“They can’t treat me that way! I’m an adult!” [As you stamp your feet and get emotional.]

“Why don’t they understand me?” [As you get all whiny and tragic-looking.]

“They won’t let me lead my life! They are always interfering!” [As you act like a rebellious teenager.]

In order to work with such relationships, you need to get rid of the parent [superior] to child [inferior] approach.

You know you are in ‘superior’ mode if you are lecturing, demanding, or belittling.

We all do this! Our conditioning makes it almost automatic. We see the behavior of others, and rather than simply see it as how another is acting, we take offense, judge the behavior as ‘wrong,’ then judge the person as ‘bad’. Then begins the lecturing while we self-righteously think, “I am doing this for his own good!”

When Grown-Ups Behave Like Teens

Treating someone this way, results in their giving in, fighting back, or running away. All of which are the behaviors of children or teens.

Our initial feeling might be of satisfaction, “I told her!”— but if we think about it, our goal was [likely] not to create distance. We actually wanted to resolve a difference of opinion, so as to become closer! What we did got us the opposite of what we wanted.

You know you are in “inferior” mode if you are thinking: you’d better behave, that you are being “bad,” or you’re feeling the dreaded, “It’s not fair!”

All three reactions are a form of disengagement. You are seeing the other as an oppressor, as opposed to seeing the other as a human being engaged in learned behavior.

Breaking the Pattern of Disengagement

Many of my clients want to break pattern of disengagement, and where they get lost is likely where you lose it, too. So, some hints:

Remember, the only behavior you can control is your own

When we teach communication, we use a specific model—the key is learning to speak for yourself. What tends to happen when you’re using this model is, you speak for yourself while your partner will do whatever they usually do: attack, whine, demand, walk away or something worse. So what happens is, “I said this, they said that, and we got into a fight.”

Now allow me to remind you that learning to have an adult relationship is not easy, and that it takes practice. After all, we got to “now” using the old methods, and those methods are hard-wired in.

So, I suggest that our job is to refuse to be drawn in to a fight or a “one up, one down” situation. How? By being [perhaps] the only adult in the room.

Also by Wayne Allen » Get your relationship off the autopilot

How to Resolve Relationship Conflicts in a Mature way

There is a world-wide shortage of adults. Sure, lots of folk are “age-adults”—well over the age of 18, but few have the maturity of self-discipline and self-knowledge. An adult is a person who stays present with and unhooked by what is going on. Such a person is able to resolve relationship conflicts in a mature way.

Stay focused on how you respond

The Zen of it all is this: Stuff happens and people act as they do. If I keep my nose focused on me, and how I choose to respond, there is never an issue, because I am not choosing to create one! “All it takes is one adult in the room.”

Adults hear what’s being said as just words. Adults recognize the prevalence of the ‘parent to child’ game, recognize their own desire to ‘play’, and stop themselves. Adults do not expect to be reaction-free—the voices in our heads are endlessly stupid, and never stop. Adults let them prattle on in the background, while choosing to respond elegantly.

Accept others for who they are

Your parents will always be your parents. Your older brother will always be…well… older. When they get caught in a power game—trying to get you to do something, act a certain way, be a certain person—they believe they have your best interests in mind. If you react by arguing, whining, whimpering, or rebelling, in a sense they prove their point—“See? You’re acting like a kid!”

If, on the other hand, you hold your tongue and your temper, and repeatedly say, “I want to thank you for telling me what you think,” they just stop and the game stops too.

Related » The game everyone loves to play

Think about your relationships

Sad to say, some relationships aren’t worth preserving. As we grow, our priorities change, and we outgrow some of our friends. That’s OK. If you trust your heart and instincts, you’ll know when a relationship is over.

Other relationships have gone off the tracks. This often happens in families. It takes a lot of effort to let the kids grow up, and equal effort for the ‘kids’ to see their parents as equals.

In this dance, someone has to make the first move, in order to shift things to adult-to-adult.

If your relationship has deteriorated, and you decide to continue to work on it, you need to find your balance. By this I mean that you have to choose to act like an adult no matter what the other person is doing.

You might say…

“So, I’m noticing that we are [fighting, arguing, annoying ourselves over each other] a lot, and it’s gotten to the point where I am not sure if we can develop a mature relationship. But I love you, care about you and want to work on our relationship. So, I am committing to spending time with you, listening to you, and treating you as an honored adult. That doesn’t mean I’m going to do what you say. It does mean I will listen and respond, without raising my voice, fighting back, trying to get you to change.”

[I know this is difficult… I remember doing it with my parents, decades before they died…]

And then, you do it, with no expectations about what they will do.

Accept that life is neither easy, nor fair

Once you truly get this, you realize that stuff happens. People act to provoke us, to attempt to control us. We want to scream, “Why should I have to do all the work?”

Because it’s your life!

What you do and who you are as a person is a 100 per cent about you and your actions. Being an adult is acting from this truth. Expecting others to stop doing what they are doing, to make it “easier” for you, is childish, and simply doesn’t work. In order to resolve relationship conflicts in a mature way, you need to understand that the hard slogging, the difficult task of ‘adult-making’, is all about you.

Conclusion

The dynamics for difficulty are built into the relationships. These difficulties are growth opportunities, and you take advantage of them by not expecting special treatment. Your friends and family are right there, to practice with. Your job is to grow up by finding out what the adult version of you looks like, and then spending the rest of your life enacting that mature person. What did you think it was all about?

This is an updated version of the article that was first published in the July 2012 issue of Complete Wellbeing magazine.

The post How to Resolve Relationship Conflicts in a Mature Way appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

Desire, like sex, is something people make themselves uncomfortable over. Many people are scared of their feelings—of what’s going on just under the surface. We tremble a bit—such is the power of our desire.

Epstein describes Buddhism’s ‘right hand path’ as the path of the ascetic — on this path, the solution to life’s drama is renunciation. This is the idea that desire leads to trouble, and the only way to avoid trouble is to repress it, fight it, ignore it, or meditate it to death.

Buddhism’s ‘left-hand path’ is Tantra — on this path, the things our bodies experience become the tools of awakening. Desire becomes the energy for action leading to transformation.

If you think about it, that’s how we actually use the word.

Desire is the feeling that lies in the gap between what we have and what we want. Desire is the emotional or vibrational pull toward change. Desire is the burning drive to bring something new into being.

Desire is dynamic

The problems come when we forget that desire is dynamic. It’s a driving force.

As we desire, we are driven to make, to create, to merge, to enact. In other words, desire at its best causes us to move forward; it empowers new realities.

Things go off the rails when we attempt to possess [cling to] what we desire. To lock it down, own it, marry it, make it “ours”.

The paradox is that desire want us to get turned on enough that we actually do something with our lives, but the feeling of desire is chargy, and therefore addicting. So, rather than acting and moving on, many attempt to maintain the feeling of desire by possessing the “object of desire”. It’s confusing the feeling with the external object.

Clinging is all about trying to freeze something dynamic — trying to make it “hold still.”

Epstein writes:

“But this kind of satisfaction is impossible because the qualities that we project onto the desired object—of permanence, stability or “thingness”—do not really exist… The disparity between the way we perceive things and the way they actually are is at the root of our struggle with desire. Once we learn to make that disparity part of our experience, however, desire can be a teacher rather than an affliction.” [p 69]

Plagued by clinging

Most of the people I work with are plagued by their clinging.

They are looking for the perfect partner. They are looking for the perfect life, the perfect career, the perfect mind-set. But perfect is a static list of characteristics, and ignores the dynamic nature of life.

My clients tell me they want to be happy. As if there is a permanent state called happiness that someone, with effort, could cling to all the time, despite the reality that all of life is change.

I want to loosen their fingers from the death-grip they have on the object[s] of their desire, so that they can accept the paradox of their desire—you can never hold on to anything, including your illusions.

Buddha on desires

The Buddha said, in the first of the Four Noble Ideas, that “life is dukkha.” Epstein writes that the Sanskrit dukkha, [the word usually translated suffering] actually means something closer to “pervasive unsatisfactoriness.”

An example of dukkha is a potter’s wheel that is off-balance, and therefore always squeaks, annoyingly. Neat, eh? When you are miserable, isn’t that what life feels like? It’s not quite right, annoying, irritating, anger-provoking.

And then, the Buddha said [The Second Noble Idea] that the cause of dukkha was attachment to desire, which is better defined as grasping or clinging to desire. Thus, it is not the desire—the feeling—that gets us. It’s our endless demands for more of what we want, less of what we don’t want. It’s our ignorance—our clinging to our confused mental picture of the object of our desire.

This confusion is captured in the song title, “Hooked on a Feeling.” [B J THOMAS]

Note the lyric, “I’m high on believing that you’re in love with me.” The person is hooked on the feeling of believing, and none of that is external—it’s not about the other person. It’s a mind game—the writer is turned on by his own feelings!

Why suffering happens

Suffering happens as we try to freeze reality.

We feel the heat of desire and passion, and addict ourselves to the feeling. We look at the object of our desire [person, place, or thing] and instead of interacting with “the dynamic reality,” we go into our heads and create a story.

Our suffering comes from our attachment to our stories—our fixation with how we think things ought to be.

We then attempt to make the other person into the thing that we desire—into our very own “it.” We turn a dynamic person, for example, into a category, like “My husband” or “My wife.” We then fixate on our story about “how a wife ought to be” [for example] and make ourselves miserable when the “object of our desire” doesn’t match the fixed story.

People do this to avoid the hard work of relating to an ever-changing reality. And they despair [or change partners] when they realise the futility of this form of clinging, which doesn’t stop them from playing the same game with the next desirable object! The only way out is to find a way to stop clinging.

The Two Paths

The ‘right hand path’ suggests dealing with this tension and pain by rejecting or renouncing desire.

The ‘left hand path,’ being open to desire, is to accept it, respect it, and use it to work with the reality of dynamic living.

Passion, without grasping, is a way to open ourselves to encountering the other person as a real, dynamic human being.

This type of relating is an internal decision to

• be passionately engaged in an exploration of the gap that exists between myself and another.
• explore the gap between another and my perception of another.
• acknowledge that I can only know “of” another—and that my knowing is more about me than about another.

So, how do we open up to desire, after all?

Oddly, it’s as simple as acceptance. I accept that nothing stays the same, and that there is always a gap [and therefore a tension] between what is and what I desire. I use this tension to relax into being comfortable with my discomfort.

As I find the comfort of desire, as opposed to the pain of clinging, I can choose, moment by moment, to be in an intimate, flowing relationship with all of life.

Meditate on this: I am who I am, and my desire is a part of that. If I observe my desire as opposed to clinging to it, the desire will lead me to notice what I am doing, and allow me to step away from clinging to simply ‘being in the moment.’

Life is an endless tension between what is and what we desire. That is the nature of life.

The way to work with the tension is to simply be present with it in a non-grasping way.

Once I see that life is as it is, I can learn to be in my life, as opposed to trying and failing endlessly, to fix it.

Once I stop playing god, in other words, I can simply be me.

Like I have another choice…

The post Understanding and opening up to desire appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

In no particular order, here are a few ideas that just might lead to a more interesting and insightful Holiday season:

1. Examine your pictures

No, really. Go through old photos, either photo albums or digital. Take a look at photos of the people you plan on spending time with. Also have a look at “oldies”, featuring those who are no longer with you… whether dead or moved on to greener pastures. Let your eyes flow over faces, and pay attention to the stories that pop up. Likely, many of the stories will be “inflated”—stories designed to create warm, fuzzy feelings. Others will be “conflated”—stories designed to confirm your worst thoughts about the person featured.

The thing to get is how easily the stories pop up, and how, if you decide to, you can focus on one and really flesh it out. But notice how inflated or conflated it is; how, the more you focus in, the more guesses and judgements pop up.

It’s just what minds do.

Now, take a breath. Let go of the stories and judgements, and have another look. This time, pretend you’re looking at strangers… as if you’re looking at someone else’s family. Don’t try to do anything; just look. This is how we begin to notice our story-making, and how “judgey” we are; we notice our unreal expectations. For example, family dinners with my wife’s family is decidedly different from my memories of my family dinners. And, of course, since different people were involved. But judging one gathering as “good” and one as “bad” would be silly, as it’s based not on reality, but on inflated or conflated memories that only exist in my head. This season, notice what projecting judgements on people and gatherings get you: nothing good.

2. Try a little tenderness

Some years ago, I met briefly with the mother of a friend of ours. She really didn’t like her husband, and especially didn’t like him around the holidays. She had all kinds of stories about how he “ruined Christmas”. My favourite: he was, as we were talking [it was October] at home, putting up the Christmas lights which, she swore, “he always puts up wrong, just to spite me and ruin Christmas!” I said, “Why don’t you go home and help him by telling him what you want him to do?” Silence, with a glare. Then: “I’”l be damned if I’ll tell him. We’ve been married for decades, and he should just know what I want!”

Well, no. Not unless you want to keep your story going.

And many of us do have much invested in how hard-done-by we are. Evidence to the contrary is ignored or demeaned. Because… poor me!

Tenderness isn’t just for meat anymore. Give the drama and “poor me” a rest. Ask for what you want, without judgement or rancour. If person “A” won’t or can’t do what you ask for,  wait for it… ask someone else! Because you’re aiming for a drama-free zone this season.

3. Develop your own holiday traditions

If your family gatherings are warm and fun, by all means enjoy them, and engage fully. At the same time, see about setting up one tradition for your principal family [with your partner/spouse, and your kids, if any.] And if you don’t much like the ‘Home for the Holidays’ tradition, shorten it, eliminate it, book a trip…in short, change it.

In my family of origin, by the time I was a teen I was expected to help out with family dinners. In my wife’s family, not so much. My 30-something niece and nephew and their significant others mostly just sit there. But see? There it is. Everyone gathered, repeating the past, and me, wanting to grouse about it.

Another option, which will happen eventually anyway, is for the next generation to start planning their own events. You know, their own dinner parties, featuring them…

Stop looking backward and trying to recapture or repeat something. Instead, create ceremonies, activities and timetables that are meaningful for you.

Your task is to create a memorable life, for you. This requires actually doing something different.

4. Take it easy, baby

How about seeing the holidays as a time for reflection and renewal? A decade ago, there was a Zen Centre in Buffalo that my wife and I attended as often as we could. They had a Buddha’s Birthday meditation session in December. We went, and sat for some hours. Best gift I ever gave myself. Quiet time, reflective time. A chance to wind down, as opposed to the endless tearing about that the holidays seem to engender.

Not sure how the whole holiday thing turned into an endurance contest, but hey… you can call a halt by calling a halt. Take a break, take a holiday, take some time for yourself. If it doesn’t all get done, who cares?

5. Deepen, Deepen

This season is either a thing to be endured, with a fake happy face, or a time of reflection, self-knowing, intimacy and sharing—a deepening. You pick. You choose. All moments are bare of meaning. We add meaning. Or, we go brain dead and numb and run [literally and figuratively] ourselves ragged as we attempt to avoid the pain we create.

Instead, capture this season and make it your own. Provide meaning to everything you do, real meaning—meaning significant to you. Use this time to deepen your commitment to your spiritual path, and to find more groundedness. This opportunity exists in each moment, and it’s up to you to use it. In the end, your path is yours, and you make of it what you will. Strive for more depth, more understanding. Bring yourself back to bare presence. Invigorate and enliven yourself.

Celebrate the gift of living and being!

The post Going home for the holidays does not have to be agony appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

What is rebellion?

It’s not unthinkingly doing the opposite

One friend is married to a guy who continually lives by his own rules, but it’s rebellion for rebellion’s sake. He’ll go to a restaurant, get seated and then demand another table. He’s highly opinionated, but it’s without thought or consideration. He’s not a true rebel; he’s just annoying.

It’s not “teenage rebellion”

This is a more benign version of the guy above. Teens have a tendency to argue for argument’s sake. The parent says “black”; the teen says “white.” Not because white is correct or even their preference, but because it’s a safe way to engage in anti-parent rebellion.

It’s not just being “against” something

It is impossible to rebel when one only knows what one is against. A woman I knew had doctors for parents. They insisted she be one, too. However, she wanted to be a pianist. They refused to help, and bought her a microscope instead. So, as a teen, she “rebelled” against them by dropping out of high school and getting pregnant. Her next step was to become a secretary and to marry a guy her parents hated. When she came to me for advice, I suggested that all these actions were equivalent to thumbing her nose at her parents; it accomplishes nothing.

I asked her what she was for. She, no surprise, still wanted to be a pianist. We talked; she enrolled in a university to learn music, and became a pianist.

It is impossible to rebel when one only knows what one is against

The act of rebellion begins in the mind

1.  The first step is discovery

Societies prize compliance; the desire to follow the values they promote is embedded in us. Sadly, only about five per cent of the population questions their beliefs. That is why true rebellion is rare; pseudo-rebellion is prevalent, and going along to fit in is dominant. But let’s just say that you’re pulled to question your beliefs. Start by listing your basic beliefs. I call these things “rock beliefs” because they are foundational. Make a list of all of the foundational truths you believe—about yourself and about the world. A hint: think in broad categories. For example, think of people of different nationalities, creeds or races. What comes immediately to your mind? What are the “truths” you know about men, women, business or religion? Carry on from there.

2.  The second step is examination

The best thing you can do for yourself is to find someone [or a group] to help you examine your beliefs. It might be a therapist, a professor, a guru or a rōshi. I’ll use a therapist as an example. A good therapist will help you to challenge your belief system by asking you to examine where your beliefs lead. For example, you might say you want an excellent primary relationship, but have a core belief that women are subservient to men. That belief means you won’t allow a relationship between equals. The therapist will point the contradiction out to you, and ask you to choose. The therapist will not make the choice for you. This is important. For example, many students in college join a particular club and hear endless diatribes about what that group thinks is “wrong.” The student listens, has an emotional reaction, and ends up blindly swapping one set of beliefs for another. You have to choose for yourself. Examination requires patience and trust.

A good therapist will help you to challenge your belief system by asking you to examine where your beliefs lead

3.  The third step is trust

And the person you trust is you. As you start examining each of your beliefs, you will monitor yourself. You will notice both feelings and thoughts arising. The first feeling is often cold fear. You are challenging a deeply held belief—and this triggers the fear of ostracisation. This leads to your mind trying to come up with all of the reasons why you should leave things alone. When this happens, I urge you to persist. Just beneath these two knee-jerk reactions resides a wisdom voice. It will say: “This is who you will be, and how you will be, if you let go of that belief.” Trust that voice. It’s never wrong.

4. The fourth step is to expect external challenges

To continue the pianist’s story, the woman’s rebellion [at 28!] was met with her being cut off by her parents. Then mockery from her husband: “What makes you think you can do this?” It took courage to persevere. Challenges will come from the people and groups that instil or follow the old beliefs. If you change something that others believe can’t be changed, and you succeed, what does that say about them? So they want you to cut it out, and they will tell you they have your best interest at heart, but they don’t. They don’t want their own boat rocked, and believe that bad things will happen to them if you change. Change anyway.

5. The fifth step is to act

Having examined and shifted your beliefs, what could possibly be left to do? Obviously, the doing. An internal shift is nice but useless. True rebellion is active. The good news is that completing the first four steps means you’ve done more self-examination than the vast majority of your peers. The bad news is that most people stop just this side of changing the one thing they can—their behaviour. Complaining about the world does not change the world. Going to rallies and listening to speeches does not change the world. Signing online petitions does not change the world. Acting in keeping with your newly adopted beliefs changes your world. The pianist changed her world at her first public concert, and not a second before.

An internal shift is nice but useless. True rebellion is active

Be the change

Revisit the above points and find a way to be what you want to see. Describe to yourself what you believe and then ask, “How can I live out my belief in the real world?” This is integrity—your actions match what you say you believe in.

The society you and I come from is heavily invested in you behaving yourself, giving lip service to the status quo. And sadly, most of us do exactly that, even in the face of overwhelming evidence that the beliefs they hold so dearly are meaningless and useless. So do the work that is necessary to ruthlessly expunge from yourself what does not work, establish a personal belief system that counteracts the ineffective beliefs, and then passionately engage. Make a difference, and start with each of your interactions, because you don’t need anyone’s permission or approval to transform your own world, one step at a time.

The post A crash course in authentic rebellion appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

A few definitions

Guilt: is often the result of blame.
Self-responsibility: is owning up to what I am doing, and creating for myself. Everything, after all is an inside job.
Manipulation: is game designed to get others to change so you don’t have to.

Ben Wong & Jock McKeen, in The NEW Manual for Life, differentiate between guilt and shame. They write that guilt is always about transgressing an externally applied norm. Shame, however, is related to the feeling one gets when one realises he or she has not been “all that they could be” in a situation.

When my dad finally said NO to my mom

A week ago, Darbella and I were out for dinner with a new friend, and the conversation came around somehow to parents and parenting. I told a couple of stories about my mom, who, along with having a ton of great attributes, was an expert at “doing guilt.” Part of her shtick came from a profound sense of entitlement. Until the day she died, she assumed that she was so “important” that what she wanted should take precedence over the life choices of anyone else. “How can they treat me like this?” was her shorthand for, “Don’t they know who I am?” Growing up and watching mom do the “guilt thing” to get her way steeled me against the wiles of the guilt trap. I still remember a call I got from my mom, back when she and dad were in their 70’s. The whole point of the call, mom being in tears throughout, was to let me know that dad had finally said “no” to her. “I can’t believe it! I never thought I’d live so long! He said, ‘no!’” I replied, “Good! I’ve been saying ‘no’ to you since I was 17. Glad he caught on!” Silence. Then, she changed the subject. Now, of course, if the things suggested by “guilt button pushers” didn’t, at some level, make sense, they’d have no effect on us. But the logic isn’t what’s important. This differs from a request, which goes, “Here is my preference. What do you choose?” With a request, the “requester” is OK with hearing “no,” as their self-image isn’t tied up in what someone else decides.

The woman who was a guilt machine

One woman I know is a “guilt machine.” She almost never comes up for air. She has a picture of how her kids and the men in her life “ought to” be. She seems afraid to state her message aloud; it’s always couched in terms of books, studies, and “logic.” But were she to speak her truth, it would sound like: “I am in charge here. I know who you are, and how you should behave. Your opinion doesn’t matter. If you love me, you will always defer to me and my wishes.” Fortunately, most of the people in her life are learning to deal with her as I learned to deal with my mom: love her, understand her games, laugh, and gently and repeatedly say, “That you want me to be a certain way is interesting. I choose to be the way that works for me. Whether you choose to hurt yourself over that or not is your choice.”

The problem with guilt and blame

My dad was good at dealing with reality — good at dealing with what was right in front of him — good at disengaging from guilt or blame.

But that doesn’t mean he didn’t have life and death challenges

Back in the late 70’s, he was working at Radio Shack, and the store got robbed. Dad would have been in his 60’s at the time. The robbers tied him up with speaker wire, threw him to the floor, and stole his wallet and engagement ring. Then they sat on his back and clicked a gun next to his ear, and threatened to kill him. They left after 15 minutes, and a customer found dad trussed up several minutes later. Initially, dad was really pissed off at every person of the racial group of the people who had robbed him. He railed against “them,” and started using racial epithets. I listened and encouraged him to dump. After 3 months he bought me a cup of coffee and said, (actually, this is the Wayne-speak version of what he said…) “Wow. That was weird. I almost became a racist over the actions of two guys. I could have spent the rest of my life blaming and hating. Close call, eh?”

We are all guilty of pushing guilt buttons

Interestingly, many moons later, that dad attempted to push my “guilt button.” After my mom died in 2000, [as mom returns, in another story] we sent her body off, as per her Living Will, to the University of Toronto Medical School. The doctors-in-training might work on a body for as long as three years. Dad chose not to hear that information. 18 months later, they finished up, cremated her remains, and left me a message that “the family” either needed to pick up the ashes, or tell them to bury them. I told dad, and he just nodded. I told him again. More nodding. A few months passed, and dad began to ask about her ashes. I repeated what I’d told him: her ashes were at a cemetery in Toronto, and had been for some time, awaiting instructions. From him. Dad [who didn’t want to decide] said, “This is your mother. What are you going to do about her ashes? A good son would care about his mother and fix this.” I replied, “It’s not my mother. It’s her ashes. And the decision about the disposal is yours.”

Guilt, interestingly, is always linked to someone not wanting to take responsibility

He tried to pass the buck a couple more times, always using the “A good son, or a good daughter-in-law, would…” We resisted being “guilted” into deciding, and kept inviting him to choose another way. Finally, after a month or so, he got real, and said, “I just can’t decide, and I would like it if you would decide for me.” We agreed, and picked up the ashes. I suggested a place that she loved where the ashes could be scattered. He smiled. “She’d like that. She loved that place.” For me, the difference is in the sentiment. Dad initially tried to play on my emotions. “She’s your mother, and you’re being disrespectful,” was the ploy. The message was that there is a certain way I was to act, based upon some invented societal norm. My message, in return, was to notice, aloud, that dad was trying to use guilt to pass the buck, thus avoiding a difficult decision he didn’t want to make. It took a month, but then dad asked me to deal with it, as opposed to trying to manipulate me into taking over by pushing the “guilt button.”

I long ago learned that giving in to guilt, no matter how it is couched, creates the expectation that you’re going to give in to guilt the next time. Better to be clear and firm, and invite others into self-responsibility.

Unfortunately, emotional blackmail is rampant in our society

Saying, “I’m emotionally upset and having difficulty deciding. Please offer your opinion,” is different from, “If you were a decent person, you’d stop being a jerk and bail me out.” The first is a self-responsible asking for help. The second is trying to manipulate through guilt.

Here’s a last, short example. I saw a couple some years back. I asked them why they had come in. Silence. I asked again. The woman sighed, and said, “I got caught cheating on my husband.” For the rest of the session, she sat in silence. When pressed, she’d reply, “I don’t know why I did it. Everything was wonderful. He needs to move on, and not be angry.” She was stonewalling. She was deeply in manipulation mode, and didn’t want to deal with her choices. Her message was, “Can’t you see how bad I feel? Now drop it, and move on, and let’s get this thing back to the way it was. And if you really love me, you’ll assure me that you trust me.” Rather than be self-responsible and deal with her actions, she focussed on her husband. This was because she indeed felt guilty… over being caught, and wanted to change the subject.

Guilt is an interesting thing. It’s always linked to someone not wanting to take responsibility – to someone trying to use emotions to get someone else to fix their messes. Think about your experiences with guilt. Do you use guilt and manipulation to get your way? Are you victimizing yourself when others use guilt with you? The way out is simple.

Self-responsibility, once again.

As always.

The post Sorry! My guilt button has been disconnected appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

I’d like you to think about your primary relationship. Or better, simply observe your side of things for, say, a week. I suspect that, if you are paying attention, you’ll see much mindless, repetitious behaviour.

It will be things like “tuning out” and not really hearing what your partner is saying [you may even say to yourself, “I’ve heard it all before…”] Or, s/he will do something and you’ll “automatically” be mad or sad.

You may discover that both of you have settled into a “safe” routine and work quite hard at not ruffling each other’s feathers. Or, something comes up and one or both of you retreat into sullen silence.

I’d like to suggest that this is actually a problem of attention, as in ‘not paying any’. Couples in trouble do this stuff all the time, and the only way out is waking up. Because predictability and autopilot do not make for great relating.

Here’s a bit of a running example for you!

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Let’s call this couple Jack and Jill. Jack is 40, Jill is 20, and they’ve been married a year. Their issue: prior to getting married, Jill loved the attention Jack paid to her. After, he started getting really possessive—wanting her “to dress appropriately”, “to be home at a proper time.”

Jill had left home at 16; her father had been cruel and dominating. Guess what? Now, it was like Jack was turning into her father! And Jack played right in, first “suggesting”, then criticising and demanding. When they fought, all there was, was finger pointing and blaming. They were on the verge of separating.

I suggested that they get out of their heads, out of their stories, and relate as Jack and Jill. Initially, they both thought I was nuts—clearly, the other person was entirely to blame! They wanted me to be a judge, and I refused.

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Let’s look at what I suggested that they do next.

Descriptions and Concepts

Let’s start with relating. It’s clear that most people don’t know the “whats” and “whys” of their relationship, and have no clue how to relate elegantly. Think about it: prior to your first relationship, all you knew about relating came from watching other relationships—primarily that of your parents’.

Each parent models how their child relates to: the same sex, the opposite sex, a spouse, their “kids”. You absorbed their way of doing things. But seeing is one thing—doing it yourself is another!

Anyway, so one day you meet Mr/Ms Right, and now you have to paddle your own relationship kayak. With no practical experience.

Most folk have no clue about relating and think it’s unnecessary to go to someone to learn; but then they can’t figure out why they’re always “flipping their kayak”.

The dumb stuff starts happening when the glow of newness [and lust] starts to wear off. One morning, one or both roll over, look at their partner, and shudder: “Who is this person, and what am I doing here?”

Then, the second dumb thing happens: either you try to ignore the differences and difficulties, or you try to “fix” your partner.

Most folk have no clue about relating and think it’s unnecessary to go to someone to learn

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Back to Jack and Jill. Jill had expected to always be adored, and Jack wanted to be endlessly thanked for looking after Jill. But then, as with most relationships, the novelty wore off.

Jill had rebelled at 16, and that was what she did when she felt pressure. Jack would suggest she do things differently; Jill would immediately do something to provoke.

I had to help them get out of fixing and blaming mode.

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I think the “cure” to this drama starts with some reflection. Let’s start with a little exercise.

Exercise 1 – Grab some paper or a notebook, and write down the reasons you are in a relationship. If you aren’t presently in one, and want to play along anyway, just write about a past relationship, or come up with a theoretical list.

Done? Good. Let’s have a look.

First, scan your list. If you were vague, and wrote something like “companionship”, take a minute to flesh it out. What are you really looking for?

Now, put a big plus sign in front of, “To learn more about myself, and to learn more about my partner.” Not there? Hmm.

Let me tell you, in my 33 years as a counsellor, “Learning about myself, and learning about my partner” never made the list, for any of my clients.

What did make the lists?

[Note: this isn’t a complete list, and it’s not in any particular order.]

• I want someone to complete me.
• I love him/her.
• I want someone to look after my needs.
• I want a cheerleader.
• I want someone attractive to show off when I go out.
• I want someone to talk to.
• I want someone to have sex with.

Anything like these on your list?
OK, let me note a problem or two with the bulleted points, and then talk a bit more on “learning about myself”.

First, all of the above non-helpful bullet points are one-sided. It’s not just semantics. People in bad relationships expect their partner to do what they want, yet have a hard time doing the same for their partner.

For example, I have never heard, “He completes me, and I complete him.” Saying it this way would imply some form of equality in the relationship, and that’s not what most people think relating is about.

One-sidedness happens because, at the emotional level, most adults are infantile.

Because of our early upbringing, all of us harbour a deep belief that “I am the centre of the universe, and that others ought to be here to meet my needs.”

We learn this in our first year or so, when it is actually true that everyone around us is totally dedicated to our comfort—to keeping us fed and clothed and clean and, above all, happy. We’re infants, after all, and can’t do it for ourselves.

All that attention becomes a hard-wired expectation.

We get older, and eventually begin to play at being adults. But the belief lingers—we still want to be looked after. “People are here to make me happy, keep me healthy and meet my needs. But my parents refuse to do it anymore.”

The fatal idea: “Oh! I know! I’ll marry someone, and s/he can do it!”

Inevitably, we bump our noses against the person we are in relationship with, and unbelievably, s/he dares to act as if s/he is the centre of the universe, and! s/he follows different rules—and! s/he wants you to look after him/her!

Up come the shields, as each hardens, and tries to fix the other.

If you’re having relationship issues, that’s what your list from the first exercise will point to.

And here’s the joke: there’s nothing to fix, because you’re not broken, not incomplete. You’re just asleep. And all of this also applies to your partner!

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For Jack and Jill, the issue was their clinging to the past—to what had worked for them in the past. Except, it hadn’t! Jack had had several failed relationships: “I treated them like queens!” Jill had run away from home and had never had a steady boyfriend. Their stories about themselves were untrue!

As were their stories about each other, of course! If they were unable to see themselves, what possibility was there that they were seeing each other clearly?

We had to begin to work at stopping the reactions they were both having: he lectured, she rebelled. They needed to learn to sit down, and simply listen to each other.

♦ ♦ ♦

Is there a way out?

Yes. Mindful relating. Keep reading!

The relating part of the solution was mentioned above—using your relationship to learn about yourself. This requires letting go of the need to be right, to win, to be in charge, to dominate.

This flies in the face of everything most folk know about relating.

Mindfulness

Mindfulness is a term and practice devised in the USA/Canada, principally by Jon Kabat-Zinn. He’s a meditator and student of [mostly] Zen, and runs a stress relief project. He recognised the benefits of what he called MBSR [Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction].

He decided to see what would happen if he extracted meditation from Buddhism, and taught it as mindfulness. As Wikipedia puts it: “…He removed the Buddhist framework and eventually downplayed any connection between mindfulness and Buddhism…”

The term mindfulness leaves a slightly sour taste in my mouth as, for me, the Buddhist psychological underpinnings are pretty important. But rather than get into that topic, here’s what I mean by mindfulness, and what I mean by “Relating with Mindfulness.”

Short-form of the Buddha story: when asked who he was [a god, a sage…] Buddha replied, “I am awake.” Being awake [bodhi] means one can see through illusion, to the true nature of things. I would [and do!] argue that awakening is “what life is supposed to be about.”

OK. So, being mindful is all about seeing through life’s illusions. I mentioned the primary illusion above, but I might rephrase it here as:

The primary illusion is “you”. You know—“centre of the universe you”. That’s an illusion because it’s unsustainable.

Every time you try to place your needs and demands over another’s, you see what happens: others counter with their own demands. We hear “no”, go inside, tell ourselves stories, and make ourselves miserable.

In Buddhist terms, when our desires are not met, we create dukkha, or dis-satisfaction. And, because of our infantile natures, we do two things:

1. we crank our heads around, look for something or someone [our partner!] to blame, and

2. we still expect things to be fixed to our satisfaction, because we think we are the centre of the universe.

So, what is awake?

Being awake, being mindful, is: catching ourselves mid-head turn, stopping ourselves from being caught in our stories, letting go of being dis-satisfied, enjoying the joke, and then sharing our insight with someone else.

Well, that last clause is the relating mindfully part.

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For Jack and Jill, the process began with learning to calm themselves. One or the other would raise an issue, and the fight would begin. This happened because each stopped listening to the other, and started defending. We worked on verbal and signal clues [like raising the hand, and saying, “Let’s take a moment, and bring the volume down.”] They agreed to use this as a time to sit quietly.

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Learning to Wake Up

Learn to meditate. No. Really.

But here’s the key, and this is essential: don’t have a goal. Don’t meditate for stress-reduction [looking at you, Jon Kabat-Zinn,] or to relax, or to lower your blood pressure, and don’t meditate [despite this article], to have a better relationship.

Meditate, and you’ll learn to see the game.

In meditation, we learn to sit still long enough to notice [without attachment] the workings
of our mind. Period. We learn to be with our mind, and to watch thoughts float by, [which is what they will do if you don’t grab on and play with them.]

As you meditate, you see that all of your games and stories, all of your blaming and uncomfortableness—your unsatisfactoriness—is a figment of your imagination.

And you notice that what is actually going on is one breath, and one breath.

You have to learn to meditate properly.

You need to come to terms with the reality of our unreality—how we judge, blame, demand—getting nowhere but into a pile of dis-satisfaction. And you see that the thoughts that empower all of this are clouds passing on the mind-screen.

Exercise 2 – Find a quiet place, and sit comfortably. Let’s do this one seated on a chair, unless you regularly meditate on a cushion. Sit with feet flat on the floor, and move your back away from the back of the chair. Keep your eyes open and softly focussed on the floor two metres ahead.

Breathe, and just sit there.

After a minute or two, [likely sooner!] you’ll notice thoughts. Just watch them arise. Don’t grab one, not yet. Let a few pass, and you’ll see there’s an endless supply.

Now, here’s the biggie. Think of your partner, and see what comes up. I’d almost bet a disagreement will percolate to the top; if not, think of your last unresolved conflict.

This time, follow the thought.

But only for a minute or two. Now, breathe, soothe yourself, and let the thought go.

Wasn’t that uncomfortable? You likely tightened up, made yourself tense, and told yourself all of your hard-done-by stories.

Now for the big question: what, in the real world, about the situation, changed?

Exercise 3 – Same set up. Go back inside, and bring that painful memory up again. This time, though, take an internal step back, and see yourself winding yourself up over a non-real movie in your head.

Have a big breath, and let yourself disengage from the movie; then, return to calm breathing.

Congratulations! You just woke up, only for a second.

Now, keep doing that, repeatedly, until you die!

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Jack and Jill wanted to stay together, so they were motivated. Both had actually meditated in the past, so they quickly learned to sit together. This led them to be able to tone down anger or annoyance… they began to look a bit deeper, and unearth
past relationship material—the stuff they wound up over—and learned to let it go.

They did this repeatedly, because dumb stuff tends to repeat!

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Because… that’s the point

Mindfulness is a dynamic process, not a fixed state. We are awakening, moment by moment, or we are not.

Meditating shows us the game, and shows us how to let go of our crazy-making thoughts. But here’s the kicker: it’s useless unless you do it all the time, off the cushion, and especially when bumping your nose against your partner.

The rules of disengagement [the last exercise] also apply when you are in dialogue: you catch yourself winding yourself up, telling stories, having judgements, etc. You step back, and have a breath. And then, you choose differently.

I’m sure you’re thinking that, when engaging with your partner, things seem real.

Well, yes and no.

It is real in the sense that you can reach across the space and pinch your partner, and s/he is right there.

It is unreal in every other sense. If you slow down and watch yourself, you can see yourself inventing meanings, telling stories, etc. When you do this, you are no longer engaging with your partner—you’re engaging with the imaginary person in your head.

What goes on in your head is not real any more than imagining eating a pizza is the same as eating an actual one

To get this, to wake up, you:

1. have to realise what you are doing, and then
2. have to let go of your stories, [just like you do when you meditate] and come back into the situation, minus the stories about your partner.

Relating with Mindfulness

I suppose I could have written, Living with Mindfulness, as what I’m describing is about the whole enchilada, but your relationship is actually a great practice field for mindful living.

It’s great because [theoretically] your partner wants you to be your best “you”, and vice versa.

Awakening is Self-Work

You do this work, and all self-work, for yourself. This is not self-ish. This is wisdom. If you are out of control and acting like an idiot, that’s on you, not on your partner. If you sort your drama out, you benefit [as does the rest of the planet!].

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Example: Next, Jack and Jill learned the Communication Model, which is just a fancy way for saying they learned to talk for themselves. Each took responsibility for speaking always and only for themselves, and learned to ask, rather than demand. Most importantly, they learned to do this for themselves, not to fix the other.

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So, we begin here: the pronoun of your life, from this point on, is “I”.

This is a fundamental shift. You are beginning a path of self-acceptance—who you are and how you do what you do is all you, all the time. Others are not making you do anything, so you need to stop talking as if they are.

“I” is the pronoun of presence. [I’m not going to get into the Buddhist principle of “no-I” as that’s another topic.] As I said above, beyond what your senses take in, everything else is you, making things up and telling stories.

Some people like oysters; others don’t. The wise person understands that this has nothing at all to do with the oyster.

Once you grasp this, you see that your judgements have nothing to do with the person [thing, situation] in front of you. It’s why you and your partner have different views—not right/wrong, but simply, personally, different.

We move past this by always and only speaking for ourselves

Exercise 4 – Monitor yourself. [And sorry, you have to do this until you die.] You need to pay special attention to two things: what you think, and what you say.

I want you to watch your internal and external usage of “I” and “you”. The commitment is this: when you say “you”, if you are not describing what you see or hear, you must shift to “I”.

[The only allowable use of “you”: “I notice that you are scrunching up your eyes, and are looking away,” or, “I notice that the tone of your voice just shifted.” (Not “I notice that you sound pissed off.” That’s a judgement, and is about you and your interpretations. Again!)]

Examples:

Instead of saying, “You make me angry!” [No s/he doesn’t! S/he is doing whatever, and you are choosing your reaction.], choose to say, “I am choosing to anger myself right now.”

Instead of saying, “You never listen to me!” choose to say, “I wonder if you’d like to hear what’s up for me.”

[Please note: this is one aspect of the Communication Model we teach. To learn it fully, pick up my book, The. Best. Relationship. Ever.]

Pay attention!

For now until forever, speak always and only for yourself. This means owning your judgements, speaking your truths by saying, “This is what I believe,” and asking your partner for clarification for pretty much everything they say or do.

We ask for clarification because we barely comprehend why we do and think what we do, and we plainly suck at figuring out the motivations of others. Our beliefs about others are self-serving, and are designed to keep us stuck in our prejudices [pre-judgements]. The only way out is through curiosity.

Our beliefs about others are self-serving, and are designed to keep us stuck in our prejudices

The Joy of Curiosity

Here’s the crux of relating with others: you know nothing! Even if someone always reacts a certain way to something, that is not ever predictive of future behaviour.

Proof: You read this article, and adopt its way of being. If the above were true, you couldn’t change. Or worse, your partner would never believe you could or would change.

Your beliefs about others are just stories, and usually non-helpful.

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Jill began to realise that she dressed and acted provocatively for two reasons: to get attention, and to be seen as a rebel. The truth was, she was a showboat, and the more insecure she felt, the more she acted out.

Jack realised that he really believed that men were “supposed to” protect and take care of women. He liked to feel like a white knight.

Both realised that they blamed the other for their discomfort with themselves! Which is pretty common. It took a while, but soon, their favourite line was, “Boy, am I ever getting myself wound up about [whatever], and I’m about to blame you!”

♦ ♦ ♦

So, with your primary partner, and later with others:

Exercise 5 – Ask questions! But be honest, too, about your silly, silly stories in your head.

“I see you tightening your eyes, and the story I am telling myself is that you are angry, so I’m gearing up for a fight. But I’m not mind reading anymore, so let me ask, ‘What’s up for you right now?’”

Because, curiosity!

Relating is a Mirror

Here’s the best reason for being in an Elegant, Intimate Relationship [according to me]:

Relating elegantly means that my partner holds up a mirror for me to see myself in, and I do the same for him/her. My partner is the perfect person to provide me with requested feedback, emphasis on requested. And, emphatically, vice versa. After all, s/he sees me being me, all the time.

The time for establishing “mirroring” is any time there’s a quiet moment, as opposed to in the middle of a fight.

Here’s an example of what such an agreement might sound like: [notice the “I” language]

“I know that when I upset myself I can get lost in my stories, and get lost in blaming people and events for what I am experiencing. In that moment, I lose sight of how much I’m winding myself up. I’d like to make a deal with you. I’d like you to listen to the stories I’m telling myself, and then I’d like you to invite me to notice that I’m winding myself up [upsetting myself, making myself angry] and invite me to stop. And I will do the same for you.”

Now, I know. You’re thinking, “Real people don’t talk or act like that!” So, I’d just ask you to look at how people in relationships you value—the ones you think are great examples—communicate. I’ll bet they are doing some variation of the above. The rest, well, they’re getting by, or are resigned to a meaningless relationship.

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After a few months with the Communication Model, and speaking for themselves, Jack and Jill began to trust each other enough to hear, “You seem to be agitating yourself, and I’m wondering what you might do differently?”

This led to “breathing”, then to dialogue regarding the internal fears, thoughts and issues that were actually behind what, in the past, would have led to blaming, then to a fight.

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Practice, all the time

OK, so most couples have this dumb idea that relating ought to be easy—indeed, if it isn’t, they think they need a new partner. Not so! Living and relating mindfully, like meditation, is a discipline, and any discipline takes practice.

In counselling, we start couples off with a Communication Model, and insist that they practice it for 30 minutes, every day.

Why?

So that they learn it in the normal times, so it’s second nature the next time they have a disagreement, and the situation is ramped up.

Exercise 6 – Have a meeting with your partner, and set aside a time and place to have a 30 minute a day dialogue. The rules: show up, and use “I” language, talking only for yourself, about yourself. In general, share the 30 minutes equally.

When the first person stops talking, the second does not refute what the person was saying! Instead, “Thanks for sharing your story. Here is what is up for me.”

Intentions

Back to where we started. Now what is your intention for your relationship? Go back to your notebook, and write it again.

Hopefully, you wrote something like,

“My relationship is the container in which I best learn about myself, while encouraging my partner to learn about him/herself.”

If this, or something like it, is not the intent for you, and you’re still stuck on being looked after, or right, well… thanks for reading this far.

For those of you that didn’t bugger off, let’s say, for the sake of simplicity, that we agree to call this Elegant, Intimate Relating.

Here’s the deal: from this point on, when you dialogue with your partner, and especially when things are heating up, you say to yourself:

OK, have a breath! [Then, have one, or several, breaths] Think, or say: “My overriding goal is to be present, which means I must escape from my stories. So, as I enter into this heated dialogue, before, during, and after my speaking, I am going to ask myself, ‘What is my intention in saying this?’”

“If my intention is to win, or hurt, or punish, I’ll have another breath, and remember Elegant, Intimate Relating.

“If I didn’t actually say something dumb, I’ll tell my partner I almost slipped. If I did slip, I’ll apologise as soon as I notice, and invite my partner back into dialogue.

“If my partner slips and deviates from Elegant, Intimate Relating, I’ll have a breath and “not bite.” And if I do bite, as soon as I catch myself, I’ll [you guessed it] take a breath, and bring myself back to Elegant, Intimate Relating.

“In no case will I pretend that my behaviour is dependent upon what my partner is doing. In other words, I have decided to engage with my partner [and with life!] mindfully, and that is entirely about me. I will no longer excuse my deviating behaviour by blaming others, situations, or even myself.

“I will continue, with each breath, to get over myself, and get over my delusions. I will self-soothe to eliminate the suffering I create for myself, and I will open myself to vulnerable dialogue.”

Phew!

Really?

Yup. This is what works. And it is work. Endless work, as we fight against our accusatory, blaming, suffering natures.

Remember: Being awake isn’t a place. It’s a process.

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Jack and Jill, years later, continue together. They do sit together regularly, and use the Communication Model all the time. They still react to triggers, but catch themselves. They have a gained sense of humour over their triggers, and continue to laugh with each other.

♦ ♦ ♦

Learning to be Open and Vulnerable

Exercise 6 – Sit with your back against the headboard of your bed. Have your partner sit between your open legs, his/her back to your chest. Reach around and rest your hands on his/her heart.

Hold them for a while.

Then, say: “I am curious and interested in who you are, and who you are becoming. My wish is that you always feel safe and secure with me, just like now. So, I promise to be this open and vulnerable with you, to hold you and your heart gently, and to agree to look at things from your perspective. I can never see things exactly as you do, but I promise to be open to listening, and responding.”

Then, change places, and repeat.

OK, so here’s a taste of what waking up—mindfulness—is all about. Needless to say, shifting your relationship in this direction is not a one shot deal.

Being present with your partner is a moment-by-moment, for-a-lifetime kind of thing

So, I’d encourage you to decide to do just that. Revisit, with your partner, your commitment to talk for 30 minutes a day, and then commit to going deeper.

The “deeper” part is to begin the sharing of your underlying stories, the hurts and pains that have caused you to tighten up and slip into autopilot. You make a new pact, to be open, honest, and vulnerable with your principal partner, about all of it.

Do that, and you’ll find yourself Relating with Mindfulness!

[Shameless plug: as I mentioned above, I wrote a whole book about this, called The. Best. Relationship. Ever. It’s a much more thorough walk through of the above, and includes the full Communication Model, as well as a lot more exercises. I’d urge you to pick up the paperback or Kindle version at your friendly, local Amazon location, worldwide!]

The post Get Your Relationship Off the Autopilot appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

Wabi means humble and simple, a life lived in nature and solitude. Sabi refers to the ‘normal-ness’ of the imperfect: things oddly shaped, lines on faces, rust on metal, moss on paths. Wabi sabi reminds us of the transient nature of living—and that the nature of—well, nature—is imperfection.

Leonard Koren, author of Wabi-Sabi: for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers, wrote: “Wabi sabi is the beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete, the antithesis of our classical western notion of beauty as something perfect, enduring, and monumental.”

Picture a Zen monk, with full attention, raking a lovely garden, and leaving a leaf behind

The leaf left behind is a mark of wabi sabi, and something Nature is going to do anyway, as Nature marks everything with a touch of imperfection. It is only the mad chatter of our minds that tells us that the garden, that our children, that our career or life path, should be perfect. Nothing is perfect.

Now, I’m not suggesting that we shouldn’t try to make things better. The issue is that what is better for me is not necessarily what is better for you. Wabi sabi reminds us to start from acceptance of ‘what is’.

The nature of our universe is a movement toward entropy; things are—and are also winding down at the same time.

Our minds are slowing, our bodies are rusting and wrinkling, and our world groans under the weight of all of us.

One thing I enjoy is photography, and I mostly take photos of people. I notice I am drawn to younger people, yet, once in a while, I’ll photograph people my age. As I begin the cropping and editing, I see the life of the older person in the set of their eyes and in the lines and creases. There is something imperfectly perfect there. What about face lifts, pumped up lips, botoxed foreheads. There’s something artificial about trying to smoothen away the years. But it fits with the urban ideal of youth equalling beauty, where women past a certain age are cast as mothers and grandmothers, not as sex objects. So out come the scalpels, and no one is fooled.

We get caught up in this game because it’s being played all around us.

And that’s not likely to change. It’s why most religions have a ‘monk’ tradition. One description of wabi is that of the reclusive monk, living in a cave, one threadbare outfit to his name. Running from the game seems sensible.

But sabi is there to remind us that really, there is nothing to fear from ageing, from imperfection. And it is as the two terms come together, we see an inclusive path.

In Zen, the chief recognition is that life, with its impermanence and imperfection, is real, [or as it is] and that our misery [suffering, the sense of ‘unsatisfactoriness’, dukkha] comes not from the world itself, but from our minds. We cling to the notion that life should be perfect, and then spend most of our lives in our heads, doing comparisons.

We make our lists [good /bad] and compare ‘what is’ with what we think ought to be. Yet, the ‘way it is’ never really changes, and the more we fight this, the more we disappoint ourselves, anger ourselves, depress ourselves.

The lesson of Zen is that, in the instant when we stop trying for perfection, we free ourselves from the dictates of our mind. Right then, right there, we find the space to stop thinking and actually do something. The monk rakes the garden. Without ‘perfection’ as her goal, she can show reality’s imperfect perfection in miniature.

The Zen life is a moment-by-moment dance between the creative soul and reality of what is.

Back when I was counselling, one of the biggest lessons I conveyed is that the actual situation my client faced was what he or she needed to work on. Not their fantasies about how things ought to be, but the reality in front of them.

Again and again we would look at reality versus faculty assumptions. The assumption that the world should bend to my will because I’m making myself sad is a big problem. My goal was not to get my clients to give in and accept the unacceptable. It was to get them out of their heads and into dealing with the actual situation.

Playing with imperfection

One of my best friends was a vice-president of a Canadian corporation. His boss was a not-so-nice guy. My buddy would go in and ask for something he needed for his department. The boss would yell, swear, scream, and order him out of the office.

He came to me to talk about how unfair it was. People shouldn’t act like that. So on and so forth.

I said two things: you can always quit, and how many times will he say “no?”

Nothing is perfect. His boss was ‘as he was’, so rather than complaining, my friend could walk away, or work with the boss he had, warts and all.

We devised a plan.

My friend went in with a list. He asked for item one. Got yelled at. Instead of leaving, he asked for item two. More and louder yelling. He asked for item three. Silence. Then, “Okay. I guess you’re going to keep asking… go ahead with that.”

He reported back to me. I said, “There! Now you know his number is three! Ask for two things you don’t want, and the thing you do want, ask third.”

This worked for his entire time with the company.

Now, some may think this was manipulative. I disagree. My friend got nothing from his boss by playing the “It isn’t fair!” card. As soon as he accepted the situation in front of him—the simple truth of the inherent imperfection of the situation—another way of acting appeared.

One that benefitted the company, my friend, and his boss.

Wabi sabi is dancing gently with reality, all the time, escaping your head as you have a gentle interaction with ‘what is.’ Imperfection, with wrinkles, age spots, and a slower gait, is quite lovely—just have a look, smile, and act.

The post Wabi Sabi: The beauty in brokenness appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

I want to talk about these self-created obstacles to meditation. It seems to me that there are three ways to stop yourself.

• First, you stop yourself by not starting
• Second, you abandon your practice because of physical complaints
• Third, your mind comes up with mental constraints to get you to stop.

The 3 most common obstacles to meditation (and ways to overcome them)

Obstacle #1: Not starting

This is one of the most prevalent obstacles to meditation. I recommend meditation to almost all of my clients. You would be amazed by the number of excuses I’ve heard for not starting. Here’s my favourite example:

One client was the CFO of a major corporation. He was really stressed out, and had medical issues—he was overweight, he had high blood pressure, and most of his days were a misery. I suggested meditation.

He replied, “How am I ever going to find 20 more minutes in my already overfilled day?”

How can he not?! The way he’s living his life isn’t working—this is obvious just looking at him.

I have this theory: We’ve all got a little kid inside our heads that really likes being miserable. It’s the quite childish voice of all of our excuses. The little kid is also really good at defending past choices.

That’s this guy’s problem—he knows that his life is totally out of control, yet presents tons of arguments for why nothing can change. And of course, he’s right. Nothing can change—unless he changes it.

Many “not starting” excuses are weird. I have a friend who teaches meditation, but won’t meditate when she’s stressed. I find this really bizarre—she thinks that she can only meditate when everything is going great.

She upsets herself, stops meditating, ends up in a big mess, starts meditating, and feels better. You’d think she’d learn, but she has a little voice in her head that says, “Things are going much too badly to be sitting around doing nothing.”

So,

• there’s the time factor—thinking yourself too busy to set aside 20 minutes a day, and
• the stress factor—thinking you’re much too upset to meditate. And there’s
• the stubbornness factor—the little kid is jumping up and down and saying, “I shouldn’t have to do this! It’s not fair! This is a waste of time!”

The way out

I know it’s going to sound pretty simplistic, but the only way to get past the obstacle of not meditating is to meditate. Everyone, me included, can come up with reasons for not starting. I certainly know that I have avoided meditation when I have a headache, or a cold, or if I’ve decided that I’m just too busy.

But I also can be stubborn, and in this case that’s a good thing. I make the daily decision to sit, I pick a logical time, typically in the morning, and then I sit. Here’s the key: I don’t have to want to sit—I just have to sit. It’s not about wanting. It’s about doing.

Obstacle #2: Physical complaints

This is another among the most common obstacles to meditation cited by people. I know this one too. I learned to meditate back in 1968. In the process, I knew if I was going to be a “real” meditator, I’d have to sit for long periods of time in full lotus.

I tried—oh how I tried. And my knees ached. And my back ached. Pretty much everything from my navel-down ached. I’d tough it out, my feet would fall asleep, I’d get up, I’d fall down. And then I’d stop meditating for a little while—maybe a decade.

There are meditation teachers that insist that full lotus is the only way to go. They are of the “no pain, no gain” school of meditation. I don’t buy it, not in the least. The only body I have to work with is mine, and after 45 years, my knees still prefer other postures than full lotus.

Which is why there are other ways to sit. There’s Burmese style, kneeling posture [which is the way I sit] and half lotus. And as an absolute last resort, you can always sit on a straight-backed chair.

The way out

Go find a meditation teacher who will help you discover the right sitting posture for you and your body. They’re out there—just ask around.

The other thing that really helped, happened three or four years ago. We found a new meditation center, and the teacher had us do yoga stretches ahead of meditating. I’ve done yoga for some years, but had never thought of using it specifically to work on my hips and legs for sitting.

He used about five poses, and after doing them, I could sit for 45 minutes with no pain. Pretty amazing. I only had to do the stretches for a year—now I can just sit, and sit comfortably.

So, you might touch base with a yoga instructor, and ask for some poses to loosen things up.

Then, tune into your body. I still feel a small amount of discomfort as I sit, so I run a scan on my body. Almost always, I’ve slid out of proper meditation posture. I may be tipped to one side or the other, or I’m rounding my back, or I’ve tightened myself up. Because I’ve made scanning my body part of my practice, it’s pretty easy to notice when things are out of alignment.

Again, you likely need someone to check how you’re sitting. Meditation teachers are used to doing this, as finding a perfectly balanced posture initially requires a second set of eyes. When in doubt, ask.

Obstacle #3: Mental chatter

Okay, so you’re sitting there. And you’re inundated with mind chatter, and vigorous gripes about sitting. How normal!

Another major issue keeping us from continuing our practice is, “My mind just won’t shut up!” And then I hear stories about all the crazy thoughts that come up for people as they meditate.

The problem comes from a misunderstanding about what meditation is all about. Most people think that meditation is about stopping thinking. Nothing could be further from the truth. We think, all the time. You can’t “not think”. Part of our thinking process involves that little kid I mentioned before. The whiny little kid really doesn’t like sitting still, meditating. There really is a part of our brain that loves the status quo. This part has habituated itself to being miserable.

It’s almost as if this part can sense that things are going to change if you continue to meditate. So this part of our brain starts throwing up warning signals. Complaints. Gripes. On and on it natters, and we obey at our peril. And let me assure you, this part makes reasonable complaints. Nothing outlandish, just endless griping.

The way out

You listen without attaching [following the thought].

What this means is, the real point of meditating is to be with what is happening. That includes being with aches and pains, wacky thoughts, and external distractions. As a matter of fact, the real point of meditation is what I call taking meditation into the world.

The world is a noisy, messy place. We learn to be present and at peace in the real world. This process begins on the cushion. As thoughts come up, remind yourself that it’s natural to be thinking. Take a slow, deep, conscious breath, and just let the thought go. Now, realistically, you might do this 100 times in a 20 minute sit. As I said before, the issue is not “thinking”—it’s attaching to the thought.

We are trying to break the habit of starting down the thought path, noticing, and then continuing anyway.

At the junction point—when you notice that you’re in your head, telling stories—you simply invite yourself back into the present moment. Some people do this by counting breaths, others by running an inventory of their bodies, and others just quietly tune into what’s going on around them.

One of my favourite silly thoughts is trying to guess when “time’s up”. We use a meditation timer that’s on our phones and tablets, and I have done all that I can to not be continually checking the device to see how much time is left. In the early days of using those applications, I could quite easily convince myself that they were broken and that I’d been sitting way, way too long. I got past it. Now I just laugh at myself. I have a breath and I remind myself that I’m there to meditate until I’m done. It’s really that simple.

The takeaway

None of the things that get in your way are that serious. It all really comes down to making the decision to sit, and then sitting. The things that get in our way are all resolvable, if we decide.

The post Overcome the 3 most common obstacles to meditation appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

I’d like to suggest that the meaning of this quote is not obvious. There are certainly tons of people who won’t let go of the past.

These people are obsessed, focussing solely on regret, disappointment, and heartache. Their minds turn backward, and rehash old data—and there they sit, stuck in the mess.

One client’s relationship ended after three years. All she talks about is her pain over the failure of the relationship. She endlessly remembers how wonderful he was, then all the bad things that happened—especially how badly she acted.

She says she doesn’t want to repeat the pain, so she stops dating and has one night stands, and then feels guilty. Then she says she does want a relationship, but continues to pick up guys who have commitment issues, who leave the next day, or week, or month. And she thinks she’s being used.

So, she took up knitting. She sighs, a lot. Complains bitterly. Repeats, “I guess I’m just stuck in my ways.” The odd part is there’s a big part of her that gets off on being a martyr.

Stop playing the martyr

All of us do the things we do because we derive pleasure from them. This begins to explain why people live in the past, or better put, live in their minds, rehashing their stories of the past. They derive pleasure from their self-created pain.

Indeed, many of my clients are addicted to their pain.

It’s just as if they were taking drugs—they keep doing the same damaging stuff, over and over. All that changes is the intensity of the misery-story they tell. “It was the worst, he was the cruelest, I was stupid…” and on and on.

Before I unpack the above quote, let me remind you: nothing about the stories you tell yourself about your past are true.

I know. You’d argue with me. “Of course my stories are true! I was there! I saw/heard/felt exactly what I was describing!” Well, not so.

If you have a sibling, ask them to remember a ‘big’ event. Notice what happens when you compare stories.

Example: One client recalled playing with his sister and brother when he was eight years old. They set a fire on the driveway, and thinking it was getting out of control, my client doused it with what he thought was water. It was kerosene. His sister got burnt.

Here’s the interesting part: 50 years later, the three of them are talking about the event—and each of them thought they had started the fire and poured the kerosene! Think about it. This was a huge, traumatic event, and for 50 years, there was no agreement—each of them wallowed in the pain and guilt.

I said, “Isn’t that interesting, each of you blaming yourself?”

He, annoyed, said, “Yeah, but my version is the right one. How do I get them to blame me?”

Our stories of the past are not clean. They are fuelled by our expectations, projections, and personalities. If I assume that I am a victim, for example, my memories will be filled with illustrations backing my belief. So, what good is the past [and what about that quote?]

Our memories are simply a vast collection of data chunks. We remember in order to learn from the past. The quote might be better put:

“Those who do not learn from the past,
and change their behaviour, are condemned
to repeat it and get the same results.”

The first client, mentioned above, wanted to spend hours telling me how sad and forlorn and alone she was. I broke in and invited her to let me know one thing she did that got her lousy results, and one thing her ex did, ditto.

She replied, “When we started to argue, he’d get quiet and leave the apartment. Or, I’d get up and go to the bedroom and curl up in a ball. We wouldn’t talk for a day or two, then make up, but never talk about the fight.”

There, in the data, was something she can learn to do differently.

I encouraged her to learn to ‘fight fair’ and to communicate. To practise with her girlfriends, to go out on fun dates, for practising the communication part.

As we worked together, if I noticed that she was shutting down and not talking, I’d ask her to choose to ‘come out of her bedroom and talk to me.’

That metaphor worked for her. When she wants to curl up and shut down, she imagines walking out of the bedroom and talking. And then she talks.

Nothing in our lives changes unless we change it, and that includes what we do in our heads.

Here are a couple of ideas to help you to escape from your mental games—from clinging to the past.

[contd.]

The post Playing martyr to your past? appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

Zazen is the Japanese name for seated meditation—the term roughly means, ‘sitting still, like a mountain.’ It is the one common practice that unites virtually all Eastern philosophies.

The Western Approach

In the West, meditation has been adapted for Western sensibilities. Jon Kabat-Zinn, for example, has developed Mindfulness Meditation for use in hospitals. He’s taken Zazen out of Buddhism, [or the Buddhism out of Zazen!] and is getting great results with people recovering from heart attacks, surgeries, stress-related illnesses, et al.

This Western approach has its emphasis on using meditation as a ‘relaxation tool.’ It is thus an ‘add on,’ used to counteract an illness [a dis-ease]. Mindfulness Meditation is a bit like a ‘pill for what ails you,’ and is doled out to help hyper active people run even faster.

Balance Is Key

Our perspective is certainly more ‘traditional.’ We see the issue as ‘imbalance’.

Our view is that ‘quick fixes’ do not address the depth of the issue–our tendency to ignore ourselves, and to bend ourselves into knots—in order to fit some preconceived notion of how adults should behave. We get caught in a loop of excess, and then look for ways to counter the damage.

We consider Zazen to be the foundation from which whole, present, engaged, and passionate living springs. From this perspective, balance is key, and being centered takes precedence over excess.

In order to grasp balance, let’s talk Qi [energy]

Exploring Qi — Yin and Yang

Qi comes in two flavors—Yin and Yang. Here are few characteristics:

• Yin is feminine, passive, dark and deep.
• Yang is masculine, active, light and shallow.

Qi is like a coin. It can’t help but have two sides. A coin is ‘balanced.’ Each side is exactly the same ‘size’ as its opposite, and each represents one ‘dynamic’ of the whole. It is impossible to think of [or have!] a one-sided or imbalanced coin. Qi is always seeking balance.

The difference between us and a coin is that we have the choice of what we emphasize, and because of this, are often un-balanced. In the 21st century, the norm is Yang-ness. The emphasis is on thinking, doing, power, aggression. Yin-ness—intuiting, reflecting, and depth is often perceived of as weakness.

Initial explorations of Qi came from the Taoists

The name Qi was chosen for the ‘unnameable, unknowable force’ that brings the Universe into being. When Qi is in balance, all is well. Awareness and focus is required so that balance is maintained.

From this perspective, each characteristic ‘flavour’ of Qi finds its balance in the other, i.e. dark/light. As for energy itself, the activity of yang is always supported by the depth and fluidity of yin. Yin, in the background, provides the framework for all action, much as a whiteboard [yin] holds what is written [yang]. Not a very Western idea at all. The passive ‘whiteboard’ is seen as ‘just a tool’ for the important stuff. Yet, because of a decided lack of emphasis on depth and stillness, people operating from this ‘modern’ understanding are often candidates for stress related illnesses.

The solution is NOT to slap on the ‘Band-Aid’ of a bit of meditation. We believe it’s to re-balance our priorities by getting in touch with the flow of our energy itself—to intuit its nature and to ease it through any blockages. Zazen is a fine way to do this. We sit to establish a harmonious body/mind/spirit. Zazen is not goal oriented—it’s not really an activity per se—it’s a way of being.

Two Misunderstandings about Zazen

Zazen is not about stopping thinking: That’s impossible. Besides, our thought processes in and of themselves do not get us into trouble. Think of it this way. The activity of our mind is to generate thoughts, just like the activity of our pancreas is to create insulin. Thinking is a natural activity. Trouble comes when:

• We confuse our thoughts with reality, and
• When we cling to our thoughts.

Zazen, then, is about sitting with our thoughts, without either judging them, or clinging to them. Thoughts become like clouds floating in front of a blue sky.

Zazen has no point: We don’t sit to accomplish something. There’s an old Zen story about the student who says, with pride, “I have let go of thinking!” His master replies, “No let go of thinking that you have let go of thinking!”

We sit in order to sit. We breathe to breathe. As thoughts arise, we watch them float by. If we find ourselves distracted, we return to ‘just sitting.’

There is no goal. It’s not about finding an ‘answer,’ and Zazen is not a contest.  Any time we set up a goal, [how long we sit for, how ‘advanced’ we are, how ‘deep’ our thoughts are, etc.] our entire focus becomes thinking about our ‘score.’ We get lost in the act of comparison, even if we are only comparing ourselves to ourselves.

Related » Thich Nhat Hanh Teaches How to Practice Conscious Breathing

Here’s How to Do Zazen

Briefly, there are 4 ways to sit, plus sitting on a chair—however, chair sitting, to my way of thinking, is only for the infirm.

The rest of us sit on cushions or benches. In an article of this length, I really can’t describe the postures adequately, or show you how to use cushions or a bench.

So here’s a video explanation featuring me!

What I can tell you is what all of the ‘postures’ have in common

Zazen is a discipline, and to accomplish what it accomplishes, you do the following:

• You sit upright. Not ramrod straight, but with a ‘stacked spine.’ Your shoulders are over your hips, and you are not tipped from side to side or front to back. In the video, I show you an easy way to accomplish this.
• Your head is slightly down, eyes open, looking four feet in front of you.
• Your right hand is palm up in your lap, your left hand is palm up in your right hand, and your thumbs are touching lightly.
• You are breathing through your nose, quietly.
• Your attention is ‘just there.’ As you sit, you are aware of sounds, temperature, physical sensations, etc. You are aware as thoughts arise. The key: as you bring your attention to any one thing, just have a breath, and let go of thinking about it.
• you fixate on something [you will!], bring your attention back to ‘just sitting.’

If you wish, you can count breaths. Start counting each out and in breath. As you notice you are thinking instead of counting, return to counting, starting at “1.” You can then start counting just the out breaths.

Walking With Awareness

Simply walk slowly, in an upright stance, carefully placing one foot, then shifting your weight, and placing another. Hands are folded across your heart. The idea is to turn your attention to each step, and come back to this as your mind wanders.

Living Meditation

Meditating on a mat is one thing. Living your meditation is another, and taking your meditation into the world is what Zazen is all about.

Once you have practiced a bit, you will notice that your body/mind/spirit resonates with sitting. This resonance can be deepened by bringing presence into day to day activities.

Cook

You might, for example, prepare a meal mindfully. When chopping veggies, chop veggies. As your mind wanders, bring it back to the action of ‘knife through vegetable.’ Keep your mind focused only on the step of the process that you are doing.

Eat the same way. Shift to eating a meal a day with chopsticks. Or, if you normally use chopsticks, switch to one meal with knife and fork. Slow down. Chew. Taste.

Do your work this way. When doing what you are doing, stop pretending you can multi-task and do one thing. With full attention, with calm breath.

Eat an Orange With Mindfulness

• Select an orange. Set the orange down in front of you. Look at it. See how the light reflects off of it. Look at the color, texture, and all the little pores. Really look.
• Now, scrape your fingernail along the skin, and listen to the sound. Pierce the skin, and start peeling, and direct your attention to the sound of peeling, then to the sound of separating the segments.
• Go back to looking—seeing how the orange pieces look.
• Bring the skin to your nose, and smell it. Set it down. Bring a segment to your nose, and smell it. Give it a little squeeze and smell again.
• Squish one of the segments in your fingers, and really feel the pulp, juice, and any seeds or pith.
• Pop a segment into your mouth, and chew it slowly. See if you can take five minutes to eat one segment. Really taste it!
• Take another segment, and rub it on your arm or leg, or just get creative, and use your body to feel the orange section.
• Now, stop, and go either wash or hose off. [I’ll wait until you get back…]

Think about your experience.

These simple games call us to presence—they help us to be in our bodies, engaging our energy, and feeling intimately what it is like to be alive.

From this place of presence, living is not something we do, but rather is who we are.

This wholeness changes everything.

Related » Mindfulness: From Doing to Being

This is an updated version of the article that first appeared in the December 2012 issue of Complete Wellbeing magazine (print edition).

The post Zazen Meditation: Zen and the Art of Just Sitting appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.