should Archives | Nancy Colier

How to Live in the Real World (Minus One Troubling Word)

kevin — Wed, 23 Sep 2015 13:05:56 +0000

Of all the words that exist in our language, “should” may be the one that creates the most suffering. Every aspect of our life is affected and infiltrated by it: I “should” be, he/she “should” be, my life “should” be, this moment “should” be… Sometimes we utter our “shoulds” out loud, sometimes we think them consciously, and sometimes they are so subtle as to escape even our own awareness, perhaps presenting as just a background dissatisfaction or despair, something not right with the way it is. At the core is always the same message: This [fill in the blank] “should” be different—should be something other than what it is.

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.

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

Are Your Spiritual “Shoulds” Sabotaging Your Spiritual Life?

kevin — Wed, 05 Aug 2015 20:18:26 +0000

A person on a spiritual path should not get angry, and certainly not furious. This was high on my list of spiritual “shoulds.” The problem was that I was on what I thought of as a spiritual path (and had been for a long time) and I still got angry and furious and still, sometimes even acted out of that anger. The combination of my actual reality and my spiritual “should” left me in a predicament. I still felt the feelings of anger that had caused the spiritual “should” to flare up, but now I was saddled with an additional anger, frustration and disappointment—at myself this time, for failing to become what I was supposed to be becoming on my spiritual path. What was clear was that none of it felt very spiritual—whatever that meant at the time.

I was recently meditating with a friend and after we were finished, she expressed great irritation about the heat in the room. And then she expressed great irritation and disgust at herself for being bothered by the heat in the room. When we explored it a little further, it turned out that on her list of spiritual “shoulds” was “shouldn’t be upset by mundane stuff like temperature.” Unfortunately, her spiritual “should” and her reality were also at odds.

As a psychotherapist and spiritual counselor, I hear a lot of spiritual “shoulds,” beliefs we have about what a “spiritual” person should or should not experience or feel. Here are some of the leading contenders…

A spiritual person “should” be:

Happy, calm, peaceful, grateful, compassionate, loving, generous, joyful, unflappable, even-keeled, fearless, non-reactive, patient.

A spiritual person “should not” be:

Angry, bothered by small things, selfish, anxious, irritable, depressed, worried, jealous, resentful, impatient, reactive, stubborn, bored, unsatisfied.

These are just a few “shoulds” that I routinely bump into, but there are many more. Most of us have spiritual “shoulds” whether we are aware of them yet or not. We are conditioned to believe that spiritual is an adjective that is defined by certain qualities (all good ones). While to some degree, living a spiritual path has a tendency to cultivate certain aspects in a person; it is not a ticket to freedom from the full cocktail of human experiences and emotions.

Attaching rules to what “spiritual” should look like and behave like turns the spiritual path into another opportunity to berate ourselves and fall short of an idea of what we should be. When we hold fast to our spiritual “shoulds,” we end up strengthening our sense of lack, and using the path as just another means to try to become a better version of ourselves, and solve our basic inadequacy. When we practice spirituality as another self-improvement plan, we defeat its purpose, by striving to once again not be who we are.

Furthermore, when we hold fast to our spiritual “shoulds,” we tell ourselves that what is happening inside us is not allowed. We reject the moment because we don’t like how it is presenting, and in so doing, we reject ourselves as we actually are. We say this being and this now are not welcome in this form. And yet, this being and this now are what the present moment are made of. The result is that we are pushed out of presence, out of our own being, out of here. It is we who have to go away, not reality. Reality sticks around whether we like it or not. If we are experiencing or containing something that we have decided presence cannot include, then for us, the portal to presence is closed.

It is only through the actuality of what is happening inside us, met with kindness and curiosity, that we can enter a space of loving presence. When we allow what is arising within us, in its full truth and without judgment, we are actually being that loving presence that we are trying to become. We are the spiritual being that we are searching for.

Clinging to a fantasy version of ourselves, and an idea of a magical moment in the future at which we will arrive, spiritually ripe, is fruitless. It won’t happen. We don’t become more spiritual by becoming better and more spiritual versions of ourselves. The only way to arrive at that magical moment and that spiritual you is through this actual now and this actual you. To be a spiritual being is to bring our attention right into this moment, and no matter what we find —beauty, ugliness, rage, resentment, joy, compassion, pain, desire, hatred—to say “yes, this too is allowed to be here.” (The truth is, allowed or not, it’s already here.)

Ask yourself, what’s on your list of spiritual “shoulds”? What qualities, thoughts, emotions or whatever else are you not allowed to have if you want to still consider yourselves spiritual? And on the flipside, what do you believe you are supposed to feel, think, or be as spiritual person? Pay close attention to your “shoulds” when they arise. When you notice one rearing its head, bring your attention to the feeling that is eliciting the “should” or should not,” whatever experience is supposed to or not supposed to be present. Then ask yourself (kindly), if you can just acknowledge that whether you want it or not, this feeling is here. If that’s okay, then ask if, just for a moment, you can stop fighting against it and simply allow it to be here. Can you be here with it? And then finally, notice what happens inside you when you stop arguing with reality, and yourself.

This exercise however, is not an opportunity to pick up yet another spiritual “should.” I am not suggesting that you “should” not have spiritual “shoulds.” Don’t get caught in that trap. When you experience the arising of one of your spiritual “shoulds,” ask yourself if you can acknowledge and allow not only the feeling you believe you shouldn’t have, but also the reactions you have to that unwanted feeling. Don’t resist the judgment, anger, frustration, disappointment, or whatever else arises as a result of your belief that you have fallen short of your spiritual idea (and ideal). These reactive feelings are also included in the space of awareness; give them all a seat at your dining table (as they are already eating!) The spiritual path is one of opening to include everything and spiritual “shoulds” are no exception. The spiritual path is not defined by the color and shape of the stones on the road, but rather by the attitude of the hiker. An attitude of “Yes… I am willing and I want to meet what is truly here,” allows us to drop the “shoulds” and the unending struggle to become a better and more spiritual being. And through that “yes,” to actually meet ourselves as what we are: spirit itself.

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How to Stop Judging Our Own Desires

kevin — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 19:40:06 +0000

So many of us judge the worthiness of our activities based on the nature of the activity itself rather than the intention/opportunity for growth behind it. We decide that we want to study jewelry making, folk guitar, pottery, balloon-twisting, baking, or anything else. Soon after, we ask “What’s the purpose of doing that?” “Aren’t I silly for wanting to spend my time with something so juvenile, useless, wasteful. Imagine doing something just because I want to! What’s that going to do for me?” When we talk to ourself like this, we put out our flame, our very life force. We are constantly categorizing our actions into worthwhile and not worthwhile categories. The determining feature of a worthwhile activity is usually if it will earn money or make us famous or lead to something or somewhere we deem as important. What we fail to acknowledge however, is that which an activity will offer us spiritually or the opportunity it will provide for us to grow. These elements should be the determining factors for whether an activity is worth our time. New activities force us to stretch, to live in the uncomfortableness of not knowing something (and still keep going), to push our edges, to focus, to learn, to be a beginner, to challenge our ego, to experience the small steps of starting from the beginning, and endless other wonderful skills. Is our growth of value? Is our spiritual nourishment of value? Is something that brings us enJOYment of value? Our organic drive to evolve, stretch, push ourselves, learn, re-awaken our curiosity, and all the rest of the best of us, these are what determine the worthiness of our activities. Our experience, our growth, our joy, in short, WE must always be what matters and not the contents of what we do.

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