Blog - Dr. Gail Brenner

Flexible Mind, Happy Mind

“Do you want to know what my secret is? You see, I don’t mind what happens.”
J. Krishnamurti

It’s so simple, isn’t it? “I don’t mind what happens.” It is a way of being that deeply accepts, doesn’t resist, and offers the possibility of profound peace.

If you truly don’t mind what happens, then anything can occur and nothing disturbs. It is the end of emotional drama, stress, and all kinds of suffering.

The Pain of a Rigid Mind

But most of us frequently feel stuck,and we suffer because of it. We hold on tightly to familiar ways of thinking about ourselves, relationships, other people, and situations. And as we move through our lives with these patterns firmly in place, things matter, and we hit edges everywhere that make us react.

He shouldn’t have done that…That shouldn’t have happened to me…I can’t seem to get what I want out of life…I’m a failure, an imposter, inadequate, scared of what might happen. Each of these thought patterns causes an emotional reaction that contributes to the cycle of discontent.

Couldn’t you write a manual on how to be stuck? I know I could:

Expect things to be a certain way.
Identify yourself as insufficient or incapable.
Continue seeing yourself as a victim.
Think and feel the same things you’ve always thought and felt.
Say the same things you’ve always said.
Do the same things you’ve always done.

In other words, be rigid. Let yourself be confined by the past. Don’t consider any fresh perspectives or new possibilities. Stay in the same old, same old.

The Possibility of Being Flexible

But…what if you considered being flexible. If you’re tired of feeling rigid and stuck, contemplate flexibility. It’s a great word, inviting you to be malleable, bendable, stretchy, spacious. It gets you out of the rut of habitual thinking.

Being flexible breathes new life into those places that are so rigid you’re barely alive when you are stuck in them. It’s like a verdant oasis when you are parched and dying of thirst.

Practically speaking, flexibility offers a new way of being that brings a fresh, undistorted perspective to old habits. Almost like a miracle, familiar ways of behaving don’t feel right anymore, fresh thoughts appear, new conversations happen.

How to be flexible?

If it’s out of your comfort zone, take your time to feel into it.

Flexible Body

Allow yourself to feel the possibility of being flexible in your body. I don’t mean the kind of flexibility where you can do a split or put your foot behind your head.

But I do mean flexible in every cell of your body.

When you look closely, you will find that rigid habits have a strong physical component. You feel tense, contracted, and closed down, especially in your chest or belly.

Now try this: offer the gift of presence to your muscles and tendons, to each of your cells. Welcome openness and flexibility into every physical sensation.

Find the places that are stuck – and those that aren’t, and offer the simple invitation to every cell to open and relax. Give them time to release from their contracted state. Practice this exercise for a few minutes a couple of times a day. Isn’t this what your body has been craving all along?

Now it is primed for new ways of being.

Flexible Mind

If you are stuck in habits, your thought processes are rigid. In the spirit of flexibility, let your mind open, and discover new potential you didn’t even know was there.

Recognize the power of conditioned thoughts that are so familiar to you. Now, imagine them breaking apart and falling to pieces to reveal space that is free of habit. They aren’t serving you anyway, so let them collapse in a heap – just for a moment.

Where you held a world view about how things are supposed to be, you find that you are free.

Where you convinced yourself that you were inadequate and undeserving, you are open to the freshness of truth.

Where you were stuck, you can now wonder, question, and not know.

There is no limit to how flexible the mind can be, beyond anything you could imagine. So let it open…more and more…infinitely…to discover its unconditioned state – transparent, radiant, completely alive.

Flexible mind, infinite mind, boundlessly peaceful mind.

What habits are asking for flexibility? What is your experience of flexible mind? I’d love to hear…

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Discovering Happiness – With Link to Video

Sorry for the sending this a second time. This one includes the link to the video.

Hi Everyone,

A warm hello to each of you. I so much appreciate that you are part of the community here at A Flourishing Life.

Occasionally, I am asked for interviews, and today I’m sharing with you two that were published recently. Below is a video of an interview with Neera Menon of Only Happiness Counts. She asked me some great questions about the nuts and bolts of discovering the possibility of happiness in the moment. You can also click here to find the video:

And Annabel Ruffell of Journey for Earth invited me to respond in writing to three engaging questions. They are: what journey are you on, what has been one of your greatest challenges over the years and how did you overcome it, and what is your greatest hope for our planet at this time. You can find the interview by clicking here.

As always, any questions or comments are welcome.

So much love…

Gail

Discovering Happiness and More…

Hi Everyone,

A warm hello to each of you. I so much appreciate that you are part of the community here at A Flourishing Life.

As always, any questions or comments are welcome.

So much love…

Gail

It’s Not Personal

“We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations.”
~Charles R. Swindoll

Are you sensitive, prone to feeling resentment, rejection, disapproval, or disappointment? Then you’re taking things personally, and you know how much it hurts.

It’s one of the human experiences that cuts deep, and we often have trouble finding our way out.

I used to feel personally offended if someone was late or he didn’t call or the feedback I got was less than stellar. At times, it seemed like everywhere I turned, someone was trying hurt my feelings. And, although I didn’t know it, I was a willing participant.

Nothing Sticks

There is so much freedom in realizing that you don’t have to take things personally.

You are lighter, free of the hooks and edges that cause you to feel put down or slighted. You feel open, generous, and compassionate – ways of being that are just not available to you if you are caught in taking things personally.

You live as the free-flow of life where nothing sticks. An event happens, someone says something to you or about you, and here you are – not attaching to any reaction, stable, fully allowing, not resisting anything.

But how to make this shift?

Welcome Your Reactions

The first key that unlocks the door to freedom from taking it personally is to bring your focus to your own reactions.

What someone else says is about them, and how you react is about you. So focus on something you can do something about, which is your own reactions.

If you feed the story, wallow in feeling bad, or run mental loops about what should and shouldn’t happen, you will stay stuck, guaranteed.

These reactions play out over and over, while you are asleep on automatic rather than being awake to what is happening within you.

If, instead, you step back and take the perspective of awareness, you notice something very simple: thoughts in your mind and feelings in your body. You might call it disappointment or rejection, but what is absolutely true in your direct experience is that some thoughts and feelings have appeared.

And these may be very familiar to you.

Why You Take Things Personally

For most of us, these painful feelings date back to childhood. When we are young, events happen that bring about emotional reactions in us. If you didn’t have the means to experience the feelings and let them go, they leave an impression in your body and mind, creating a sensitivity to reacting the same way again and again.

Decades later, here you are, experiencing rejection, disappointment, and shame – taking it personally. Then the spinoff stories start: I’m not deserving, I’m inadequate. These experiences congeal into an identity that keeps you frozen and limited.

You have developed a filter through which you view the world.

Question Who You Are

But what exactly is this identity? It seems so real, but when you shine the spotlight of your attention on your direct experience, all you notice are thoughts and feelings. That is all.

There is no “you,” no identity of one who has been rejected or disappointed. Only thoughts and feelings floating through awareness.

And if you don’t attach your attention to them, if you don’t engage and make them important and tell stories about them, they disappear, creating no disturbance whatsoever.

You no longer take them personally because there is no personal thing called you.

You realize you don’t have to make a big deal over something that isn’t real anyway.

Here is the possibility: to stay as the sky and let the dark clouds of difficult thoughts and feelings move through. They are nothing more than insubstantial wisps of energy that appear and disappear.

Persistence and Kindness

It takes time to erode these attachments that feel so real, so be very kind to yourself.

When you notice that you are taking something personally, step off the habit wheel.
Pause and take a breath. You’re halfway there already.
Know that these thoughts and feelings are not important and don’t define you.
Stay as the sky, clear, open, and undisturbed.

When you discover that it’s not personal, you walk through the doorway to the deepest peace beyond imagination.

Have you discovered that it’s not personal? Still stuck? I’d love to hear…

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Orient Your Whole Life Toward What You Love

“Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely.”
~Rodin

What do you love? What really matters to you? For most of us, the answer is simple: we want to be happy.

But are you orienting your whole life toward happiness? No wonder you’re not happy.

The search for happiness is often misunderstood. If you are hoping to be happy once the right relationship and work situation magically show up, your present moment experience now is frustration and lack.

If you are waiting for inadequacy, resentment, and other inner troubles you experience to finally, somehow, disappear, what are you experiencing now? Inadequacy, resentment, and inner turmoil.

Your life is happening right now, in this very moment. But if you are looking out to the world for happiness to arrive at some other time, your now experience is not so happy.

If happiness is what you love, discover it now. Consider that it is not somewhere else, but here to be revealed, the very essence of who you are.

Maybe you, who you actually are, is simply covered up by worrying, regretting, and telling yourself stories. Maybe you are already everything you are hoping for and waiting to be – happy, fulfilled, completely at peace, heart overflowing.

Be on fire to know by orienting your whole life toward what you love.

How do you meet life?

The qualities you bring to the moments of your life matter, if you want to be happy. Consider being curious, flexible, and open. Rather than living in reaction to things that happen, start asking questions.

What is the nature of this feeling that is here right now?
Are these thoughts that I’m thinking actually true?
Who am I?

Acknowledge the places in you that are rigid, and bring flexibility to them – your brain, your mind, your body, and your heart. Let your grudges completely untangle, your old stories become uninteresting.

Open in every cell of your being to the possibility that who you are is infinite beyond measure. See yourself everywhere.

What does your attention feed?

If you give close attention to anxious and judgmental thoughts, what will you get? More anxious and judgmental thoughts.

If you indulge feelings and dramatic stories, what will you get? More of the same.

You might say that you want to be happy, but where you place your attention shows what you are actually most interested in. Show interest in difficult thoughts and feelings, and that will be your in the moment experience.

Instead, recognize that thoughts and feelings are temporary. They come from nowhere, arise in the space of awareness, and dissolve. They are essentially free, but get stuck when you feed them with attention.

Notice that awareness is stable, unchanging. No matter what appears, you are always aware.

Establish yourself in that which is aware, and let the unhappiness be.

How do you spend your time?

Just as where you place your attention reveals what you are interested in, so does how you spend your time. Simply track it for a day or two, and you will know how your life is oriented.

Do you complain, argue, isolate? Are you overdoing it somehow in your behavior? Who do you spend your time with? Are you sitting in unhappy feelings much of the time?

Now that you are conscious of what you are actually fascinated by, let wisdom guide you. Make the changes that support what you love. Maybe you will meditate more, find a group of like-minded people, slow down, and read, watch, and listen to inspiring media.

Let what you love show in your behavior. Nothing can replace the fire for true happiness.

Resistance, anyone?

Resistance is saying “no” to life. A situation or feeling shows up as part of the natural unfolding of reality, and you say, “No, I don’t like it, I don’t want it to be like this. It should be different.”

If you resist, there is no way you can discover that peace is possible in this very moment. You are too busy rejecting what is here to realize that it is actually a doorway to all that you long for.

Study how you resist so you can learn to recognize when it’s happening. You might notice that you:

Avoid feelings that are present
Get caught in compulsive behavior or addictions
Ruminate in your thoughts
Believe that people and situations should be different than they are.

These are ways of being that say, “No, not this.”

Now feel into the effects of resisting – tension, fear, contracting against life. Instead, say “Oh, this,” with the deepest acceptance and embrace.

Opening or closing?

In any moment, you are opening or closing. You close to escape discomfort and the fear of discomfort. But in so doing, you close to life. You end up spending your precious energy managing your inner experience so you can stay away from that which you fear.

This is not a sustainable way of being (it’s so tiring!), and it doesn’t orient you toward what you love.

Really, uncomfortable feelings aren’t so bad. In fact, when seen with the eyes of absolute truth, they are only sensation and energy, and barely that. They are impersonal, meaning that they come and go and have nothing to do with you.

When you open, you disidentify with everything, including uncomfortable feelings, and you allow things to be as they are. It’s like taking a step back and becoming uninvolved.

But don’t worry, you lose nothing, except pain. And you realize that everything you wanted is already here, awake, and alive.

Really, it’s simple. Orient your whole life toward what you love, and each moment sings with joy.

How’s it going for you? Any comments or questions? I’d love to hear…

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Shhh…Just Be Quiet

“How can I be still? By flowing with the stream.”
~Lao-tzu

“Give your attention to the experience of seeing rather than to the object seen and you will find yourself everywhere.”
~Rupert Spira

There is a great power that is well within your reach. It’s the simplest thing. It takes very little time, it’s available always, and has the potential to radically transform your experience.

Do you want to stop feeding negative and damaging thought patterns? Do you want to be peaceful and at ease?

It’s the first step to freedom: shhh…just be quiet.

Be quiet? In the middle of all the noise? It’s revolutionary.

Everything in the world pulls for our attention. We are so used to being captivated by thoughts, consumed by emotions, and propelled forward by demands and desires. It’s obsessive and exhausting, yet it’s how many of us live.

Just a few minutes of quiet gives you space from this noise. It returns you to your natural state. It exposes the insanity of mindless habits that don’t serve which allows you to be fully aware of the choices being made.

The Value of Quiet

I recently reflected on my path in the search for truth and relief from confusion. Decades of therapy did next to nothing to get to the root of the problem. But everything started to shift when I began to meditate.

Instead of running full force into frantically trying to fix everything about myself that I thought was wrong, I stopped. During several meditation retreats years ago, in the vastness of the desert, layers of pain were set free. It was uncomfortable, intense, and joyous.

And it started with the willingness to be quiet.

Be Like the Sky

Being quiet, stopping, doing nothing is so simple. You sit down, close your eyes, and experience whatever is present.

The goal is not to stop thoughts or make anything change. Rather, it’s about simply allowing whatever arises to be there as it is.

Thoughts and stories? No problem. Emotions? No problem. Just let everything be.

Our normal tendency is to think, feel, figure out, do. When you are quiet, you shift your attention to the space in which everything arises in, so the doing part stops.

You are like the sky, with any kind of cloud welcome to pass through. Whether or not there are clouds, you are simply here, present, at peace.

The Nuts and Bolts of Being Quiet

If you’re not used to being quiet, start small. Just a minute or two when you wake up in the morning and before you go to sleep is a good beginning.

You might sit in your car for an extra minute before you go on to continue your day.

Or you might spend a half hour or more quietly being. It’s up to you. Once you get started, you’ll know what is needed.

It might feel awkward or scary at first, which is always the case when things are new. Be brave and commit to spending time in quiet for maybe every day for the next week. Give it a chance. Just do it as an experiment to see what it’s like.

Here are some times when being quiet is especially helpful:

When you’re caught up in emotions
When something has triggered you
When you’re consumed by thinking (Hint: notice sensations in your body)
When you know you are avoiding admitting the truth to yourself
When you’re feeling stressed or out of sorts
For no reason at all.

Try it out without any expectation, and simply let things unfold effortlessly. Who knows what will happen?

What Quiet Reveals

It’s radical to realize that you can have space from thoughts and feelings which sets in motion the possibility that they don’t have to dominate your life.

Then you are free of conditioned habits, fully conscious, and awake to presence that is overflowing with everything that is needed.

Shhh…just be quiet. Stop and be. No stress, no separation, no drama or discontinuity in your experience. Very simple…being who you are.

What is your experience with being quiet? What are the challenges? I’d love to hear…

Note: Please check out this beautiful project and book called “RE:INVENT” by reader and artist Derick Tsai and friends inspired by his friend with ALS .

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What Is Asking for Your Openness?

“Nothing is softer or more flexible than water, yet nothing can resist it.”
~Lao Tzu

There is no end to the kindness that is possible. And it starts at home with ourselves.

Right now, feel into the possibility of being infinitely kind within yourself. You resist nothing. You don’t feed mental stories that make you unhappy, which means you no longer believe self-critical thoughts or judgments of others. You welcome your feelings and befriend them rather than turning away.

Not only are you open to what is present, you are openness itself. Everything coming and going within you – thoughts, habits, needs, perceptions of yourself as a separate being – and here you are – alive, receptive, completely at peace with it all.

Happiness? Contentment? Fulfillment? So obvious when you know you are this openness that excludes nothing. Already overflowing, you realize that not one extra thing is needed.

Closing Down Denies Openness

This is our natural state. But what keeps us from expanding into openness? Fear.

We are afraid of discomfort; we fear the idea of encountering the unknown or losing control. We convince ourselves that closing down is necessary to survive, and we avoid the consequences of honest and real truth-telling like the plague.

We get so used to our habitual ways of being that we can’t let ourselves experience things differently.

When we close down, we wall ourselves off from our own experience. A difficult feeling comes up – can’t go there. Disappointment, an old grudge, an unmet need – these throw you off and leave you scrambling to try to find equilibrium once again.

All of this effort and doing saps energy. It’s what leaves us discontented, depleted, stressed, and sick.

And at the root of it, the idea of ourselves as separate entities that need to be protected stays firmly intact. It’s like constantly being at war, keeping the enemy from taking us over.

And the enemy is simply your own experience.

Yet we desperately long to relax and simply be. We yearn to drop all the effort it takes to close down and let everything in. Somehow we know that peace is possible.

How We Close

Let’s explore how we close down, how we turn away from ourselves. Let me count the ways:

We avoid feelings
We live in stories of regret and blame
We think we are insufficient or lacking, which keeps us caught in the cycle of seeking attention and approval
We believe thoughts about all the terrible things that might happen
We focus only on thinking (living in the head), while ignoring the rest of our experience
All compulsive, addictive, mind-numbing (and heart-numbing) behaviors

Closing down is not our natural, unconditioned state – that is openness. Closing is a habit, a well-worn path for many of us, a choice we make when we are afraid or don’t know what else to do.

It is often the product of decades of avoiding feelings and spinning stories endlessly that make us suffer. In that sense, it is understandable, but it doesn’t support awakening/happiness/peace.

Glorious Openness

So what to do with this habit of closing down? Open…open…open… In openness, you move from tunnel vision and rigidity to space and infinite possibility.

You really can put down all the efforting it takes to close down and instead flow like water.

You know, in your heart of hearts, what is asking for openness.

A feeling that’s been buried long ago
A story or belief that you know doesn’t serve you
An old habit
An identity, a way of thinking about yourself, that is limiting and painful – and untrue.
A strong physical sensation
Any inner experience that is masking happiness.

Being open may be scary at first. You don’t know what it will be like, and you don’t know what you will discover. But take it from me, the water’s fine in here. Simply put your toe in to start.

Instead of being scared, be curious. Recognize what you have been avoiding and turn towards it. Investigate the feeling – it won’t bite. See that the story you have been telling yourself like a broken record doesn’t serve. It’s just words – blah, blah, blah. Explore what it might be like to not hold onto your personal identities so strongly.

Openness is a love letter to yourself. It holds everything without one iota of resistance.

Inhabit openness. Live here gloriously. Feelings may come and go, but they are no problem. Simply be the openness that you are. Eternal resting as peace…

What is it like to close down, to open? What are you waiting for? I’d love to hear…

What About All the Suffering in the World?

“Love is a flame that burns everything other than itself. It is the destruction of all that is false and the fulfillment of all that is true.”
~Adyashanti

I’m so happy to be back and writing again after a long break. Part of the reason for my absence here is that I have been dealing with online identity theft. The takeaway for all of us: complex, unique passwords and as many layers of security on your accounts as possible.

Yes, I see the irony in protecting my identity. Who am I really? Not my name or social security number. But in the realm of infinite possibility, it makes sense to be practical and protect yourself as needed.

What to Do With All the Pain

As readers here, you know that this blog is all about lasting happiness and true freedom. But are these truths universal? Do they apply to people suffering in difficult circumstances in all corners of the globe?

This is just the question asked by reader Tristan, who writes,”Are these answers universal? What should someone do if (s)he is going to be abused tonight if dad/uncle comes home drunk/horny/aggressive. Or lives in a war zone, and may have her/his child murdered tomorrow?

“I know I can achieve my own peace by shining awareness on everything, and my middle-class circumstances afford me plenty of space… but I worry for our sisters and brothers I mention who still suffer in agony while I claim my peace… I feel so such pain over that that if there isn’t a realistic answer for them too, I would actually rather not be alive.”

Yes, these answers are universal. The truth is not selective. It is the reality of everything always. It is stable and unchangeable and applies everywhere and to everyone. So how do we understand these situations of immense suffering?

Deeply Investigate Who You Are

This question invites an investigation of who we really are, and who are all these other beings on the planet who are suffering. Who is it who is peaceful? Who is the one who is suffering? Let’s start with you.

When you look in your direct experience to find yourself, what is there? You will find thoughts that come and go, a body that changes over time, feelings, habits, physical sensations – but you will not find an entity that is you. So who you think you are is all of these experiences congealed into what seems like a separate self.

But there is no actual self, there is just these experiences, coming and going and changing. And the same goes for the rest of the almost 7 billion of us on the planet. We think we are separate, but in actuality, there are no separate selves.

Let’s then go straight to the heart of the matter and ask, “Who are you?” Who you are is the consciousness that comes before all thoughts, feelings, habits, sensations, etc. You are unity, non separation, non division, the space of awareness, the source that everything arises from. You exist, you are.

You are the purity of love itself before any objects or thoughts about the personal self arise. And this is true of every thing, every person that appears to be a separate entity.

Tell the Truth About Your Beliefs and Habits

Before this truth is realized, we buy into our belief systems, habits, and feelings that divide and separate. We justify bad behavior toward the apparent “other” in our thoughts. We compare, judge, and make ourselves and others better than or less than. We are misguided in our intentions, coming from fear, and lack, and not from love. This is what creates the suffering in our world.

And there is so much of it because only a tiny percentage of people investigate the truth about existence, and an even tinier percentage are open to realizing the endless well of peace that is possible. The vast majority of beings on the planet run on mind-created beliefs and delusion, fear and lack.

Don’t we all know the pain of being victim and perpetrator? I haven’t been physically violent in behavior with others (except for a girl in second grade), but I have said hurtful words, pushed others away, and been less than kind toward myself. I have let myself be the victim of others’ unconscious confusion when I knew better. And I know I’m not alone.

When any of our habits go unexamined, and we don’t admit the truth of who we are, there is great suffering of all kinds.

This is true even for those who commit the worst acts and for those who are the recipient of them.

From this place of non separation rises understanding and even compassion. Because when we truly see the apparent “other,” our heart knows there is no difference – we see ourself everywhere. Sometimes this moves us to help others or simply to be so very kind in the simple acts of daily life, including toward ourselves.

This is the ultimate healing – to be alive in the understanding of non separation and to live the unfolding of life in the knowing that all is love.

Allow Everything and You Will Be Peaceful

Should you take care of yourself and your loved ones in the face of threat? Absolutely. In the great openness of awareness, nothing is excluded. Are there times of great helplessness in the face of all the suffering in the world? Yes. And as you let that helplessness in without resisting, painful as it may be, feeling or action may arise.

When you claim “your peace,” it is not actually yours in the personal sense. There is no you to whom this peace belongs. You are touching into the truth of reality that is available to everyone – to all our brothers and sisters who are suffering.

Be a Living Testimony of Infinite Love

All behavior, all events that occur, unfold from original innocence. See that, then feel into the intensity of unexamined belief systems that bring about tremendous suffering. Eventually, only love is left. And, for me, the fire to bring awareness to any vestige of misguided thinking that may remain so the personal “I” dissolves, leaving presence, aliveness, and love.

Choosing not to live because of the suffering of others would be a sad waste of amazing potential. Instead, consider dedicating this life you have been given to living the truth. Clean up all your belief systems that confuse and limit.

Let your brilliance shine in everything and everyone in your daily life.

Since there is only unity, the joy and ease will be felt everywhere, even if it is at the most subtle level.

For the next day or so, look into, and behind, the eyes of everyone you meet – people familiar to you and strangers – and see that the source of you and the source of them is the same. This is where we all meet in love, as love.

Any reactions, comments, or questions? I’d love to hear…

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The Treasure at the Heart of Pain

“As long as you make an identity for yourself out of pain, you cannot be free of it.”
~Eckhart Tolle

“The water hollows out the stone, not by force but drop by drop.”
~Lucretius

Yes, I know it hurts. Whether you feel sad, scared, lonely, or regretful, it weighs heavy like a ton of bricks, dragging you down. And it keeps you from realizing the brilliance that you are.

What do you do to escape from emotional pain? Do you drink or eat to excess, keep yourself ridiculously busy, sit around hoping for a better future? It’s human nature to do everything you can to avoid turning around and meeting the feelings that arise in you. Who wants to feel pain?

No Escaping

But here’s the problem. These temporary measures simply don’t work. Addictions, compulsions, incessant mental spinning. They may dull the pain for a short time, but still it remains, barely below the surface, waiting for you to take a break from all your efforts to avoid it so it can tap you on the shoulder once again. “Remember me?” it says.

So must you resign yourself to a lifetime of pain? No, because pain, even though it seems so real, is a thin veil that covers the truth of who you are.

Your true nature is peace itself, and what you perceive as pain distracts you from experiencing the endless well of contentment that is eternally available. No matter what stories you hang on to, peace is possible for you because it is already who you are.

What it takes to realize this is the option you have been avoiding your whole life – turning to meet the pain. Not to wallow in it. Not to feed the drama. But to face what you have been running from – the experience of emotional pain that seems to have taken up residence inside of you.

Here is where you will discover the treasure at the heart of pain.

The Source of Pain

Most difficult emotions have their roots in events that happened long ago. You experienced a strong emotional reaction to a challenging situation or relationship, and you didn’t have the skills or support to feel it and let it move through you. Instead, it got stuck, lodged in your mind and body, creating layers of contraction and armoring as the years go by.

Fast forward to now, and here you are, desperately wanting relief so you can be at peace. This is your invitation: to discover the treasure at the heart of pain.

Three Blessed Steps

Honor this process that returns you to yourself – your sane and shining self that is not veiled by the past.

First Step: Recognition

First, pause from all the turmoil and recognize that an emotional reaction consists of two experiences: a story line that goes through your mind and physical holding in your body. Whenever you are caught in an emotion, be curious about your experience, and this is what you will discover.

It’s always the same: thoughts and physical sensations, a repetitive story and physical contractions, consumed in your mind and felt in your body.

Second Step: Turning Away

Now, put the story aside. You don’t have to get rid of it, you only need to see the futility of continuing to think it over and over. I mean, haven’t you gone over the same thoughts millions of times? Have they brought you relief yet? In fact, this is why you feel stuck.

You will never find peace by repeating the story in your mind. Never. And once you feel your way into this truth, you start turning away from thoughts every time they appear. It doesn’t matter how often they arise or how much they try to seduce you into thinking they are true or important. Your job is this: to stop feeding useless stories with your attention, every time.

Once I really got this point, everything started to shift.

Do you want to be happy? Stop acting as if your stories are true. Don’t feed them, and here you are, so fresh and alive!

Third Step: Turning Toward

If you aren’t going to think about what happened, where does your attention go? This part may be tricky, but hang in there with me.

In every moment, you are aware. If you are breathing, you are aware that you are breathing. If you are crying, you are aware that you are crying. You can’t possibly have any experience without also being aware of it. You have been aware of everything that has ever happened to you – that is the constant. How could it be otherwise?

If you bring your attention not to things that you are aware of, like thoughts and feelings, but to the awareness itself, you will make some interesting discoveries.

Memories, ideas, feelings, sounds, sensations, sights – all of these appear and, at the same time, you are aware.
Awareness is still and spacious. Things just are, no matter what arises in it. It can’t be disturbed.
Being aware is infinitely patient and utterly accepting.

Putting It All Together

We already have seen that an emotional reaction consists of a story and physical sensations and that feeding stories will quickly take you down the road to suffering. But what about physical sensations?

Undigested emotions from the past get stuck in the body and appear as physical contraction and holding. We tense up on so many levels to protect ourselves from the world. And this is what needs to be liberated.

Grounding yourself as awareness and turning away from thoughts, notice the sensations in your body, and let them be. Let them surface from the recesses of your cells to be seen in the light of awareness. Simply be aware, with great kindness, but don’t do anything.

As you feel the sensations, give them time to come out of hiding, and you will eventually notice they aren’t solid. As you welcome them, they begin to not even feel real. Every time you find a sliver of space in a contraction or a tiny hole in the armor, this is awareness shining through.

Over time, simply be aware. Let sensations be, and they will barely cause a ripple.

How to discover the treasure at the heart of painful emotions? Turn away from the story line, then turn toward yourself – aware, alive, awake, and present. Let the physical contractions release into this space and be the space.

No story…being aware…contractions dissolving…where is the pain?

Have you discovered the treasure at the heart of pain? Questions? I’d love to hear…

Follow the Intelligent Path from Anxiety to Peace

Note: I had some problems publishing this post. If you’d like to join the conversation by commenting, please do so here. Thank you!

“As long as you make an identity for yourself out of pain, you cannot be free of it.”
~Eckhart Tolle

“Anxiety is loves greatest killer.”
~Anais Nin

If it happens to you, you’re not alone. It’s an experience I hear about often and used to color every day of my life. It’s that subtle undercurrent of anxiety that makes you feel ill-at-ease, restless, and on edge.

Do you know this feeling? Maybe you experience it as fear, dread, or just plain discomfort. It causes your mind to spin and fills you with doubt. Left unexamined, it governs your life, making peace seem like an unattainable fantasy.

We are speaking about the primary dis-ease of our modern life.

Have you noticed that we are constantly given messages that lead us to conclude that we need to do more, have more, be more? We live in a culture of lack that reinforces the sense of the inadequate personal self and has us looking to the past and future for fulfillment.

It breeds the toxic “if only” story: if only I were thinner, happier, in a better relationship with a more satisfying job… Taking this on, you believe that:

Things are not OK as they are are,and
You are a person who is not good enough.

These identities sit in you like an annoying guest who refuses to leave. No wonder you’re anxious.

What to Do?

What to do with this intense feeling of discomfort?

Analyzing why it’s there will not get to the root of it.

The desire to run from it is understandable, but creates unconscious behavior patterns that don’t serve and leaves you scrambling to fix everything about yourself that appears to be broken.

Just tolerating the feeling leaves you hopelessly anxious, out of sorts, and overrun by obsessive thinking.

What is needed is a radical solution. Because you can’t think your way out of this endless cycle of anxiety and worry.

The Radical Solution

Finding your way out of the discomfort of anxiety asks you to question your assumptions about everything you take to be true.

What exactly is anxiety?
What are you doing that sustains it?
Who is the you who is anxious?
What needs to happen for you to be peaceful?

Let’s start by establishing that peace is possible; in fact, peace is more available than you could ever imagine. Anxiety? A ship passing through the ocean of you. Realize this by following the trail of breadcrumbs from anxiety to peace.

Pick up the first one by investigating the actual nature of the experience of anxiety, which requires moving your attention away from it so you can take a closer look.

Notice that this is possible – you can be aware of this experience of anxiety and discomfort. Recognize that just with this simple shift of attention from being caught in the web of anxiety to witnessing it, you already feel more spacious.

Interesting.

Now, from this place of being aware, what do you notice? If you are like me, there are swirls of thought forms and various physical sensations in the body. And that is all.

I can get caught up in these thoughts, spending my time analyzing, worrying, and sifting through possibilities and what if’s. But if, just for a second, I stop being consumed in the content of the thinking, I notice two things:

I am aware, and sensations and thoughts are temporarily present in awareness.

Let’s explore further by experimenting.

Experiment #1:

Engage intently with anxious thoughts. Think them, make them real, and see how more anxious stories immediately spring to life. How do you feel? Probably tense, contracted, worried, and stressed.

Experiment #2:

Notice physical sensations without paying attention to thoughts. If you don’t create thoughts about the sensations, even by labeling them, there is just the direct experience of the sensation. Is there a problem?

Experiment #3:

Shift your attention away from thoughts and physical sensations, and just be aware. Is awareness spacious or contracted? Does it have a name, a gender, or an identity? Is it troubled or at peace?

What do we conclude from these experiments? When you unravel what you call anxiety, it loses its power. Anxiety thrives when your attention gets lost in thinking. When you rest as aware presence, you are at peace.

Return to Peace

When you are consumed by anxiety, how to return to yourself?

Disengage from anxious thoughts
Let physical sensations be without weaving a story about them
Notice that you are aware, still, alive, and full, and live here.

Rinse and repeat a thousand times a day, if necessary, as each moment is a moment of peace.

Next time you feel anxious, know that thinking won’t help you. Instead, simplify. Notice you are here, present and aware. Already at peace.

Anxious? Have you found your way to peace? I’d love to hear…

Note: I had some problems publishing this post. If you’d like to join the conversation by commenting, please do so here. Thank you!

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