Finding the Center Within: The Healing Way of Mindfulness Meditation. (5 page)

his father came home. He would listen at the door for a minute to test the water before going inside. Sometimes he didn’t go inside at all, but stayed overnight at a friend’s house.

In rejecting his parents, Jerry rejected their religion, too. It was so hypocritical of them, he felt, to spout their Christian platitudes and sit in church on Easter and Christmas with smiling faces, dressed in their best clothes. But Jerry went further. He didn’t just reject Christianity. He rejected God. He rejected religion. He rejected spirituality. He rejected any sense of meaning and purpose in life. He saw it all as childish and hypocritical.

Jerry adapted the best he knew how. He tried to make a family out of his closest friends. This was not altogether satisfactory, however, for his friends had their own families. On major holidays and for birthdays, weddings, and funerals, Jerry’s friends were with their blood families, and unavailable to him. Sometimes Jerry felt subordinate to his friends’

families, and it bothered him. But he was doing the best he could. Find Your Roots

The point is not that Jerry was wrong. His reaction was understandable. In some situations, it may be the best a person can manage. While none of us are born to perfect parents, some of us are born to parents who are so wounded it may be impossible to reconcile. So perhaps Jerry needed to take the stand he took. Perhaps he needed to avoid speaking to his parents and to see their faith skeptically. But even so, can he look more deeply? Can he, at least in memory, acknowledge that they were people, not monsters? Can he allow himself to remember those admittedly rare moments of positive connection? Though they gave him little and hurt him much, someone clothed him, fed him, changed his diapers—enough for him to have survived early childhood’s dependency. And even if he rejects his parents’ religion for himself, can he acknowledge the positive yearnings religion represents for others? Does he have to close himself off in bitterness and cynicism? Continuing in such a disconnected way creates grave risks to Jerry’s well-being. Over months of therapy and meditation practice, Jerry slowly began to heal. He learned to relate differently to his thoughts and feelings, experiencing them more fully and clearly while identifying with them less. He eased his grip on his anger and resentment, and eventually re-01 BIEN.qxd 7/16/03 9:44 AM Page 15

Someone else might make a different choice than Jerry. Someone else might in fact feel that any contact is impossible. Still others may try to reestablish true familial closeness. But Jerry felt this was the healing choice for him. And he made that choice out of his freedom and mindfulness. Not all of us are as disconnected from our roots as Jerry. But most of us probably have some disconnections to contend with: friends who were once close that we have lost touch with, a sibling we have nothing in common with, parts of our heritage that we have rejected. The world being what it is, this is to some extent unavoidable. But the fewer gaps of this nature we have, the stronger, the more resilient we can be.
It is hard to grow tall without deep roots.

Reconnect with Your Roots

Spend some time considering the people who have been important to you. Be sure to think about all the different times and places of your life. Now write down the names of the significant people you have lost touch with. For each one on your list, consider the circumstances under which you lost contact. Was it just drifting apart as one of you moved away? Or was your disconnection the result of some conscious choice, based on disagreement? Or was it perhaps unclear how you drifted apart? Notice any patterns. Try to see beyond blaming either them or yourself.

Then for each person on the list, consider whether you might want to reestablish contact in some way. Form a plan to recontact anyone you might like to. There will be some people you may not be able to contact because you no longer know how to find them, and others who, for one reason or another, you judge it best not to be in contact with at all. That’s okay. Such choices must be made in freedom and not forced. For those you do not want to contact or cannot contact, spend a few moments visualizing them. See them as happy, smiling, and fulfilled. If you have bad feelings about them, release them by reminding yourself that, whatever they did to hurt you, they were just trying to be happy 01 BIEN.qxd 7/16/03 9:44 AM Page 16

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and avoid suffering in accord with their best understanding at that time. Don’t just say the words, but do your best to let this be a deep intention. THE EXPERIENCE (BEVERLY)

I just returned from a hike in the Sandia Mountains. As always, I feel refreshed. My hikes in the New Mexico landscape always help me to recenter when I find myself getting a bit off track. But I had that feeling today: that Where am I? feeling that I sometimes experience since moving to New Mexico. It happens less often now, but still washes over me occasionally. It’s a moment of feeling strangely disconnected from my New Mexico environment, which is so drastically different from where I grew up in the Boston area.

The moment passes and the landscape once again feels comforting and familiar. I stop for a few minutes and sit on a rock overlooking an expanse full of cactus and piñon trees. Breathing in and out, feeling the hard rock beneath me, I meditate on being at home right here.

Negative Emotions and Low Self-Esteem

When the Dalai Lama started coming to the West, he encountered the problem of low self-esteem for the first time. When first asked about it, he did not know what the term meant. And this was not just a problem of translation: The very concept was unknown to him. From a Buddhist point of view, there is never any reason to feel bad about oneself. No matter what mistakes you have made, you are a future Buddha. Nor is this just a philosophical attitude. Tibet had not been infected with the vicious microbe of low self-esteem.

Of course people everywhere experience negative emotions, and Tibetans are no exception. But negative emotions
with
low self-esteem and negative emotions
without
it are quite a different matter. If you feel positive about yourself overall, it is not terribly difficult to pass through negative moods, learn their lessons, and come out the other side, perhaps stronger and wiser. But if you do not feel good about yourself at 01 BIEN.qxd 7/16/03 9:44 AM Page 17

In the West, negative emotions present a special problem due to the background of low self-esteem. Our combined fragmentation, disconnection, and low self-esteem make us less resilient to negative emotions and mood states. They also present some special difficulties in learning to be more mindful and tapping into the healing and wisdom this brings. We will suggest ways to negotiate these difficulties in chapter 7, drawing upon both psychological and spiritual wisdom to help you in your work toward psychospiritual well-being.

Be Aware of Self-Punishing Thoughts

Spend a day practicing awareness of your tendency to engage in selfcritical, negative thinking. Label each instance you notice and number them consecutively: “Self-abuse number 1, self-abuse number 2, . . . self-abuse number 37,” and so on. If you lose count, just start at one again. Do this in a lighthearted way. Laugh.

If you do this deeply, you will notice that many thoughts may contain an implicit self-critical element rather than a direct criticism of yourself. Count these also.

If you have a lot of these thoughts, you might like to continue this practice for several days. See if, by the process of awareness and without trying to correct the thoughts, they automatically begin to decrease. Awareness itself is healing. Relationships: Great Expectations

Nothing affects us as deeply, makes us as happy, or causes us to lose our balance as much as romantic relationships. Love is said to make the world go round, but it often sends us spinning as well. Relationships, particularly romantic ones, often get in the way of our holding to center.

The modern view of romantic love seems so fixed and absolute and is 01 BIEN.qxd 7/16/03 9:44 AM Page 18

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so much a part of the psychological landscape of our time, it is difficult to see it in its historical and cultural context. But romantic ideals of love are not universal, they are a phenomenon of the Western world. The creation of what we consider love in this sense can be attributed to one very powerful medieval woman, Eleanor of Aquitaine. Eleanor (1122–1204) was married successively to two different kings—Louis VII of France and Henry II of England. She used her attractiveness to spur Louis on to dangerous endeavors. As a patron of the arts, she encouraged the romantic poetry of the troubadours, which instilled an almost divinized view of woman as the unobtainable, ideal lady, thereby increasing female power and influence. It is hard for us to imagine a world without love, in this sense of the word, yet it is absolutely an invention of culture, scarcely existing before Eleanor’s time. In contrast with romantic idealism in the West, in traditional societies parents arrange their children’s marriages. Our culturally conditioned reaction to this is generally one of horror. Imagine having to marry someone you had perhaps never even met. Where’s the romance? Where’s the love?

While romantic love can be wonderful, older ways contain their own wisdom, and people who do things differently than we do are not necessarily less intelligent or wise. Of course, marriages were arranged among royalty in former times to cement political alliances and strengthen family fortunes—reasons that from our perspective are horribly crass. But consider the consequences of our ideal of romantic love, of soul mates living happily ever after. For one thing, falling under the spell of this myth, we often fail to see the reality of the other person clearly. And for another, this ethos creates tremendous overexpectation. Somehow by just meeting that special someone, as the songs all say, all our dreams should come true. That’s it. No more strain and struggle and striving. Instant happiness.

This sets up inflated hopes, and subsequently, painful disappointments. What we experience is inevitably at least somewhat different from the happily ever after of fancy. For one thing, all the other problems of life continue. We still worry about earning a living and what career to pursue, where to live and how. We still confront health problems and emotional problems. While it is often easier to face these things with someone we love than to face them alone, the problems themselves do not disappear. Moreover, the relationship creates problems of its own: How to get along with her when she’s grouchy. How to 01 BIEN.qxd 7/16/03 9:44 AM Page 19

Disconnection also affects our relationships. In the village of old, even in the neighborhoods of a few generations ago, people enjoyed considerably more closeness. For this reason, people did not expect their primary relationship to meet all their emotional needs. What you didn’t get from your partner, you got in part from Uncle George or Aunt Sophie, from the friend next door or across the street. Even the neighborhood grocer might supply a piece of what you needed, just by noticing that you looked a little tired. For many people, all of this burden of caring is placed squarely on the shoulders of the primary relationship. And the heavier the burden, the more likely the eventual collapse. This lack of broader social support can strain even the best relationships.

Other external factors affect relationships. If your partner is not happy at work, guess what? You are going to be less happy also. If your partner has an argument with a friend, undergoes a change in health status or earning capacity, has a fight with his or her parents—

all of these things and more will have a direct effect on you and on your relationship.

The hidden factor in many divorces is overexpectation, so that when these predictable crises hit the relationship, we feel something is terribly wrong. For it certainly does not resemble the fairy-tale fantasy, no matter how sound the relationship may be at its core. Because of these expectations, it is all the more important to take especially good care of our relationships. But in practice just the opposite is the case. Somehow the relationship is just supposed to be there for us, no matter how many years of neglect and indifference it has suffered. Often we lack the basic skills for relationship care. And if we have them, we may still feel something is wrong if we have to work at it. For this reason, to be mindful in the West involves special attention to relationship skills, which we address in chapter 8 with both spiritual and psychological practices. Living in the future, becoming fragmented and disconnected, expecting all of life’s problems to be solved by our partners—these are all 01 BIEN.qxd 7/16/03 9:44 AM Page 20

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common sources of suffering. These problems point us all the more urgently in the direction of mindfulness. In the next chapter, you will learn more about mindfulness—what it is, and how it can help you meet these challenges and difficulties. We then move on to the specifics of mindfulness practice and relate it to the special problems of negative emotions, relationships, and other needs. You do not have to be superhuman. You do not have to be a saint to practice mindfulness. Every step taken in mindfulness helps reduce our very human, very common, but very painful suffering.