we notice an unpleasant feeling, we focus, as best we can, on how we experience it in the body. This is aided enormously by connecting our awareness of the breath in that very moment with whatever the unpleasant experience is—what we were calling in Chapter 6 the gesture of “breathing with.”
Rather, it is as if we are bathing the difficult situation, and even our aversion to it, in an open, compassionate, and accepting awareness, just like a mother embracing a suffering child.
As best we can, we greet them with a sense of interest and curiosity, rather than with a sense of unease, hatred, and dread. We welcome them in, as they are already here anyway.
“It’s okay. Whatever it is, it’s already here. Let me open to it.”
But it is important to keep in mind that mindfulness is not about getting rid of anything, nor is it about “not having” such feelings arise in the first place. Rather, the intention behind cultivating mindfulness of emotional states is to learn how we can relate to them in ways that will not get us stuck in unhappiness.
The feelings are still here, in this very moment, just as they were for Amanda, but it is as if, somehow, they do not take up all the space in the mind.
Radical acceptance can keep us from becoming progressively constricted and diminished in the face of painful experiences. It invites us to fully experience the richness of life even when things seem to be at their worst.
In mindfulness practice, a spirit of gentleness and tenderness is combined with a spirit of adventure and discovery: “Let’s see what is in this moment—and this moment—and this moment.” This means that we’ve got only the problems of this moment—and they may not even be a problem in this very moment—rather than piling on all the problems of next week, next year, and the rest of our lives, which we so reflexively fall into doing.
the heart of healing, and of the healing gesture we make toward ourselves, is gentle, kind acceptance of whatever we find right in the midst of the difficulty itself.
We are always explaining the world to ourselves, and we react emotionally to these explanations rather than to the facts.
most of what drives our emotions and behavior is not deeply unconscious, but just below the surface of our awareness. Not only that, but this rich interior world, with its motivations, expectations, interpretations, and story lines, is accessible to all of us if we dare to look. We can all become more aware of the “stream of consciousness” going on in our minds, moment by moment. It often takes the form of a running commentary. If it is potentially damaging to us, it is not because it is buried deep in the psyche but because it is virtually unattended. We have gotten so used to its whisperings
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As we saw in Chapters 1 and 2, our thoughts influence our feelings and body sensations and are themselves influenced by our feelings and body sensations. But that does not make our thoughts true, no matter how compelling they may feel.
As far as thoughts themselves are concerned, through mindfulness we can cultivate a new and very different relationship to them, allowing thoughts simply to be here instead of analyzing them, trying to work out where they came from, or trying to get rid of them in any way. In awareness, we see them immediately for what they actually are: constructions, mysterious creations of the mind, mental events that may or may not accurately reflect reality. We come to realize that our thoughts are not facts. Nor are they really “mine” or “me.”
Negative thoughts are part of the landscape of depression. There is nothing personal about them.
Intellectualizing and analyzing doesn’t work when low mood has been triggered. Remembering that thoughts are “just thoughts” is a wiser strategy.
But it is more skillful to pause long enough to bring to them a spirit of gentle inquiry and curiosity, an investigative awareness: Ah, there you are; let me see who you are. In this way, we not only develop a new perspective toward them, seeing them, increasingly, as passing events in the mind. We are also in much better shape to become familiar with the content of recurring messages. Furthermore, this sense of openness, curiosity, and exploration will activate the approach mode of the mind and brain.
“It’s okay . . . whatever it is, it’s already here: let me feel it.”
But the first instruction does not even mention the breath. Instead, we are invited to become aware of our posture and intentionally allow it to express a sense of dignity, of taking a stand in our life, in our own body, to whatever degree may be possible in this moment.
In this way we are “tuning the instrument” for stepping out of automatic pilot mode and acknowledging whatever is going on right now. This stepping out of autopilot and into awareness is inextricably linked.
Intentionally separating an unpleasant experience into thoughts, feelings, and body sensations allows the mind to respond more creatively than it would to the perception of an event as monolithic, impenetrable, and overwhelming.
Sometimes just acknowledging what’s actually going on instead of dwelling on what “should” be happening is all that is needed to transform our experience.
Nevertheless it is still better to bring whatever degree of mindfulness we can to this moment and take some appropriate action to care for ourselves than to sink further into a state of ruminative brooding.
What we are saying here is that the task, when things are tough, is really to focus on each moment: to handle each moment as best we can. If our approach to how we relate to a difficult moment shifts even by one percent, that is potentially an enormous shift to have made because it affects the next moment, and the next moment, and so on; so one seemingly small change can have a surprisingly large impact down the road.
The three-minute breathing space is intended to provide us with just that kind of sensitivity and potential for choice when we come face to face with old patterns. These old patterns may relate to thinking about ourselves in a certain way or dealing with our moods in unhealthy ways or keeping ourselves insanely busy while blaming it on outside circumstances.
Five steps for practicing mindfulness throughout the day: When possible, do just one thing at a time. Pay full attention to what you are doing. When the mind wanders from what you are doing, bring it back. Repeat step number three several billion times. Investigate your distractions.
It is not that difficult situations, worries, memories, people, are somehow neutralized by our practice of mindfulness, or that we become indifferent to them. Rather, that the space we make for them when we bring present-moment awareness to them is bigger; big enough for them to become only part of our experience.
We may discover that we are okay as we are and that we can accept ourselves as we are. We may begin to feel a growing sense of gratitude for the life we already have, rather than grasping at the one we fantasize about.
