But over time, I realized that despite all the thinking humanly possi­ble, there were important questions in my life that I couldn’t know and couldn’t solve, not yet anyway. This truth was unavoidable and irrefut­able. I had to admit and accept that, with all my pseudo-knowing, my proposed and attempted solutions, I was still not any better off. Any knowing I had thought myself into was illusory. The more I tried to know, the more I felt like I didn’t know. On the other side of that admission and acceptance however, I found something unexpected…utter relief.

We live in an age of reason and science. We worship information, research, and logic so much that we named our era for it: the age of information. To reason is to think, to use the rational mind, understand, and make sense of our world. Over time, we’ve put more and more eggs in the reasoning basket, betting on thinking to save the day. The thinking mind is the road to salvation. At this moment in history, we’ve lost interest and, to some degree, respect, for all the other ways of knowing: bodily, intuitively, experientially, and so forth—all the ways we can know other than through thinking and logic.

When I present material as a public speaker, despite three decades of professional experience with human beings and their thoughts and emotions, I am almost always asked what MRI studies or research I can offer to support my observations on human behavior. Reason and scientific proof have been anointed as our kings. Thinking, we believe, will solve whatever questions and challenges life presents. And, with technology exploding, our faith in and reverence for thinking are only intensifying.

Living in the Question

“The only true wisdom is in knowing we know nothing,” said Socrates. A lot has changed in the 2,500 years since Socrates uttered those words. Our society now seems to disagree with the great philoso­pher on the issue of knowing. Here, in the 21st century AD, we believe that we should and can know everything. Our unceasing need to know the answers along with our unwillingness to accept the unknown sit at the root of our excessive thinking, and our anxiety.

Mystery, in our society, is not a real thing…it’s a flaky or woowoo thing. Not knowing the answer is not an acceptable answer. We’re taught from the time we’re born that knowing is good—we are good, worthy, if we have the answers. “You should know better” is what we hear when we’re young and have done something wrong. We feel shame and inadequacy when we don’t have the answers: It makes us feel weak and defective, vulnerable and lost. Not knowing is a form of failure.

At the same time, knowing feels safe; it feels like we’re in control. With the answers in place, we don’t have to face the impermanence that underpins our life, the reality that everything is constantly changing, whether we like it or not. We don’t have to feel how out of control we really are as human beings on this mortal and mysterious journey. As a result, we do a lot of faking it, “impostering,” when it comes to knowing. Simultaneously, we rush to answers that aren’t true or sustainable. We’ll do anything, essentially, to not reside in the unknown.

But despite what we’re conditioned to believe, life is forever deposit­ing us in situations where we cannot know and don’t have access to the answers we want, don’t know the way forward, to say nothing of the larger not knowing—what we’re all doing here, existing, in the first place. Given the frequency with which the experience of not knowing or at least not yet knowing shows up in life, we would be wise to learn how to inhabit it and, even better, to do so with a sense of acceptance and relaxation rather than judgment and fear.

It may feel unfamiliar, unwise, and even dangerous to sit with a chal­lenging, unresolved situation, to not know what it means, what we need to do about it, or how to get out of it. Uncomfortable though it may be however, it behooves us to learn how to not know, to feel what it’s like in the not knowing, and to await more clarity and the arrival of a path through. Living in the question, if we can drop our judgments about it, can become its very own place to reside. With practice, we can learn to actually relax with not having the answer.

When we offer ourselves permission to not know, we allow life to reveal what it wants to reveal, in its own time—without forcing it. The questions then, remarkably, become their own destinations. What’s more, we find that not knowing is a place that, if we have the courage to trust it, can deliver deeper and wiser solutions, real solutions, paths forward that are more reliable than anything we can mentally muscle our way into knowing.

Surrendering to living in the questions feels like dropping through a trap door. Suddenly we are deposited into the present moment; we have permission to be here, to experience what life is like—now. We have permission to get interested in the experience of this reality and allow the answers to reveal themselves on their own timeline. Just for now, we don’t have to do it all ourselves, don’t have to push our way through with our mind, as we’ve been taught. Relaxing into the questions, unexpectedly, allows us to join a larger unfolding, a process bigger than ourselves, and thankfully, one in which we don’t have to be respon­sible for controlling our life at every turn. At last, it isn’t up to only us. Living in the questions, no matter how uncomfortable it might feel, is living in the truth, which, once we get the hang of it, contains its own safety and trustworthiness. The safety we experience in the truth, however, is not because we have all the answers or because the truth is comfortable (the usual markers of safety), but rather because the truth is inarguable…because the truth is what is. Surrendering to not knowing means planting our feet in moving ground and accepting that we’re in a process without a known outcome and that the process is the destination for now.

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Knowing also gives us a sense of control.  If we can know something, we believe we can control it.  If we can control it, we feel less vulnerable, and less at the mercy of our ever-changing (uncontrollable) life.  And of course, if we can control life, we can be happy.

When we’re young, we’re taught most of what we need to know in order to function well.  We’re schooled in the process of living.  As we get older, however, we’re no longer taught what we need to know and seem to know less and less.  And yet the belief persists: we have to know in order to stay safe and be okay. Great anxiety thus forms within us, in the space of this gap.  As a result, we start desperately trying to figure out life.

In our modern world, we know through our mind.  We make sense of things, organize ideas into rational patterns and linear progressions.  Causes and effects. Knowing involves stringing together our thoughts about what’s happening, why it’s happening and what we need to do about it.  Whatever we want, whatever problem we think we have, we’re convinced that thinking more about it will lead us to the answer we need.  We think we can think our way out of and into everywhere, everyone, and everything.

Simultaneously, we all crave a sense of serenity that can withstand the ever-changing ups and downs of life. We want to trust in something that can hold steady in the midst of the unknowable and often difficult reality that is life.  And so, we bring this same figure it out/knowing paradigm to how we view the attainment of the peace we desire.  We imagine that we can mentally muscle our way to serenity, that more thinking about life will ultimately lead us to peace.

One of the inherent problems with this belief system, our great faith in and reverence for figuring it out, is that it relies on the premise that our thoughts (the building blocks of figuring it out) are not just our thoughts, but rather, the truth. We think that our subjective experience is an objective reality, simply what is.  And it follows then that everything that’s built from our thoughts, every narrative we construct from our thoughts should also be absolute truth.

If I have a fight with a friend then start figuring out what happened and what needs to happen going forward, I’m basing that interpretation, that entire storyline of thought, on my subjective experience, my particular mind with its particular wounds, conditioning, history, thoughts, core beliefs, and everything else I’ve ever lived. I believe that my thoughts about what this other person was doing is what they were doing and therefore, what I think they need to stop or start doing in order for me to feel better is also an inarguable fact.

But the problem is, what I think this friend is doing may have nothing to do with what they think they’re doing or what I’m doing for that matter.  Their intentions and inner reality may and probably does exist on another planet than mine.  The whole narrative I’ve constructed, the way I’ve figured this situation out, is irrelevant and useless then.  I’m operating in a universe (my mind) with rules and systems that make sense inside this particular mind, but which have little or nothing to do with what’s happening in other minds.  What makes the dots connect in my thought system is of little use when applied to someone or something else’s reality. That said, figuring out life, based on our personal narrative, is an exercise in futility and to some degree, absurdity.

This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try to understand our experience.  But rather, that we need to be aware that our knowledge, our version of what makes sense lives only in our own mind.  Our truth exists within us, and only within us.  And, it co-exists with billions of other truths that exist in other people’s minds.  We can still present our version of reality or our truth to another person but we can stop assuming that our subjective experience, our thoughts of what makes sense, are also true in some absolute way.  We don’t have to work ourselves up into a lather believing that we have the keys to the castle, we know exactly what’s happening and the way it all needs to go. And, we don’t need to worry that if it doesn’t go the way we’ve scripted it, the way our mind tells us it must, that something is wrong and we are being wronged.

It’s profoundly liberating to realize that our version of the truth, which not coincidentally always places us at the center of what’s driving everyone and everything else, may not and probably is not the truth for anyone else.  When we believe this, we suffer alone (and we really suffer), trapped inside the certainty of our own figured-out and usually unwanted reality.

There is yet another flaw in our assumption that we can figure out our way to happiness. The belief that bringing more thoughts and mental understanding of a challenging situation or relationship will automatically benefit that situation or relationship is false. We believe that the mind is the proper tool for every situation, but it’s not.  It’s often the worst tool we can pull out of the shed in fact.  In many cases, what’s needed for actual improvement, growth or change, is something else entirely.

Sometimes, if we’re dealing with a difficult person, the best thing we can do is nothing—not try and understand their behavior or what we need to do about it. Sometimes the best thing we can do is to just let it be what it is.

Often, when we stop trying to figure out what’s wrong with and how to fix everyone and everything (which we know as masters of the universe), and just let it be the way it is, for now, our whole experience changes. We discover that in all the trying to understand and fix, we actually exacerbate the problem, not just on the outside but on the inside too, scratching at the wrongs, fomenting anger and resentment, which always intensifies our own suffering.

Sometimes, when confronting a problematic person, it’s wise to simply offer it the generosity of compassion, the serenity of not trying to control it, and the wisdom of not trying to figure it out.  It can be helpful to realize that the other person’s behavior probably comes out of their own suffering or ignorance, and also remind yourself that they also want the same things you want—happiness, safety, and peace—even if the way they’re going about it may not seem wise to you.  Keeping our attention focused in kindness, while resisting the urge to go up into our sense-making mind, frequently serves to improve the situation far more than any mental gymnastics could.  The felt experience of wishing this person well, even if we cannot or choose not to try and understand their behavior, is the choice that brings the most change—and relief.  And most importantly, whether or not we can find compassion for this other, it is an act of profound compassion–for ourselves–to stop trying to figure it all out.  Nothing ultimately feels better.

Knowing feels fundamental to our safety and control.  But in the end, surrendering to not knowing, realizing that if what we really want is for the situation to change or us to change in relation to the situation; if what we really want is peace, then understanding it more is not the wisest choice.

In place of figuring it all out (which I spent umpteen years doing) I now like to turn difficult people and situations into opportunities.  In place of trying to make sense, I focus on being the person I want to be in the situation.  I turn my attention away from figuring out what’s making the other do what they’re doing and how to get them to change (according to my reality), and towards how I am being in the midst of this reality.  This profound turn from something I can’t control something I can gives me back my power and more importantly, my freedom.

What’s ironic too is that if my underlying desire is for my external world to change with regard to this difficult situation, I’ve had far more success when my focus is on my own behavior and not the others.  Taking my eye off the self-diagnosed problem and putting it on myself, how I’m being in this difficulty, just plain works better.  But even when the situation doesn’t change on the outside, my experience of the situation on the inside radically changes when I shift my attention in this way.  Challenges become opportunities to grow and evolve; in moments I actually even look forward to them.  I get to practice being who I want to be, my best self; I get to choose what my own participation in life will look like.

The process of taking care of my own side of the street has never failed to be a nourishing and rewarding choice.  It always changes my experience even when it doesn’t change a single thing on the outside.

If I had a nickel for every time I heard someone say (something like) “When I don’t try and figure it out, I’m happier and things go better,” I’d be a very wealthy woman. I sure know that’s it’s been true for me. Figuring it out may give us a pseudo sense of control and safety, but it doesn’t make us feel better, which at the end of the day is what we really want.

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Meditation for Peace:

https://itunes.apple.com/gh/podcast/nancy-colier/id1073710322?mt=2

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There is a story I once heard of a five year old whose mommy had just given birth to a new baby. The little boy kept asking to spend some time alone with his new sister. When his parents asked him why he wanted this alone time with the new baby, the five year old said that he needed it because he was starting to forget God.

It seems that we come into this world with an innate wisdom and knowing of our infinite and spiritual nature, but through our conditioning and just life as it unfolds, we forget who and how magnificent we really are. You could say that we get smaller, and begin believing that who we are or what we are made of is just a resume of the roles we play, our successes and failures, the opinions we hold, and the problems we need to solve.

So what gets in the way of our knowing who we really are? What untethers us from our truly infinite and spiritual nature? The long answer to such questions is complex and multi-layered. But since this is a blog, I’ll go with the short answer. The number one thing that makes us forget our true nature as spiritual beings is thought, or more specifically, our fascination with our thoughts. From the time we are very young, we devote most of our life’s energy and attention to our thoughts. And truth be told, most of them are not that interesting, or helpful.

Because a thought appears in our awareness, we assume that must believe it. Because we are conditioned to believe that we are our thoughts, we assume that we must pay attention to every thought that occurs. But this is a false assumption. Thoughts appear and we can choose to believe them—or not. Thoughts just happen; we don’t actually choose to think them. Rather, we are the witness of our thoughts. It is up to us how we want to be in relationship with the thoughts that vie for our attention. This fixation with thoughts causes us to be lost in a trance most of our lives—not actually where we are. Put another way, it causes us to abandon our bodies. With our attention focused on the stream of thoughts we are always hearing, we become disconnected from our senses. This is important because it is the senses that are the portal to our own presence, our basic being, our spirit.

Coming into the body, feeling the breath, the sensations that are happening right now—this is our gateway into now, and it is only through this present moment, now—sensed directly—that we can remember ourselves as the infinite and spacious presence that we intuitively know (but forget) that we really are. The mind turns “now” into a bundle of thoughts, a concept, something to talk about, a place we need to get “to.” But in truth, “now” can’t be talked about, can’t be a destination. “Now” can only be something we are, something we melt into. As soon as we talk about or think about “now,” it becomes something separate from us, a possession, a notion, and a goal. “Now” can only be experienced directly through the body, the heart, the senses. While thoughts have tremendous value for many aspects of life, if what we want is to know ourselves as spiritual beings on a human journey, thought is not the path.

We can’t know our true and infinite nature through thought. In fact, our fixation with thoughts obscures us from this knowing, this timeless wisdom. The body holds this intelligence, this memory, deep in its cellular structure, as if the body itself remembers from whence it comes, the stardust out of which it is made.

Right now, in this moment, invite your body to feel itself, from the inside out. Right now, in this moment, allow your body to arrive—here, where you are. Don’t consult your mind for what it thinks of here. Don’t send your mind down into your body to notice what’s happening now and come back up and tell you. Simply tune into the sounds reaching your ears, feel the sensations happening inside you, experience the breath as it enters and exits, and the gaps in between. Allow yourself to land inside, and to fill up your whole body with your own presence, to sense your being. Feel what it feels like simply to exist.

When we feel the moment directly, through the body, who we are as thought, ego, a “person,” disappears. Our individual “me” agendas fade and we are just now, life—not separate from life, from our spirit, or our true nature. Check it out for yourself; don’t just take it as an idea from me. Use your senses as your portal, experience the boundlessness that your body contains, and you will come to remember yourself as the spiritual being on a human journey that you truly are.

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Still, we believe that we are the thinker of our thoughts. Despite all evidence to the contrary, we think that we decide our thoughts, and as a result, that we are responsible for their content. Because they are “our” thoughts, and we “did” the thinking, our identity is determined by their content. We are a good person if we have “good” thoughts and a bad person if we have “bad” thoughts. We spend a lot of time trying to control our thoughts and create order out of the chaos that the mind delivers.

In truth, thoughts happen — on their own. We are not in charge of what our thoughts are about. We are the recipient — the “hearer” of thoughts, the screen upon which they are projected, but certainly not the one doing the thinking.

If you are like most people, the majority of what your mind tells you, you have already heard before — many times. So too, many of the thoughts you receive are useless or boring. Only a small percentage might actually be of interest to “you.” While it is true that we can direct our attention to a particular topic and thus encourage certain kinds of thoughts, still, most of what we hear in our heads is useless chatter that we would not miss if it were not heard.

When you walk by a crazy person on the street and they yell out wild, non-sensical things at you, do you take the comments personally? Do you feel responsible for their content? Probably not. The mind is not much different than that crazy person on the street. The main difference however is that your mind lives inside your head and thus you can’t walk away from it. And more importantly, that you believe that crazy mind to be “you”!

What if we didn’t have to take credit or responsibility for our thoughts? What if we could use thought but without taking ownership of it? What if we didn’t have to do anything about or with the thought-racket that the mind makes? Indeed, all of these are possible! And how liberating and relieving to be given permission to let the mind do its thing without having to get involved or be responsible for it.

Try it for a day: Let your mind fire off like the out-of-order computer that it is. Don’t get involved in the contents of what it fires — don’t feed its firings, or build a storyline from its random fragments. Starve the mind. (Be careful however, not to turn “starve the mind” into another thought that interests you.) If you are lucky enough to hear a thought that is genuinely interesting, you can move toward it, engage with it, and build something with it. But otherwise, you can get on with your life and let the thoughts simply pass through, like weather, without much ado. Imagine yourself inside a giant mosquito net with hundreds of mosquitos buzzing just outside the net, unable to get through. You can ignore the mosquitos and go about your business without getting bitten. After a while, you may not even hear the buzzing anymore. And when not paid attention to, the mosquitos often take off to find someone else to bug. The same is true for thoughts — without your energy, your juice (in the form of attention) — they lose their power. You can make use of thoughts, but don’t believe them to be “yours” in some fundamental, identity-defining way.

We cannot stop thought but we can stop being interested in thought.

The “you” who is hearing the thoughts is the real you. You are the space within which the thoughts appear (and disappear). Practice turning away from thought — not feeding the thoughts with your attention. And then, notice what’s there — the silence behind the noise, the stillness behind the mind’s movement. Indeed, you may find that starving the mind can deliver a most profound form of nourishment. Remember, the mind is not yours to control. Let the mind do its thing — and you do yours!

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Very often close friendships, the ones that feel like family, are like family. But what aspect of family — this is the important question. A friend might present a similar challenge as a parent or sibling, and thus elicit the same feeling in us that we had with that family member. We then interpret that feeling as love and attachment. We say that friend is “like family,” because in fact they are. We are often drawn to and surround ourselves with people who remind us of our parents, which then gives us another opportunity to correct the experience that occurred with our early caretakers. This unconscious drive to re-script the past with a new outcome is one reason that we stay hooked into certain long-term but unsatisfying/unhealthy friendships. As we become more self-aware however, we can examine our long-term friendships, particularly the ones that no longer feel good, and investigate what our sense of deep connection is actually built around, and whether that connection is something that we still want or need in our life. The flavor of the relationship may indeed be familiar, and familial, but is it still nourishing to who we are now?

It is easy to talk theoretically about friendship, but what are we to do when an old friend with whom we have a lot of history is no longer someone we like or respect, or worse, is unkind, competitive and/or critical of us? Now don’t misunderstand me… I am not suggesting that we bail when the bumps come or when it no longer feels good all the time. There is no doubt that long-term friendships require seat belts and hard work, and most of the time they are worth the effort. This is not about bumps in the road of friendship. But what about when the effort is no longer producing a relationship that is nourishing or pleasurable — when our old friend is no longer someone we like to be around? Ultimately it should feel good to be around our friends, at least at some level. It certainly should not feel bad. After all, friends are people we choose to include in our life. When it feels bad much of the time, we need to make a change.

Today’s blog is not about relational strategies, however. Rather, it is about our relationship with friendship itself, and specifically how letting go and accepting the true lifespan of a friendship can align with a larger understanding of what friendship really is.

Mistakenly, we are taught that the only way to honor our history with an old friend is to stay in an active relationship. We believe that to let a friendship go because it is no longer nourishing or enjoyable (and may even have become harmful) is to dis-honor our history with that friend and eradicate the place that they occupied in our life. If we acknowledge that the friendship does not serve us any longer, it is tantamount to saying that it never had any value at all. We believe that what is true in the present must be consistent with what was true in the past — one continuous experience. Otherwise the past cannot be true.

Unfortunately, we have it backwards.

When we allow an important history to be infiltrated with resentment and un-friendly feelings, we are in fact not honoring the friendship and not treating it with the love and respect that the friendship’s history deserves. We are injecting something sweet with poison. We don’t know it, but we can hold someone in our heart, actively, in the present moment, honoring the profound place they hold in our life history — and — at the same time, also know that the friendship’s time may have passed. When we can be honest about a friendship, and about the season of life that the friendship belongs in, then, we can be truly grateful for the miracle that a friendship is. Trying to force a friendship to keep bearing fruit past its season is a disservice to its profound nature.

As humans, we are works in process and continually changing throughout life. There are friendships that belong in different places and at different times, with different versions of who we are. Because a friendship’s time has passed does not mean that it was not and is not important — still. To demand that a friendship continue past its rightful time can be an attempt to turn it into something it isn’t, which is to take away from what it is. Sometimes the only way to get to have a forever friendship is to let it go in the form that it was and allow it to take on the form that it needs to be — all the while holding it steady in your heart.

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Today, as I approached the park where my 9-year-old daughter’s fourth grade class was holding a running race, I spotted a huge group of parents huddled together, anxiously awaiting the appearance of our children.  Enter my friend, the cell phone—and my gratitude.  Suddenly, my silent device found its way to my ear and that was that… problem solved.  For this purpose, I bow in gratitude to technology, to save me from the ritualistic and repetitive exchange of information we call small talk.

I speak to people for a living so I feel somewhat qualified to make the following claim…  Some people love small talk but in fact, many hate it.  Regardless of where we fall on the spectrum however, there is an enormous pressure to engage in it.  If you follow people after a small talk conversation and ask them if they had wanted to be in the exchange that just occurred, often (amazingly), both people will report wishing they could have avoided it.  This is the fascinating part.  Neither person wants to be doing it, and yet, like well-behaved citizens…off we go, chatting away, our mouths moving, making noise, as we wish we could just be quiet. This brings me to the next question.  Why do we feel we have to?  Why do I (ironically) hold up a cell phone to keep me in a chat-free zone?  What are we afraid of in the silence?  Meeting ourselves?  Losing our minds?  Death?

Technology creates noise in the mind.  Our devices keep us jacked up, distracted, protected from ourselves.  Talking, checking, searching, playing—technology makes sure there is always something for the mind to do. We never have to face our difficultly with being still or being with ourselves.  Furthermore, technology strengthens our belief that the answer to our discomfort, distraction and inability to be where we are, is somewhere to be found in the distraction itself, somewhere in the infinite morass of the information technology offers.  While we claim to be learning all sorts of new and important things, mostly we are learning how to keep the internal chatter going, and stave off our ever-increasing fear of silence. To steal from the movie “Spinal Tap,” technology has turned the mind’s volume up to 11 when the dial is only set to reach 10.

We are terrified of silence. And yet, tragically, what we fear is precisely what we crave.  In our deepest hearts, quiet—relief from the inner and outer noise—is what we long for.  In truth, we do not want more ways to make our mind screech, we want to be able to stop the screeching and be where we are—within ourselves.

In this culture, to be quiet while in company is viewed as a rejection of the other.  In order to acknowledge being together, we believe there must be words, to document the experience.  And yet, when we crave silence, it rarely has anything to do with the other.  Rather, we simply want to be in company with ourselves—nourished by the silence that sits under all the noise.  Our desire to refrain from small talk is about longing to turn down the volume of life, and stop trying to fill up every moment with contents and chatter.  The longing for silence is a longing to land where we are—to come home to the stillness that is our essence.  Deep down, we know what we need and it is not more noise.

So in honor of Thanksgiving, I bow to my cell phone. Not for the reasons we usually think of—not for the “more” that technology offers, but for the “less” that it paradoxically can provide.  I bow to the power that technology holds to keep us in the silence that we so crave—and so desperately need to stay well.  I express my deep thanks to the opportunity that a dead cell phone against an ear can offer… the chance to connect with my own being—to reside, blessedly, in the silence that is the essence of our deepest nourishment and true well-being.

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