I finally got back to teaching on Insight Timer, which was nice. I did a class on something like, What if meditation isn’t supposed to fix you?
It’s a really hard message to sell because the practice is not about fixing yourself and getting rid of everything.
And yet, when you do the practice and you’re not trying to get rid of things and make everything better, things do go away. Things do get better.
But it’s not a guarantee.
I could get cancer tomorrow. It wouldn’t matter that I’ve been meditating for twenty years. I could still get physically ill. I could still have problems.
But the way I would relate to that would be very different than if I didn’t have the practice.
That’s the point.
You have a place to show up, and life is going to keep showing up. It’s going to show up however it shows up.
My kids are always a good example of that. They’re great reminders that life does not follow the path I want it to follow.
One day everything is going great and the next minute I’ve got a hot mess on my hands.
Something happens in my marriage. Something happens in my life. Something happens at my job.
Today I had a really difficult day at work. But I’ve had the same kind of day so many times before, and I always make it through.
I’ve been here before.
And that changes everything.
The practice is not about making things the way I want them to be.
It’s about making room for how they are.
A fancy way of saying what I’ve said before:
Don’t ask this moment for anything.
Just show up and engage.
Whatever is there, there is room for it.
I was really stressed out earlier. I was engaging with being really stressed out. I did okay for a while, then I had to step it up a little and calm things down, and then I went right back into whatever I was doing.
That’s very different from how things would have been before I had this practice.
It’s a wiser relationship to what’s arising.
You control what you can control.
And then you embrace the rest.
The thing we can always have some control over, even though we absolutely get caught, is how we speak and how we act with whatever conditions are present.
So the practice isn’t about getting what I want.
It isn’t about fixing myself.
It isn’t about being peaceful all the time.
It isn’t about never feeling anything unpleasant.
It’s about opening to all of it.
And that’s why I love it.
It’s radical.
Look at the meditation and spiritual wellness world and so much of what you see is: Find peace. Get rid of your anxiety. Manifest what you want. Change your life. Become happier.
And I look at it and think, people are learning about the practice and getting what I believe is the wrong understanding of what it’s about.
You hear about manifestation and the idea that if I just write everything down, make a vision board, and believe hard enough, everything is going to fall into place.
I’m just not a happily-ever-after kind of guy.
But I’m not a depressing, everything sucks kind of guy either.
It’s just that you can’t get what you want and then feel good about getting what you want forever.
Think about Christmas when you were a kid.
You believed in Santa, and you thought, If I could just get that one thing, that’s it. That’s the last thing I’ll ever want.
Then you get it.
And it feels amazing.
For a while.
Then the Nintendo Switch comes out.
And now you want something else.
The feeling fades. The games get boring. Something new comes along.
And this is just how life works.
Sometimes things change for the better.
Someone gets a new job. Someone gets good medical news. Something that looked hopeless suddenly turns around.
Sometimes things change and they become difficult and painful.
That’s life.
So the practice isn’t about controlling life.
It’s about learning how to be with life.
Pleasant and Unpleasant
I’ve started to think more about using the words pleasant and unpleasant instead of positive and negative.
Because as soon as we call something positive, we start making positive good.
And negative bad.
Now we have another layer of unnecessary suffering.
Something can simply be unpleasant.
It doesn’t have to mean it’s negative.
It doesn’t mean you’re failing.
It doesn’t mean you’re vibrating at a lower frequency.
It doesn’t mean anxiety is a demon.
Sometimes it’s just chemicals being released in your body.
It feels unpleasant according to our perspective, and that’s it.
Sometimes things are unpleasant.
And sometimes they’re pleasant.
Sometimes they’re skillful.
Sometimes they’re unskillful.
Sometimes they’re wholesome.
Sometimes they’re unwholesome.
But we don’t need to add all the extra bullshit on top of the experience.
Two Different Levels of Practice
I think there are two different levels to how we approach difficult experiences.
The Western approach is often:
I went through this. What did I learn? What can I do differently? How can I make a better choice next time? How can I move in a better direction?
There’s nothing wrong with that.
There’s nothing wrong with trying to live more wisely or even trying to feel better.
But I think there’s another level.
The Eastern side of the practice asks you to look directly into the nature of the unpleasant experience.
Not just the story.
Not just what happened.
Not just what you should have done differently.
But:
What is this experience?
What is an unpleasant sensation?
What does anger actually feel like?
What does fear feel like?
What is this mind?
You let go of the content and go into the direct experience.
You stop trying to solve the story and investigate the experience itself.
That’s where the practice gets really interesting.
When the Mind Won’t Stop
The mind can become obsessive.
It can replay something over and over.
Why did they say that?
Why did that happen?
What does it mean?
What should I do?
What if this happens?
And then we get angry at ourselves because we’re obsessing.
But even that is unnecessary.
Don’t say, I’m obsessing and I need to stop.
That’s just adding another layer of stress.
Instead, recognize:
Obsessive mind is happening.
That’s all.
It’s a conditioned experience.
For whatever reason—biology, things that happened growing up, the conditions of your life—your mind has been conditioned to obsess.
Okay.
That’s what’s happening right now.
You don’t have to fight it.
You can almost talk to it like you would talk to a little kid who wants your attention.
“Oh, obsessive mind. Of course you’re here. We’re about to go to sleep, so of course you’re showing up now.”
And you can let it be there.
“Go ahead. Keep thinking if you want. I’m going to lie here and close my eyes.”
That friendliness goes a lot further than:
“I need to go to sleep. Shut the fuck up.”
The training is to let yourself feel angry and sad and hurt over and over again so that your nervous system gets used to feeling unpleasant sensations without losing its balance.
Little by little, you learn:
I can feel this and be okay.
Stick Your Head in the Monster’s Mouth
One of the things I love about this practice is that sometimes you have to stick your head in the monster’s mouth.
If something is painful, we usually want to get away from it.
We distract ourselves.
We analyze it.
We suppress it.
We tell ourselves a story.
We try to fix it.
But what if instead you let yourself actually feel it?
Not the story about it.
The feeling.
Where is the anger?
Where do I feel it?
What does it actually feel like?
You can ask:
Where is this obsessive mind?
Show it to me.
If you could show me this thing that is driving you crazy so that I could fix it, what would you show me?
Is it a thing?
Where is it?
Is there even anything there in the way that I think there is?
You can ask deeper questions like:
What is this?
And then just watch.
But more importantly, ask:
What am I feeling?
Because often the mind is obsessing because there is something underneath it that we don’t want to feel.
The mind starts going crazy trying to figure everything out because you feel shitty.
So feel shitty.
Instead of letting your attention go off into the fireworks of the story, bring it back to the shitty feeling.
What does it feel like?
Where do I feel it?
That’s workable.
The story isn’t always workable.
The sensation is.
You are giving the feeling your full attention instead of running away from it.
Stand Around the Fire
An unpleasant emotion is like a fire.
If you keep feeding it, it keeps burning.
But if you stop giving it fuel, eventually it burns out.
The mind triggers something.
Chemicals get released.
You feel like shit for a while.
And if you don’t feed it anymore, eventually it loses momentum.
Then the mind comes back with:
“Yeah, but he said this…”
And there it is again.
That’s okay.
You don’t have to make it go away.
You just don’t have to feed it.
It’s like feeding stray cats.
If you keep putting food out, they’ll keep coming back.
If you stop feeding them, they’ll show up for a while, and eventually they’ll lose interest.
So you don’t suppress the feeling.
You don’t identify with it.
You don’t indulge it.
You don’t add to it.
You just observe it.
“Look at this.”
And there is something amazing about that.
Just having a mind.
Watching a mind.
Watching thoughts arise.
Watching feelings arise.
Watching them change.
Watching them disappear.
It’s kind of a miracle.
The Calm After the Storm
Usually, after you feel something intense, there is a calm after the storm.
Then you can assess how you want to relate to what happened.
You can say:
“This is how I felt. This is what happened.”
And then you deal with the other person’s reactivity.
That’s their problem.
But then you also have to deal with your reactivity to their reactivity.
That’s yours.
This doesn’t mean you never react.
It doesn’t mean you become some emotionless Buddhist robot.
Feelings are feelings.
Thoughts are thoughts.
Sometimes you need to honor them.
Sometimes you need to express them.
Sometimes you need to have a difficult conversation.
The practice isn’t about never reacting.
It’s about understanding what’s happening when you do.
You Can Learn Your Own Patterns
The more you feel what you’re feeling, the more familiar those feelings become.
They’re still there.
They can still be scary.
But they don’t have the same stickiness.
They don’t consume you in the same way.
You begin to develop confidence in your own ability to experience difficult things.
You start to know yourself.
“I know I’m going to say this, and he’s probably going to respond this way because that’s his pattern.”
“And I’m probably going to feel this because that’s my pattern.”
“It’s probably going to go on for two or three hours.”
You know yourself.
And when it happens, you can say:
Of course. This is my pattern. Of course I feel this way.
But you don’t have to lie in bed and soak in it.
You can go for a walk.
And your obsessive mind can come with you.
You’re cultivating a kind, friendly space for yourself.
That’s incredibly important because we shouldn’t depend on somebody else for our own well-being.
Two Whole People
We often think of a relationship like this:
You + another person = whole.
But I think it should be more like two whole people coming together.
You have to be complete within yourself.
Because then the relationship isn’t about filling some hole inside you.
And that raises a difficult question:
Why am I in this relationship?
Not simply:
“What am I getting out of it?”
I think I screwed that up for many years.
I thought relationships were about how I felt in the relationship.
When I first met someone, I felt something.
Everything was exciting.
There were googly eyes.
Everything felt perfect.
And then we started arguing.
Our neurotic stuff started banging heads.
And suddenly I didn’t feel that anymore.
So I thought:
“Well, I’m not in love anymore.”
Then I met somebody else.
And of course, when you meet somebody new and they look at you with googly eyes, it feels amazing.
But that feeling is about me.
It has very little to do with the other person.
That’s a very self-centered way of relating.
However It Is, There’s Room for It
I’ve been practicing for twenty years, and I’ve gone through a lot of different phases.
I’m sure I’m in another one now.
Maybe there will be another one after this.
But right now, the phrase that keeps coming back to me is:
However it is, there’s room for it.
That’s the practice.
Not:
“How do I make this go away?”
Not:
“How do I make myself peaceful?”
Not:
“How do I make my life turn out the way I want?”
Just:
How is it?
And can I make room for that?
Sometimes life comes together.
And then it falls apart.
Then it comes together again.
And then something happens and it falls apart again.
That’s not a problem with the practice.
That’s the practice.
You can’t control whether life falls apart.
But you can learn how to meet it when it does.
You can learn how to feel fear without becoming fear.
How to feel anger without becoming anger.
How to feel sadness without needing to get rid of sadness.
How to experience uncertainty without needing certainty.
And eventually you start to realize:
I know what this feels like.
I’ve been here before.
I can feel this.
I can let it be here.
And I know I’ll get through it.
That’s a completely different kind of freedom.
Not freedom from unpleasant experiences.
Freedom to experience them.