There’s something profoundly disturbing going on in our culture right now. Well, truth be told, there are a multitude of profoundly disturbing things going on. But at the center of our toxic culture is a rapidly metastasizing and malignant sense of entitlement—a righteousness. And specifically, the right to cast judgment.

As a society, we have become astoundingly judgmental. We feel entitled and emboldened to cast judgment on absolutely everything and everyone. We not only judge what everyone is saying, doing, and believing right now, but we judge what everyone said, did, and believed throughout history. We feel entitled to criticize and condemn those who came before us, specifically, for being less aware and evolved than we are now. We shame who we used to be, and at the same time, deny that that’s who we were.  

We do this judging not only on a public stage, to other people, but also personally—to ourselves. We are constantly attacking, shaming, and rejecting earlier versions of ourselves, judging and blaming who we used to be. But we judge and blame through the lens of who we are now—who we’ve become.

Oddly, we expect ourselves to have always known and understood what we now know and understand. We shame ourselves for being works in progress, for having to grow up and keep growing up, for not coming out of the womb fully formed and perfect. As we become more awake and aware beings, sadly, we look back at less mature incarnations of ourselves with disdain and contempt. 

Laura, a client, started to tell me about a recent, wonderful experience in which she did something profoundly kind for her neighbor. She felt really good about her choice, and about herself. But before she had gotten even a few sentences into her story, Laura veered off into a shaming and critical diatribe on herself—specifically, about a past experience from 20 years ago, when she had acted with less kindness and less generosity.

The opportunity to honor this lovely experience, and also fully inhabit the person she had become as a woman in her forties, was hijacked by her need to vilify and condemn who she had been in her twenties. In an instant, she had abandoned her present-day self and was back in self-loathing and shame, caught in an old narrative, and an ocean of regret about who she used to be.

It’s odd really. We don’t expect our children to be able to run the moment they’re born. We all understand that, as human beings, we need to roll around for 9 or 10 months, then slide along on our butts for another few months, then crawl, then stand up and fall down, then toddle for a while holding onto something, then take a couple of steps on our own, then fall down some more, then take more steps, then fall down, and then walk. 

We accept that we need to grow into ourselves on a physical level, to fail until we can succeed. And to some degree, we hold this same acceptance with regard to our mental evolution, recognizing our need for education. And yet, for some reason, when it comes to our emotional and spiritual evolution, the maturation of our character and awareness, we expect perfection right out of the gate. We deny ourselves the right to learn and evolve over a lifetime, and similarly, to change and grow over generations, as a species.  article continues after advertisement

Life is a process of endless becoming. We’re never fully done growing, never done becoming. We are works in progress, throughout life. Over time and through our lived experiences, we learn who we want to be, who we are capable of being.

The truth is, we don’t come out as our best self; we grow into and learn how to be our best self. Particularly if we didn’t have parents or caretakers that could serve as models for our best behavior. We become more evolved and aware, and hopefully more compassionate, through trial and error, good examples, failure, time, and experience; we become the people we can respect and be proud of. That’s precisely the journey of life, precisely the point of it. To deny this truth or demand that it should be otherwise is to deny reality. 

When we judge and condemn our past behaviors and level of awareness based on what we are capable of now; when we shame the toddler in our past for, well… being a toddler, we not only deny reality, but we reject and abandon our more evolved selves. We refuse ourselves the privilege to change, to become and be better versions of ourselves. We cling to our past failures in the face of our current successes as a way of holding onto an old identity, an outdated narrative on ourselves as bad or not who we should have been. 

Often, at the root of our judging is shame. We shame ourselves for having to spiritually and morally mature, as if there were some other way for our evolution to happen. We condemn ourselves for having to grow into our best self. And of course, for ever having been imperfect.

In the process, we turn our backs on who we actually are, now. We dishonor the ways we’ve evolved. Simultaneously, we block the self we’ve become from becoming even more, and from fulfilling its potential. By focusing on the missteps and failures of who we used to be, we prevent ourselves from stepping into the shoes of the person we’ve become. In so doing, we get in our own way and slow down our continuing evolution.  

As human beings, we are works in progress. We grow into who we are on a daily basis. There’s no point at which we reach our final destination, a completed self. Again and again, we realize that what we thought and believed before, maybe even yesterday, we no longer think and believe now. Again and again, we discover that how we want to behave and how we can behave has changed.article continues after advertisementhttps://86b187bc2b58c4d1800c54a967d26945.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-37/html/container.html

The same holds true for us as a species. Who we were at other times in history is not who we are now. There’s no shame in that; it’s just what is. But each minute we spend condemning and judging who we were; each present moment we waste expecting and demanding a past self to have known what a present self knows, is not only a complete rejection of reality, of the human condition, but it’s also a moment we’ve lost, one that could have been spent living our life from and as the more evolved self we are right now.  

The post We Weren’t Always As Good As We Are Now, So What? appeared first on Nancy Colier.

Carol came to see me with a serious agenda.  She and her husband had had a disagreement the evening before our session and Carol wanted to explain to me why her husband had said what upset her, and specifically, what in his personal psychology and history had made him decide to hurt her. She also wanted to lay out her theories on what was wrong with her husband in a more general sense and how she was going to explain it to him so that he would understand and be different.  Knowing what she knew about him, she was sure that once she laid out her case and helped him understand what was wrong with him, he would become different—and as a result, she would be okay once again.

My client had come up with an intricate, psychologically sophisticated and comprehensive narrative about her husband’s intentions, resentments, methodology, and shortcomings, and tying in his familial history, present psychology, and relational style.  Carol’s presentation was a multi-layered, multi-dimensional, and multi-generational storyline. Most developed in her narrative, interestingly, was her theory about her husband’s strategy and intention to hurt her.

Carol was suffering and I listened empathically as she constructed her clear case for why the experience with her husband had happened. And simultaneously, what she needed to do about it or explain to her husband so that he would understand why he was wrong, and would never do this kind of thing again.  I felt her pain and frustration; I also felt how her words and ideas were trying to keep her from feeling her pain, give her some protection from her heart’s hurt, make her pain manageable. And, I felt how desperately those words were failing her.

Everything Carol said made perfect sense. In court, she would have won her case.  At the same time, I have been listening to her theories on her husband for many years, and also keeping her company in her suffering, as none of her well-crafted theories and/or action plans have changed how he behaves or how she feels about it.  I’ve watched as none of her theories and action plans have brought her happiness or peace.

On this day, I felt we were ready and so I asked Carol to consider a few new questions in relation to her story and her experience. “What if none of the thoughts and intentions you’ve assigned to your husband are actually true—for him?” I asked.  And, “What if your thoughts only exist in your own mind but don’t really exist anywhere else?”  And furthermore, “What if your narrative, no matter how true and real for you, is of no value whatsoever in making you feel better?”

It was a risk to pull Carol out of her story.  At the same time, she had been telling me her theories on her husband for a long time and I trusted that she knew my re-direct was coming from a desire to help, and also that we’d given enough space and attention to the storyline of the moment, enough so that she would be willing to pull the lens back and examine the story-making itself.  I have learned from experience that asking someone to move out of their story before it’s received its due process is not useful or kind, but Carol and I were in a place to take a new turn in our journey.

In this moment, as sometimes happens, grace graced us and Carol had an awakening moment.  Her paradigm shifted and it suddenly dawned on her that what she had considered to be the truth, not just for her, but for her partner too, might not be the truth.  She saw that her narrative could make utter sense to her, could be un-challengeable, and yet could have absolutely nothing to do with what her husband was experiencing.

Her mind opened to the possibility that her idea (and certainty) as to why her husband was intentionally hurting her might be false, for him, or just an idea in her head.  In an instant, Carol literally unstuck from her most tightly held thoughts, she surrendered to the freedom of not knowing what’s true for anyone else.  Carol realized that just because she had a thought didn’t mean she had to believe it, even if it made perfect sense in her own head.

It’s revolutionary and profoundly liberating when we grasp that our version of the truth, which not coincidentally always places us at the epicenter of what’s motivating everyone else’s behavior, may not and probably is not the truth for anyone else.  Tragically, in an effort to help ourselves feel better and make sense of our pain, to know and be able to control what hurts, we construct elaborate stories on why others are doing what they’re doing to us.  We lock in a truth, one that applies to everyone and everything, and no matter how painful that truth might be, we hold onto it, believing that knowing is far safer than not knowing.

The narrative we are living and suffering however, is unreal and unnecessary.  It’s made up by our particular mind, with its particular wounds, conditioning, experiences, thoughts, and everything else we’ve ever lived.  In the end, we suffer alone, trapped in the certainty of our story, the story of what’s inside everyone else’s head—inside a pseudo-reality of our own damaging design.

It’s also remarkable to discover that our theories on why what’s happened to us has happened, and what we need to do about it, that none of them, none of our beautiful, logical works of mental art, will ultimately lead us to peace.  If peace is what we want, our mind and its theories will not take us there.  Trying to find peace with our mind is like trying to open a lock with a banana.  The mind is simply the wrong instrument if peace is what we desire.

That said, the next time you find yourself convinced of and grasping onto a storyline about how you’ve been wronged or any such thing, ask yourself, What if all my ideas on what’s true for this other person, the world, or whatever else is the protagonist of my narrative of the moment, what if they’re not actually true—for the other, not true outside my own mind?  What if my truths are only true for me?”  See if it’s possible to loosen your grip on the “big T” Truth.

Paradoxically, when we give ourselves permission to not know what’s true, to turn in our badge as master-interpreter of everyone else’s behavior, surrender our throne as judge and jury of universal truth, blessedly, we discover the very peace we believed we could only find through our storylines and certainty.

We get there when we get there, but usually, with enough mental fatigue and smart storylines under our belt; when we’ve tried long and hard enough to find peace through the mind’s gymnastics and found ourselves again and again at pain’s door, suffering within our brilliance and certainty, knowing so much but not how to be happy, we start to recognize our banana without having to shove it in the lock for too long.

The post Because Our Thoughts Make Sense Doesn’t Mean They’re True appeared first on Nancy Colier.

This morning I was on a train listening to a mother talking to her young son. The mother’s words were unkind and deliberately hurtful, in a way that demonstrated their damage instantaneously.  Yesterday I worked with a couple who came to see me to learn how to communicate better. For an hour, I listened to both of them using their words to criticize and humiliate each other.  Last week I said something to a friend that was not helpful for our relationship and not skillful in terms of expressing myself in a way that she could hear.  Add to all that, I just received an unsupportive email from a family member telling me all the reasons why I was wrong (and he was right) about something we had discussed.

It’s been a week of thinking about words, those spoken as well as those left unspoken. We’ve all had the experience of saying something and wishing we hadn’t.  And, we all know that once we do say something out loud to someone, we can never really take it back.  In Buddhism, there’s an important practice called “Right Speech.”  Right speech is part of the Noble Eightfold Path, the fundamental, eight-part instruction manual for  ending our suffering.  According to the Buddha, our own wellbeing is built upon the practice of not lying, not slandering, not using unkind or abusive language, and not gossiping.  In order to end our own suffering, we’re taught to speak truthfully and use words to promote harmony and understanding, reduce anger, and most of all, be helpful.

Sometimes I read the Buddha’s words on words and think about how radically different our world would be if more people practiced his version of right speech, as a path to happiness.  We’re living in a time when communication is constant and words are cheap; we throw our words around on social media and the like as if they hold no consequences and are without any real or lasting impact on those who receive them, and our world. Because we don’t have to witness or hear the impact of our words online or via text, we’ve forgotten (or are purposing ignoring) the effects of the words we choose to put into our world.

As we age, our relationship with words and speech changes.  When we’re young we tend to believe that what we have to say is extraordinary, original, and right in some overarching, universal way.  We have a strong need to be known and recognized, to establish who we are.  It feels important thus to have our words heard and to use our words to correct any wrongs we encounter.  Our words are representations of our self; without them, we don’t feel we exist.

But as we evolve and hopefully a bit of humility sets in, we often realize how little we actually know, how much less we have to say than we thought.  And, how much has already been said by those before us.  So too, we recognize how many versions of “right” actually exist—in addition to our own. If we’re lucky, we start to lose the sense of awe we have for our own words.  Furthermore, we come to understand how powerful our words actually are, how deeply the words we choose impact our relationships and our own wellbeing.  If we’re paying attention, we assume a greater sense of responsibility for the words we put into the world.

In my own life, I’ve been actively paying attention to and practicing (or doing my best to practice) right speech for some time now.  I do this in many ways but three in particular stand out.

First, I consciously try to use my words to provide support and encouragement.  Before speaking, I think about how my words can point the other person towards something positive in themselves, something they do well or that might feel helpful.  I see my words as having the potential and purpose to remind another person of their own goodness and possibility.

Second, I choose to relieve my words of the burden of having to perfectly and completely capture my actual experience.  Words are powerful and at the same time layers of experience exist that are not conveyable or formulate-able with words. And so, rather than demanding that my words be absolute representations of my experience, and furthermore that I be understood by others, completely, through my words, I now accept that some of what we live internally is simply is not language-able…and that’s okay.  It has to be okay because it is.

Finally, I used to believe that when my partner said something I disagreed with, it was my responsibility to explain why he was wrong.  I felt I had to engage with and correct the wrongs I perceived.

Right or mindful speech, blessedly, has taught me how to say less not more.  I now practice restraint of pen, tongue and thumb.  Not speaking, writing or texting when I feel bothered or perceive a wrong, has in fact been most significant in my practice because of how directly and deeply I feel its results, both in myself and in my relationships.  It turns out that silence, particularly at the times when I most want to use a lot of words, is in fact more powerful than anything I could say.  Saying nothing says a lot.

Practicing right speech, I see that when my partner says something I don’t agree with, remarkably, I don’t have to say anything at all.  I can leave anything and everything just as it is.  I don’t need to change anyone else’s ideas to own my own ideas; my truth does not depend on adjusting anyone else’s truth.  My partner and everyone else can have their experience and I can have my own, simultaneously.  If it’s something that we need to find consensus on, perhaps something about the kids, I can also choose to press the pause button when I hear something that feels very wrong.  I can say nothing in the moment and take time to think about what I want to say, if anything, and how to say it in a way that can be helpful to the situation and that the other person can hear.  I have learned, in fact, that I have all sorts of choices in how to employ the power of speech.

I have discovered that relationships run far more smoothly when I take the path of saying less not more, and even nothing at all sometimes.  And, that the peace I’m trying to create through words, the peace that is always my end goal, is paradoxically maintained through the absence of words.  It feels miraculous every time I say nothing and simply let go without a response or reaction, other than silence.  This, for me, is emotional freedom.  Many moons ago, Mahatma Ghandi beautifully used his words to say this: “Speak only if it improves upon the silence.”  And I would add, before using our words, we can ask, will these words help or harm?

The post Mindful Speech: Using Your Words to Help Not Harm appeared first on Nancy Colier.

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.

For others, commitment is about living together or getting married and sharing a home life. And for still others, a child expresses the commitment desired. But wherever we fall on the spectrum, when our partner cannot provide the commitment we want and need, we are left to live in a difficult limbo: There’s something we want, that we want more of and more from, and yet we don’t know if we’ll ever get it.

How do we know when to stay or leave this type of relationship?

There are no hard fast rules, ever. Each time we make the choice to stay or go is unique, and sometimes we make it again and again within the same relationship.

At the most concrete level, we can always ask our partner if and when he or she will be willing to meet us at the level of commitment we desire. Sometimes the answer we get is comforting and gives us the sense that we are heading in the direction we want. But more often the answer is unsatisfying and leaves us not knowing if what we want in the relationship will ever happen, usually because our partner doesn’t know. Living with such uncertainty can cause pain and anxiety, and lead to insecurity and resentment.

What’s most important is that we own our truth, which is our desire for more commitment.

We must stop judging and blaming ourselves for needing what we desire. For years I have heard women condemn themselves for being too demanding or not being able to figure out how to be OK without what they fundamentally want. I have heard every possible rationalization for why it makes sense to do without something we fundamentally want. In the context of a relationship, there is nothing “Buddhist” about not being able to make plans for the future, or with someone who is not sure about us. Even if everything is impermanent in the absolute sense, we still need to create places of security in our lives, where the ground is solid—or at least, as solid as it can be.

We get certain things in relationships and give up others. When we’re not getting the commitment we want, we must ask ourselves if the balance is workable, that is: Am I receiving enough to give up what I’m giving up?

We can only answer this one moment at a time, and the answer changes over time. We know we must leave when we can no longer tolerate or bear the situation we are in, when the equation shifts and it’s too painful to do without what we really want. We leave when the unrealized desire for commitment becomes resentment, and we can no longer enjoy or appreciate what our partner offers.

Source: Flickr Creative Commons

No one can answer the question of whether to stay or leave for us. But when we stop judging ourselves for wanting what we want, and dive deep into our own truth, we will find the answer we’re looking for.

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For one thing, our self-care approach in this culture is made out of the wrong fabric, or if not the wrong fabric, one with the wrong texture.  We’re taught that self-care is an external process; it means getting a massage, making time to eat lunch sitting down, taking a walk, putting on our oxygen mask first.  All are valid self-caring actions which serve our wellbeing.  And yet, a far deeper and richer level of self-care exists, one which is not about externally doing for ourselves, but rather about being with ourselves, internally, in a particular kind of way…

Read more:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/inviting-monkey-tea/201712/are-you-your-own-side

The post Are You On Your Own Side? How to Take Good Care of Yourself From the Inside Out appeared first on Nancy Colier.

vimeo.com/247705768

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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.

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