Dr. Gail Brenner

Sacred Space for Awakened Living

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Archives for April 2010

Thank You, Annoying People

“All violence is the result of people tricking themselves into believing that their pain derives from other people and that consequently those people deserve to be punished.”
~Marshall Rosenberg

I met someone recently who pushes my buttons, and not the good ones. When I am around him, I feel irritated, there are judging thoughts running through my mind, I am trying to figure out how I can get away, I want him to be different than the way he is. I actually think I am justified in my feelings because I know other people feel the same way I do.

But where does this get me? I’m right…but so what?

Truth be told, feeling right doesn’t even feel that good. I feel the arrogance of being “holier than thou” in my body like a ten-pound weight in my chest. Being right certainly doesn’t put me any more at ease when I anticipate encountering this man again, and it doesn’t bring any more love into the world. In fact, I am trapped, a victim of my judgments and opinions. And I am contributing to disharmony and strife.

Please Change so I Feel Better

What I am experiencing is a ubiquitous phenomenon that is at the root of all interpersonal difficulties: we want other people to change so our uncomfortable feelings will diminish. I want my new acquaintance to not be overbearing so I won’t feel invaded. Mary wants her husband to not throw his clothes on the floor so she can find relief from her frustration. Joe wants his coworker to stop talking so much so he won’t feel bored and irritated.

We give up our inner comfort to something we cannot control – the behavior of other people. And, oh, the lengths to which we will go to try to control them anyway!

When we don’t own our emotional reactions, we run the risk of wreaking havoc on our lives. We leave relationships, gossip, criticize, fight, manipulate, and spend our precious time rationalizing our opinions to ourselves and everyone else around us.

Is this what we really want? Do we want to promote friction and divisiveness – or do we want to be free of undesirable habits and meet the world with an open heart?

True Healing by Turning Our Attention Inward

It is so easy to blame and accuse. But the beginning of a bold and courageous enterprise is to turn our attention away from the other and directly into all the distressing emotions we strive so hard to avoid. We stop seeing others through the veil of our own pain, and compassion naturally arises – for others as well as ourselves.

Rather than being an annoyance, our reactions to other people can be viewed as a golden invitation served to us on a silver platter. They are a mirror that reflects back to us areas of unexplored emotion and inner secret places where we wall ourselves off. Being triggered by others becomes a time of celebration: we get to see where we are stuck, we have the opportunity to free ourselves, and as one book title suggests, we can say, “Thank You for Being Such a Pain.”

The inner investigation of our triggered reactions toward others reveals so much tender information. If you lash out at your partner, you might realize you are actually afraid. If you judge and constrict your children, maybe you feel helpless as a parent. Take any relationship that causes you stress or displeasure, and like a trail of breadcrumbs, follow your reaction back into yourself to its source. I can guarantee you your discovery will be illuminating.

The Opportunity to Clean Up the Past

Often, the strong feelings that arise in our interactions echo an unresolved relationship from our past. If you were criticized by an overly demanding parent, it won’t take much for a boss correcting your work to seem like a tyrant in your eyes. If you were abandoned in your youth, a friend calling to cancel plans at the last minute may cause you to feel like you are five again. Any reaction that seems too intense for the situation at hand has undoubtedly triggered some old, undigested feelings.

What to do with these emotions that are revealed? Love them with all your heart. Surround them with affection. Let your heartfelt attention permeate them entirely. And once they have drunk their fill, notice that you now see others in a fresh light. Where before you saw an aggressor or a nuisance, the clouds part and you see a tender being who is scared, hurt, or needy. Now the relationship, you and the other, have the potential to be transformed.

Author and teacher Byron Katie says, “Things don’t happen to you, they happen for you.” The challenges in our relationships are an offering, a gentle tap on the shoulder asking us to deepen in our commitment to freedom. Can we take care of ourselves and free our interactions from being repositories of our pain and suffering? Can we look into another’s eyes and rest in the space of non-separation? Can we declare an unmitigated, “Yes!” to truth, to life, to this very moment?

This is a topic that hits home for all of us. I’d love to hear how you are meeting these relationship challenges in your own life.

For an exercise in unconditional acceptance, have a listen to: You Are Welcome as You Are.

image credit

 

Getting Unstuck by Facing Everything

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I am excited to share with you that this post is part of a collaborative writing project. Today, myself and three of my favorite bloggers are publishing posts on the theme of “Getting Unstuck.” This project is an offering to support freedom. When each of us takes responsibility for getting unstuck, a powerful momentum for true transformation develops. Please click on the links to check out the other posts. These lovely women are, moving clockwise from the upper right of the photo:

And here are my thoughts on getting unstuck:

The only way out is through.
~Howard Nemerov

If the only way out is through, then the only way to truly get unstuck is to experience stuckness. Sure, you can try out a new behavior, take a class, or set your alarm an hour early. Anything that takes us out of our routines and habits can shake things up.

But if we are stuck in a familiar and long-standing pattern, then fix-it strategies usually aren’t enough. Why? Because the only way out is through. The conditioned tendencies that bring so much suffering to our lives are fueled by tender feelings that hide outside of our awareness.

Until we turn to recognize and embrace these feelings, they continue to hang around, nipping at our heels.

This principle of inner work is tremendously useful. If you want to get unstuck, see through to the source of the stuckness. If you want to be peaceful, explore the ways you struggle and fight. If you want more love, investigate the nature of lack and inadequacy. Resistance ends when we bring our attention to the experiences that are actually here, rather than to the ones we wish were here.

Make this a lifestyle, and watch your life transform.

An Example of Moving Through

Recently, I felt stuck, and some would call it writer’s block. I tried making notes, taking a walk, meditating, forcing myself to sit in front of my computer. None of it helped. Then, I had the brainstorm to follow my own advice. I was stuck, so why not investigate stuckness?

To be honest, it was a huge relief. I moved from resistance and problem-solving to actually experiencing what was present. I felt the rigidity in my limbs, clenching in my throat, frustration welling up from the pit of my stomach.

My mind, which had been working overtime to come up with a solution, felt spacious and relaxed, and the words began to flow once again. I went through, and I came out the other side.

Befriend Your Most Tender Feelings

There is no shortcut to this process, and here’s why. Painful experiences are part of the landscape of being human. When we are young, we invariably encounter feelings that are too painful to bear. We may react to events with basic emotions like terror or rage, but we lack the tools and sense of safety to actually feel them.

What happens to these undigested emotional reactions? We push them out of conscious awareness. We ignore or deny or forget. But they don’t go away entirely. They show up in the form of bodily tension, illness, confusion, difficult relationships, unsatisfying habits, and lives off track. We engage in any behavior we can come up with, even if it hurts us, to avoid the pain.

The decision to turn our attention directly into what we are feeling is revolutionary. It opens up the possibility for those disenfranchised parts of ourselves to be seen, experienced, and healed by love.

Discover the Hidden Diamond

Every way in which we find ourselves stuck invites us to find the brilliant diamond hidden among the thistles. If we follow any unsatisfying pattern or reaction to its source, we discover a long-lost piece of ourselves. If we allow ourselves to simply feel the pain, the treasures of peace, ease, and new beginnings are realized. We no longer fight to keep the wolves at bay; the tragic war with our own inner experience comes to an end.

Freedom from being stuck in our habits and tendencies is absolutely possible. Happiness, deep peace, joy, satisfying interactions, fulfillment – these are our birthright, truly. They are right here, even in this moment. But when we are caught up in our patterns, doing everything except being with what is, these essential life qualities have no room to breathe.

Once we make the choice to befriend the painful fragments of our being, our attention is freed from the chains of the past, and these authentic aspects of ourselves are revealed. As these tender parts are welcomed back from the depths of unconsciousness, we begin to relax, we feel whole and light, we are no longer bound by uncontrollable patterns.

So if you want to get unstuck, go through. Bring your loving attention right into the hardest place. I can assure you it won’t be as bad as you think. Embrace what you discover in true friendship and love, and enjoy the fruits of your courageous exploration.

Care to share your experience with being stuck? With getting unstuck? To read more, please visit the blogs of my beloved friends.

Your Life Is Your Message

Note: I am honored to have a guest post published today on Robin Easton’s blog, Naked in Eden, called, “Are Your Maps Holding You Back?” Feel free to stop by and visit!
gandhi

“Let your life speak.”
~Quaker saying

“If you cannot find the truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it?”
~Dogen, Zen master

One of the most important questions we can ever ask ourselves is, “What do I want?” In my role as a therapist, I often ask this question of people when I first meet them. The most common response? “I never thought about it.”

Here we are, with the moments of this precious life ticking away. Maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to stop and consider, “What do I really want?”

The Fallout from Not Asking

We all know what happens when we evade this question. We go along blindly, pleasing others, constructing a life that matches what we were taught to want or what we think we should want.

Until we contemplate what it is that we actually want, we bump along, patching things together, hoping the anxiety and discontent we feel will somehow dissipate.

I recently undertook an exercise in which I made a chronological list of all the events in my life having to do with my career, and the list was long. I moved from one position to another, quitting without a plan, secretly longing for the time when I would have enough money to stop working altogether.

As I looked at the list, the reason why was obvious. I had moved from fear, from views I developed from my past, from my identities – but I had not moved from my heart or my soul. I never stopped to ask myself, “What do I really want?” It was quite a revelation.

Needless to say, my approach has shifted dramatically. I have exposed the beliefs that were limiting me and befriended the ghosts of my past. I absolutely refuse to make a move unless I am clear that it is guided by clarity and truth, no matter what the consequences. My inner fire is roaring right now, and I have no idea what the future will bring.

Life is Expressed in our Actions

If we are not living according to what we really want, what are we doing? Gandhi said, “My life is my message.” If your life is your message, what is it expressing?

All we need to do is take a look at how we spend our time to determine what we actually value, what we choose to express in any moment. Try tracking where your attention goes for the next few days.

  • What do you spend your time thinking about?
  • What actions do you take over the course of a day?
  • How do you treat other people and yourself?

When you consider what you really want and what you are actually expressing, how does it look? Are your actions aligned with fear and maintaining the status quo or with love and inner knowing?

Say you want to relate with kindness, but you find yourself snapping and stonewalling. Maybe you want freedom from a habit or addiction, but you keep doing it over and over. Perhaps you want to be at ease with yourself, yet your thoughts are incessantly critical.

Maybe you find that your actions do express your deepest heart’s desire.

Even though I longed to be fulfilled in my work, for many years, my choices were driven by fear and misconception. What occurred was far from a disaster, but it left me frustrated and dissatisfied. What I was expressing was a fraction of what I know I am capable of.

The Ultimate Commitment

As we take the courageous step into radical honesty and ask ourselves what we really want, may we be tender and forgiving. Every second of our past has brought us to this moment. We would not be here, open and willing, on the precipice of greatness, if any of it had been different.

We can play the “if only” game forever, or we can hold everything in love and commit to truth from now on. If our life is to be our message, we can:

  • Become aware of fear so it doesn’t divert us;
  • Identify roles and patterns that aren’t serving;
  • Listen to our deepest yearnings;
  • Make decisions with full awareness; and
  • Follow what brings us happiness, joy, love, and true fulfillment.

This is the path that I choose. Care to join me?

Start Where You Are

beautifulYou suppose you are the trouble
But you are the cure
You suppose that you are the lock on the door
But you are the key that opens it
It’s too bad that you want to be someone else
You don’t see your own face, your own beauty
Yet, no face is more beautiful than yours.
~Rumi

Start where you are. How could you start anywhere else?

Don’t worry yourself with sweeping changes. No need to be overwhelmed by all the “work” there is to do.

All we need to do is begin with what is right here, right in this moment. The terror, shame, regret, disappointment. The mess you might be in. A bit of tension somewhere in your chest. Very simple, just start where you are.

Befriend this Moment

Can we make friends with the reality of this moment? Can we let whatever is here drop into the cave of our heart, to be held like a long-lost child. Take the painful feeling, the sad story, the inner fight, and surrender it into the only place of sanity – your precious, loving heart. Your heart is limitless, hugely capable of receiving all of it.

Discover What You Are Resisting

What do you resist? What do you ignore with busyness, drinking, blaming, drama? What arises the moment before you pick up the phone, grab some cookies, or turn on your ipod? What tender feeling is tapping you on the shoulder, begging for your kind embrace, your “yes?” Tell the truth to yourself.

Resistance is a form of inner violence. We make our own experiences an enemy out of pain and fear. We divide ourselves up, then wonder why the anxiety won’t go away, why we live in confusion, why life seems flat.

Look at the suffering in the world! It all originates in the unwillingness to meet ourselves fully. All out war and relationship strife, depleting the earth’s resources and the arrogance of thinking we are right – no difference. My heart breaks over and over as I let it in.

The suffering is even more bittersweet because the solution to problems and dilemmas is closer than close. We heal inner division by allowing everything in. So simple. We stop the effort of pushing away and all is seen effortlessly. The walls we construct fall to pieces, bit by bit. We let ourselves unravel rather than continuing to struggle.

The Search Ends When We Look Within

Finally, with great relief, the insight dawns. You were looking in the wrong place! All answers are revealed when we stop waiting for things to change. We move our attention from the outer to the inner. We welcome fragments of feelings and physical sensations. We willingly create the space for whatever wants to come. We realize the sanity of being a kind and receptive host.

Maybe where you are is: I can’t, it’s too much, I’ll lose it. Then this is your doorway. Welcome in the fear and inflexibility, the “no.” Do not think you need to be different than you are. Whatever is your experience in this moment is the experience to embrace. Nothing to figure out, nothing to do but open with compassion to this that is here right now.

The only moment we concern ourselves with is this one, as there is no other present moment. We simply open to it. Often, we find it’s not nearly as hard as we thought. We might cry or shake, then eventually the energy that has been tied up moves through. We are left peaceful, wondrous, with so much tenderness toward everyone and everything.

Don’t let fear deter you. Right now, in this moment, start where you are. And in the next moment, start again. Simply open lovingly in each moment, and all is revealed.

How do you experience resistance? What happens when you allow yourself to open? I’d love to hear…

image credit:  tibchris