Dr. Gail Brenner

Sacred Space for Awakened Living

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Are You Attached? Here’s the Way to Freedom

“The work of the eyes is done. Go now and do the heart-work on the images imprisoned within you.”
~Rainer Maria Rilke

If the world out there doesn’t feel safe and welcoming to you, if you can’t be peaceful inside no matter what you try, then you may want to take a look at what you’re attached to.

What is it like to be attached?

  • You can’t be happy unless others respect, love, or approve of you;
  • You’re waiting for someone to apologize so you can be at peace;
  • You think your contentment in life depends on the right job, relationship, or family;
  • You expect other people to listen to and understand you—and get upset when they don’t.

We’re attached when we want someone or something outside ourselves to give us what we think we need to feel happy, whole, or peaceful.

Here’s the reality of being attached: we’re caught in a story of what we don’t have or what we lack, and we’re left waiting, hoping, and ultimately disappointed. We feel like a victim, putting our precious happiness in the hands of something we can’t control—what other people say or do and our life situations.

So how to get unstuck if you’re putting off your happiness waiting for something outside yourself to change?

If you want to be happy (who doesn’t?), you’re called to approach the problem from a different perspective.

As Einstein wisely said, “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.”

The new level of consciousness that is needed is to turn toward your experience and look within. Forget about looking out to the world, hoping to get the love or apology you think you need.

Instead,

  • Identify the story you’re telling yourself because it is a story designed to make you feel separate and lacking;
  • Experience how it painfully limits you; and
  • Experiment with losing interest in this story and bringing your attention fully into the present moment.

Rather than focusing on the loop of the story playing over and over in your head, take a breath and come back to what’s here and present right now.

Turning inward, what you might notice first is the pain you’ve been living with. For most of us, it’s the despair of a young child who didn’t get the love and care she or he needed. Putting the story aside, there’s the physical experience of this pain.

Now you’ve gotten to the root of the problem—the emotion that’s been lying here unexplored. And by noticing it, loving it, breathing with it, and letting it be present, it eventually begins to lose its power. It can’t hold up to the light of loving awareness.

You stop justifying the pain and waiting for resolution…and form a friendly and loving relationship with your own experience. This is how you become free of longing for something you don’t have and find the peace and happiness, right now, that you’ve wanted all along. It’s an incredibly kind way to be.

The painful feeling of not getting what you think you need will probably return many times, but each time is an opportunity to lovingly welcome your inner experience.

Being attached to an outcome you can’t control creates division that reinforces the idea that you’re separate and lacking—and it just doesn’t feel good. Turning toward what arises in you invites love, clarity, and compassionate understanding.

Instead of living in lack, you discover acceptance, celebration, and the simple joy of being alive.

The Delights of Beginner’s Mind

“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.”
~Shunryu Suzuki

There’s a phrase in Zen Buddhism known as “beginner’s mind.” I’m not a Buddhist, but I love that in any moment, all of us can be a beginner.

We can ignore the thoughts that constrict, judge, limit, and define. We can forget our histories and see the familiar ideas about ourselves as old news.

With empty mental space, we can open to reality directly—just as it is—experiencing everything freshly and with the deepest intimacy.

Know this: you can always begin again.

If you’re not a beginner, then you think you’re the one who knows—and that limits possibilities. That’s what the quote at the top of this article means by “an expert.”

  • Are you an expert in the judgments you hold of other people?
  • Are you an expert in how you evaluate yourself and your shortcomings?
  • Do you think you know how things should be?

Standing in beginner’s mind, you forget everything you know…everything. Now you’re fresh and innocent…and untouched by the repetitive and negative commentary of the mind.

Can you feel the openness you’re experiencing now, not knowing anything? It’s radical!

Here are some ways to enjoy beginner’s mind:

  • Enter a situation with no memory or expectation based on past experience, and receive what unfolds;
  • Look at familiar objects as if you’ve never seen them before. Don’t take them for granted. Be curious;
  • Act outside your comfort zone;
  • Show up in an interaction with someone you know forgetting the history between you;
  • Don’t rely on common sense or the usual way. Now there’s space for creativity.

Beginner’s mind is don’t know mind. It’s a mind vast and open like the sky…empty of content, awake, infinitely creative, supremely aware.

Over and over, let go of what you know and return to the openness of beginner’s mind…where you’re poised and present, available to all…

What to Do with Sticky Patterns

“Someone, who has realized the Truth of what he is, rather than what he has been conditioned to believe he is, will be smiling in every cell of his being. It is infectious.”
~ Mooji

A powerful insight is illuminated when we realize how much our conditioned patterns interfere with our happiness.

Many of these patterns have plagued us for years, and no matter what we try, they seem to take hold and not let go.

We hear about freedom as a possibility, but we just don’t know how to find our way there. And meanwhile, the patterns keep getting played out in our minds, our emotions, our relationships, and our choices in life.

First, it’s important to understand that deeply embedded patterns usually take time to unwind. You’re expressing tremendous self-compassion when you commit to working with them as much as you can whenever they arise. Because that’s what is needed for you to experience the peace and happiness you know are possible for you.

The goal is not to get rid of these tendencies. So when they reappear—and they will—it doesn’t mean that you’re doing something wrong. If they’ve been played out without much awareness for a long time, they are highly reinforced. This means they have a strong momentum to keep arising.

So what is your goal? To bring conscious awareness to these patterns as they are occurring and to relate to them with understanding, wisdom, and love. Because this is what softens them.

Love for the patterns? Yes, you read that right. These conditioned tendencies aren’t evil. Behind them lies a heartfelt motive to protect yourself and to avoid pain.

Do you smoke and want to stop? You’re probably trying to find a sense of inner calm. Do you feel like a victim? Maybe you’re hiding from some painful feelings. Do you put up barriers to intimacy in your relationships? You’re trying to stay safe inside.

And as convoluted as it may be, even getting angry at someone is an attempt to make them stop what they’re doing so you will feel peaceful.

As your desire for true peace and happiness grows, you realize that these patterns aren’t working for you. They had a helpful intention when they came into being years ago, but now is the sacred time when you’re ready to move beyond them.

Because you are way more magnificent than your patterns will tell you.

We sometimes don’t know where to start. So today I’d like to share with you a framework for working with these sticky patterns that I call top down and bottom up.

Top Down

Top down means that you recognize the behaviors that aren’t working for you and you experiment with changing them.

Imagine acting as if you were someone who wasn’t caught in this particular pattern. What would that person do? How would they feel inside? What would they think?

Enjoy the possibility of stepping way out of the limited reality of the pattern.

Suppose that you’re free of this pattern—what would you do differently in any given moment? Give yourself some time for this reflection, and be as specific as possible.

Then experiment with embodying your newfound insights. Take a breath and open to your present moment experience (not the reality in your head). Look into your loved ones eyes before responding. Consider the whole and not only yourself. (This is one I’m working on.)

Then take in how these new ways of being feel in your body—because they will feel different. This is what happens when deeply held patterns begin to shift.

Bottom Up

Along with top down, is bottom up. And here is the invitation to be so kind to yourself in meeting whatever emotions underlie these patterns. Often you’ll find longstanding fear, hurt and sadness, or a deep sense of lack.

If these feelings are ignored, they will continue to fuel the pattern. As you turn toward them with loving attention—a lot—they begin to get what they need. They calm down and soften. The nervous system starts to relax.

Then without the fuel of unexplored emotions, especially combined with the new behaviors you’re practicing from top down, amazingly you begin to experience that these patterns don’t have to define you.

In my experience, it feels like an inner revolution is starting to take place. I’ve felt a certain way for so long, then the pieces inside begin to move. I feel unfamiliar in my body—in a wonderful way. I’m in a space of not knowing how to be without that old identity, which feels so fresh!

There’s expansion and lightness in my whole being.

Maybe you’ve felt like a victim of your patterns for a long time. And here’s the truth: your experience of them can change. Try top down and bottom up. You’re creating the fertile soil for an inner revolution.

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Ease and Flow in Uncertain Times

“If uncertainty is unacceptable to you, it turns into fear. If it is perfectly acceptable, it turns into increased aliveness, alertness, and creativity.”
~Eckhart Tolle

Who would ever have guessed that we would get a crash course in uncertainty? Well, here we are.

A global pandemic, the health of everyone in the world at risk, including ourselves and our loved ones… Wow!

One question on my mind is about how to meet the uncertainty we’re all facing. And there is a lot of it.

What is going to happen? Who will be affected? When will this disruption end so we can get back to “normal?” How will it end?

Uncertainty means that we don’t know. We just don’t know the answers to these questions.

And for many of us, not knowing fuels the fear lying at the core of how we view ourselves. Everything is threatened—our preferences for how things should be, our life situation defined by roles and relationships, our finances, and even our physical bodies.

Our familiar ground starts to feel quite shaky.

Here are some points for you to contemplate: if you think you control your life, you don’t. If you think you and those you love are going to live forever, they won’t. If you think your world can’t change in a heartbeat, it can.

The tragedies that mark the nature of human civilization don’t just happen to others. Now we’re all facing one.

We’re attached to normalcy, taking the most fundamental aspects of our lives for granted. And now they’re up for grabs.

Whether we want it or not, we’re being given one gigantic invitation to investigate our attachments. What are you going to do with this invitation?

I’ve shined the light on many attachments over the years, seeing them, feeling into what it’s like to be attached, and considering what it would be like to let them go. It’s been a fruitful exploration of fear, loss—and ultimately freedom.

We are always in some kind of relationship with our experience. We might swirl in our minds’ stories while we miss the feelings that drive them. We shame ourselves for our reactions, rather than welcoming them. We desperately want what we want while we resist the truth of what we’re given.

Or we can be conscious of what arises in our inner landscape with curiosity…and tenderness.

Many of us are terrified of our reactions. We don’t want to face loss and change. We don’t want to feel out of control.

I can tell you from experience that fighting what is only makes you struggle more. When we relax a bit and begin to embrace the deeper reality of things, there’s a natural softening.

And softening the hard edges of our resistance brings spaciousness and flexibility, if only for a while as we surf the waves of our reactions.

No longer locked into the fight with ourselves, there’s room for more. As the field of what’s possible expands, we notice a deeper understanding, compassion and acceptance even in the midst of painful feelings, the flow of generosity, and creative responding that includes the whole.

Uncertainty is about the future, and exploring it brings us right here to our present moment experience.

We stay informed and make intelligent decisions based on love for all (e.g., social distancing even if it’s inconvenient). We welcome our reactions and resistances. We consider taking breaks from filling our heads (and bodies) with the news.

And we remind ourselves to watch the leaves blowing in the wind…notice our chest rise and fall with the breath…appreciate our time with family, friends, and pets…and embrace the abundance of all that’s given.

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Healing at the Source of Shame

“Nothing makes us so lonely as our secrets.”
~Paul Tournier

The more I speak to people on the spiritual path, the more I become aware of the hidden shame that many of us carry.

We’re ashamed of our bodies, our thoughts, and the feeling that we’re odd, defective, or abnormal.

Shame is a form of secret suffering that we keep in the shadows of our being. It’s like a bruise that keeps getting re-opened over and over. Simply said, shame hurts.
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Shame is a source of unhappiness that thrives on inattention. Ignore the shameful feelings, and they’ll poke at you forever.

But turn toward them with your loving and curious attention, and the pain of shame begins to soften.

Befriending Shame

You get to know the story of shame and the way it takes up residence in your body. And your heart begins to open with compassion to the sense of the one who feels so hurt.

And what opens to this hurting part of yourself? It is you being aware of shame, watching it like a movie on the screen.

This is so important to know: the you who is aware of shame is simply noticing, untouched by the shame itself.

This is how you find freedom from the shame. You discover the gap between the experience of shame and you as the observer of it. In the moments when you rest as this observing presence, the wave of shame subsides.

Now you’re relating to shame in a completely new way. Instead of being lost in it, you study it to see what it is—and realize that it doesn’t have to define you.

You become tender toward the shame, feeling its pain, while also knowing that something in you is strong, whole, and perfectly okay.

Can you find that sense of being okay? Maybe it will help to take an expansive, conscious breath. Even if that being okay is a tiny seed, it’s in there, I promise you.

Softening Into Our Humanity

The more we befriend our own perceived imperfections, the more tender we are toward others.

In our humanity, we know at some level that we’re all messy, awkward, and unsure. We all have vulnerabilities that show the richness and diversity of living the human life.

So in a sense, anything that we experience as shameful isn’t personal to us. In the silence of shame, you might convince yourself that you’re the only one who feels the way you do.

But dig one inch below the surface, and you’ll find that everyone is vulnerable in the same way. It’s the nature of the human condition.

This invites us to meet our own and others’ vulnerability with love, compassion, acceptance, and lightness—and not judgment. Judging doesn’t serve, but love and presence do.

Be the loving presence for whatever arises—whether in yourself or someone else.

Intimacy from No Longer Hiding in Shame

Then, with deep acceptance of your own experience, the fear of judgment starts to fall away.

  • You show up with others open and vulnerable.
  • You share what you’re experiencing because you no longer need to hide it.
  • You break down walls and open the door to so much intimacy and deep understanding.

It’s a sacred path.

Ignoring shame will keep you lonely and disconnected. Meet it with curiosity and a tender and open heart, and you’ll wake up to yourself: peaceful, boundless, and one with all.

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