Dr. Gail Brenner

Sacred Space for Awakened Living

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Archives for October 2011

Relationships Are for Your Awakening

“I wish that every human life might be pure transparent freedom.”
~Simone de Beauvoir

I have come across a treasure trove of useful articles about relationship recently. If you are interested in deepening in your exploration of relationship, any of them, then be sure to take a look.

You can glean just as much from these posts if you are single as if you have a partner. Because, as you will see, the ultimate relationship skill is to know your own triggers and learn to intelligently deal with them. And who can’t benefit from that?

The Necessity of Taking Responsibility

Pay close attention to what you bring to any interaction.

  • Are you ready for a fight?
  • Are you waiting for the other to satisfy your every need?
  • Do you show up bored, half-present (which is not present at all), already thinking you know how the conversation will go?
  • Do you try to help, save, and fix while sacrificing your own needs and desires?

None of this is about the other person. Holding up the mirror and seeing that the responsibility is yours paves the way for inner peace and outer harmony. You investigate how you get caught so you can be open, transparent, and available to intimacy.

A Common Story

I know whereof I speak when it comes to struggle in the area of relationships. Even friendship didn’t come naturally to me, let alone a healthy connection with a romantic partner.

Then I realized the futility of waiting for Prince Charming to show up at my door. That’s when I got down to business and began to meet my fears and emotional reactions with unflagging honesty.

I saw how I had not been the easiest person to get along with. I pulled out of need and pushed out of fear. No wonder there was so much drama.

Now my policy is this: I notice when I am triggered, then meet my expectations and emotions with curiosity and love. Ninety percent of the time, the trouble miraculously dissolves. No need for “the talk,” which is most often leaking our own unfinished business into the relationship. No more short-circuiting intimacy in the name of communication.

And, although I don’t think this has everything to do with it, I am engaged to the most wonderful man in the world (an unbiased view).

Relationship Is Opportunity

If you are single, use this time well. Read carefully: become the one who the one you are looking for will clamor to be with. Recognize the story of lack and realize there is nothing lacking when you tap into the fullness of you. This is a win-win situation. You get to be happy, no matter what.

And if you are with a partner, look first within. Clear yourself out. Make a lifestyle of not looking outside yourself, even to the one right next to you, for your emotional rescue.

Maybe you will be surprised, as I was, at how easy it is to love – in a healthy, sane, and sustainable way – when you come from a heart that is already overflowing. Take care of your own business, and you can love without attachment, honor and cherish while holding nothing back.

Where do you get stuck when it comes to relationships?  What is your hook that needs your kind attention? I’d love to hear…

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10 Love-Filled Ways to Live From Your Heart

“I name it silence. Some people say self, or love, or fullness. It is actually life itself.”
~Gangaji

Living from the heart is incredibly relaxing. You stop using your mind to analyze, plan, organize, and figure everything out. What a relief! As you let go of all of that mind activity, you are able to relax into presence, where there is no trouble and no resistance.

When you live from the heart, you begin to touch into the universal experience of love. Love is the source of everything – the fabric which makes up our very existence.

Sure, there are many waves in the ocean, but they all are made up of the same thing. Play with letting go of your individual self and live from the eternal ocean of love.

  1. Ask, “What would love do?” In any situation, look for the response that is peaceful and free of stress. Put aside your fears and conditioned habits, and let love guide you.
  2. Let love pervade every conversation. Can you not take your relationships for granted and be more openly loving? Even when things get tense, drop away from your emotional reaction and melt back into love.
  3. Treat yourself like gold. When it comes to love, you are included, too. Tune into what you need and let yourself have it. Live as stress-free a life as possible.
  4. Be here now. Spinning stories in your mind about things that have happened in the past and what might happen in the future take you away from what is here right now. When you are stuck in your mind, it is impossible to be fully in touch with the love that is here. Let your attention explore this very moment. Open your senses, open your heart, and live from there.
  5. Become aware of the oneness of love. Consider this: what is looking out of your eyes is the same as what is looking out of everyone else’s eyes. When you meet an “other,” you are actually meeting the essence of yourself. When you understand this, love is impossible to deny. Check it out with the next person you speak to.
  6. Don’t obsessively plan. In fact, only plan when absolutely necessary. Planning is in the mind, and when you realize how little planning you actually need, there is space to recognize that you are alive right now. And in that aliveness, let your heart glow.
  7. Make hard choices. When you live from the heart, you begin to be very honest with yourself. You may realize that certain situations or people aren’t working for you. Likewise, you will see your own tendencies that don’t serve. Sometimes, the most loving response you can make is a kind but firm, “No.”
  8. Honor your personality quirks. A funny thing happens when you live from the heart. As conditioning falls away, your natural gifts and inclinations have space to be expressed. Let your creativity flow in whatever way it wants to. Go where you are guided, learn what you want to learn, enjoy yourself in all your activities.
  9. Bring boundless acceptance to your moment-to-moment experience. Be a kind host to all the emotions and reactions that visit you. The more you resist, the more trouble you will have. Say, “Hello” and let it be.
  10. Get to know the unconditioned, totally free you. When you relax away from all your conditioned habits, you will discover formless space that is clear, open, and inherently loving. Begin to become familiar with this space, as it is the essence of you. Listen, let it guide you. Live here.

In any moment you have a choice – the head or the heart, inauthenticity or truth, distraction or love. Play around with living more in your heart. Don’t be shy. Let love in, and life’s greatest treasures will be revealed.

What is your experience of living from the heart? Is it easy? Do you resist? I’d love to hear…

Bogged Down by Fear? The Two-Step, No-Fail Guide to Freedom

“Every moment of one’s existence one is growing into more or retreating into less.”
~Norman Mailer

Are you human? Then you are familiar with fear. But what you absolutely need to know is that you have a choice over how fear affects you.

You can listen to the voice of fear, letting opportunities pass you by. You can live an “if only” life that is small and safe. You can pretend you aren’t magnificent, creative, and capable.

Or you can thrive, with your light shining in all directions. The choice is yours.

The Courageous Choice

And it is a courageous choice that is asking to be made. Because fear can be powerful. It convinces you that you are unworthy and paralyzes you from moving forward. Yet it feels like an old, familiar friend – one who has overstayed her welcome and needs to go.

Are you ready to tell yourself the truth about fear? Are you prepared to take the sacred step to let the essence of your being be expressed in the world? (We’re all waiting for you.)

Then take on board this two-step guide. Open up to receive its guidance, and find within yourself the courage to roar.

Step 1: Get to Know All the Faces of Fear

“The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.”
~Joseph Campbell

Fear can be a wily character. You might be shaking in your boots. But just as likely, you will find yourself procrastinating, rationalizing, getting distracted, or losing yourself in judgmental and limiting thoughts.

I recently revealed to a friend a story that runs through my mind that keeps me from finishing projects I am passionate about. Rather than empathize with me, she said, “You’re comparing. It’s a sign that you need to return to your center.” She didn’t give the story itself a second thought – and she was right. I had momentarily lost my way – in fear.

Any mind activity that interferes with your brilliant self-expression is, at its source, fear. If it reeks of “No,” makes you doubt yourself, or persuades you to stop what you’re doing, it deserves investigation.

Approach it with tough love. Be kind, not harsh, but commit to seeing the truth about these thoughts. When it comes to fear, you can be sure that the mind will not support you. No fear-based thoughts are true.

Get to know intimately how fear arises in your experience. The subtle tightness in your chest, the mental fog that keeps you from carrying out your passions, the spinning mind that concludes, “I can’t.”

See procrastination, excuses, and getting lost in busyness as gifts handed to you on a silver platter. They are signals that fear has taken over. Recognize it. Acknowledge it. Then go on to Step 2.

Step 2: Choose Life

“Be brave enough to live life creatively.  The creative is the place where no one else has ever been.  You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition.”
~Alan Alda

It is impossible to be aligned with life if fear is controlling your behavior. Fear will make you choose what is safe and known. It won’t stretch you or take you out of your comfort zone.

Once you recognize that fear has taken over, you are awake! Now you have a choice. Do you let fear drive you – or do you choose life? Do you hang out in what you already know, or do you venture out into the garden of unknowing?

You will never know what is on the other side of fear until you take the leap.

And leap you will – over and over. Fear may be a constant companion, offering you the opportunity to choose life time after time after time.

In choosing life, you say, ‘Yes!” to creativity, to intelligence, to the inner whisper of truth, to passion and wonder and delight. Who knows where it will take you? You can’t even begin to imagine. Nourish the glowing ember of You, and enjoy yourself endlessly.

Any comments, questions, or reports about fear? I’d love to hear…

Stuck in a Rut? Start Asking Questions

Note: Does fear hold you back?  Please join me for my first-ever conference call on “Moving Through Fear with Grace.”  You will hear exactly what you need to know to be released from the trap of fear.  I look forward to speaking with you!

“Live your questions now, and perhaps even without knowing it, you will live along some distant day into your answers.”
~Rainer Maria Rilke

As we all know, it doesn’t take much to get stuck. Before we know it, we are barreling along on automatic, going down a road that doesn’t support our happiness and well being. Sound familiar?

Some of these tendencies we perpetuate are so strong, that we may not even know what to do to find our way out. We are lost in tunnel vision, with seemingly no choices for freeing ourselves.

A friend of mine gets caught in trying to be perfect. When he needs to make a decision, he researches the options endlessly, staying on the fence for a very long time (up to a year!).

Some of us are stuck in seeking approval and validation or avoiding life due to fear. And others might be immobilized by a grudge, an addiction, or a victim story of, “Why me?”

Why Ask Questions

Whatever is your special brand of suffering, here is the truth: There is always a way out. Not sure how to begin? Simply ask questions.

Asking questions is like a healing balm for unhappiness. And it’s easy. You don’t need to know the answer – you only need to learn to ask intelligent questions. Begin to ask questions, and you will:

  • Discover useful information about what you are thinking, feeling, and doing.
  • Embark on a path that offers the freedom to make appropriate choices for yourself.
  • Stop the loop of unsatisfying or self-defeating patterns.

The How-To

How to do it? Simple. Take any habit at all that you recycle in your life, any way you spin your wheels, and ask yourself any of these questions.  Take them slowly, one at a time, and let them sink in.

  • What am I actually doing?
  • Is this supporting my well being?
  • Is this serving me and everyone else?
  • How is this pattern bringing trouble to my life?
  • What do I really want? Is this what I want?
  • How can I be more aligned with what I want?
  • What is my heart saying? How is it directing me?
  • How can I be kind to myself?
  • How can I bring ease to my life in this very moment?

It is not an exaggeration to say that asking these questions can be transformative. When you stop to inquire about what is actually going on in the moment, the raw truth is revealed. You may not like what you see, but seeing things clearly opens up the possibility to make a new, healthier, more life-supporting choice.

Say that what holds you back is self-critical thinking. Without you even realizing it, court is in session, and judge and jury are hard at work – in your mind. At some point, you will recognize what is happening. And this is the time to start asking questions.

“What am I doing?” “Is this supporting me?” “What is my heart saying?” “Can I be kind to myself?”

The Wonder of It All

Any tendency that brings you unhappiness is not aligned with your true desires. This disconnection needs to be identified, brought to the surface, and seen in the light of day – and asking questions will allow this to happen. Only then can you turn toward the peace and ease you long for.

I have to say, I’m amazed at the power of synchronicity. Just as I was completing this post, what shows up in my inbox, but a link to an article by poet David Whyte called “10 Questions That Have No Right to Go Away.”  Immensely revealing.

Interested in truth, authenticity, and heart-fueled living? Start asking questions.

What do you discover when you ask yourself the essential questions? I’d love to hear…

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Stop…Be Still

“To a mind that is still, the whole universe surrenders.”
~Chang Tzu

It was a lightbulb moment for me when I realized how much I was moving away from life. It had been happening for years until I finally saw that pulling away in fear was my first response to people, situations, new possibilities.

Once I saw this tendency in the light of day, the jig was up. I learned to stop moving away and wholeheartedly embrace things as they are. It was a happy revolution in my whole way of being.

We tend to move in three ways: toward, away, or against. Which is your style? See how you move, and you will discover the joys of not moving. For when you take your stand in the here-and-now, life becomes available to you – intimate, rich, and full.

Moving Toward

Moving toward is based on need and lack. If this is your style, you grasp at people and things to fill you up and give you what you think you are missing. This tendency is learned at a very young age. You convince yourself that you are not enough.

Yet the truth is that who you are is whole, full, and overflowing. Can you not move and see that there is nothing lacking?

Moving toward looks like this:

  • Seeking approval from others
  • Great concern about the image you present in the world
  • Sacrificing yourself for others, then feeling resentful
  • Perceiving yourself as lacking and flawed
  • Difficulty walking away from relationships that aren’t working
  • Attachment to your personal dramas
  • Grasping money, people, objects
  • Feeling that you are special and avoiding your ordinariness

When you notice these tendencies, stop. With great compassion, let the feelings and urges arise, but don’t act on them. Relax back into yourself, and realize that life is complete, just as it is, in this very moment.

Moving Away

Moving away is all about fear and avoidance. In response to just about everything, there is tightening in the body, contraction in the breath, and a physical pulling away from whatever is present in the moment. Threat is seen everywhere.

Moving away is built on a perceived lack of safety and security. What are you really afraid of, anyway? Can you consider trusting that you are OK, that you can engage with life that is unfolding right now?

Moving away looks like this:

  • Paralyzing doubt and indecision
  • A surface bravado that avoids the experience of fear
  • Nonstop thinking
  • Avoiding people and situations
  • Trepidation in the face of anything new
  • Fear of committing to anything
  • A tendency toward paranoid thinking
  • Excessive worry
  • Holding yourself back

Moving away has strong physical and mental elements. Learn how to relax your body and breathe deeply. Experiment with not running your life by all the thoughts that appear in your mind. Put the thoughts aside (they aren’t helping you), and stay here, present. Open yourself fully to the wonder of now.

Moving Against

Anger, frustration, entitlement. Some of us live with our figurative fists flying in every direction. We show up ready for a struggle, while missing out on what is here when we let our guard down.

Moving against is a defensive posture that avoids vulnerability. What if you allowed yourself to open tenderly to the reality of now?

Moving against looks like this:

  • Tendency toward anger and resistance to people, situations, the world
  • Rebelliousness
  • A sense of entitlement – things should be the way you want them to be
  • Judgment – either outward toward others or inward toward yourself
  • Stuffing anger by eating, sleeping, and avoiding conflict at all costs
  • Desire for power and control
  • Championing the underdog

It takes so much effort to face the world primed for a fight. Really, there’s nothing to protect. Let the anger subside, and be open, soft, and receptive. Relax into life unfolding.

The strategies of moving toward, away, and against sap your energy. They all require you to be vigilant and defensive. The alternative? Stop…be still.

How do you move? What would it be like to stop? I’d love to hear…