Dr. Gail Brenner

Sacred Space for Awakened Living

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Forgiveness: The First Crucial Step

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“Of course, anger can always be justified. But then, so can forgiveness. It all depends on how much more you want from the adventure.”
~Mike Dooley

Everybody needs to relax, right? Well, that is why I do crossword puzzles. The other day I came across the clue for a 6-letter word meaning “something you hold or nurse.” The answer? Grudge.

This clue offers a recipe for how to keep a grudge – you hold on tight, you feed and nourish it so it stays lodged in your mind. And what are we cherishing so dearly? As the dictionary defines it, “a feeling of ill will or resentment.”

To anyone out there still holding a grudge, is this what you really want?

Why Let Go

Freeing ourselves from the web of a grudge needs to be approached with care. People are capable of doing some pretty nasty things, and maybe you have been the target of some of them. If so, I am truly sorry for the pain you experience. But now the question to consider is: have you suffered enough? Does it serve you to hold onto the story of what happened or do you want to be free of it?

As you reflect on this question, here are some facts to consider:

  • Forgiveness is about us and our peace of mind; it is not about the other person.
  • The person who benefits most from forgiving is us, by far.
  • Forgiving does not condone or excuse someone else’s bad behavior.
  • We cannot change the past or others’ behavior; we can shift our thoughts and feelings about what happened.
  • We can let go without an apology.
  • Forgiveness lowers stress, decreases blood pressure and heart rate, and enhances positive thoughts and feelings.

Just as forgiving benefits us, not forgiving perpetuates our suffering. When we are caught by a grudge, here is what happens:

  • We think about the tragic story of what occurred – sometimes a lot.
  • We justify continuing to hold the grudge by reminding ourselves, over and over, how awful the other’s behavior was.
  • We feel angry and sad.
  • There is often a rift in our relationships.

Letting go of all of this is a return to wholeness and relaxation. We stop expending energy trying to protect ourselves. We take a huge weight out of our minds, hearts, and bodies.

Consciously Choosing to Let Go

The first crucial step in letting go of a grudge is to turn our attention to our own thoughts and feelings. Incessantly repeating the story of what happened distracts us from our inner experience and keeps the grudge in place. The medicine is to open our hearts to ourselves and tenderly embrace all of the hurt and pain. As we learn to care for ourselves, the focus on the bitter and resentful thoughts and feelings diminishes.

Shifting our attention doesn’t happen by magic. It takes our conscious commitment to the intention to heal ourselves, no matter what. It is a decision we make for our own well being. It’s the same as choosing an apple over a doughnut – we consciously decide to move in the direction of helpful rather than hurtful.

When you look inside yourself, are you ready? I know you can find the brittle story of what happened, but can you also connect with the part of you that is fed up with feeling bad? When we desire freedom, more than anything, we are ready for true healing.

Caring for Our Tender Feelings

With an open and accepting heart, the forgiveness inquiry begins by asking, “What am I actually feeling in this moment?” Be curious about what you discover: maybe sadness, anger, or fear, or the stronger feelings of sorrow, fury, or terror. You might notice physical tension or a sense of feeling stuck in different areas of the body.

In the spirit of cultivating inner peace and happiness, allow these experiences to be received fully by you. Saying, “Yes!” to each one, brings the liberation you are longing for. No longer hidden and festering, they are fully welcomed into the light of your attention.

As we are all well aware, the thoughts associated with a grudge have the power of a freight train barreling down the tracks. We cannot control their arrival, but we can control how much attention we give them. Our job is to look underneath the thoughts to reconnect with our tender feelings, over and over.

Odd as it may sound, we don’t try to let go. When we refuse to give the story our attention and we care so lovingly for those most vulnerable places inside of us, the letting go happens. We notice feeling lighter, having more energy, smiling more, being kinder to others.

Returning to Wholeness

Goodness and love are our nature. As soon as these essential qualities have a portal, they can’t help but express themselves. Holding a grudge pushes aside our essence, our very life force, in favor of misery and separation. When we light up our dark secrets with love and understanding, peace beyond peace is revealed.

Do you want to forgive but feel stuck in the process? What has helped you to let go? I’d love to hear. Everyone benefits from the challenges and revelations you share.

image credit: atoach

The Good News About Limiting Beliefs

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“When there is no enemy within, the enemies outside cannot hurt you.”
~African proverb

In the last post, we saw that when we tell the truth about our challenging relationships, the only solution is to look within. Where previously we might have blamed or criticized another, we discovered that the true source of the problem is our own unexamined thoughts and feelings. When we are willing to explore these unresolved places in ourselves, we stop projecting them onto others. We stop wanting others to change so we feel better. We accept the fundamental reality of people and situations and respond accordingly.

This approach potentially shifts the whole dynamic of a relationship. Friction fades to freedom; resistance to wise responding.

The Tragic Effect of Not Embracing Feelings

However, the desire to look within is extremely rare. Very few people are interested in inner reflection, in taking responsibility for their contribution to their own unhappiness. Projection runs rampant in everyday life, with the vast majority of beings on the planet wanting others to change so they can avoid feeling their own pain. It is at the root of wars between nations as well as conflicts in our communities and struggles in our homes.

Most people in the world do not want to be honest with themselves. And we have probably encountered some of them in our own lives.

What happens when we are the object of other people’s unexamined pain? Say you were raised by parents who could not meet their own sadness or fear. Maybe you had a teacher or sibling or neighbor who was ruled by a need to avoid their own distressing feelings.

Even though unintentional, you might have been the object of someone’s:

  • Blaming
  • Judging
  • Criticizing
  • Abandoning
  • Demanding
  • Ignoring
  • Manipulating
  • Intruding

How did that affect you? Because of how others treated you, you may have concluded that you are unworthy, lacking, needing to prove yourself or please others to deserve love. You may believe that success and fulfillment are for other people, not you. You may speak to yourself with a very harsh voice.

As Always, the Way Out

Well, here is the good news: it is so important to realize that how you were treated had very little to do with you. The person who could not give you what you needed was unable to tend to their own painful emotions. What happens when people hide from their inner strife? They engage in all manner of avoidance strategies, some of which have an impact on those closest to them.

Significant people in your life may not have really wanted you to suffer by this treatment, and you didn’t really want to let it define you. Both of you were unaware of what was happening and both ill-equipped to handle it wisely.

Divest Yourself of Limiting Beliefs

The beliefs you hold about yourself? They seem true, but they are erroneous conclusions based on others’ misguided behavior. When to unwind them? How about now.

  • Bring to mind a belief or mindset that holds you back in life.
  • Reflect on how that belief developed. How were you treated that led you to conclude that you are damaged, incapable, or less than whole?
  • Now, enter the world of the person you were in relationship with. What do you imagine he or she was actually feeling – scared, overwhelmed, incompetent, angry, filled with unexpressed sorrow? Can you see that this person was unable, or unwilling, to embrace these uncomfortable feelings?
  • Reflect on the fact that the pressure of these feelings fueled their less-than-supportive behavior toward you, leading you to make distorted – and untrue – assumptions about yourself.

As part of my training to be a therapist, I had a session in family sculpting. I chose fellow interns in our group to play the roles of people in my family, and I gave them a scene to enact. Now, my mother can be a formidable character. But through this play, I became privy to unexplored frustration, sadness, and fear I never imagined she could have been feeling. I felt so relieved not to have to carry the effects of it any longer.

The legacy of unconsciousness continues in families – until it stops. Like tumbling dominoes, one person denies their pain, which impacts those around them, and so on through the generations. You may have absorbed this tragic bequest, but you also hold the key to unlock yourself from the prison of these beliefs.

Living Consciously = Clarity, Light, Ease

As we saw last week, you can lovingly welcome all parts of yourself into awareness and thereby put an end to your role in emotional and relationship drama. And, with the light of clear seeing, you can shed unproductive and demeaning identities that have nothing to do with your brilliant essence. Regarding all of the insanity, the buck stops with you.

What happens next? Enjoy your life. If gratitude wells up, let it consume you. Live from your heart, and be the light of truth and clarity in this crazy world we live in.

What have been your insights about limiting beliefs you hold about yourself? What do you experience when you look objectively at what really happened in your past?  Any other thoughts?  I’d love to hear….

image credit: inju

Getting Unstuck by Facing Everything

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

And here are my thoughts on getting unstuck:

The only way out is through.
~Howard Nemerov

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

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

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

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

Make this a lifestyle, and watch your life transform.

An Example of Moving Through

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

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

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

Befriend Your Most Tender Feelings

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

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

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

Discover the Hidden Diamond

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

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

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

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

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

Start Where You Are

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

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

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

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

Befriend this Moment

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

Discover What You Are Resisting

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

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

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

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

The Search Ends When We Look Within

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

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

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

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

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

image credit:  tibchris

Want to Let Go? Be Ruthless and Compassionate

In the last post, we examined the usefulness of unchaining ourselves from old emotional baggage. Readers offered some beautiful comments that speak to the power of letting go. There are certainly those welcome moments when, without our doing anything, the stuck energy of emotions moves through us in one big torrent.

More commonly, though, the emotional and mental habits that weigh us down play a kind of hide-and-seek game with us. We know we engage in patterns that don’t serve us, but somehow the full display stays just enough out of awareness that the patterns sustain themselves. We truly want to stop doing whatever it is that keeps us from being happy, but we just can’t seem to get to the bottom of it.

Rather than waiting for those moments of huge release, it is intelligent to cultivate the intention to investigate these patterns. As we all know, the force of a pattern can be intense. It’s exactly like an addiction that has us by the throat.

If we want to be free of the pattern, our intention to fully embrace it needs to be stronger than the energy of the pattern itself.

Fully embracing a pattern means being willing to take off all the blinders and directly experience our thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations. It means putting down our defenses, distractions, and urges to avoid and simply allowing ourselves to be aware of our own inner experience. And it is not always easy because the force of our habits can be so intense.

In my own journey, I have found the unlikely twins of ruthlessness and compassion to be essential.

One Twin: Ruthlessness

Ruthlessness is a very strong word. I use it because a strong intention, a fire is sometimes needed to burn through our conditioning, especially when it is well-embedded in us. When we want freedom more than anything, we become open to investigating everything we take for granted, including all our treasured beliefs and emotional dramas. We become intimate with all of it, bringing every bit of our experiences out of the shadows.

To realize complete freedom, nothing is immune to conscious examination – no assumption, no expectation, no identity. Nothing gets to hide; everything is seen. This exploration can be unrelenting, merciless, and unyielding, and leaves everything up for grabs. It’s kind of like dying, where what dies are the unconscious, often deeply-held, tendencies that lead us down a road of suffering.

The desire to know ourselves may smolder in a single ember or blaze through our lives igniting everything in its path. Buddhist meditation master Ajaan Chah says,

“Do everything with a mind that lets go. If you let go a little, you will have a little peace. If you let go a lot, you will have a lot of peace. If you let go completely, you will know complete peace and freedom. Your struggles with the world will have come to an end.”

The process isn’t meant to be cruel. It is designed to expose all our misunderstandings and confusions. It can turn our lives upside-down for a while, but eventually leaves us clear, open, grateful, and supremely happy.

The Other Twin: Compassion

Ruthlessness alone is devoid of heart. Although the path to freedom is sometimes quite fiery, it is incomplete without compassion. As we open our awareness to our deepest fears, we may notice the tendency to avoid or judge – anything but actually feel the terror at the core of our being.

Compassion reminds us to relax, to receive, to welcome. What is is. If fear is present, or any other difficult feeling, it just is. We commit to unearthing everything, with ruthlessness, then we receive what is discovered in openness and love.

We find within us the most loving, accepting place that becomes a haven for our challenging emotions and distorted beliefs systems. Compassion is the welcoming invitation for all the disowned and fragmented parts of ourselves. Every experience can come out of the shadows and return home. Habits weaken, and we realize that who we are is whole, undefended, and free.

Ruthlessness without love is one-dimensional, and compassion without fierce determination leaves room for us to slide. Discover your compassionate inner warrior. Commit to openness always. Live in the receiving of things as they are. Know yourself fully, and you are free.

“Wisdom without love is like having lungs but no air to breathe. Do not seek wisdom in order to acquire knowledge but in order to live and love more fully.”
Adyashanti

What challenges do you notice in living a self-aware life? What qualities are important? I’d love to hear…