True Refuge: Finding Peace and Freedom in Your Own Awakened Heart (11 page)

“Tara, while I was quiet just then, the sadness turned into a kind of sweet, peaceful energy and it was like my whole body was tingling with it. I felt totally alive … for the first time. Then I heard a different voice, like the gentlest whisper, blessing me. It was giving me permission to live my life from this place of aliveness. I had a glimmer that this whisper was coming from the real me, the living spirit that has been invisible all these years, but never actually went away.” Jane's eyes glistened with tears. “More than anything, I want to trust this spirit, to stay connected with who I am.”

Jane was on the path of true refuge. By investigating her body's experience with a committed, intimate presence she had tapped into her unlived life. Now a wise and hopeful voice was emerging from her depth, one that expressed an awakening from years of troubled sleep.

Planting Ourselves in the Universe

In the early part of the last century, D. H. Lawrence found himself in a society devastated by war, a landscape despoiled by industrialism, and a culture suffering from a radical disconnect between mind and body. Written in 1928, his words have lost none of their urgency:

When we disconnect from the body, we are pulling away from the energetic expression of our being that connects us with all of life. By imagining a great tree uprooted from the earth, we can sense the unnaturalness, violence, and suffering of this severed belonging. The experience of being uprooted is a kind of dying. Jane felt it as an “inner deadness,” and described herself as mechanically trying to keep herself going day after day. Some people tell me about the despair of not really living, of skimming the surface. Others have the perpetual sense of a threat lurking around the corner. And many speak of being weighed down by a deep tiredness. It takes energy to continually run away from pain and tension, to pull away from the life of the present moment. Roots in the air, we lose access to the aliveness and love and beauty that nourish our deepest being. No false refuge can compensate for that loss.

Several years after that retreat, Jane came to D.C. for a conference and made an appointment with me. I didn't immediately recognize the woman with long, flowing blond hair who walked into my office. Relaxed and smiling, she looked me directly in the eye and joked about boycotting beauty salons. She told me she had continued to practice mindfulness of the body, using the steps of RAIN whenever she encountered her old patterns of anxiety or depression. While she still sometimes became anxious and uptight, her life had changed in many unexpected ways. The most important had to do with her heart: “When I bring my attention to the young girl who got her hair cut and feel her hurt in my body, I sometimes find myself crying for my mom who never really knew how to relax and live life. I feel her suffering in my body too, the loneliness and loss that she maybe never allowed herself to feel. There's room in my heart to include her life, and a feeling of love I never touched upon when she was living.”

Jane and I sat quietly together for a few moments, sharing each other's company. Then she went on: “When I'm present and awake in my body, I'm larger than any old idea or feeling I had about myself. That living spirit I reconnected with at retreat is really what I am.” We sat for another moment savoring her realization, and then we said our good-byes.

Like the Buddha touching the ground, we reclaim our life and spirit by planting ourselves again in the universe. This begins when we connect with the truth of what is happening in our body. The mysterious field of aliveness we call the universe can only be experienced if we are in contact with the felt sense of that aliveness in our own being. For Jane, the simple practice of feeling the life of her hands expanded to include the wounds of her unlived life, and then opened her to the pure aliveness of her heart and body. By connecting with her inner life, by bringing presence to the truth of her immediate experience, she had begun to replant herself in the universe.

Guided Reflection: Bringing RAIN to Pain

We release the suffering that can accompany pain by relaxing our resistance to unpleasant sensations and meeting them with an open, allowing presence. This meditation is especially useful when you are currently experiencing physical pain. If at any point the pain feels like too much, turn the attention with mindfulness and compassion to whatever will ease and soothe you. Then you can return to this direct practice of mindful and open presence when ready.

Find a comfortable position, sitting or lying down. Take a few moments to become still, relaxing with the natural rhythm of the breath. Gently move your attention through your body, relaxing your brow and jaw, dropping your shoulders, and softening through your hands. Try not to create any unnecessary tension in your body.

Begin the R of RAIN (recognize) by scanning through your body and recognizing if there are areas of strong discomfort or pain. If so, bring a gentle, receptive attention directly to the unpleasant sensations. Continue the R of RAIN by discovering what happens as you begin to be present with the pain. Is there an attempt, however subtle, to push it away? To cut it off, block it off, pull away? Is there fear?

Because of the tendency to resist unpleasant sensations, it is essential to awaken an allowing, open presence, the A of RAIN (allow). To establish this openness, you might imagine a great blue sky and let the mind mingle with that vastness. Open your senses to include sounds, listening with a full, receptive attention. As you listen to the sounds, sense the space in which they are happening. Then begin including in your awareness areas in your body that have neutral or even pleasant sensations. This might be your hands, feet, cheeks, the area around your eyes. You might also sense these areas, or your whole body, as an open field of sensations that is suffused with space.

Investigation (the I of RAIN) is a deepening of attention. It begins as you remain aware of this background of openness and simultaneously contact the unpleasant sensations. Let your attention move toward the place or places where the sensations are the most intense or unpleasant. If it feels difficult, take some more moments resting the attention in the space around the area of unpleasantness, establishing a sense of openness. Gently move back and forth, touching the pain and then sensing the space around it, until you feel more able to enter fully into the center of the unpleasantness without resistance.

As you directly contact the pain, allow the sensations to express in whatever way is most natural and real. Where are the unpleasant sensations? What is the shape of the pain? What is its intensity (on a scale of one to ten, ten being strongest)? As you sense the location, shape, and intensity, see how fully you can say “Yes” or “I consent,” surrendering any resistance and genuinely letting this life be just as it is. Continue to feel both the pain, and the background field of sensations and space. What happens to the unpleasant sensations when there is no resistance?

It is natural to move through several rounds of this stage of the meditation. Once you can experience your awareness as the soft open space that surrounds the pain, move again toward the center of the unpleasant sensations. Let your awareness soak into the pain like the gentlest falling rain. Is it possible to merge your attention into the center or heart of the pain? Can you sense the openness diffusing the painful sensations? Or can you sense the painful sensations dissolving into openness? Continue to notice what is happening as you surrender over and over into the experience of the painful sensations.

Let the body become like open space, with plenty of room for unpleasant sensations to arise and dissolve, fade and intensify, move and change. No holding, no tension. Explore what it means to have a surrendering presence, releasing resistance over and over. When there is no resistance whatsoever, is there any sense of a self who owns the pain? A self who is a victim of the pain? Discover how you can inhabit the sea of awareness, including the changing waves of sensations, but not be identified with them. This is the N of RAIN: Not identified, you touch the freedom of natural presence.

Guided Reflection: The Buddha's Smile

In many statues and pictures, the Buddha is depicted with a slight smile. Research now shows that even a small smile relaxes our reactivity and inclines us toward feelings of ease and well-being. This short reflection can be done during a formal meditation or at any time during the day.

Close your eyes, take a few full breaths, and with each exhale sense a letting go of tension, a softening and relaxing of the body. Imagine a smile spreading through your eyes, gently uplifting the corners and softening the flesh around them. Feel a real yet slight smile at the mouth and also sense the inside of the mouth smiling. Relaxing the jaw, notice the sensations that arise through the mouth and cheek area.

Imagine smiling into the heart. Sense the smile spreading through the heart and chest, creating space for whatever you might be feeling. Allow the sensations and feelings in the heart area to float in this tender space.

Imagine smiling into the navel area, letting the curve of a smile spread through the belly, softening any tension there. Notice awareness awakening deep inside the torso.

Now imagine the atmosphere of a smile enlarging to include your whole body. Take a few more full breaths, sensing the aliveness that fills your entire body held in the openness of a smile. Rest for as long as you like in that felt sense of aliveness and openness.

Near the beginning of his career, the great magician Harry Houdini traveled throughout Europe visiting small towns where he would challenge local jailers to bind him in a straitjacket and lock him in a cell. Again and again he delighted the crowds with his quick escapes from seemingly impossible restraints. But in one small Irish village he ran into trouble. In front of an avid group of townspeople and news reporters, Houdini easily broke free of his straitjacket, yet despite his repeated efforts to solve the puzzle of the lock, he failed to open his cell door.

After everyone had left, Houdini asked the jailer, “What kind of new lock do you have on your cell?” “Oh,” said the jailer, “it's a very ordinary lock. I figured that you'd have no difficulty opening it … so I never bothered locking it at all.” Houdini falsely assumed that he was trapped, and his very efforts to free himself had locked him in!

When I first heard this story, I thought about how many of us, like Houdini, perpetually assume that life is a problem we have to solve. Our challenge is that we are hooked on thinking—it is our way of trying to control life itself. It's only when our incessant inner dialogue quiets that we realize the cell door is already open.

“Lost in Thought”

When a student asked renowned Thai teacher Ajahn Buddhadasa to describe the consciousness of today's world, he answered simply: “Lost in thought.” When we live inside an incessant stream of thoughts, we become identified with our mental creations. We react to the people or events in our minds as if they were real, and we believe that the self portrayed in our mental stories is actually who we are. Severed from the direct experience of the present moment—from the truth that is here and now—
we are lost in a virtual reality.

We're usually aware of painful obsessions like nagging thoughts about a dreaded job interview, or persistent fantasies about having a drink when we've sworn to be abstinent. But compulsive thinking also takes the shape of everyday obsessing, the familiar stream of worries and plans that are an ever-present part of our lives. This kind of obsessing is free floating; it will affix itself to whatever object is available. We might anxiously obsess about an unfinished project at work, complete it, and then immediately transfer our obsessing to what needs to be done next. Or we might have a strong craving for acknowledgment, or a burning desire to buy something new, and after satisfying it, find we are grasping after the next fix. Even a vague sense of anxiety or stress can lead to dozens of hours lost to worrying or planning, judging or figuring things out.

While the intensity of compulsive thinking varies, the common denominator is that whenever we're lost in thought, we are disconnected from our body and our senses. We are cut off from the perceptiveness and receptivity that underlie our natural intelligence and kindness.

In all this, I certainly don't mean to devalue thinking. Thinking is a crucial part of our evolutionary equipment, our primary means for surviving and thriving. Everything we humans bring forth into the world—buildings, computers, pianos, and poems—begins as an idea in the mind. And yet this same thinking brain is responsible for unspeakable violence toward our own species and other animals, it drives the overconsuming that threatens to destroy our living planet, and it generates much of our emotional misery. Just as Houdini locked himself in his cell, our thoughts can imprison us in a painful and sometimes nightmarish trance.

Compulsive Thinking Is a False Refuge

Compulsive thinking is the primary strategy of the space-suit self. For many of us, it is the easiest and quickest way to temporarily control stress or escape from the raw tension of wants or fears in the body. Our thoughts keep us from feeling powerless—we're not just sitting around helpless, we're doing something … we're thinking! As Descartes said, “I think therefore I am.” Thinking continually reconstructs the self-sense, and it reassures us that this self exists.

Yet the notion that compulsive thinking helps us is an illusion. On the most fundamental level, compulsive thoughts arise from fear-based beliefs. When we are in their thrall, we take on the identity of a self who is in trouble, a self who is isolated and endangered. We become ruled by the underlying message that “something is wrong with me,” or “something is wrong with you.” Compulsive thinking keeps us from seeing clearly the root of suffering—our own and others'—and it keeps us from responding to that suffering with the kindness and clarity that can bring true healing.

My students sometimes object that obsessing can be beneficial. “What about creative obsessions—like the poet who spends days trying to find just the right word, or the scientist obsessed with a problem? Don't we need those?” But this kind of focus, this intense, mindful engagement, is different from the churning of obsession. When the intention behind thinking is to deepen our understanding, to communicate clearly, to awaken spiritually, or to nurture the life around us, then our thinking is not primarily focused on protecting the small self. Our thoughts are not circling around what will hurt or help us (or those who are close to us). Rather than possessing us, our thoughts become our tools, and can be guided by our natural compassion, intuition, and creativity.

I'm also asked about situations when we really are endangered. Isn't there a value to compulsive thinking then? Fear-based thinking does serve a critical function when we need to protect ourselves. Just as the body prepares itself for danger by directing blood flow to the extremities and tensing the muscles, so the mind mobilizes to orchestrate a strategic response to threats. But when that orchestration never ends, when we become completely identified with our stream of fearful thoughts, we lose touch with the actual feelings and circumstances that require our attention. Our repetitive thoughts have no exit or outcome. They simply loop. Worse, they lock us into fear.

Strangled by Obsession

I first came face to face with the pain of mental obsessing during my sophomore year in college. I had gone into therapy, and I remember the March day when I brought up my current prime-time fixation: how to stop binge eating. No matter how committed I felt to my newest diet plan, I kept blowing it each day. I mercilessly judged myself for being out of control; when I wasn't obsessing on how I might concoct a stricter, more dramatic weight-loss program, I was getting caught up in food cravings.

My therapist listened quietly for a while, and then she asked a question that has stayed with me ever since: “When you are obsessing about eating, what are you feeling in your body?” As my attention shifted, I immediately noticed the painful, squeezing feeling in my chest. While my mind was saying “something is wrong with me,” my body was squeezing my heart and throat in the hard grip of fear.

In an instant I realized that when I was obsessing about food—craving it, wanting to avoid it—I was trying to escape from these feelings. Obsessing was my way of being in control. But then I realized something else. “It's not just food” I told her. “I'm obsessing about everything.” Saying it out loud unlocked something inside of me. I talked about how I obsessed about what was wrong with my boyfriend, about exams, about what to do for spring break, about when to fit in a run. I obsessed about what I'd tell her at our next therapy session. And most of all, my tireless inner critic obsessed about my own failings: I'd never change; I'd never like myself; others wouldn't want to be close to me.

After pouring all this out, my mind started scratching around again—this time for a new strategy for changing my obsessive self. When I started down that track, my therapist simply smiled and said kindly: “If you can notice when you're obsessing and then feel what's going on in your body, you'll eventually find peace of mind.”

During the weeks that followed, I kept track of my obsessing. When I caught myself planning and judging and managing, I would note that I was obsessing, try to stop, and then ask how I was feeling in my body. Whatever the particular focus of my thoughts, I'd find a restless, anxious feeling—the same squeezing grip I had felt in my therapist's office. While I didn't like my obsessing, I
really
didn't like this feeling. Without being conscious of pulling away, I'd start distancing myself from the pain almost as soon as I'd contacted it, and the relentless voice in my head would take over again. Then, after a month or so of this, I had an experience that really caught my attention.

One Saturday night, after my friends and I had spent hours dancing to the music of a favorite band, I stepped outside to get some fresh air. Inspired by the full moon and the scent of spring blossoms, I sat down on a bench for a few moments alone. Suddenly the world was deliciously quiet. Sweaty and tired, my body was vibrating from all that dancing. But my mind was still. It was big and open, like the night sky. And filling it was a sense of peace—I didn't want anything or fear anything. Everything was okay.

By Sunday morning, the mood had vanished. Worried about a paper due midweek, I sat down to work at noon, armed with Diet Coke, cheese, and crackers. I was going to overeat, I just knew it. My mind started ricocheting between wanting to eat and not wanting to gain weight. My agitation grew. For a moment I flashed on the evening before; that quiet, happy space was like a distant dream. A great wave of helplessness and sorrow filled my heart. I began whispering a prayer: “Please … may I stop obsessing … Please, please.” I wanted to be free from the prison of my fear-thinking.

The taste of a quiet, peaceful mind I'd experienced the night before had felt like home, and it motivated me not long after to begin spiritual practice. In the years since, I've become increasingly free from the grip of obsessive thinking, but awakening from this mental trance has been slower than I initially imagined. Obsessive thinking is a tenacious addiction. Yet like all facets of trance, it responds to awareness—to an interested, good-humored, forgiving presence. We can listen to the energies behind our obsessive thinking, respond to what needs attention, and spend less and less time removed from the presence that nurtures our lives.

In the Grip of Emotion

I recently read in the book
My Stroke of Insight
by brain scientist Jill Bolte Taylor that the natural life span of an emotion—the average time it takes for it to move through the nervous system and body—is only a minute and a half. After that we need thoughts to keep the emotion rolling. So if we wonder why we lock into painful emotional states like anxiety, depression, or rage, we need look no further than our own endless stream of inner dialogue.

Modern neuroscience has discovered a fundamental truth:
Neurons that fire together, wire together.
When we rehearse a looping set of thoughts and emotions, we create deeply grooved patterns of emotional reactivity. This means that the more you think and rethink about certain experiences, the stronger the memory and the more easily activated the related feelings become. For example, if a young girl asks her father for help and he either ignores her or reacts with irritation, the emotional pain of rejection may become linked with any number of thoughts or beliefs: “I'm not loved,” “I'm not worth helping,” “I'm weak for wanting help,” “It's dangerous to ask for help,” “He's bad. I hate him.” The more the child gets this response from either parent—or even
imagines
getting this response—the more the impulse to ask for help becomes paired with the belief that she will be refused and the accompanying feelings (fear or hurt, anger or shame). Years later, she may hesitate to ask for help at all. Or, if she does ask, and the other person so much as pauses or looks distracted, the old feelings instantly take over: She downplays her needs, apologizes, or becomes enraged. Unless we learn to recognize and interrupt our compulsive thinking, these ingrained emotional and behavioral patterns continue to strengthen over time.

Fortunately, it is possible to break out of this patterning. Researcher Benjamin Libet discovered that the part of the brain responsible for movement activates a quarter-second before we become aware of our intention to move. There is then another quarter-second before the movement begins. What does this mean? First, it casts an interesting light on what we call “free will”—before we make a conscious decision, our brain has already set the gears in motion! But second, it offers an opportunity. Say you've been obsessing about having a cigarette. During the space between impulse (“I have to have a cigarette”) and action (reaching for the pack), there is room for a choice. Author Tara Bennett-Goleman named this space “the magic quarter-second,” and mindfulness enables us to take advantage of it.

By catching our thoughts in the magic quarter-second, we are able to act from a wiser place, interrupting the circling of compulsive thinking that fuels anxiety and other painful emotions. If our child asks us to play a game and we automatically think “I'm too busy,” we might pause and choose to spend some time with her. If we've been caught up in composing an angry e-mail, we might pause and decide not to press the send button.

The basic mindfulness tools for working with compulsive thinking are “coming back” and “being here.” If you recall the wheel of awareness from chapter 3, you can visualize how easily our mind fixates on the thoughts circling around the rim. But when we notice that our attention has left home, and come back to our anchor (such as the breath), we reconnect with the presence at the hub. This builds a critical muscle—our capacity to wake up, to “come back,” when we are lost in thought.