Dr. Gail Brenner

Sacred Space for Awakened Living

TwitterYoutubeFacebookGoogle +

Getting Back on Track

“Insofar as we’re not conscious, we’re not free.”
~Gabor Maté

Just about every day I speak with people who tell me how they get off track. They feel disappointed when their expectations aren’t met, get trapped in the inner critical voice, bring irritation into their relationships, or believe the thoughts that tell them they’re inadequate.

What is happening that creates this reality? Our attention is pulled into the stories that run through our minds while our feelings are being ignored.

The possibility of freedom disappears as the machine of compulsive, unconscious behavior takes over. Yes, we’re acting and speaking, but we’re not actually aware of what we’re doing. We don’t realize that we’re living from confusion.

We’re like robots, lost in the forest of our habits with no access to our humanness, our compassion, our sensitivity, and our capacity to be aware. Sound familiar?

Getting back on track, we wake up to realize we’ve been disconnected from ourselves. It’s a moment of grace when conscious awareness is revealed to illuminate what’s actually happening in our experience.

Like a breath of fresh air, we come home to ourselves. Turning away from the mind and outer world, we look inward—with loving curiosity—to notice what emotions are present and how we feel in our bodies.

That’s how we begin to know what we’re actually doing and what’s driving us.

As a support to get back on track, inquiry may be helpful. Consider these essential questions that take you out of the confusion of conditioned reactions and into the depth of your true heart’s desire. Ask yourself:

  • What is important to me in this moment? How do I want this moment to be?
  • What do I value?
  • How can I express myself to be aligned with what I really want?

A client came in humbled by the power of these questions. She told me that in the past week she posed them every time she felt irritated and discovered that they brought her back on track where she could open fully to her present moment experience.

She saw that her personal needs and reactive emotions were not what she really wanted for those moments, and she reconnected with a generous, loving heart, a relaxed mind, and the true desire for her own and others’ happiness. She left the drama of her thoughts so she could find calm and see things clearly.

Then she had the insight to apply these questions to all moments, no matter what the situation. She couldn’t contain her excitement about the possibility for her whole way of being in her life to be affected in a profound way—infused with awareness, love, and truth.

By asking these questions, we go beyond the blinders of our patterns and expand into openness and clarity. We’re present, aware, and fully alive.

As an example, consider a relationship you’re in where there is friction or disconnection. Your conversation with this person loops around in the same dissatisfying dynamic.

Now with a fresh view, how do you want your next interaction with this person to be? From your deepest truth, what is important to you?

Embodying these insights, how can you show up differently? Can you take care of your inner reactions, listen deeply with curiosity, be a bit more vulnerable?

When you’re triggered, lost, and things feel challenging, try asking these essential questions.

They just might bring you out of the fog of conditioned habits and home to yourself. And here you are, aligned with truth, with eyes and heart wide open.

image

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…

Ending the Inner War of Resisting Your Experience

resisting your experience“What you resist not only persists, but will grow in size.”
~Carl Jung

It’s our natural, awakened state to resist nothing.

When the illusion of separation is seen through, there’s simply the free flow of experience continually welcoming everything.

There is no threat, no fear, and no sense of a person who needs to avoid or defend. It’s effortless.

But add in human reactions, fears, desires, and expectations, and the world divides into the duality of inner and outer, acceptable and unacceptable—otherwise known as human suffering.

If you want to know the luminous peace of your true nature, then get to know how and when you resist.

What is resistance? It’s an activity of the agitated mind that says a resounding, “NO!” to your present moment experience. It’s a desire to cling to some experiences and push others away—a desire for things to be different than they are.

Take a moment to reflect:

  • What feelings do you resist?
  • Where in your life do you say no to what’s actually appearing?
  • Where do you want or expect things to be different than they are?

Someone wrote to me recently saying she hates the the way she feels when she wakes up in the morning, with too much tension and too many worrisome thoughts.

Hating your experience is resisting, and resisting is a recipe for feeling stuck.

You’re locked in a fight with what’s happening, leaving no room for the experience itself to shift or move. Resisting energizes the experience rather than giving it the liberating space it needs to come and go without attachment.

We’re masters at resisting our experience. How do you resist? Here are some possibilities:

  • Compulsive behaviors such as overeating, excessive use of alcohol or drugs, excessive shopping, texting, or gossiping
  • Being too busy or preoccupied to be present with your experience
  • Recycling thoughts of worry, judgment, complaining, or blame
  • Resenting how you feel
  • Waiting for or hoping that things will change

The common motive behind all of these behaviors is to keep you from relaxing with your present moment experience. How can you possibly know the peace of your true nature if your own experience is an enemy?

What’s the alternative?

You make the sacred choice to stop the outward momentum, slow things down, and lovingly turn inward. Things now have space to shift as you create a new and loving relationship with what arises.

Instead of hating what’s happening, you’re friendly, open, and curious. You let things be as they are. You become the welcoming presence that ends the inner war with your experience.

Why not try it out so you know how it feels? Simply go inward and say a warm and loving hello to any thoughts, feelings, or physical sensations that are present. Breathe and stay


The mind quiets as the one who wants to resist starts to fall away. With no attention to the story in your thoughts, you’re one with what appears, loving it with a warm embrace like a long-lost child coming home.

And here you are as awakened awareness
radiant, open, and resisting nothing


image credit

A Better Way to Talk to Yourself

“In my experience, we don’t make thoughts appear, they just appear. One day, I noticed that their appearance just wasn’t personal. Noticing that really makes it simpler to inquire.”
~Byron Katie

As you probably know in your own experience, as humans we are highly conditioned to believe what our minds tell us about ourselves.

Without even being aware of it, we take on the way the thoughts describe us as our unquestioned reality.

  • If your thoughts tell you about all the things that could go wrong, you say, “I’m anxious,” or “I’m a control freak.”
  • If your thoughts judge, compare, and criticize—yourself or others—you live in that negativity and separation as if it were true.
  • You believe your opinions are facts.When we say, “I am
(fill in whatever the thought is saying),” we’re identifying with the content of those thoughts, taking it to be true.

Here’s a fact: identifying with our thoughts will always bring suffering to our lives. So if you want to suffer, how to do it? Believe what your thoughts tell you.

How You Speak to Yourself

For most of us, it takes time to untangle ourselves from the content of our thinking, and a skillful way along the path is to be very clear in the language we use.

It’s common to say something like,“I’m a mess and unlovable.” What’s more accurate is: “Thoughts are arising in me telling me I’m a mess and unlovable.”

You might say, “I’m worried.” But a more accurate way to describe what’s actually happening is to say, “Worrying thoughts are arising in me.”

When you say, “I’m worried,” you believe you’re the one who is worried, and there’s a sense of shutting down and believing all the implications of being someone who is worried.

But “Worrying thoughts are arising in me” changes everything. You are no longer identifying with what the thoughts are telling you. You have space for something new.

And it doesn’t have to be only about thoughts. You can also say, ‘The feeling of anxiety is arising in me.” Or, “There are sensations present in the body,” instead of, “I’m feeling anxious.”

Your Thoughts Don’t Describe You Accurately

This may sound like an awkward way to describe your experience, but it’s much closer to the truth than identifying with your thoughts. I highly recommend it.

There are benefits to this practice.

First, it’s a quick and obvious reminder that you are not your thoughts. It helps you to break the identification with your thoughts so you’re not taking them so personally.

Yes, that’s what I mean. Your thoughts aren’t personal to you—they just appear in the mind.

Once you have some space from the contents of your mind (which are mostly negative), you can be in the moment with openness, curiosity, and kindness.

Second, it invites you to question who you are and who you’re not.If fear or a judging thought arises in you, then who is the you that they arise in? This question offers an interesting exploration that will help you to suffer less.

If this doesn’t make sense to you, don’t worry about it. Just live in the question of what’s true about you if you are not what your thoughts tell you that you are.

Take away the content of your thoughts
and what remains?

Your Turn

I invite you to try out this practice—how about right now? Close your eyes and notice the thoughts or feelings that are arising right now. Say, “These thoughts and feelings are arising in me.”

Now shift to the “me” that these objects are arising in. You’ll probably become aware of open space, ease, and peace. Now you are aware of the essential choice.

You can pick up those objects if you want to any time and make them real—or rest as this openness
endlessly


image credit

How and Why to Turn Toward Your Body

“Maybe you are searching among the branches, for what only appears in the roots.”
~Rumi

I love melting into the present moment. Here is where I deeply feel everything.

I take in the world through all of my senses and savor what I experience. And when I’m very present, without being drawn into thoughts about the past or future, it’s so fresh, and there’s a deep, undeniable sense of peace.

But it hasn’t always been like this. Before I knew differently, all I did was think—think, think, think. I worried
analyzed
dissected
looked at things from different angles.

I played out scenarios about what might and might not happen and doubted everything.

I endlessly evaluated, compared, and tried to understand why. It seemed to never stop.

I was like one big walking head with barely a body attached.

I didn’t know exactly what wasn’t working, but I felt tense and anxious most of the time. I wasn’t at ease in my life, and it didn’t feel good.

I was aware that I was suffering, but I wasn’t sure what to do about it. I tried psychotherapy—years of it—but didn’t get to the core of the problem. I even became a psychotherapist to help others
and still I suffered.

Thankfully, I wasn’t doomed to suffer forever. Things began to shift when I started on a spiritual path.

Studying My Inner Experience

Instead of trying to fix my problems and life story, I was directed to notice whatever was happening in my present moment experience. And this changed everything.

Looking inward, it was easy to see thoughts, as they were flooding me most of the time. But there was something else that I had missed completely.

I was amazed to realize how afraid I was and how much fear was living in my body.

I learned that all emotions are made up of two elements: a story running through our minds that’s fueled by the feeling—and physical sensations in the body. That was the key I had missed!

I was so much in my head worrying about the future and doubting myself that I didn’t realize how much tension and contraction was in my body—until I started becoming aware of it. No wonder something felt off!

There was a time when I would stop whenever I felt fear, close my eyes, ignore the thoughts, and simply feel the sensations in my body. Many times during the day, I sat on my couch feeling physical tension, contracted chest and jaw muscles, and shallow breathing.

I didn’t have a goal to get rid of or change these sensations—I just made the space for them to be present. Sometimes they would lessen, and sometimes not, but it didn’t matter.

It was relieving to finally get to the core of these uncomfortable feelings and let the sensations be. After rejecting my body for so long, it felt like I was being incredibly kind to myself.

And it wasn’t just fear that I felt. There was the array of emotions we all feel—anger, sadness, disappointment, frustration. Every time I was triggered, I stopped and welcomed the sensations appearing in the body.

And I began to realize something miraculous. When I didn’t pay attention to the stories my mind was telling me, the problems I thought I had all but disappeared. I felt surprisingly peaceful when I was simply present with the sensations as they are, so why go into all the drama? I became totally disinterested in it.

It wasn’t immediate, but over time, I felt less stressed. I didn’t worry so much about making the right decision or trying to figure everything out. I was lighter, happier, more present, and more loving toward others.

One morning I woke up and, much to my amazement, I realized that I hadn’t been anxious for quite some time.

Now, years later, I have a loving relationship with whatever appears in my body, and this relationship has served me well.

The Residue in Our Bodies

The body contains the residue of all our learning—all experiences, traumas, fears, and conditioning.

Whereas our minds work overtime avoiding, explaining, and distracting, our bodies are simple—they react to the stimuli around us. They have been present our entire lives absorbing the effects of our experiences.

In their natural state, our bodies are open vessels free of tension. That’s why infants move with such freedom and flexibility.

Stress takes its toll as we experience physical, mental, and emotional demands in life. We become scared and untrusting, and the body begins to close down. These bodily contractions are like a defensive shield, armoring us as we meet the challenges we face in the world.

Bringing our attention back into the body gets to the root of the problem. Here is where we connect with ourselves, heal separation, and discover our essential wholeness. This is what’s right here and available when we turn our attention within.

How to Be Aware of the Body

How do we become aware of what’s happening in our bodies? Here are three practices that help you build a kind and loving relationship with your present moment experience in the body.

Try them out, and you’ll say goodbye to being harsh, rejecting, and hard on yourself
and hello to peaceful living.

Practice 1: Conscious Breathing

One of the wonders of life in this human body is the regularity of our breathing. And we can use the breathing as a tool at any time to focus our attention inward and turn away from our busy minds.

The instruction is very simple: be conscious of what happens when you breathe. Simply bring your attention to the direct experience of breathing—the sensations of the inhale and the sensations of the exhale—and be curious.

You might notice you feel more relaxed as you pay attention to your breathing, and the breath itself might shift in some way—or not. Simply continue to be aware of all the sensations. Almost immediately, you’ll naturally breathe more slowly and deeply, which soothes the nervous system.

A conscious breath is available to you any time you feel stressed or stuck. It’s a reset, a wakeup call, and a gateway into being at peace with yourself.

Practice 2: Welcoming Sensations

When you welcome sensations, you stop and simply notice the sensations that are present and allow them to be. You meet any sensation with an attitude of acceptance, curiosity, and love—with no story, no commentary, and no need to figure it out.

Rather than panicking with what you notice or going into a story about how hard it is to feel it, you’re simply aware of it. You’re the welcoming presence that invites the sensations into the light of conscious awareness. This is what I practiced on my couch many years ago and still do often throughout the day.

Sitting here, breathing and allowing things to be as they are, you’re likely to feel an uncanny sense of ease.

When do you welcome sensations?

  • When you’re triggered,
  • When you feel anxious or ill-at-ease,
  • Any time at all.

Practice 3: Mindful Movement

If you live with your attention lost in your mind, it helps tremendously to invite your attention into the body as much as possible. Mindful movement practices help.

Yoga, tai chi, and slow walking bring awareness to the body and encourage presence by synchronizing movement with breathing. They invite your attention into the here-and-now by ignoring mind chatter and focusing on being with the moment as it is.

Movement practices also teach us about being present in daily life. Moving into a yoga posture is ultimately no different from washing dishes, folding laundry, or taking a walk in nature.

Coming Home to Ourselves

When we’re completely in our heads, we’re pulled into the drama of our problems. We feel fragmented, anxious, and alienated from ourselves.

That’s how I was living years ago without even realizing it. And maybe that’s how you’re living, too.

By turning away from thoughts and being aware of what’s appearing in the body, we begin to come home to ourselves. Here we discover spaciousness, grounding, and connection with all of life.

image credit