Summer is officially over, even though the weather is still nice.
And I’m trying not to let the leaves that are starting to fall and the cooler temperatures in the evening make me sad, because it kind of means the end of summer.
I used to see fall that way. Everything dies. The weather gets cold. Winter is coming. And I would get depressed every year when the weather changed because cold weather is not my favorite.
But the practice has helped me see it differently.
Instead of trying to “see the positive,” I think it’s more useful to appreciate the isness of the particular season.
We don’t have to like every season.
But there is something special and unique and kind of wondrous about each one.
The weeds grow even though we don’t like them, and the flowers die even though we love them.
That’s just the way life works.
There is a sadness that summer is over, but there is also the beauty of fall. The cooler nights. The crisp mornings. The leaves changing. Apple picking. Pumpkin picking. The fact that the sun hits differently.
We tend to think we have to choose.
I’m either happy or I’m sad.
But we can be both.
I can be sad that summer is over and appreciate the beauty of this new season.
And this is a much bigger teaching than just learning to appreciate fall.
The Problem Isn’t Always the Problem
If we really use everything as practice, we can ask a deeper question:
Why don’t I like fall?
Warmth is generally more comfortable than cold. Life and spring and blossoming are generally more comfortable than death and aging and falling apart.
So much of what we struggle with is simply the habitual way the mind meets the ordinary experiences of life.
We want the things we like to stay.
We want the things we don’t like to go away.
And when life doesn’t cooperate, we think something has gone wrong.
We experience difficulty in our relationships. We feel overwhelmed by parenting, work, money, family, or whatever else is happening.
And we think:
Something is wrong.
I must be doing something wrong.
My relationship is rocky.
I’m struggling with my kids.
Everyone else seems happy.
Why can’t my life just be easier?
But what if this is just the stuff of life?
Life isn’t permanently happy.
There are bumps in the road. People change. Relationships change. We change.
You can get together with someone and fall in love with a particular version of them, but life doesn’t stay still. Nothing stays the same.
Sometimes you fall out of love. Sometimes you don’t.
Sometimes what is needed isn’t an escape but more room for how the other person is.
That’s what I mean when I say:
However it is, there’s room for it.
That doesn’t mean you blindly accept everything.
It doesn’t mean you stay in a miserable relationship.
It doesn’t mean you stop trying to make your life better.
It means that whatever is happening right now is the only set of ingredients you have to work with.
You can wish they were different.
You can bang your head against the wall.
You can pray for something else.
You can try to control everything.
But none of that changes what is actually here.
And the good news is that life changes.
Maybe you’re having a hard time now.
It won’t always be this way.
It could get harder. It could get easier.
That’s the uncertainty of life.
So the question becomes:
How do I settle into the life that I actually have?
How do I change my relationship to my thoughts, my reactions, my emotions, and my circumstances so that I can navigate my life with more clarity and compassion?
There Is No Happily Ever After
I don’t think meditation is about finding a way to make life fall into a beautiful little happily-ever-after bubble where everything is good and you’re comfortable all the time.
That’s not real life.
I’m not saying life is all bad either.
There is a time to grieve and a time to feel joy. A time for beginnings and a time for endings.
There is pain.
There is difficulty.
Things change.
Things end.
We can’t hold on to anything permanently.
These aren’t pessimistic ideas. They’re basic facts about being alive.
And when we can actually accept that this is reality, something interesting happens.
We can find a place of ease within reality rather than constantly trying to escape it.
I sometimes call this a profound okay-ness.
Not necessarily feeling good.
Not pretending everything is fine.
But a place of refuge underneath the changing conditions of your life.
A place that can hold the anxiety, the stress, the frustration, the grief, the anger, the joy, the uncertainty—all of it.
One sentence I recently came across summed this up beautifully:
Friendliness toward ourselves and compassion toward others.
That, to me, is the heart of the practice.
Unconditional friendliness toward our lives.
And, more importantly, unconditional friendliness toward ourselves.
What Happens When We Don’t Want to Feel?
A lot of the problems in our lives come from simply running away from our lives.
The second we’re uncomfortable, our habits get triggered.
We blame.
We project.
We avoid.
We defend.
We attack.
We try to control.
We try to make the uncomfortable thing disappear.
Relationships are difficult, but they can also be incredibly healing because they point directly at the places where we’re stuck.
Sometimes we end up with someone who embodies the very thing we’re most afraid of.
For me, one of my deepest fears has been not being liked.
So I might avoid telling someone how I really feel. I might not call someone out when they hurt my feelings.
My wife, on the other hand, has no problem doing that.
Complete opposites.
And that’s part of what can make relationships so attractive and so difficult.
The thing that scares me is also the thing that can help me grow.
It brings me face-to-face with the possibility of being disliked, of being rejected, of feeling unlovable.
The practice isn’t about getting rid of that fear.
It’s about learning to see it clearly enough that it doesn’t have to run my life.
I might still feel nervous about telling someone something difficult.
I might still feel afraid that they won’t like me.
But I can say it anyway.
And I can try to say it in a way that’s wise, kind, and appropriate for that particular person in that particular moment.
The fear doesn’t have to disappear first.
What If You Could Tolerate What You Feel?
Think about this:
If we were able to tolerate whatever we felt, what problems would we have?
Why do we hate that person at work?
Sometimes it’s not really because of the person.
It’s because when we’re around them, we feel bad.
I’m not saying the other person can’t be a secondary cause. Of course they can.
But then we can’t tolerate our own feelings, so we make those feelings their problem.
How do I get rid of this person?
How do I avoid them?
How do I make them change?
We do the same thing with our kids, our spouses, our parents, our friends.
They make us feel bad, and we don’t want to feel bad.
So we decide they’re the problem.
But what if the deeper problem is that we can’t tolerate being uncomfortable?
This is why meditation is difficult.
And it’s why there is no quick fix.
A lot of people start meditating because they think they’re going to feel awesome.
And sometimes you do feel good.
I feel great when I meditate.
But it’s not magical bliss.
Sometimes it’s just the feeling of:
Okay. I’m doing something deep and important.
And it might not feel good every time.
It might not show a benefit immediately.
But something is happening.
Because showing up every day and sitting with yourself no matter what is actually a pretty radical thing for a human being to do.
Anxiety, Have a Seat
Our minds are constantly doing the same thing.
If I feel good, I want to keep it at all costs.
If I feel bad, I want to get away from it at all costs.
And then we bring that exact same pattern into meditation.
We sit down and feel peaceful.
Wow, this feels great. How do I keep this?
Then the mind gets busy.
Oh my God. I hate sitting still.
And we decide:
This practice sucks. Meditation isn’t working for me.
But maybe nothing has gone wrong.
Maybe you’re simply seeing your habitual relationship with discomfort.
The practice itself is incredibly simple.
Sit there.
If anxiety shows up:
Anxiety, good to see you today. Have a seat with me.
If the mind is busy:
Oh, busy mind. You don’t want to settle down today? Okay. Let’s see what a busy mind does.
What does it feel like?
Where do I feel it in my body?
Is there tightness in my chest?
A squeezing in my throat?
A churning in my stomach?
An ache somewhere?
We don’t have to intellectually figure it out.
We can actually feel it.
And become curious.
What happens if I let myself feel this?
That’s unconditional friendliness.
It’s incredibly simple.
But it’s not easy.
Treat Your Pain Like a Three-Year-Old
One of my favorite analogies is to think of anxiety, overwhelm, frustration, addiction, anger—whatever we’re struggling with—as a three-year-old.
Then look at how you’ve been treating it.
Ignoring it.
Running away from it.
Trying to get rid of it.
Hating it.
Wishing it would disappear.
Imagine treating an actual three-year-old that way.
Most of our unskillful patterns are understandable when you look at them this way.
Often they’re younger versions of ourselves that couldn’t handle reality.
Something was painful.
Something was unbearable.
Something happened that we didn’t know how to process.
And that part of us is still looking for some kind of loving attention.
But instead of turning toward it, we project it onto the world.
We try everything we can to avoid feeling what we’re feeling.
And ironically, by trying so hard to avoid it, we make that feeling the obsession of our lives.
Everything starts rotating around the thing we don’t want to feel.
So the practice says:
Turn toward it.
Make friends with it.
Sit with it.
Learn to tolerate it.
Have compassion for it.
Because when you can go to that place and stay there, something starts to soften.
You become more open.
You become more compassionate.
And that naturally begins to extend toward other people.
From Friendliness to Compassion
Once you start seeing how difficult it is to be caught in your own patterns, you start recognizing it in other people.
You know what anger feels like because you’ve been angry.
You know how easy it is to get seduced into saying something hurtful because you’ve done it.
You know what it’s like to be caught.
So when you see someone else caught in their anger, instead of immediately thinking, What an asshole, there can be a little tenderness.
Oh. Anger. I know anger.
I’ve been there.
That doesn’t mean you excuse harmful behavior.
It means you understand something about the human condition.
This is the other side of the coin:
Friendliness toward ourselves. Compassion toward others.
The more intimately we know our own suffering, the more intimately we can recognize suffering in other people.
And that softens us.
Stop Trying to Fix the Horizontal
I think there’s an important distinction between two different ways of approaching life.
Most of us are trying to fix things on the horizontal level.
Make my life better.
Work out.
Eat healthier.
Make more money.
Fix my relationship.
Go to therapy.
Get more sleep.
These can all be good things. I’m not against any of them.
But they can only change so much on the horizontal plane.
What I’m interested in is the vertical.
Going deeper into the nature of why we suffer.
Why do we struggle?
Why do we react the way we do?
Why do we need things to be different before we can be okay?
What is creating all of this unnecessary suffering?
And can I find a place within myself that can hold all of it without being consumed by it?
Instead of always trying to fix the moment, we can go deep into the moment.
We can become still enough to see it clearly.
Open enough to feel it completely.
And wise enough to respond rather than simply react.
Meet This Moment Fully
This is where meditation becomes much more than sitting quietly for twenty minutes.
Sit comfortably.
Close your eyes.
And simply become the witness of experience.
Notice how things are right now.
But notice them without the storyline.
Without judgment.
Without expectation.
There’s no right way.
There’s no wrong way.
There’s just the way it is right now.
Maybe there’s heaviness in the chest.
Just heaviness in the chest.
Tightness in the belly.
Just tightness in the belly.
An ache in the knee.
Just an ache in the knee.
A busy mind.
Just a busy mind.
A worried mind.
Just a worried mind.
Be like a mirror.
A mirror doesn’t argue with what’s in front of it.
It doesn’t say, I don’t like that.
It doesn’t say, I wish that were different.
It simply reflects what’s there.
So feel what you feel.
Hear what you hear.
Notice whatever the mind is doing.
And let it do that.
Imagine a house with nobody home.
All the doors and windows are open.
All day, things come in.
Things stay for a while.
Things leave.
But because there’s nobody home, none of it is a problem.
It’s just things coming and going through open doors and windows.
What would it be like to rest like that?
What would it be like to stop creating a problem out of the moment?
You don’t have to fix it.
You don’t have to change it.
You can just let it be.
And there is a tremendous freedom in that.
The Awareness Doesn’t Go Anywhere
Everything changes.
Your body changes.
Your thoughts change.
Your emotions change.
Your circumstances change.
You can have hundreds of thoughts in the space of a few minutes.
You can go from angry to sad.
From stressed to calm.
Your body can go from tense to relaxed.
Everything is moving.
But notice the awareness that knows all of this.
The thoughts come and go, but the awareness knows the thoughts.
Sounds come and go, but the awareness knows the sounds.
Emotions come and go, but the awareness knows the emotions.
The body changes, but the awareness knows the changing body.
That awareness doesn’t come and go with every experience.
It’s spacious enough to allow all of it.
Healthy or sick.
Pain-free or in pain.
Peaceful or overwhelmed.
Whatever is happening, the awareness is bigger than the experience.
And that is a place we can come home to.
A place we can take refuge in.
Don’t make your home in changing conditions.
They’re always changing.
Make your home in the awareness that can hold them.
May I Meet This Moment Fully
One of my favorite teachings from Sylvia Boorstein is:
May I meet this moment fully.
May I meet it as a friend.
That’s it.
Don’t turn meditation into some big, difficult task.
Can I meet this moment fully?
Can I feel what I feel?
Hear what I hear?
Notice what I notice?
Without asking for anything else.
Without adding anything.
Without pushing anything away.
Can I open completely to the moment?
And then:
May I meet it as a friend.
Can I honor whatever is arising?
Can I allow this experience to be exactly what it is without making it good or bad?
Right or wrong?
Can I stop banging my head against the wall?
Even if this is a hard time, can I simply acknowledge:
This is what a hard time feels like.
However it is, there’s room for it.
And soon enough, this will be a memory of a hard time you had.
Life is incredibly fluid like that.
We go through something.
Then it dissipates.
And eventually the whole thing becomes a thought in our mind.
There’s something almost dreamlike about our lives.
When we understand that, we can settle into them a little more.
Whatever You’re Feeling, Use It
If you’re feeling good, enjoy it.
Feel good.
Share it.
Give it away.
And if you’re feeling bad, open to that too.
You can use those ingredients for empathy and compassion.
If I touch my own humanity, I’m touching the same humanity in you.
If I know anger, I know something about anger in you.
If I’ve grieved, I know something about grief.
If I’ve been afraid, I know something about fear.
This is how we connect.
That tender heart of sadness can actually make us love more deeply if we’re willing to touch it.
So whatever you’re feeling, sit with it.
If it’s pleasant and easeful, let yourself feel that.
If it’s miserable, if you’re antsy, stressed, angry, sick, or in pain, soften into that too.
Get to know it.
Make friends with it.
Meet it as a friend.
And see what happens when you stop fighting.
When you stop running away.
When you stop making it a problem.
When you stop telling yourself that it’s negative, wrong, or somehow a lower vibration.
Just let it be what it is.
Nothing more.
Nothing less.
Just what it is.
If I have a scratchy throat, I can experience a scratchy throat.
I don’t need to add the entire story about how terrible it’s going to be tomorrow, how difficult work will be, or how annoying it is.
It’s just a scratchy throat.
And I understand that it won’t be scratchy forever.
Tomorrow it will be a memory of a scratchy throat.
So for now, I can simply experience it.
No big deal.
Rest
It is exhausting to struggle with reality every day.
That little self in your head can take a short break from complaining, whining, struggling, wishing for something else, and pushing reality away.
Just for now.
Stop trying to make this moment into something else.
Just be the space.
The loving awareness that can hold things exactly as they are.
May I meet this moment fully.
May I meet it as a friend.
And perhaps that’s what the practice really is.
Not learning how to create the life we want.
Not learning how to eliminate everything uncomfortable.
Not learning how to feel good all the time.
But learning how to stop abandoning ourselves when life becomes difficult.
Learning how to stay.
Learning how to feel.
Learning how to make friends with the parts of ourselves we’ve spent our entire lives trying to get rid of.
And discovering that, somehow, however it is, there is room for it.