Mindfulness means paying attention to the present moment, on purpose, and without judgment, according to Jon Kabat Zinn, a leader and teacher in the mindfulness movement. While we can easily define it, it seems that being it is not so easy. Despite all our talk of mindfulness, studies indicate that most people are only here, paying attention in the present moment, 50% of the time.  That said we miss out on half our life, with our attention somewhere other than where we are.

Rather than take the usual, culturally-accepted model and suggest another thing to go out and become, get, do, study, buy, or otherwise accomplish in order to attain mindfulness, perhaps it’s wiser to turn our attention into ourselves and investigate what gets in the way of our being present.  What are the obstacles to being here now?

The first and most obvious obstacle to being present is distraction. We’re in a constant state of motion, busyness, and getting to somewhere else—using our devices, substances, entertainment, chatter, and anything else we can find to avoid here, now.  Doing is our first line of defense against being present.

The most treacherous impediment to mindful attention however, even more than busyness and activity, is thought. The mind, maker of thoughts, is forever chattering, distracting us, telling us stories, beckoning us to not be where we are, but rather get involved in the tickertape of plot twists it’s creating.

When it comes to avoiding the present moment, we tend to employ a handful of habitual thinking patterns.  First, we keep ourselves safe from now by narrating our experience as it’s happening. We follow ourselves around, perpetually commenting on our own experience.  “Oh look, I’m having a good time here, this is going well, they seem to like me” and so it goes, the voice over of now—soundtrack to our life.  All day and night we tell ourselves the story of ourselves, story of our life.  Sadly, we live the voice over but not the life itself.

So too, we disappear from the now by continually packaging our experience as it’s happening, preparing the story that will later tell the tale of our current experience.  As our present moment is unfolding we’re preoccupied with transcribing the now into a summary or narrative, ever-readying the now for some future explanation or presentation for others or perhaps just ourselves.

And then come the big three: the thought patterns that are always running in the background of mind, subtly or actively pulling our attention away from here.

How Thoughts Block Us From Being Fully Present

Boots on the ground mindfulness: removing the obstacles to being here now.

Posted Aug 11, 2018

Source: Val Toch/Unsplash

If just one word were to go in a time capsule to represent our society right now, the word would have to be “mindfulness.” Mindfulness is in every book title, workshop, conversation, idea, and everything else we now encounter.  We’re a society obsessed with mindfulness.  So what is this thing we’re all talking about and presumably trying to create? And how do we do it—become mindful?

Mindfulness means paying attention to the present moment, on purpose, and without judgment, according to Jon Kabat Zinn, a leader and teacher in the mindfulness movement. While we can easily define it, it seems that being it is not so easy. Despite all our talk of mindfulness, studies indicate that most people are only here, paying attention in the present moment, 50% of the time.  That said we miss out on half our life, with our attention somewhere other than where we are.

Rather than take the usual, culturally-accepted model and suggest another thing to go out and become, get, do, study, buy, or otherwise accomplish in order to attain mindfulness, perhaps it’s wiser to turn our attention into ourselves and investigate what gets in the way of our being present.  What are the obstacles to being here now?

The first and most obvious obstacle to being present is distraction. We’re in a constant state of motion, busyness, and getting to somewhere else—using our devices, substances, entertainment, chatter, and anything else we can find to avoid here, now.  Doing is our first line of defense against being present.

The most treacherous impediment to mindful attention however, even more than busyness and activity, is thought. The mind, maker of thoughts, is forever chattering, distracting us, telling us stories, beckoning us to not be where we are, but rather get involved in the tickertape of plot twists it’s creating.

When it comes to avoiding the present moment, we tend to employ a handful of habitual thinking patterns.  First, we keep ourselves safe from now by narrating our experience as it’s happening. We follow ourselves around, perpetually commenting on our own experience.  “Oh look, I’m having a good time here, this is going well, they seem to like me” and so it goes, the voice over of now—soundtrack to our life.  All day and night we tell ourselves the story of ourselves, story of our life.  Sadly, we live the voice over but not the life itself.

So too, we disappear from the now by continually packaging our experience as it’s happening, preparing the story that will later tell the tale of our current experience.  As our present moment is unfolding we’re preoccupied with transcribing the now into a summary or narrative, ever-readying the now for some future explanation or presentation for others or perhaps just ourselves.

And then come the big three: the thought patterns that are always running in the background of mind, subtly or actively pulling our attention away from here.

-Why is this present moment happening?

-What does this now say about me and my life?

-What do I need to do about this now?

Our tendency is to experience the present moment through at least one and usually more than one of these thoughts.  Rather than being where we are, we busily attend to the who, what, where, when and why of where we are.

And then there’s fear.  Thoughts are a way the mind tries to manage its fear of and lack of trust in the present moment.  Rather than risk diving into now, into the river of life, we stay on the shore, using our mind to manage, control and make linear sense of our present experience, in the hopes of steering now in a direction we design. The mind doesn’t believe that we can relax into the unknown of the present moment, show up fully where we are, experience now without controlling where it’s headed. It doesn’t trust life to take care of us, but instead imagines that it must make life happen, and direct our path at all times.

In reality, the present moment doesn’t need the mind to make it happen; now is unfolding without the mind’s help.  When we live the present moment without thinking it, the mind is left without a task, without something to do, figure out, or solve.  It has no bone to chew on.  For this reason, the mind vehemently rejects the now, using this moment to generate ideas and issues that will require its own attention and input.

Furthermore, the mind subsists on the past and future; it alternates between turning now into a projection into the future and a narrative on the past. The now, however, is a space poised between the two locations or concepts, past and future. The present moment is a gap between the two.  In truth, it’s always now–now offers a vertical eternity. When we dive fully into the present moment, we step out of the linear timeline altogether. We are liberated from the shackles of time.  In response and rebellion, the mind grabs hold of now, through thought, and places it back into a timeline, thereby re-orienting itself in a way it can understand.

It’s often said that we avoid the present moment to avoid ourselves.  But in fact, when we dive fully into the present moment, are fully engaged in our experience, as in the flow state, what we discover, paradoxically, is that we lose ourselves.  We disappear, and that’s precisely what makes it so delicious and makes us want to return again and again.  In full presence or flow state, we don’t experience ourselves as separate, as the one living the experience; there is only the experience of which we are a part.

We’re always running from the present moment, not to escape ourselves, but to escape the absence of ourselves.  The battle with the present moment is an existential battle for the mind; the flight from now is its fight to exist.

Living the now, without a narrative, requires a death or at least temporary letting go of mind. When the mind stops talking to us, there’s nothing there to remind us of our own existence, we’re left unaware of ourselves, in a state of void.  That said, the mind abhors the present moment just as natureabhors a vacuum.

But in fact, when we have the courage to drop out of mind and into the present moment, what we find is the opposite of a void.  We find wholeness, an experience without an experiencer.  We encounter ourselves as presence inseparable from life, rather than a person who is living, directing, managing, and controlling this thing called life.  In the process, we discover liberation and something as close as I’ve ever found to the end of suffering.

To begin practicing this paradigm shift, start small.  Every now and again, glance around your surroundings and just look, see what’s there without going to thought or language to understand or name what you’re seeing.  Experience your environment without using mind to translate what your senses are taking in.  Simply allow your awareness to be aware without interpretation.  So too, if you ever meditate or spend time focusing on your breath, try paying attention to the spaces between breaths as well. Feel the sensations occurring in the gaps between the inhalation and the exhalation. This simple practice can offer a direct taste of the present moment without the interruption of thought. And finally, every now and again, invite yourself to stop and drop. Deliberately unhook from the storyline going on in your head and shift your attention down below your neck into the silence and presence in your own body.  Experience being as its own place, without thought.

These and other simple pointers can escort us into a radically new experience of living; they can be used as portals to a serenity that the mind, no matter how much it wants to be involved, cannot figure out or create.  When we’re fully present, living now directly rather than the mind’s interpretation of it, a palpable peace unfolds—a peace that surpasses all the mind’s understanding.

The post How Thoughts Get in the Way of Being Present appeared first on Nancy Colier.

Jane, a woman in her 40s, recently had an experience with a parent that set off a strong and somewhat unexpected reaction in her. She met her father for a meal and he behaved the way he always behaved, asking her no questions, acknowledging nothing about her, completely invisibilizing her, while simultaneously demanding that she act as a mirror to reflect his own grandiosity. It was an experience Jane knew intimately and one she had been living for decades. But on this particular day, sitting across a table from this man she called her father, a man who had never shown Jane the kindness of acknowledgment or curiosity, it all broke—the dam that had protected her from her actual experience was gone. Without warning, Jane discovered that she could not keep pretending this kind of interaction was okay. Even if she had wanted to continue the same relationship with her father, her body had decided otherwise: being unseen and unknown, receiving nothing, inauthentically playing the role of the loving validator, was no longer possible.

Midway through the meeting, Jane took off the hat she had been wearing her whole life; she stopped confirming her father’s importance, and also stopped playing the role of the grateful daughter, who would happily enjoy the glow of his greatness while remaining forever invisible. She even went so far as to suggest that something he had said about himself might not be true, a first. The encounter ended abruptly and with obvious prickliness. While no words were spoken about the tectonic plates that had just shifted between them, it was clear to both father and daughter that their usual way of interacting was suspended, if not finished for good.

Very shortly after the meeting ended, Jane’s body started crying and vomiting and didn’t stop for hours. At the same time, her mind was in an intense swirl, trying to make sense of what had just happened, to create the narrative that would give her some ground in this emotional storm. The casing that had contained decades of grief, rage, and longing was broken open.

Interestingly, within a day or two, Jane had moved on from the experience. She was feeling fine and also empowered by a new-found, never before experienced clarity. She knew at a cellular level, without any doubt, that she was no longer going to continue subjecting herself to her father’s unkindness. A new reality had emerged entirely on its own. While she would have to continue seeing her father in family settings, she would no longer be participating in a “close” relationship with him or playing the role she had formerly played. She wasn’t angry, just clear and decided. She was lovingly and steadfastly on her own side.

And then, shame appeared. While Jane was aware that something profoundly important had taken place within her, and that she had behaved in a radically new way, and that she would not be continuing the relationship with her father in any kind of similar manner, she also felt a sense of shame. She shamed herself for having had such an intense response to her father, for being so impacted by him. So too, she was upset with herself for visibly reacting, which she believed shamefully revealed to her father that she was indeed affected by their relationship.

As someone who had meditated and practiced spirituality for many years, Jane began convincing herself that her reaction to her father meant that she was a spiritual failure. And furthermore, that her pain meant that she was also psychologically weak, someone who couldn’t be flourish unless in ideal, kid-glove circumstances.

And, as it turns out, Jane was not alone in administering shame and blame. Jane’s partner was pouring his disdain into the mix with a common cultural belief, namely, that after years of spiritual practice, she should have found a way to be immune to her father’s behavior, to build appropriately thick walls around herself. If she knew that this was how her father behaved, which she undoubtedly did, she should expect and be prepared for his behavior. She should not, still, be so devastated by her family. He accused Jane of being “fragile” and too sensitive to live in the real world. This was how he chose to support her in her transformation.

After being subjected to her partner’s and her own shaming however, something magnificent happened.

The same grace that had allowed her to know the truth with her father showed up and awakened Jane to yet another truth. Jane realized that she was indeed a spiritual grown up, now. She understood that spiritual and emotional wellbeing has nothing whatsoever to do with being able to deny, not feel, push away, or become immune to our experience. Indeed, quite the opposite. Spiritual maturity means having the courage to welcome whatever emotion is happening, to let reality be what it is. It means being willing to allow the full mystery, majesty and catastrophe that is the human experience, being willing to live with what is, which includes pain.

With spiritual and emotional maturity, we learn to welcome whatever emotion is arising and to do so without creating a narrative or personal identity out of its contents. As in Jane’s case, she could feel and internally validate the sadness of her relationship with her father and yet not cling to it, create a personal narrative or build an identity out of it. She could experience the sadness without being it. She had the wisdom to let the tsunami of emotion move into and through her, but also, by not grasping onto it, to allow it to move through and out of her, just as swiftly and effortlessly. Both processes, the in and out, are part of the same grace, of which we are not in control.

Furthermore, spiritual wellbeing is not about building thicker walls around our heart or finding freedom from difficult emotions. It’s about the willingness and bravery to deconstruct the walls around our heart, to let them dissolve so that we can live the full human experience: joy, sadness, and all the rest. We cannot reside behind walls and imagine that the emotions we want will get through while the ones we don’t will be kept out. A closed heart is a dead heart. When we live behind walls, we lose out on the whole enchilada that is life.

Growing up spiritually means living with a warrior’s heart, which is not a more armored heart but rather a less armored and more vulnerable heart. It means being willing to offer a seat at our inner table to whatever emotion is arising, and at the same time, to know ourselves as the compassion that holds the experience in company. It means trusting that the continually changing internal weather can move through us with great ferocity and yet, simultaneously, something can remain steady and well, holding the space in which life happens. A warrior’s heart contains the strength to open the doors and windows, to let life come in and also to let it leave.

There is a strong cultural belief that when you’re spiritually and emotionally well, you should stop feeling pain and stop being affected by life’s difficulties. This is a false belief. When we grow up spiritually, we don’t stop feeling difficult emotions or being fully and fallibly human. Rather, we stop fearing and judging our emotions; we embrace our imperfect humanness. With spiritual maturity, who we are evolves, from the one to whom our feelings are happening to the loving presence within which they happen. We feel our emotions and witness their comings and goings, both, simultaneously. Ultimately, we come to know that our heart can get bounced around and broken into pieces, that we can feel everything, and still know a wellbeing that perfectly holds the whole dance.

The post When We Shame Ourselves: How to Unhook from Self-Shaming Thoughts appeared first on Nancy Colier.

Or perhaps you know the experience of trying to organize a vacation (that later everyone will enjoy), and battling to get everyone’s schedules lined up so as to be able to buy tickets or make reservations that require advance planning, and then being told that you are a control freak who can’t relax.

I have lived both of these experiences (and countless similar ones) more times than I care to remember.

I travel a lot with my family in the summer months.  It’s a time filled with joy, laughter, silliness, frustration, irritation, despair and everything else in the tapestry of human experience.  As beautiful as the time is, every year a part of me is a little bit surprised that we all return home together, in the same plane or car, with no one having departed the trip early, and with everyone still speaking to each other, kindly for the most part, and all still committed to making this grand experiment we call family work.

While the examples I give in the opening here are lighthearted and meant to amuse, the truth is, families offer the most satisfying, profound, and nourishing elements of the human experience and also some of the most challenging and painful.

This summer I’ve been thinking a lot about family and specifically, about what makes a family work, what increases the experience of love and joy and decreases suffering and frustration. What is it okay to ask of each other as members of the same tribe, this small group of people with whom we are choosing to journey through life?  And perhaps most importantly, what decisions do we want to make and intentions do we want to set, as a family, about how we are going to relate to and be with one another?

And so I asked myself, What is the one practice that we could/can implement as a family that would radically improve our experience of being together?  Can we set intentions and expectations that come from the highest part of ourselves, and actually try and meet them?

Here’s what I came up with: What if, as a family, we made a deal with each other that no matter what happens (within a healthy context) we won’t throw each other under the bus? That is, regardless of the current situation or what another person is doing or saying, whether we like it or not, we will stay steadfastly on each other’s sides?  When someone is doing something we don’t like, rather than the habitual reaction of  blaming and criticizing, and succumbing to our (and the family’s) story about the other, what if we were to agree to pause and consciously insert empathy where previously there was only judgment and attack?  What if we were to try and imagine what the other’s deeper intentions were in that moment? What if we were to consider what they might be struggling with that’s coming out in this particular form? What if we agreed to not rush to judge or negatively label each other, simply because the behavior at that moment is not pleasing?  Instead of blaming those closest to us for the behaviors they’re exhibiting, what if we took a moment or two to ask ourselves what the deeper longing is under their behavior, the longing that’s trying to express itself through this moment.  And, most radically, if we can help this person we care about to receive what they actually need?

What would it look like to be on the other’s side instead of against them in this moment? 

We are conditioned and habituated to respond to another’s words and behaviors based on our opinion of those words and behaviors, whether we agree with them and they support our own ideas about the world and ourselves.  We make up all sorts of narratives and interpretations about the other based on our opinions. But our thoughts and opinions about the other are not the same thing as the other, and not the same thing as the truth of that other.

To live in an environment of empathy in a family (or any relationship) is to make a commitment to trying to understand the other person through their eyes, what they’re living inside themselves–not through our ideas or narratives about them.  In order to love another human being fully, family or otherwise, we have to get our own ego out of the way and stop defending our version of reality (and through it, ourselves).  We must be willing to try and know the world through the other’s experience, to consider their deeper intentions, fears, vulnerabilities and longings, and in so doing, to refrain from judgment and feeding our stories about them.  The challenge that we can hold ourselves accountable to in our loving relationships is to care about and for the other’s experience, no matter how different from our own.

You could say that our real job as family is to know our loved ones’ inner experience  and to hold that knowing in the most sacred of embraces inside our own heart.  That means that we assume the responsibility of  doing what we can to lessen their suffering, and to help them harvest their deepest longings.  Fundamentally, our responsibility to each other as family is to not be yet another force that our loved ones have to work against in order to get what they really need.

Our tendency as human beings is to defend our separate selves, which includes our  thoughts, our versions of reality and our personal identity, a kind of giant yet fragile “I” ball.  And yet, paradoxically, when we join another human being, in trying to know their truth, we often discover that the “I” we were defending, who had all these ideas about the other and what should be happening, the “I” we thought we needed to survive, simply drops away without much ado.  And at that moment we experience ourselves as that loving presence that welcomes all, unconditionally.  Without the “I” in the way, we get to feel the full force of love as a living entity.

Every time we respond to another’s behavior with kindness, trying to put ourselves in their shoes rather than blaming, judging, or creating more stories about them, it’s like we take a step into the divine—into bliss.  The choice to look out through another’s eyes and heart fills our own heart with love.

Setting an intention within your family or any relationship to not throw each other under the bus is a profound event in the lifespan of a family or relationship.  Try out the “Taking each other’s side” or “No throwing under the bus” challenge with those you love.  Put a sign up on your fridge or a picture of a bus with a stop sign through it.  No matter what’s happening in the moment, no matter what the contents of the situation are, take a moment to stop, pause, and interrupt the habit.  See the situation as if  looking out through the other’s heart.  Live this difficult moment through the other’s most vulnerable place, through their pain, fear or weakness, through the child in them. Know that, just like you, they are trying to create happiness, to find peace and feel okay—for themselves and possibly even for you.

One post note: this practice applies to healthy family dynamics only.  It is not to be used in abusive or dysfunctionally destructive contexts.  This practice is not an opportunity to excuse abusive behavior of any kind.  Abusive behavior should not be tolerated in any context.

The post The One Decision That Will Radically Improve Your Family Life appeared first on Nancy Colier.

What makes negative repetitive thoughts so challenging is that they often stem from core self-beliefs, like I’m not good enough, I won’t get what I want, or the world is not trustworthy. Because they’re built out of these deeply held beliefs, repetitive thought loops are powerful and sticky; we believe our repetitive thoughts, as if their persistence is somehow evidence of their truth. As a result, we are compulsively compelled to attach and engage with their content.

Further, we learn early in life that we need to do something with and about our negative thoughts: Either prove them wrong, convince them (and ourselves) that they’re false, or actively replace them with positive thoughts that feel less threatening. Either way, we’re taught, we need to put up a fight.

There is nothing inherently wrong with these strategies: Arguing with and disproving negative thoughts is sometimes helpful, as is actively replacing the negative with positive thoughts. But the most effective approach I have found (personally and professionally) for working with repetitive negative thoughts is actually the least intuitive:

• Stop trying to change negative thoughts.
• Don’t do anything about them.
• Leave negative thoughts alone.
• Stop fighting with what’s actually happening.
• Look elsewhere.

How can we be okay when what’s happening in our mind is not okay? How do we leave our thoughts alone and not get involved in their content?

We assume that by agreeing to not change our thoughts, we are also agreeing to believe and engage with them — that if we allow the thoughts to happen, we also have to pay attention to them and invest them with meaning. But what if that weren’t true? What if negative thoughts could appear in your inner world, and you could see and hear them, comprehend their content, but not have to do anything with or about them — not have to make them go away, invest energy in them, get involved in their stories, award them with a sense of importance, or even believe them to be true? What if the negative thoughts could mean nothing about who you are? Before we can practice this, however, we have to know it’s possible. And I can tell you with certainty, it is.

Source: BrainFacts.org

We are a culture of doers, and the instruction to not do, for some, can feel like not enough. It can be helpful, therefore, to reframe the not doing into a doing, or in this case, the not changing into a changing. Specifically, instead of focusing on not changing your thoughts, practice turning your attention away from the contents of the thoughts and placing it on who or what is actually hearing the thoughts. Ask yourself, who are these thoughts talking to? For whose attention are they vying?

As soon as thoughts appear, particularly negative ones, we tend to narrow our attention down onto the thoughts with the focus of a laser beam, thereby darkening anything else that might exist in our awareness. And yet, what if, when thoughts appear, we were to look beyond them, and contemplate what else is here? What is behind and under the thoughts? In so doing, we leave the thoughts alone, and direct our attention to the spaciousness within which the thoughts are appearing. If thoughts are like birds appearing in our sky, we shift our attention from the birds to the sky.

An important aspect of the practice of not changing negative thoughts involves another not — not judging the fact that you have negative thoughts. In truth, thoughts happen, with or without our consent. The fact that negative thoughts may come back again and again, in almost or entirely the same form, is just how it is — it’s a byproduct of our mind’s operating system. It is not a failing on our part; it does not make us less spiritual, or more troubled or tortured. The sooner we can accept this truth, the sooner we can get on with the business of living. Getting rid of negative thoughts is by no means a necessity for well-being.

Try it out for a day or an hour: Don’t change your thoughts, no matter what they contain — just leave them alone, and let them happen. Turn your attention away from the thoughts and toward the one who’s listening, the one whose attention the thoughts are beckoning. Sense the space in which the thoughts are appearing, the silence behind the noise, the stillness under the movement of thoughts. Notice your own awareness, that presence which is aware of these thoughts.

When we shift our attention in this way, something very curious happens: The thoughts start losing their power. They may still be there, but they contain less oomph. Simultaneously, the volume of the thoughts shifts from a shout to a whisper. And sometimes, as the thoughts figure out that they’re not that seductive to us anymore, or that their appearance no longer sends us into a tailspin, they start to fade altogether. But then sometimes they don’t fade. And while we would prefer that the negative thoughts subside rather than continue, neither is evidence of the success or failure of our process.

Repetitive negative thoughts are part of the human journey; we cannot stop them. We can, however, stop trying to stop the unstoppable, or to change the unchangeable. What matters is how we relate to the thoughts, what we tell ourselves we must do or not do about them, and the self-attack we propagate as a result of having such thoughts. We generate internal peace when we give up the fight with the inevitable and direct our attention towards new frontiers. Ultimately, the relationship we build with our thoughts and the agency we take with our attention is what creates our experience. And, as is always the case, life resolves itself in contradiction: When we stop trying to change reality, reality changes.

The post How to Live Peacefully with Repetitive Negative Thoughts appeared first on Nancy Colier.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The most important thing is to remember the most important thing.  What makes for a meaningful life?  What do we really need and want?  Is our Smartphone the answer that will bring lasting happiness? As a psychotherapist and… Read more: http://resident.com/resident-magazine-january-2017/ 

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Granted, while some of the time we spend in the digital world on our desktops, laptops, and phones is necessary, much of it isn’t and that’s a problem — one that many of us have!   Read more…

http://www.drfranklipman.com/are-you-addicted-to-your-smartphone/

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Neuroplasticity, neural networks, neurotransmitters, neurochemicals, neural cortexes, synaptic reactions, the amygdala, the cerebral cortex, bi-naural beats, brain waves… these are the words we now hear when discussing life.  Science has officially kidnapped the human experience.

A few examples: neuroscience has now proven that meditation leads to increased gray matter in the brain, and thus to better learning and memory.  Also, that meditation increases the part of the brain that produces feelings of love, compassion and forgiveness.  Love, on the other hand, has been scientifically shown to produce the hormone dopamine, which creates pleasure, and also stimulate norepinephrine, which raises blood pressure and heart rate. In addition, love lowers serotonin, the chemical associated with feeling in control, and thus we now know that instability and anxiety are neurologically induced by love.  In another laboratory, scientists demonstrated that courage is created when the prefrontal region called the subgenual cingulate cortex is activated, thereby dampening bodily-related responses to fear.  Name the experience, we can now prove that it exists biologically, how it exists and why it exists.

I have been meditating for many years.  I know, from my own experience, that the practice makes me feel more compassionate, spacious, grounded and present.  I’ve also fallen in love.  I know that love makes me feel happy, and also short of breath at times.  I know that when I am courageous, I feel willing to face my fear, proud, and also connected to a sense of personal growth.  I don’t need neuroscience to tell me that any of this is happening, my own experience tells me what is inarguably true.

Truth be told, we don’t need our own personal experience or felt senses any longer, we have science to tell us what we are experiencing, and to confirm that it is real and believable.  We don’t need to know God any longer, science itself is our new God.

Why suddenly do we need to prove or demonstrate that what we are living is really happening, and explainable, rational, concrete.  Why do we now need neuroscience to validate that what we are subjectively experiencing is actually objectively occurring?  Do we believe that by knowing what love looks like in the brain, how our brain responds to love, we will be able to recreate it?

Our increasing deference and dependence on science is in part a result of our ever-deepening relationship with technology.  In the digital age, our attention is perpetually focused externally, at a device and what that device provides, and rarely if ever turned inward, into ourselves.  That which we value and are interested in is now located somewhere outside us, but no longer within us.  Our own personal experience, internal truth, is no longer something we consider important, worthy or even reliable.  The tether into our own felt sense, intuition, and deep knowledge has been cut.

Furthermore, in the process of figuring out the science of our experience, intellectualizing and objectifying the subjective and emotional world, we are relinquishing supremely important and joyful parts of being human.  To name a few: mystery, wonder, awe, humbleness of the sort that comes from not knowing how and why life works—the unfathomability of living this human experience.

This summer I watched a breath-taking sunset with someone who educated me on the neuroscience of beauty, and how we determine it, just as the sky was fading into a shocking pink and shimmering lavender.  What I really wanted in that moment was to be breathless, and feel beauty—not hear about its synaptic reactions.  For me, the fact that there is a sky, one that turns pink and lavender, that pink and lavender exist, and that there’s an “I” who gets to see all of it—is plenty.

I personally love mystery; I love knowing that I don’t know everything, that there is something larger than me in play.  I love the sense of surrender that comes in accepting my smallness in the vastness.  With technology however, has come a need to know everything, to break life down into knowable and provable facts.  But sadly, the knowing about life can hinder and even replace the experience of living it.  Cracking the code on life, knowing that an experience is happening, and why, is a paltry substitute for living it directly and experiencing it for ourselves.

Fact is, there’s nothing wrong with understanding neuroscience and how it relates to life—it’s fascinating and wonderful.  And it’s not about burying one’s head in the sand and avoiding knowledge.  The problems arise however, when we:

1.  Start believing that we need to prove how and why our experience is happening in order to trust and know that it is happening.

2. Defer to science and award it with authority, over and in place of our own experience, heart and gut.

3. Substitute our knowledge about the experience for the (felt) experience itself.

In addition, when science proves the existence of an experience, say, that love generates dopamine, which then brings pleasure, it is also suggesting that the experience is the same for everyone.  But this is false.  We all experience love, pleasure, and every other emotion differently.  By suggesting that our experience is just a scientific event, just cause and effect, we are robbing ourselves of the exquisite subtlety of our own experience, and denying what makes us special as individual human beings.  While the chemicals released might be similar for each person living a particular experience, how we live it, which is so much more than chemicals, is what makes the experience meaningful, and is part of what makes us who we are.

Something remarkable and indescribable happens when we investigate and marinate in our own truth—what the body knows.  And even more remarkable, when we value and trust that truth, prove-able or not, to be our guide.

Our own experience is our greatest teacher and source of wisdom.  Don’t turn away from what is for you just because science tells you it has the answers, your answers.  Don’t turn away from your own knowing in deference to a magnetic resonance image.

Right now, ask yourself, What are you experiencing? What does your body know?  What is true for you? Turn your attention back inside yourself, into your own unique experience.  Remember that you already hold the answers to what is real and true—for you.

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Most of us are defensive in close relationships. If we’re not, we have to interact with people who are. It is the relational disease of our culture and the one that imprisons and destroys intimacy, and prevents love and connection between partners and friends. Why are we so defensive and what are we so afraid of?  And… how do we make it stop?

Recently I witnessed a married couple interact in a way that was not only tragic but tragically familiar. In this example, the woman was telling her husband that something he had done had hurt her, just in that moment. The pain was evident in her face, and tears were coming. His immediate response was to angrily accuse her of (frequently) doing the same thing to him. ‘How dare she feel upset when she was guilty of exactly same behavior.’ She then began defending herself, needing him to understand that she was not a person who would ever do such a thing to someone she supposedly cared about. Without responding to her claims, he moved on to his next defense/attack. If she was hurt by what he had done, it was because she was overly sensitive. It was her problem not his. Desperate now, the woman pleaded her case, explaining why it was reasonable for her to feel pain—that “anyone” would feel the way she did. She was not overly sensitive—his behavior was insensitive. Her case was a good one but he didn’t hear it, and couldn’t hear it. Sadly, with her original pain rejected and attacked, she now had a second layer of pain and misunderstanding to contend with, a second layer of feeling unknown and un-loved as a result of the interaction. In the end, nothing was resolved, no connection was formed, and eventually they went their separate ways.

On a practical level, at the moment when her husband claimed that she “did the same thing” to him, it would have been wise for her to bring his attention back to the present and to the experience that right now was causing her suffering. She might have asked him to point out her “doing it” when it actually happened, to request that he not use it as a weapon against her, but rather as an opportunity for healing his pain about it too. This small insertion might have kept the dialogue from devolving into a battle for rightness. Unfortunately she also got caught up in defending herself and thus lost sight of the original suffering for which she was needing his attention. As an aside, I must say that I have never quite understood the “You do it too” argument. If the same behavior upset him when it happened (to him), why then would that invalidate his wife’s pain or justify his actions? In truth, husband and wife seemed to be on the same side, both feeling un-heard and unknown in the relationship. Blinded by their identities however, neither could see it.

The interaction was tragic and painful to witness, not only in its unkindness, but also in its lost opportunity. Instead of truth and pain serving as a doorway—an opening into intimacy and understanding—truth and pain were used to inflict more pain. Instead of easing their loneliness, the truth brought them deeper into isolation.

At no point in the exchange did the man pause to hear his partner’s suffering. In fact, it appeared that just allowing her pain to exist, letting it be true for her, presented (in his mind) a threat to his very survival. He did not believe that both he and his wife’s experience could co-exist. In order to survive then, it meant that her suffering would have to be destroyed, or at least radically undermined. It was nothing less than a fight for existence.

While this exchange may sound like something that should have happened between eight year olds, in truth, its sort is more prevalent with adults. As compared with children, adults have far more complex and sedimentized self-stories (to defend) and more rigid and firmly entrenched egos (to protect). So too, adults are more attached to and identified with their past hurts, and thus more vigilant about preventing them from re-occurring. Like a perfect storm, all of these factors then come together to create the defensive interactions that pervade and destroy grown up relationships.

So often, when we learn that someone we love is hurting, our immediate response is to start fighting for ourselves, but not to attend to, comfort or understand their hurt. We set out to prove that the other is wrong for feeling the way they feel, even though it is the way they feel. We have been taught that in the face of pain or conflict, what’s most important is that we survive as the one who is justified and right. Fundamentally, we do not view pain as something that is safe to engage with or that can lead to growth or healing. Instead, we see pain as something to survive and defeat.

When someone tells us that we caused them pain, we get angry at them. Often, the more hurt they are, the more hurtful and vicious we are in response. It is strange behavior really. And yet, it is not so strange when we consider that we have been conditioned to believe that who we are is our self-story, the carefully constructed version of me that we have assimilated over a lifetime. And simultaneously, we are conditioned to believe that our selfcan be altered, harmed and ultimately annihilated by another’s experience of us, particularly when that experience is inconsistent with our self-story. No wonder we are so afraid and defensive when conflict arises! While our conditioning has taught us that who we are is remarkably fragile, in truth, who we are is fiercer than anything we know.

The next time the opportunity to know another’s experience presents, try out what it feels like to listen without strategizing to keep yourself positively positioned—without defending the story of who you are and what you have or have not done. See if you feel worse or better.  If only for a moment, fire yourself as the client of your own public relations campaign—surrender your title as your own brand manager. Connection is not born from successfully proving that you are a good person, coming out looking like a good person, or being right. When you make use of another’s suffering to champion your identity, you indeed emerge as a champion me. Despite all the effort however, your true identity remains isolated. You go home with your badge of rightness, your champion ego, while the experience of love and connection are lost.

It is counter-intuitive really… the less we defend our wellbeing, the more well we feel. When we stop trying to protect me (at last) me feels safe and without the need for protection. We are conditioned to believe that strength means coming out on top and winning the fight. But in fact, real strength means having the courage to put our swords and shields down, and to risk being open and un-defended. When we truly listen to another, without our self-story in the way, we not only offer the greatest gift one can offer to another human being, but we get to jettison the shackles of this fragile identity and realize our true being… that under all the defending, who we are is love itself, which is indestructible, and so fierce as to need no defense at all.

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