Waking Up from the Trance of Unworthiness: Part Two

Posted April 8, 2013

Filed under Meditation/Mindfulness, Self-Acceptance, Self-compassion, Sounds True Self-Acceptance Program

I am loving this Sounds True audio/video series on self-acceptance. For those who learn better by reading, here is part two of a rough transcript of the session with Tara Brach, Ph.D. (I watched on one computer, paused it as I went, and dictated into my phone.) I am breaking it into two posts, as it got a little long. You can still listen to this interview online here. And if you didn’t read part one, you can do so here.

Tara’s first book Radical Acceptance helped me so much on a personal level, and I frequently recommended it to my clients over the years. Her newest book is called True Refuge: Finding Peace and Freedom in Your Own Awakened Heart. I have already read it once, and I highly recommend it.

In this episode, Tami Simon speaks with Tara Brach, PhD, clinical psychologist and founder of the Insight Meditation Community of Washington. Tara has been practicing and teaching meditation since 1975 and has led Buddhist meditation retreats at centers throughout North America. Her audio programs with Sounds True include Radical Self-Acceptance: A Buddhist Guide to Freeing Yourself from Shame and Finding True Refuge: Meditations for Difficult Times.

Tami: Do you think our trance of unworthiness has something to do with our contemporary society, or is it something that’s always gone on?

Tara: I think both. We are hard-wired to feel separate and to look for something to go wrong. It’s called our “negative bias” and it’s designed to keep us safe. But it’s a very quick step to thinking that something is wrong in the environment to thinking, “I’m wrong.” So there is a deficiency mind-set that comes with being human.

But there’s also a cultural component. Particularly in the West, we have very few natural ways of belonging in which we can experience our basic goodness. We live in a fear-based culture that over consumes and is competitive. We are not invited toward feeling contentment. We’re not invited to relax and say, “This moment is enough.” That would stop the economy in its tracks. Our culture feeds the sense that I should be better. I should be more.

The tend-befriend aspect of our wiring is there, too. It’s just not as well cultivated, and it takes training. But once we get that we’re suffering because we are at war with ourselves, there can be a very deep, sincere commitment to embracing our own being and embracing life everywhere.

One way to wake up the “compassion neural networks” is the idea of conscious community: A place where we share our vulnerabilities; we mirror back each other’s goodness; we take inevitable conflicts and turn them into deeper understanding; and we listen deeply. There is a sense of belonging to each other.

Tami: Do you still struggle with self-acceptance in your own life? Do you still go into the trance of unworthiness?

Tara: Yes. Sometimes I will find I am in a bad mood and I’ll scrape below the surface and I realize I’m down on myself. Sometimes I feel I’m falling short as a friend or in caring for my aging mother. Or I think I wasn’t as present for a talk as I would’ve liked to be. Sometimes if I know I’ve hurt someone, it can feel very “sticky.” The difference between then (say 15 year ago, although it’s been a gradual shift) and now is there is less lag time. I more quickly recognize that I am caught up in the trance–in the thoughts and beliefs of an unworthy self. The other difference is that I recognize the thoughts and feelings, but I don’t believe them as much. The feelings are there and the thoughts are there, but the sense of who I am beyond the self that I am judging is much more alive and accessible. I know that there is a loving heart, a being here, an awareness that isn’t so identified with the unworthy self. But I still have to find my way back.

One of the ways I find my way back, and I talk about this a lot in my teaching, is by thinking about this metaphor:

Photo by macinate via Flickr Creative Commons

Imagine you are walking through the woods and you see a small dog. You think the dog is cute and you approach the dog, wanting to pet it. It suddenly snarls and tries to bite you. The dog no longer seems cute and you may feel some fear and anger. As the wind blows, the leaves on the ground are carried away and you see the dog has one of its legs caught in a trap. Now, you feel compassion for the dog. You know it became aggressive because it is in pain and suffering. (I also wrote about this story in the piece, Leaving Judgement Behind.) You go from being angry, to this poor thing.

I pause and get that in some way my leg is in the trap. The thing I’m judging is coming from a place of pain. Then I soften and I can be present with feelings and offer kindness to myself. I’m able to loosen the grip and arrive more fully at that sense of who I am when I’m not trapped in the trance.

Tami: I want to tell people about this tool of RAIN that you are known for. Will you explain it?

Tara: When we’re stuck in the trance, we may have a vague sense that we are there, but it’s so hard to get out that state. We get reactive and we stir things up more. So this acronym of RAIN is this easy to remember handle. When we’re caught in the trance of unworthiness, we can say to ourself, “OK, just pause.”

R, is to recognize what’s going on. All those thoughts of unworthiness are going on right here.

A stands for allow it to be there. We don’t try to get away from what’s going on. We deepen the pause.

I is for investigate. We investigate with kindness. We bring a gentle attention to what’s going on. This is where we start loosening the grip. For example, when I turn on myself for being “the sick person” I sink below the feelings– I get under the story line– and I realize I have this core belief that if I’m this bad at being sick, I’ll never wake up and be free…I’ll never be enlightened. I can really feel the fear in the body.

N stands for not-identified with the unworthy self. It sounds like a dry concept, but it’s very freeing and liberating.

So RAIN is a way to detangle the trance. And it really comes down to a mindful awareness with kindness.

Tami: In classic Buddhist teaching we are taught that we are not this solid self that we think we are. How do you understand this paradox that we have to accept and be kind to ourself, when there may not even be a self there?

Tara: I make a translation and think of it that what we are accepting is the life that’s right here. In actuality, what we are accepting is this feeling, this hurt, this sadness, this fear, this anxiety, this whatever… We are embracing the lived experience. What happens is that when we do this, the sense of the separate self dissolves anyway. All of us are doing this together. We’re all doing this project of embracing the life that’s right here–it’s pleasantness, it’s unpleasantness, and in doing so, we get the liberating realization that we are way beyond any story we might’ve told ourselves.

Read Part One of Tara’s interview.

Befriending the Body

Posted February 16, 2012

Filed under Meditation/Mindfulness

Lily wants to meditate. She’s pretty good at “downward dog.”

My body and I haven’t always gotten along. Eleven years ago I had surgery on my low back. The doc said I would be good as new in 6-8 weeks. It took a solid year, but I finally made a good recovery. Then, six years ago, I started having pain in my hands and arms. I went through a lot of specialists, ruling out everything from carpal tunnel to rheumatoid arthritis. I finally ended up with a spinal fusion at C5-C6. At six weeks post op, my surgeon pronounced me “cured” (his exact word) although I was still reporting significant pain and functional limitations. Long and unfortunately typical story, I’ve seen more specialists, had more tests, and of course, done the usual physical therapy and every other kind of therapy you can name. (I haven’t tried accupuncture yet, but I’m actually exploring that now.) I still have pain on a daily basis. Sometimes it’s a mild irritant; other times it’s so intense it makes me sick to my stomach. The main thing I hate about it is that the pain affects my ability to type and use the computer for long periods of time. I’m writing this post in short bursts, which really wrecks my concentration. (I’ve just gotten a voice activated dictation program; I’ve heard there’s a pretty big learning curve, but I’m hopeful). I’ve also found it difficult to travel. Somehow the vibration of the car seems to make the pain flair. But I did not want this to be a post about pain!

This is about Week 2 of the Sharon Salzberg’s meditation challenge based on her book, Real Happiness: The Power of Meditation. The purpose of the month is to give participants an overview of meditation. Week 1, which I wrote about here, was about breathing. This week was about mindfulness and the body. One of the exercises involved doing a body scan meditation and letting your awareness move from the breath to other parts of the body–head to toe somewhat in order. The instructions are to simply notice the sensations; no need to label them. It’s natural to try to hold on to sensations you find pleasurable, but you’re encouraged to notice them, but not cling to them. If you find sensations that are uncomfortable, you’re again encouraged to notice, without trying to make them go away. You can follow along with her on an audio version on her website. I tried doing this once, but actually found I did better moving at my own pace. Sharon also posted a really helpful post about working with pain that you can find here.

As I did last week, here are some of my observations from my practice sessions:

I have a difficult time not putting things into words. I guess that makes sense with me being a writer. I kept wanting to silently talk to myself while I was doing the exercise. Sharon’s directions suggest trying to move beyond the level of words and just be at the sensation level. This will take a lot more practice for me.
Since I was talking to myself, I made sure to be self-compassionate as I did. When I was feeling the sensations in my arm that were painful, I decided to talk sweetly to my arm. “You know arm, you do a lot for me. You basically work hard all day even though you don’t feel good. Thank you for that.”
I’d read enough ahead in the book to know a few phrases to throw in. I told my arm I wanted it to be “free of suffering.”
Somewhere (maybe in Sharon’s book) I’ve heard the phrases “soften” and “allow.” So I threw those words in liberally. I also tried to “make space” around the pain, and that actually seemed to help a bit.
Sharon wrote in her post: “If there is a whole area that is painful, don’t try to take in the whole scope of it…see if you can find the most intense spot and pay attention to that. Notice if it changes – does it get more intense, less intense, stay the same?” I let myself explore the pain and see that it’s actually quite nuanced. I tend to just say, “My arm hurts,” but it’s much more rich and varied and complex than that. Then the thought popped into my mind, “My elbow doesn’t hurt. It actually feels quite divine.” I was excited about that. Wow! It’s not really my whole arm that hurts.
Another point in her post I found really helpful was to see what we might be adding on to the pain – “future projection, a lifetime of hurt, self blame, etc.” I could write many posts about the “add-ons” I bring to my pain. Right now as I’m typing, I’m thinking: Am I doing too much? Am I going to hurt worse tomorrow? I’m being stupid. I should stop now. I don’t want to stop. This isn’t fair… The point is to be able to separate the “add-ons” from the actual experience so we know when it’s reasonable to listen to the thoughts and perhaps take some appropriate action, and when to say, “It’s just a thought.”
And finally, at the end of week two, Sharon tweeted, “Let the breath lead the way.” As I found the body scan meditation challenging, and I found comfort in her message. All I really need to do is breathe.

By the way, I had no problem noticing the sensation of a 14 pound Bichon on my belly. Does anyone have any tips for dealing with needy, neurotic dogs?

Let It Be Easy

Posted January 25, 2012

Filed under Project Beginnings

photo by Greg Markway

As I’ve been tuning in to my self-talk over these past few weeks, I keep hearing the word, “pressure.” I think I need to do things on a certain timetable and with a certain level of quality. And then that pressured feeling turns into procrastination. In talking with the insightful Beth Beulow of The Introvert Entrepreneur, she suggested something along the lines of, maybe if I loosened the screws a little bit that feeling of pressure would morph into inspiration. I’m not sure if those were her exact words, but I definitely heard “Loosen the Screws!” (What? Me a little uptight?)

There’s a certain paradox in this self-compassion “project.” How do I not turn it into one more thing to stress over?

The other night I couldn’t sleep, and instead of getting all worked up like I usually do, a phrase kept running through my mind: “Let it be easy.” As I said in my last post, I’ve been doing a lot of reading, so I don’t know if I’d just read this (I can’t find it anywhere now), or heard it in one of the guided meditations I’ve been listening to, or just maybe, my “unconscious” knew what I needed to hear. “Let it be easy” is not something I’m used to doing. I typically make things more complicated than they probably need to be.

But in the spirit of self-compassion, I’m going to try to hold this project gently and lightly, like you’d hold a butterfly in your hand. What does that mean?

First of all, I’m going to ease up on any expectation of outcome. For example, I’m constantly saying things to myself such as, “Will this post be helpful?” or “Will this resonate with people?” Originally, I’d thought that one of my guiding principles of this blog was going to be, “If I help even one person, the blog is not in vain.” Yeah, I’m a helper through and through. And that’s a good thing for a psychologist. But there are pitfalls, too. In The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion, Christopher Germer says that “attachment” is a danger for helpers. I think he means attachment in the sense of wanting things to go a certain way. He gently reminds us helpers that everyone is responsible for their own happiness. So I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that if this blog speaks to someone, great. But if I only help myself through this process of blogging, that’s more than enough. (After all, he also says “Self-compassion is the foundation of compassion for others.”)

Second, although I had the intention of this being a one-year project, similar to The Happiness Project and The Shyness Project (it’s popular to have a project these days), I’ve noticed I’m already feeling pressure about time. “Oh no! It’s almost February and what have I accomplished? I’m still just laying the groundwork.” Deadlines are definitely good in that they help with accountability, cut down on procrastination (sometimes), and can enhance productivity. But in my case, I think the most compassionate thing to do is the realize that this has been my Issue for almost 50 years. There is no reason to think that in one year, poof, I will be completely self-compassionate and this will be something I can cross off my to-do list. To quote Germer again, “The path to happiness and well-being never ends. Just when we’ve arrived, a new challenge presents itself and we begin again.” So I’m going to quit worrying about time and simply see where this flows.

Speaking of time, it’s a week until my 50th birthday. I’m excited about an easier year ahead!