Dr. Gail Brenner

Sacred Space for Awakened Living

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Die Before You Die

“When it’s over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.”
~Mary Oliver

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“Die before you die”…this is a phrase from the Zen and Sufi spiritual traditions, and I recently got to see the meaning of it up close. For a month, I watched my 97-year-old father decline, leading to a peaceful death last week.

He felt good about his life, and was initially accepting once he realized that his body was starting to change. He said he was ready…my sisters and I had heartfelt conversations with him. But as the decline progressed further and he faced the depth of letting go that death involves, he became intensely agitated. Frankly, it was hard to witness.

He was angry and demanding with almost everyone. Although he wasn’t in pain, he couldn’t get into a comfortable position. And he cried out for help many times even though he couldn’t say what he needed help with.

At one point, he yelled with shock and disbelief, “I think I’m going to die!”

Facing Death

I can’t say what was going on inside him, but it looked like the closer he got, the more he was faced with what he would need to let go of…and he was angry and terrified.

The daily routines he relied on were taken from him, as he no longer had the strength for them. He had to let go of showers, food, and sitting in his favorite chair. He couldn’t reach out for someone’s hand. And ultimately, I think he was scared to realize that he couldn’t stay in the body and that life as he knew it was coming to an end.

He didn’t know what was coming next.

A hospice organization was involved, and the nurses gave him calming medication once he stopped refusing it. So in the last hours, he appeared to be at peace.

“Die Before You Die”

The phrase that kept coming to my mind as I was watching this process unfold was, “Die before you die.” And I was taken over by a flood of gratitude for the spiritual path that has been my home for a long time.

Because I absolutely know for sure that peace comes with letting go of attachments and accepting everything as it is. Peace is right here and available when we stop relying on the mind to control what we can’t control and go with life as it is actually unfolding.

What do we die to before we take our last breath?

  • All our expectations,
  • Our needs and preferences,
  • Our ideas about ourselves and others,
  • The entirety of our personal identities,
  • Attachment to our appearance, habits, and anything that makes us feel separate from others, and
  • The familiarity of what it’s like to live this human life.

We have what we have and enjoy it thoroughly, but know that none of it lasts forever. In fact, nothing in form lasts forever—no thought, no feeling, no relationship, the world as we know it—nothing. And if we’re busy worrying about what we might lose, we can’t fully appreciate what’s here.

Celebrating What’s Here

My experience is that letting go of these attachments is not sad and it’s not about loss. Because when we’re liberated from clinging to what we have, we’re free to celebrate with no limitation. What we have when we have it becomes so fresh! We get to play in the world of form, living this human life, as long as it lasts.

And when it goes, it goes. That’s the nature of all things in form. In a sense, they’re not real because they’re temporary. And clinging doesn’t make them more real—it only feeds our suffering.

Feel into what it might be like to surrender control over everything. Then see what remains, as this is the essence of the profound spiritual life. Here is consciousness, a stable sense of ease and peace that just is. This is the boundless ever-present field of being aware that receives everything with no preference and no attachment.

It’s what is always here when all forms fall away. And experiencing this makes me not fear death at all.

This is not to say I’m not mourning the loss of my father. I honor his memory every day as a ritual right now, and tears come sometimes. But if I look at it very closely, empty of any story about what happened, the deepest peace that I know to be the truth about reality is always present.

Discovering the Sacred in Everyday Life

“Sometimes it is necessary to reteach a thing its loveliness.”
~Galway Kinnell

Although you may not realize it, your everyday life is already sacred. Everything arises from the one source. Everything is an exquisite expression of life, of pure being.

One of my clients reported that she is starting to become more aware of things in her life she never noticed before. She loves it when someone unexpected shows up at her door. She flows through the day responding with ease to everyone and everything. And she is attuned with all her senses when she takes a walk outside.​​​​​​​

These are new experiences for her, but this deepening awareness has always been available. Things aren’t becoming more tender or sacred. The way nature appears to her hasn’t changed.

What’s changed? Her perspective.

Rather than living in the mental noise, she’s more willing to say a friendly, “Hello,” to her reactions when she’s triggered and let them be. She is slower and quieter so there’s space to see and appreciate everything.

She’s sensitive and grateful—and her heart is touched over and over.

Discovering What’s Sacred

This is the sacred in everyday life.

When something is recognized as sacred, it is known to have a quality that is beyond the material, physical world. It’s not subject to the mind’s analysis, judgment, or interpretation.

It is illuminated by grace. It may look ordinary, but as we encounter it with nothing in the way, we stand in awe of its very existence.

Recognizing the sacred all around us—which includes ourselves, we take nothing for granted. Then everyone and everything is a gift, a surprise, an expression of the light of consciousness.

Oh, the puddles of rain outside my window! I get to breathe! I get to hold my friend who just lost her husband.

Most of us need reminders—a gentle tap on the shoulder that invites us out of the mind’s noise and into the living reality of this now moment.

And this is where rituals and practices are helpful.

A friend has an altar at home that she visits in reverence every morning. Another steeps himself in books describing the exquisiteness of being present in nature. And another starts the day with a guided meditation that grounds her in presence.

Your Rituals and Practices

There are countless ways to remind yourself of the sacred quality of everything. Here are some suggestions:

  • Set an alarm with soft chimes to awaken you to presence any time during the day;
  • Pair a conscious breath with a common action, such as standing up or feeling the urge to check your email;
  • Read or listen to something that inspires you before you turn out the light at night or just upon waking;
  • Offer a prayer of gratitude before you start eating a meal;
  • Go to a busy cafĂ© and see the tenderness in everyone (I love this one!);
  • Commit to slowing down and being aware when you find yourself rushing.

The mind may tell you that if you were really far along on your path to awakening, you wouldn’t need rituals and practices. And this is an opportunity to not listen to the naysaying mind.

Give yourself permission to do whatever it takes to absorb into the experience of being aware. Come up with actions that bring you back to the spaciousness beyond your personal self, and incorporate them into your daily life.

With each moment of consciously being aware, you’re here: peaceful, free, and utterly alive.

What About You?

What are your rituals and practices for coming home? Do you have any resistance to using them? I’d love to hear your reports and comments.

How to Make Space for Joy and Celebration

“You have the freedom, ability, and authority to love your life. Just be you, then wait.”
~Gangaji

If your attention is in your head, and you’re going over stories, worries, and resentments for the zillionth time, there’s no way you’re going to experience the joy and celebration you just somehow know are possible.

Something in you knows that you weren’t put on this earth to always feel ill-at-ease and bothered. Something in you knows that joy and celebration are possible for you—you just don’t know how to find your way to them.

Space for Joy

I saw how this works firsthand when I was speaking with a client the other day. She was telling me about complicated family dynamics involving conflict, chaos, and various kinds of dysfunction.

There was a lot of story, and I started asking myself where she was going with all of it.

I politely interrupted her and invited her to bring her attention to her feelings and the sensations in her body. She found nausea in the pit of her stomach along with sadness and resentment—and she noticed a tendency to avoid these feelings by going back into her thoughts.

Does that ring a bell—avoiding what you’re feeling by going into your thoughts?

Taking me up on the invitation to stay with the feelings instead of going back into the story, within a few minutes, her eyes lit up. She told me she suddenly felt a burst of joy and excitement about an upcoming positive event.

What We Miss

If she had kept avoiding the feelings in her body—and kept spinning around in the narrative in her mind—would she have experienced the aliveness of feeling joyful and excited? No. Her attention would have been tangled up with the endless retelling of why her family members should be different than they are.

And she would have missed out on being conscious of her present moment experience. She would have missed the opportunity to bring kindness and acceptance to what she was feeling.

And she would have missed the joy that appeared once her mind stopped chewing on so many thoughts.

For many of us, the repetitive swirl of thoughts in our minds is a familiar home base.

  • We think we’re going to find solutions if we keep thinking about the problems.
  • We think we’ll successfully avoid our emotions if we don’t let ourselves feel them.
  • We’re just used to thinking a lot and don’t consider any alternatives—even if we’re miserable.

What are you missing out on by trying to solve unsolvable situations in your mind? What is possible for you if you’re mind-space isn’t full of thoughts and the tension that comes with avoiding feelings?

There’s only one way to find out. And it’s the sacred step that sets you free.

The Sacred Step that Sets You Free

Take a breath and open to whatever you’re experiencing. Be the spacious presence that accepts whatever arises unconditionally. It’s so simple—and utterly glorious.

Your mind will tell you that you’ll be stuck in painful feelings forever. But this is the mind’s strategy to keep you thinking.

Instead, expand beyond your familiar and limited ideas of yourself. Consider a new and fresh approach, which is to open to what’s here with an overflowing generous heart.

Trust your inner knowing to guide you to explore the expansiveness of being present.

Peace, joy, gratitude, celebration, love…these are all right here, available to you when you end the fight with your experience.

But you won’t find them in your mind. And they won’t have space to blossom if your mind is perpetually busy.

Welcome your feelings fully, and soon they’ll settle. Then you’re primed to discover the spaciousness from which infinite possibilities emerge.

What About You?

Are you available to joy and celebration? Reports or questions? I’d love to hear…

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The Pain of Judging Thoughts

judging_thoughts_post“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.”
~Rumi

Any belief that we hold onto makes us feel separate. We blame, criticize, and divide the world into right and wrong, acceptable and unacceptable.

The pain of the judging mind runs rampant.

Every day I hear of people judging the decisions they made when they were younger, judging their appearance, judging every word that comes out of their mouth, and judging what other people say and do.

How Judging Thoughts Affect Us

How does it feel to judge? Check in with your own inner experience. You’ll find that you feel sad, contracted, shameful, separate, and alone.

Judgments contain a solid sense of the personal “I” who thinks it knows what is right and wrong.

  • I’m right in thinking he should have acted differently.
  • I know everyone’s looking at me and thinking there’s something wrong with me.
  • I know she’s shouldn’t be so negative.

Do you want to be right or do you want to be close, connected, and aligned with the truth of things?

Finding Another Way

My invitation to you today is to turn away from judgments that appear in your mind. Why? Because it’s kind.

I know that might sound hard to do, but give it a try. Notice judging thoughts, but know that if you follow them, they won’t take you to happiness.

Say, “No thank you,” to the pain of judging thoughts.

What do you do instead? You find another way.

Instead of staying stuck in right and wrong, look beyond those thoughts and bring compassion and understanding to the moment.

If you’re judging someone else’s behavior, get curious. Wonder why they’re doing what they’re doing. What’s the feeling or intention behind the behavior?

Use the opportunity to break down your own mental ideas that divide and separate, and connect with the tender humanness of the other person. Can you simply say OK to them as they are?

And if you’re judging yourself, you already know that it doesn’t serve your peace and happiness.

Whatever you’re judging about yourself needs your love and care. Hold that part of you like a loving mother holds her child. Bring compassion to the one who is hurting, to the one who is doing her best.

Be supremely kind with your own inner experience.

Leaning Into Love

One day as I was driving, I noticed that the car in front of me had a vanity license plate that sent a message about the driver’s self-importance. A harsh judging thought arose in my mind about how conceited that person must be. And immediately I felt a strong, almost physical stab of sadness and separation.

Letting that feeling be, I looked for another way.

I felt deep compassion for the human condition—the one who judges and the one who chose to publicize their views about themselves on a license plate. Did that license plate really matter to me?

This seemingly trivial experience led to a huge heart opening that included everyone and everything. My internal dividing walls collapsed, and I fell into an ocean of love.

It’s the nature of the mind to judge, but you don’t have to give those judging thoughts any of your interest and attention.

You don’t have to engage with them at all.

Let them float off like a cloud moving across the sky. And find your way to your huge, natural, loving, open heart. You’re going to love it, I promise you.

What About You?

Do you notice the pain of judging thoughts? What’s another way? I’d love to hear…. And if you’re reading this by email, please click here to visit GailBrenner.com and to comment.

When You Feel Wronged

wronged“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there.”
~Rumi

Have you ever been stuck in a grudge against someone? Are you feeling wronged, taken advantage of, or betrayed?

There are many ways that our connection in relationship can break down, and feeling that you’ve been treated unfairly is one of them.

If you’re like me, it’s like a fire burning inside that says, “No!” No, it shouldn’t be this way. No, she shouldn’t have said that. And here we are, caught in blame. Because if the other is wrong, then you must be right.

Due to their own unconscious patterns, people can be thoughtless and hurtful and do things that have challenging effects on us. But staying caught in blaming others, no matter how tempting it is, does little to ease our pain.

Life brings us what it brings us, and we have little control over it. However, what we can do is go within and decide how we want to meet what’s been given.

Life’s challenges, as difficult as they are, can be seen as generous opportunities for conscious exploration and the wisdom that softens our minds and hearts.

If you’re feeling wronged, there’s an inner journey available that guides you to restore your connection with the flow of life. It takes time, intention, and a tremendous amount of self-compassion. Be very tender with yourself when you’re ready to begin this process.

The last time I held a grudge, I spent months blaming the other person in my mind. I’m sure I repeated the “she shouldn’t have” story thousands of times. Finally, it dawned on me that I was tired of my own suffering…and that’s when the journey began.

The Solution Is Not in the Story

Our minds love to grab onto stories of judgment, hurt, and revenge. It feels satisfying to be right because it justifies the pain we feel.

What is your actual experience while you’re busy cycling through these stories in your mind? You probably feel tense and contracted, inflexible rather than spacious, and disconnected from the reality of the present moment.

And while your attention is absorbed in the stories, you’re overlooking a tender part of your experience…the emotions you’re feeling.

If you stay involved in the story, you will continue to feel stuck. How to begin to restore connection to your present moment experience? Breathe.

It might look like this: STORY…take a deep breath…STORY…take a deep breath… Again and again.

As your attention falls away from your mind and into your body, you’ll notice parts of your experience that were previously hidden.

Being a Loving Witness to your Feelings

Without the story, what’s happening in your body? If your feelings are strong, you might feel on fire with anger and hurt.

Make the space to notice how you feel inside…the agitation in your chest, the burning behind your eyes, whatever it is. Be the vast welcoming presence for all of this emotional energy that wants the space to move.

Then go deeper. Explore to see what emotions lie underneath the anger and pain, and lovingly welcome them.

Expanded Exploration

When it feels right, consider this journaling practice to support your clarity. Choose some of these sentences to complete with the challenging person and situation in mind. Your answers don’t need to make sense…just let your thoughts flow and your heart speak. Take your time with this exploration.

  • I’m sorry that___________________________________
  • I’m sorry for____________________________________
  • I realize I_______________________________________
  • I realize you____________________________________
  • What I can learn is_____________________________
  • Thank you for__________________________________

As you finish, tune into your present moment experience. What is arising for you?

Wise Perspective

When you take on this journey back to your essential wholeness, you give up waiting for the other person to make things right. As you move beyond the personal story in your mind, there’s space to soften into your present moment experience.

It feels like coming home to the living reality that’s here right now.

With a quieter mind, what do you notice? Maybe you become aware of compassion for the suffering of all involved. Or you realize that feeling wronged is an aspect of our collective human experience throughout time.

Maybe you relax into gratitude for all that’s given, or you simply, finally, enjoy feeling peaceful.

This is what happens when we consciously make our way through the hard places. Our personal hurt becomes a gateway into the loving embrace of all of life.