Even if you don’t have a stack of books on your bedside table detailing the newest ways to fix yourself, you still might be. And it wouldn’t be your fault if you were. Our  conditioning from a very young age is to believe that we need to become better, new and improved versions of ourselves, even if at first we don’t know exactly how or why. But soon enough we have filled in the why’s with our shortcomings and failures, and self-help provides the how-to’s with unending methods for self-correction. Armed with our story of deficiencies firmly in place and a surplus of paths toward improvement, we set off on our life mission—namely, becoming someone else. And we are proud of, and celebrated for, this mission. Growing and evolving, becoming a better person—it all sounds so virtuous. Who would turn down such an opportunity?

And yet, growing and evolving are too often code words for what is really “fixing” or correcting our basic unworthiness. From the time we are young, we are infiltrated with the belief that the basic problem underlying all other problems is, put simply, us. We are what’s wrong. As adults, we search the globe for the right teacher; we attend seminars, buy books, hire coaches, consult shamans, and everything else under the sun—all in an effort to make ourselves into something good enough or maybe just enough.

But are we good enough for what or whom? Did you ever wonder?

If we boil it down, we keep fixing ourselves in the hopes that we can, finally, just be as we actually are. Once we’re fixed, enough, worthy—whether that means more compassionate, more disciplined, or whatever shape our more’s have formed into—then we’ll be entitled to feel what we feel. We can think what we think, experience what we experience—in essence, be who we are.

The fear that fuels our self-betterment mission is the belief that we are, at our core, notwhat we should be: We’re faulty, broken, unlovable, or some other version of not okay. To give ourselves permission to be who we are, to give up the mission for a better version of ourselves, would be tantamount to accepting our defectiveness and giving up all hope of fruition. And that, of course, would be unwise, naive, lazy, and a cop out. To suggest that we stop striving to be better than who we are is not just counterintuitive, but frightening and dangerous. Such a suggestion incites fear, scorn, anger, confusion, amusement, and an assumption of ignorance.

Self-help, while useful in certain ways, strengthens our core belief that we are inherently defective. Self-help starts with our defectiveness as its basic assumption, and then graciously offers to provide us with an unending stream of strategies by which to fix our defective core—which, once fixed, will award us the right to be who we are.

The problem is that the strategies keep us stuck in the cycle of fixing—and more important, in the belief that we are broken. If you notice, we never do become that person who is allowed to feel what we feel, and experience what we experience. We never do get permission to just be who and as we are.

This is where spirituality enters, and offers something radically different than self-help.

Most people think that spirituality and self-help are the same thing. They’re not. In fact, they are fundamentally different. We have tried to turn spirituality into self-help, another method for correcting ourselves, but to do so is to misunderstand and eradicate the most profound (and beneficial) teaching spirituality offers.

True spirituality is not about fixing ourselves spiritually or becoming spiritually better. Rather, it is about freedom from the belief of our unworthiness, and ultimately, about acceptance. Spirituality, practiced in its truest form, is about meeting who we really are, and allowing ourselves to experience life as we actually experience it.

In this way, it is more of an undoing than a doing.

In truth, we need to take the risk that it is to lean back into who we actually are. We need to do that before we even know that who we are will be enough, or even that there will be anything there to catch us. We need to relinquish our self-improvement plans before we believe that we have the right to stop improving. The whole thing—true spirituality—requires a kind of faith. It’s not faith in a system, story, or methodology, but a faith that trusts that we can’t think our way into what we truly want. No matter what path we practice, there comes a point where we have to let go of the reins; when we have to give up the quest to be good enough.

What happens when we stop trying to change ourselves into something better is nothing like what we imagine: We envision stepping off the self-help train and landing smack inside someone incomplete and unsatisfactory. And yet in truth, the simple (but not easy) act of inviting ourselves into our own life has the effect of placing us at the center of something beautiful and extraordinary. Giving ourselves permission to be as we are miraculously creates a kind of love for ourselves—not so much for our individual characteristics, but for our being. It’s not just for our being, but for the truth, whatever that is. It is as if whatever we find inside ourselves, whether we wish it were here or not, is okay and we are okay. Ultimately, we shift from trying to become lovable to being love itself. And amazingly, from this place, the not-enough person we thought we were has simply vanished, or more likely, never was.

Try it out for a moment—this moment. Just let yourself be. Give yourself permission to have the experience you are having, whatever it is, with no story about whether it is right or wrong, good or bad. Feel how you actually are. It’s that direct and that simple. No judgments allowed. It won’t make sense…it takes a leap…so leap.

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The problem is that anyone with a brain who knew anything about Manhattan would also know that the street the GPS was telling us to cross was a terrible option and the last street on earth one would want to choose in good conditions, much less the conditions on that particular day.  A human brain with intelligence and life experience, that could factor in the context of rush hour, pouring rain, construction, and a bridge set at the east end of exactly that street, would know that any other path would be a better option to get to where I was going.  But alas, technology told us to go that way—and so we did.

After sitting in entirely stopped traffic for ten minutes and then crawling bumper to bumper for another ten, just to travel half a city block, I asked the driver if he could get off this particular street and take a different route, to which he replied, “But the GPS tells me that this is my path,” “But what happens if we know better than what it tells you to do?” I asked.  While I don’t remember his exact words, the message was that regardless of what we in the car know to be true, he has to follow the directions of the computer.  If the computer chirps it, we do it.

The fact that this path might be the shortest physical distance between the two points was irrelevant at this time of day, with this particular weather, and with the reality of urban planning.  Nonetheless, we honored the computer’s determinant, geographical distance, as if it were the only important element in making this decision.

Five minutes later, still moving an inch at a time, I asked the driver if would be possible for him to text the company and tell them that unforeseen (by the computer) conditions had rendered its usual genius inaccurate, and to inquire whether we humans could override its intelligence and take another route.  He told me at this point, 25 minutes into the street crossing, that only the passenger could text the office to tell them that real life dictated a route other than what the computer indicated. But he certainly couldn’t do that.  When I then asked him why he had not suggested that I text the company earlier, when we were talking about the traffic, he looked confused and reiterated that he had to do what the computer told him to do.

I didn’t say anything after that, but I did get out of the van and walk in the pouring rain the rest of the way.  What I knew about traffic and my city didn’t matter, but what I knew about myself did matter, and that was that I needed to be out of that black Suburban as soon as possible.

Have we gone mad as a species?  Are we so anxious to surrender our authority, to not have to think, not be in charge, that we will follow any computer that tells us what to do—even when we know better?  Do we really want to be passive lab rats?  What has happened to our respect for and trust in our own intelligence, and our ability to figure things out for ourselves?

While algorithms can decide a lot of things, they cannot substitute for human intelligence, which can factor in the wisdom of experience, context, circumstance, psychology and a whole lot of other factors too, all at once.  To make wise decisions we need a lot more than just facts, and yet, we are behaving as if data is the central key to a good life.

In truth, the expression on my driver’s face when I asked him if he could take another route, was the spookiest thing I encountered, and what made me feel most hopeless.  This grown man, who I am sure has lived a life filled with experience, and who probably has a tremendous amount of wisdom, looked like someone who had been vacuumed of his own life force, his basic humanness.  He looked, dare I say it, like a robot.

How can we regain authority in our own lives?’ This is the question that is not just interesting, but existentially urgent.  How can we stop ourselves from becoming robots, handing over our intelligence and life force to the computer?  How far are we from a time when the computer chirps us a message that is not just inconvenient, but actually destructive?

The human brain has the capacity not just to gather, store, and link data, but also to bring to that data an intelligence and wisdom of experience that is not just profoundly important, but also changes that data into something else.  We need more than information to live a good life, we need the ability to process and to make meaning, which (still) only humans can provide.

In the meanwhile, use the computer to text the head office and tell them that the human on board knows better.  Grab the reins back in your own life.  And remember, we humans, at least for now, are still the ones in charge—if we decide to be.

Copyright 2015 Nancy Colier

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And then I went home.

I love my family, my work, and so much about my life.  I am so lucky and I know it.  But as re-entries go, the instant I walked in the door on Sunday afternoon, I was immediately catapulted back into the “normal” world.   Tasks, responsibilities, groceries, broken cell phones, dishes… all the usual stuff that is modern life, hit me like a major league pitch to the head.  And with that too came the always present (blessed) need for my attention, from everyone.  I needed to be caught up on what I had missed while away.  The overpowering truth that I had lived over the past three days, on the other hand, was unsharable, at least in language.  And certainly I could not expect those who had not experienced it to “get” it in any real way or, for that matter, be particularly interested in it.  Life at home, regular as it is, needed my attention—now.  In an instant, I had left the place for bathing in the ineffable profundity and meaning of existence, stoking awe for this human experience, and steeping in gratitude for getting to be alive.  Back in everyday life, it was no longer about the meaning of life, it was about the doing of that life.

It was a painful re-entry, not because I wasn’t thrilled to be with those I love, but because it felt like a loss, like in order to re-enter life, I had to give up my beautiful connection with the Divine, as if I had to come back up and swim at the surface when I had been down deep in the beauty of the timeless.

The experience got me thinking a lot about whether it’s indeed possible to feel awe and gratitude for being alive—all the time?  Can we stay connected to the profound when living the mundane?  Can we hold onto the sacred in the midst of the regular, stressful world of living—stay tethered to what really matters when doing what needs to be done?

It turns out that there’s good news and bad news.  The bad news first: it is not possible (unless perhaps you’re enlightened and I’m not so I can’t vouch for it) to feel wonder and awe all the time.  While self-help gurus tell us that we should be in a continual state of astonishment that we can walk, or bliss because we can experience the color blue, in truth, if we have always walked and always seen blue, it isn’t always possible to see these experiences as mind-blowing or particularly fabulous.  There is nothing wrong with you if the activities of normal life do not evoke a sense of great reverence.  Sometimes, after someone has died or we have lived through a trauma of some kind, we, for a time, crack through the window of the sacred.  We get what it means to be alive, and to have this gift of incarnation.  And then, usually, that sense of awe at being alive closes and we return to the everyday with perhaps just a slight scent of the sacred left behind.  The truth is, we have only ever known ourselves to be alive, and so the fact that we are alive doesn’t always feel like the incredible coup it’s supposed to feel like.  And really, how could it?

The good news: we need contrast to feel what we feel.  We need to live without a sense of the unbelievable-ness of life so that when it does appear, we can really experience it.  If it were here all the time, we wouldn’t recognize it as something remarkable.  More good news: gratitude does show up when we stop demanding that it appear; grace does present itself when we stop expecting it to be present all the time.

While our connection with the sacred is not something that must be or can be be front and center all the time, and not something that we can control, nonetheless, there are certain things that we can do to encourage it to appear—to invite awe into our everyday life.  And, since most of us want to feel a sense of wonder at being alive and gratitude for the opportunity to have experiences at all, to “get” to live, it is worth laying the internal groundwork from which awe can grow.

In order to feel gratitude, we need, first and foremost, to be in our life, that is, to be present now.  The surest way to feel gratitude is to pay attention to how we are and where we are at this moment, so that when gratitude does appear, we are here to notice and feel it.  While some experiences contain a beauty that can render irrelevant any tangle of thoughts in which we are lost, for the most part, noticing grace when it arises relies on our being awake and aware to what we are living inside and out.

As we cultivate our own presence, we can also, consciously, move our attention and point of reference from the contents of our life, the thoughts feelings and sensations that are appearing, to the presence that notices the contents.  That is, we can make it a practice to not just focus on what is happening in the relative world, the dishes we are washing, as the determinate of wonder, but rather on who or what is aware that it is all happening, who or what is inside the lens we call awareness. This slight but enormous paradigm shift, from what is perceived to what is perceiving, can instantly put us in touch with a sense of the miraculous.

It is also worth reminding ourselves that all experiences appear and disappear without exception.  While it is human nature to grasp onto those experiences we enjoy, like awe and gratitude, to try and make them stay, these too are subject to unending change.  Imagining that awe could or should be permanent is like imagining that we ourselves could be permanent.  And to remember, as a final paradox, that it is precisely in its impermanence that its grace exists.  One without the other could not be.

Copyright 2015 Nancy Colier

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Boiled down, the conflict between my friend and me is about how we define “right” and “wrong,” and our attachment to our personal “rights” and “wrongs.” We all run into this conflict, frequently. Whether it’s a friend who holds a radically different political belief than us, or one who believes in a moral choice that we consider inhuman, or even something small, when their “best book ever written” is one that we think is utterly infantile. Whatever the current contents of “right” and “wrong,” we are continually having to figure out how to navigate relationships that contain intense dissonance, disagreement, and even disrespect.

What is to be done when our intimate friend or partner holds a belief that we cannot find a place for in our head or heart?

The first thing I decided to do was to convince my friend that he was wrong and that I was right… and I was certain I could do it. After all, sense was on my side. So I gave it the college try, the graduate school try, the saintly try, or whatever try you imagine is most admirable — I gave it that. I was sure that he would come around to sanity, and then I would be able to resolve my conflict with both loving my friend and also (what I consider) his unreasonable belief. But, as is usually the case with this approach — changing the other — it failed. My friend’s belief remains intact, and if anything, strengthened by all my explaining, arguing, and proving.

My next approach was to try and change my own belief so that I could agree with my friend — close the gap between our views, and settle my anxiety about seeing “right” and “wrong” so differently. I tried on his belief from every vantage point: compassion, reason, logic, historical precedent, and everything else I could think of; I really tried to make it make sense to me. But, as is usually the case with this approach — forcing a truth in order to eliminate cognitive dissonance — it failed. I simply could not get myself to believe or even respect my friend’s belief.

For Plan C, I went with the “let it go” approach. In essence, to accept that my friend believes this to be truth, and that it makes no sense to me, and it makes me angry and hurt… and then drop all of it, drop my experience of the situation and move on. Focus on what works in the relationship and let the rest go. But, as is usually the case with this approach — to decide (intellectually) to feel differently than I feel — it failed. Every time I saw my friend (and even when I didn’t) the fact that he thought that I was wrong and he was right made me feel unfairly judged and deeply resentful. And I couldn’t find a way to love and respect him — if he believed this. No matter what I told myself to do, my body felt tight and uncomfortable in his presence, and my heart felt closed. In “letting it go,” I was trying to eradicate the conflict, to create a ‘now’ that didn’t include all of these uncomfortable parts, but that ultimately didn’t exist. Truth was, I didn’t know how to make myself let go of or will away what felt like my actual experience of the situation.

And then I stumbled on an approach that offered some genuine relief. For the first time, I found a space that felt better, and one from which our friendship might be able to continue, even with the discord that it now included. I would call this approach the “letting it be” way. While “letting it be” sounds similar to “letting it go,” it is in fact profoundly different. “Letting it go” is an attempt to change reality while “letting it be” is literally, a letting be of reality the way it is. In this case, accepting that my friend believes what he believes — that this is so, and not something that must or is going to change. When I can let it be, I stop trying to change his belief, change my belief, push his belief out of my consciousness, or push my experience out of my consciousness. I can then allow myself to be present in the relationship and stop demanding that it become something else. While all the same factors are present as before — he still believes something to be right that I think is mad, he still believes that I am doing something fundamentally wrong — and yet, I have stopped fighting the is-ness of it. While theoretically it may feel counter-intuitive to surrender the fight against a ‘now’ that we don’t want, in practice it is in fact a great relief to the body, heart and mind, to literally, let reality be.

So perhaps you are somewhere in this process with a friend or partner, of trying to change, integrate, or find a way to live with an aspect of their belief system, their idea of right and wrong, that you fundamentally reject. And it is not easy process, when we feel so at odds with another’s values — particularly another that we care about deeply. And yet, if we can truly learn to surrender to who the other is, what the other believes — not who we want them to be or what we want them to believe — meet the other as he/she is in reality, and accept the differences between us, then, with that acceptance, that surrender — something in us profoundly relaxes.

From that surrender, that relaxation, the relationship can (sometimes) grow into something more intimate, but always into something more real. And perhaps even more importantly, the practice of “letting it be,” no matter what or whom we apply it to, is really an invitation and permission slip to ourselves — to drop into and be in this very moment, with what it actually contains, and to stop having to reject ‘now’ in the hopes of a different ‘now.’ This is the true gift of “letting it be.”

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I also received a number of responses about the difficulties that arise when trying to listen in the manner we crave. Some readers reported feeling like a doormat, abused, when they listened openly and without defending themselves, as their partner or friends spoke about matters that felt damaging to their own identity, and also untrue. And the question arose: What good could come from listening (and acknowledging) another’s experience that you know is untrue or perhaps caused by something they are not acknowledging?

These are important questions, and precisely what makes true listening such a challenge.

For years I had a dear friend who always talked to me about who had abandoned and mistreated her. What she never included in the dialogue was what she had done to create or contribute to these fractured relationships, some of whom were with people I also cared about, whose “story” of my friend’s behavior I also knew. When I listened to my friend openly and acknowledged her where she was, I felt as if I was supporting an aspect of her that was damaging not just to the way I felt about her, but also to her own ability to build different and more lasting relationships going forward.

Just listening to her, without correcting her view or telling her what was “true,” made me feel as if I was supporting her belief that she was the victim, and contributing to her inability to take responsibility for what she was creating in her relationships. I believed that her refusal to take ownership for her own behavior by playing the victim was unhealthy and unlikable, and precisely what kept her so unhappy and stuck. And while I wasn’t aware at the time, some part of me also believed that it was my responsibility to change her into someone who could do relationships differently; I wanted that for her. And so for years I essentially rejected my friend’s experience, refused to listen to her empathically, and “educated” her on her responsibility in these broken relationships — why it wasn’t just about what others had done to her but also about what she was doing. And truly, I thought that by doing so I was helping her change for the better — so that she could ultimately have a different experience of life. Also, in attempting to correct her experience, I was trying to hold onto a relationship that felt authentic to me, one in which my truth was also being voiced, not just hers.

My friend has since passed away and I miss her. I also know that I never really gave her what she needed, which was someone who cared about her enough to hold a non-judgmental space for the way she experienced her life, regardless of what I thought about it or whether it was the way she “should” experience it. Interestingly, all my educating, correcting, and, to some degree, blaming, never really made a difference in how she experienced her life. Knowing that her experience of being victimized was wrong, or at least caused by her, never made her feel any less rejected. If anything, it only added to it, as I was also rejecting her through my interpretations and well-intentioned self-improvement plans.

Sometimes I wonder: Had I been able to listen compassionately and not judge my friend for feeling victimized, would she have felt supported enough, or loved enough, to look at her own behavior? I’ll never know the answer, but what I do know is that endlessly trying to correct her experience into something I considered “true” did not give her what she needed to change.

In a smaller example, I now have a friend who is always complaining that the world is a terrible place. It’s his experience. I hate that aspect of him, and hate hearing about all the terrible things that have happened and are to come. I am a fundamentally optimistic person, and I suppose have some investment in that aspect of myself, as it keeps me feeling safe. So when I really listen to him about how the world is doomed, and simply let his experience be, without trying to convince him of something different, it can feel like I am supporting an aspect of him that I don’t enjoy, and that feels threatening to my own wellbeing. Listening without changing is no small affair, even when it is about a small affair. It is excruciatingly difficult to just listen and not try to change in situations where what we are loving through our compassionate presence is threatening to our own identity and/or the relationship itself.

The three biggest obstacles to deep listening:

1. We believe that truly listening to another’s experience, letting it be without interjecting our opinion or trying to change it, is the same as acknowledging that their experience is true — and not just true for them, but in a universal sense.

2. We listen not for how the other’s experience is for them, but rather for what their experience means about who we are, and how we are perceived.

3. We believe that we need to change or control the other’s experience in order to maintain our own identity.

If you aspire to become a better listener, or to create more intimacy in your life, try the following practices:

Try on the idea that acknowledging another’s experience does not mean that you share their experience, nor that you consider their experience to be universally true. You might play with phrases like, “I hear that it’s like that for you,” or, “The experience you are having sounds…” This allows you to set boundaries between your experience and theirs, and between what’s true for everyone and what they are feeling.

Set the intention to listen to the other without you in the way. Drop the lens of what their experience means to or about you. Set aside your opinions about their experience as you listen. Intend to simply understand what the other is experiencing.

Give yourself permission to “just” listen, and not do anything with what you are hearing. Set the goal to not change the other person in any way. Approach the communication as an opportunity to simply be curious and meet that person, where they are, with the aspiration to specifically not improve their experience or make them into someone else (more like you).

Listening deeply doesn’t just benefit the one being heard; it is also profoundly nourishing to the one who’s listening. Listening creates a circle in which two separate egos can dissolve into one love. When we can truly listen, we can truly love. And we can only feel loved to the degree that we feel listened to. If you want more and deeper love in your life, aspire to listen better, and then practice.

Copyright 2015 Nancy Colier                                                                                                                       Photo credit: https://onlineforlove.com/

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The truth is, we’re not very good listeners; we don’t know (and are not taught) how to listen to each other, at least not in a manner that truly nourishes us on a deep and spiritual level, and makes us feel heard, understood, or loved. We know how to listen from the head, but not from the heart.

And yet being deeply listened to is the experience that human beings most crave and need.

If there is one ingredient that determines whether or not a relationship will be successful, that ingredient is listening—the degree to which each partner feels listened to and truly known. Couples that can listen to each other in a satisfying way usually succeed, while those that can’t usually fail. Ultimately, we can only feel loved to the degree that we feel listened to.

I recently had a session with “Jon” and “Joan” (not their real names). Joan began by saying that she felt her experience could never be “just heard” by Jon—listened to and absorbed, without any interpretation, solution, judgment, defense or attack. She described how Jon was unable to hold a space for or really be with what she was living—without doing something with it or to it. Jon responded that holding a space for her feelings was not something that should be expected of him. Her request was unreasonable in his eyes, because a husband should not have to sit by silently and listen to what his wife is not receiving in the relationship—not without speaking up for himself, expressing his opinion, and providing some explanation. He then told his wife that what she really wanted (whether she knew it or not) was to control the relationship, the interaction—and him, as she “always did.” Joan, without responding to his interpretation, repeated the same yearning—to be listened to with simple openness and non-judgment. Jon responded to this second attempt by telling Joan that her experience was false, that he did in fact listen to and hear her, even if she couldn’t feel it, and that she should examine why she couldn’t feel his kindness and interest. Joan then repeated her longing one more time, almost verbatim. This time Jon’s response was to express how totally alone he feels in the relationship, and how Joan has no interest in hearing what is truly important to him.

From there, we began the work, in learning how to listen.

What happened between Joan and Jon is not gender specific nor is it specific to romantic relationships. What this couple demonstrated is a human problem: We constantly reject each other’s experience. It’s what we are taught to do. Listening to Joan that day, I felt as if I were watching an airplane desperately trying to find a place to land. Rejected by all control towers, her experience was to be left floating, unheard, unloved, with nowhere to touch down, nowhere to be welcomed home, no place to just be.

We all live this suffering daily, left with our own orphaned experience to nurture and land for ourselves. Yesterday I finished a particularly challenging and heartbreaking session in my office. Coming home, carrying a deep well of unprocessed feelings about what I had just lived, I entered my home to find my babysitter in a tiff. Before I had put my keys down, she was unloading her anger on me because my daughter would not eat her pasta. And just like that, my experience, what I was holding so profoundly in that moment, had to be put away to attend to the situation at hand. Life is always doing this to us, asking us to move from one experience to another without the processing, the landing, or the care and attention that we really crave—and need.

While we are conditioned to present our experience to others with a “What should I do about this?” as a way to include the other person (and hence earn their ear), most of the time we don’t really want to know what they think we should do about an issue, how to fix it, what’s wrong with us, why we shouldn’t feel what we feel, or anything else. We have probably already been inundated with countless well-intentioned and wise suggestions, from others and ourselves, on what we should do about our experience, and why we are having it. We already know all this. The problem, really, is that what we are asking for is not what we actually want, but rather what we have been conditioned to believe we are allowed to ask for. We don’t really long for anything to be done with or about our experience. Really, we just want our experience to be heard, listened to, understood, and cared about. We want someone to know how it is for us in this moment, in this life, and to keep us company in our experience—exactly as it is. What we want is for our experience to get to just be, without having to change into something else.

The hardest thing in the world (or one of them anyway) is to listen to someone we care about (and even someone we don’t) talk about an experience that sounds painful—and notstep in to help, offer suggestions, or try to fix it. The second-hardest (not necessarily in this order) is to listen to someone describe a problem that they (or we) believe we are responsible for—and not defend ourselves. And rounding out this trio is to listen to someone describe a problem for which we believe they are to blame and have created, and not try to convince them of their responsibility.

Counterintuitive though it may feel, simply (but not easily) offering our compassionate presence to another human being—being willing to truly understand what the other is living, and selfless enough to get out of the way of their unfolding process—we are actually offering the greatest gift we can—and the experience that we all really crave. While we may believe that we are not giving enough, we are actually giving the very thing the other person wants, but is not allowed to say they want. By seemingly doing nothing (but truly listening), we are allowing the other to discover what they need to discover, creating and holding the space in which their problem can uncover its own solution (which is rarely anything we could have come up with). Experience teaches us to trust the profoundly transformative and healing power of being with—holding a space for another person’s experience. By being willing and courageous enough to do nothing with and to another’s experience, we are actually doing the most profound thing of all.

In addition, while it can be very difficult to refrain from defending ourselves when we feel we are being blamed (or are to blame), by simply holding a space for another’s unhappiness, we establish ourselves as one who authentically cares, who wants to and is brave enough to know the other’s experience (even if it is about us). In so doing, we become a person who is not deserving of blame, who loves deeply enough to put our own ego aside to know another fully, to put knowing the other first, even if what we come to know in the process is painful. In this sense, though it is challenging to practice, we actually accomplish more on our own behalf by listening deeply and openly as opposed to defending ourselves. The listening is the defense.

Finally, when we are able to just listen to another’s experience, without judgment, even when we believe the other person to be responsible for the experience they are describing, the other person experiences our compassion, which increases the possibility that they will come to discover their own role in their experience. Pointing out the other’s responsibility or blaming them on the other hand only serves to increase their defensiveness, making it less likely that they will take ownership for their experience. If our intention is to help the other own their behavior, listening openly and without judgment is the best method for accomplishing our goal. Making the other feel loved, through our deep and present listening, is the only way to create a safe enough place from which the other can assume the responsibility we want them to assume.

All of us long to have our experience held, heard, understood and cared about. Yet, we are conditioned to believe that just listening is passive, and that helping must include action—making suggestions and offering interpretations, and doing something to change the other person’s experience for the better. What we don’t know (because we are not taught) is that true listening, true “being with,” is the most active and healing thing we can do; it is an action of the highest order, with the most profound results. Ironically, our being, our presence, is far more powerful than anything we could ever do for another.

The next time you are listening to someone, see what it feels like to commit to being present, to just listening, without offering any interpretation about what the other person is living, or suggesting any way to fix it. See if you can simply be with their experience as it is, and feel what it is like to be living what they’re living. The next time you are sharing an experience—particularly if you are being bombarded with ideas for what to do about your experience, or why it is the way it is—kindly ask the other person if they can listen to you without suggestions, and just hold a space for what you are describing.

It may feel like an awkward request, but if the other person can truly offer you this, it will be well worth the discomfort of asking. Notice how it feels for you to be heard and absorbed in this way. We need to relearn what helping really means, and what we actually need and want from each other, and for ourselves—the presence that we truly crave. Simultaneously, we need to be able to recognize and voice our real longing—to be known deeply, really listened to, and not fixed.

This experience, at its core, is love.

Read more on similar issues:

• “How to Heal Defensiveness in Close Relationships”
• “How to Ask for What You Really Need”
• “And” Not “But”: The Secret to Healthy Relationships”
• “Why We’ll Give Up Everything, Just to Be Right”
•  “The Secret to a Joyful Life… Kill the “Me” Who’s Living It”

Copyright 2015 Nancy Colier

The post What We Want Most From Relationships (But Rarely Get) appeared first on Nancy Colier.

Lesley (all names are changed here) wakes up in her apartment in the city every weekend to a raging “should” assault: I “should” be doing something fabulous this weekend, I “should” be traveling and experiencing new and interesting things. I “should” be living a different life than the one I’m living.

John suffers mostly with the “should” of the other. While his wife has been exhibiting the same insensitive behavior for the last decade, which is extremely frustrating and painful for him, his internal dialogue remains the same: She “should” be more sensitive to his needs, she “should” care about the fact that her behavior upsets him.

Just now, as I was putting the finishing touches on this blog, I slipped out to meet a friend. “I should have gotten a nice day,” she exclaimed as we dodged the puddles on the way to lunch. It was her first day off in weeks and she felt deprived of the sunny day she “should” have gotten. Her experience was not what it “should” be, and that felt bad.

The “should” thought arises (generally) when we don’t like or want what is happening.  While the energy and intention of “should” is to point us towards the thing that we want, and thus to alleviate suffering, the effect is actually to create more suffering than we already felt. When we add “should” to a reality we already don’t like, we end up with the same unwanted reality we started with, but on top of it, we have an emotional battle against what is actually happening.

Most of the time, the reality we think we don’t want would actually be bearable if we just stopped struggling against it. It might even contain elements that we could enjoy, if we were to let ourselves experience it. What is not bearable, however, is the belief that we are being cheated out of a reality that we were supposed to get. The greatest suffering comes from our fight against reality—not our reality itself.

Giving up our “should” narrative is very challenging, in part because we are conditioned to believe that if we give up the fight with a reality we don’t want, we will be surrendering and agreeing to that unwanted reality, and to it continuing forever. Shifting the focus from what “should” be to what is, otherwise known as acceptance or allowing, is, as we’ve come to understand it, code for giving up and giving in to a life we don’t want. Acceptance or allowing reality is seen as passivity. This, however, is a radical misunderstanding of what acceptance and allowing actually mean.

What we are giving up when we stop fixating on what “should” be is just one thing—the fight with the fact that what is, is. Accepting that what is, is, has nothing to do with our actions, our intention to change it, or our approval of it. Acceptance and allowing simply means relaxing our opposition to the fact that what is happening on the inside and outside of us is actually happening.

For my friend to accept that it is raining, and to stop imagining that it “should” be the way she wants it, would not be to agree to like the rain, nor would it mean she ought to leave her umbrella at home. To give up her “shoulds” would mean only dropping her anger and resentment against reality, the blaming of the sky for doing what it is doing, the insistence that she was supposed to get something else from her day off. It would leave her only with the rain itself to deal with, which is far more manageable and less painful than her feelings of being punished by a weather system utterly uninterested in her quarrel with it.

If Lesley were able to allow the fact that she is in the city in the summer, that this is her life right now, she would be giving herself the gift of the present moment. Her reality might be a little hot or loud, or a little lonely if she’s alone, but it would go on without the intense suffering that comes with the narrative of what her life “should” be. Instead of the absence of the weekend she’s missing out on, she would experience the presence of the weekend she’s living in, a presence out of which she might create something she actually wants. Further, from her apartment in the city, she could still book a trip to the beach or a visit to friends in the country. Anything is possible when we start from the place we actually are, while nothing can happen from the illusion of where we “should” be.

One client discovered that when she dropped her painful and overwhelming “I should have a more fabulous life” narrative, she in fact only had one micro-moment at a time to contend with. Without the “shoulds,” and with just this moment, now, to address, her life felt quite bearable and even potentially interesting. She realized that when she didn’t have to live the “story” of her life, she could enter her actual life — go to the movies or take a walk, listen to a piece of music or sit on a bench and feel the sunshine. Instead of trying to figure out what she “should” be doing in her fabulous imaginary life, she started to discover what she actually felt like doing right now — in her real life. She was like a teenager with her first set of car keys, realizing that from here, from the ground she was standing on, she could go anywhere or create anything she wanted.

When we stop obsessing over what “should” be and shift into acknowledging what is, we discover that, as opposed to becoming more passive, our solutions to a reality we don’t want actually become more creative and forward-moving. When we are willing to look at and feel what is actually true, solutions appear that are unexpected and fresh. Solutions that arise out of the direct experience of the truth, of what’s really happening, contain an energy and inarguable-ness that is far more powerful than anything that comes from an anxiety and urgency to get away from reality.

For years, I was in a relationship with someone whom I thought “should” be different. I remained in that relationship, unhappy but relentlessly engaged with my “shoulds.” At some point, however, having struggled and suffered with reality long enough (with no budge on reality’s part) I decided to drop my stories about the way it “should” be. I was bone tired and weary from my unhappiness and his “wrongness,” and, perhaps more to the point, from my fight against that unhappiness and that “wrongness.” Instead, I started looking at who he actually was instead of obsessing about who I wanted him to be. I started feeling the way I actually felt in the relationship instead of trying to feel a better way. When I did, instead of anger and frustration over what was, I sensed a deeper truth, and with it a calm clarity. As heartbreaking as the truth was, it was without any of the confusion and frustration that had plagued me throughout the years of “shoulds.” It was unavoidable: I didn’t want to and couldn’t be with this partner any longer.

This was the truth that my “shoulds” had kept me from having to face. And indeed, “shoulds” allow us to live in a state of denial, to avoid the pain of the truth, and what we might need to do about that truth. We believe that accepting reality creates passivity and inaction but in fact, allowing reality, as it is, actually creates the ground for powerful action and inarguable change.

What if we were to approach our life with the attitude that this IS our life: It’s not supposed to be another life. It might one day be different, but right now it’s this life.

The irony is that whether or not we “allow” reality to be as it is, reality is still the way it is. “Allowing” reality to be as it is is really just an idea cooked up in our heads. Reality doesn’t go away because we stop allowing it any more than it comes into being when we do allow it; our resistance has no effect on reality itself; it affects only our own well being. Reality always wins. We can make our lives a whole lot more peaceful by renouncing the delusion that fighting with the truth will make it any less true.

Each time you hear yourself saying or thinking what “should” be happening, flip it around and ask the question, What is happening? Drop your fight with reality, your narrative about what “should” be, and you’ll discover that reality, unburdened by your opposition, is a lot different than you think. The surest way to find peace is not to win the war, but to stop the fighting.

Copyright 2015 Nancy Colier

The post How to Live in the Real World (Minus One Troubling Word) appeared first on Nancy Colier.

These people are not isolated examples or peculiar in any way. Many people hold grudges, deep ones, that can last a lifetime. Many are unable to let go of the anger they feel towards those who “wronged” them in the past, even though they may have a strong desire and put in a concerted effort to do so.

Often we hold onto our grudges unwillingly, while wishing we could drop them and live freshly in the present, without the injustices of the past occupying so much psychic space.

Why do we hold grudges when they are in fact quite painful to maintain, and often seem to work against what we really want? Why do we keep wounds open and active, living in past experiences of pain which prevent new experiences from being able to happen? What keeps us stuck when we want to move on and let go? Most important, how can we let go?

To begin with, grudges come with an identity. With our grudge intact, we know who we are—a person who was “wronged.”  As much as we don’t like it, there also exists a kind of rightness and strength in this identity. We have something that defines us—our anger and victimhood—which gives us a sense of solidness and purpose. We have definition and a grievance that carries weight. To let go of our grudge, we have to be willing to let go of our identity as the “wronged” one, and whatever strength, solidity, or possible sympathy and understanding we receive through that “wronged” identity. We have to be willing to drop the “I” who was mistreated and step into a new version of ourselves, one we don’t know yet, that allows the present moment to determine who we are, not past injustice.

But what are we really trying to get at, get to, or just get by holding onto a grudge and strengthening our identity as the one who was “wronged”? In truth, our grudge, and the identity that accompanies it, is an attempt to get the comfort and compassion we didn’t get in the past, the empathy for what happened to us at the hands of this “other,” the experience that our suffering matters  As a somebody who was victimized, we are announcing that we are deserving of extra kindness and special treatment. Our indignation and anger is a cry to be cared about and treated differently—because of what we have endured.

The problem with grudges, besides the fact that they are a drag to carry around (like a bag of sedimentized toxic waste that keeps us stuck in anger) is that they don’t serve the purpose that they are there to serve. They don’t make us feel better or heal our hurt. At the end of the day, we end up as proud owners of our grudges but still without the experience of comfort that we ultimately crave, that we have craved since the original wounding. We turn our grudge into an object and hold it out at arm’s length—proof of what we have suffered, a badge of honor, a way to remind others and ourselves of our pain and deserving-ness. But in fact our grudge is disconnected from our own heart; while born out of our pain, it becomes a construction of the mind, a story of what happened to us. Our grudge morphs into a boulder that blocks the light of kindness from reaching our heart, and thus is an obstacle to true healing. Sadly, in its effort to garner us empathy, our grudge ends up depriving us of the very empathy that we need to release it.

The path to freedom from a grudge is not so much through forgiveness of the “other” (although this can be helpful), but rather through loving our own self. To bring our own loving presence to the suffering that crystallized into the grudge, the pain that was caused by this “other,” is what ultimately heals the suffering and allows the grudge to melt. If it feels like too much to go directly into the pain of a grudge, we can move toward it with the help of someone we trust, or bring a loving presence to our wound, but from a safe place inside. The idea is not to re-traumatize ourselves by diving into the original pain but rather to attend to it with the compassion that we didn’t receive, that our grudge is screaming for, and bring it directly into the center of the storm. Our heart contains both our pain and the elixir for our pain.

To let go of a grudge we need to move the focus off of the one who “wronged” us, off of the story of our suffering, and into the felt experience of what we actually lived. When we move our attention inside, into our heart, our pain shifts from being a “something” that happened to us, another part of our narrative, to a sensation that we know intimately, a felt sense that we are one with from the inside.

In re-focusing our attention, we find the soothing kindness and compassion that the grudge itself desires. In addition, we take responsibility for caring about our own suffering, and for knowing that our suffering matters, which can never be achieved through our grudge, no matter how fiercely we believe in it. We can then let go of the identity of the one who was “wronged,” because it no longer serves us and because our own presence is now righting that wrong. Without the need for our grudge, it often simply drops away without our knowing how. What becomes clear is that we are where we need to be, in our own heart’s company.

Copyright 2015 Nancy Colier

The post Why We Hold Grudges and How to Let Them Go: It’s Not About the Person Who Wronged You, It’s About Who You Want to Be appeared first on Nancy Colier.

When we think about loving ourselves, we often run up against the judgment of selfishness. To love ourselves is considered self-indulgent and more than we deserve. To love ourselves is viewed as something that will take love away from others, as if love were a zero sum entity that could shrink or run out if we used up some of it up on ourselves.

Furthermore, when we think about loving ourselves, we assume that it is in exchange for being loved by others. We don’t want to be responsible for giving ourselves love; love is something that others are supposed to give to us. And for many people, there is resentment around self-love—the fact that they have to take responsibility for loving themselves and have to do what others should do for them. Self-love is an effort that they are tired of having to expend. In any case, loving ourselves and being loved by others are seen as either/or scenarios.

But really, why are we so resistant to loving ourselves? Why do we see it as such a punishment and imposition? In part it is because we don’t know what it means to love ourselves or how to “do” it. We view self-love as another chore we have to accomplish, like taking out the trash. We imagine loving ourselves as something that takes time out of our day, like an exercise regime that will leave us less time to spend time with our kids or spouse. In truth, these are false beliefs.

Self-love is not an act of effort but rather a way of being. It means living in a way, moment to moment, that makes room for our own heart’s experience, being with ourselves with kindness and without judgment. Self-love means asking, “How am I in this moment?” and then really sticking around for the answer, with an attitude of curiosity and compassion. So too, self-love means bringing our own presence into the body and attending to the body’s life with mindful attention. Self-love means coming home inside our real experience and giving ourselves the permission to matter.

Love is not a finite entity, quite the contrary. When we spend time lovingly paying attention to ourselves, attending to the nourishment of our spirit, we generate more love and enrich ourselves to become greater vehicles of kindness. Self-love inspires love for others.

In order to open the gates of self-love, it can be helpful to see ourselves as an expression of the Divine, Buddha Nature, basic goodness, the universe, divine intelligence, or, for you, whatever represents something larger and deserving of being cherished. Knowing and loving ourselves as manifestations/incarnations of the Divine, spirit in human form, we are free to offer self-love without resistance and free to love the universe and its wisdom rather than just our personhood.

This Valentine’s week (and every week), add yourself to to your own love list. Attend to the nourishment of your own heart. Place your hand on your heart and ask, “What do I long for at this moment in my life?” “How can I take care of my heart, my body my spirit?” Give yourself the gift of your own presence and sense the exquisite life force, the sensorial profundity that is right here inside your own body. Ask, listen, and keep company with your being; make this a way of living, not just for the second week of February but for your entire love life.

The post Loving Yourself on Valentine’s Day appeared first on Nancy Colier.