Dr. Gail Brenner

Sacred Space for Awakened Living

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The Wisest Choice You Could Ever Make

“The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.”
~William James

All your personal troubles are due to one simple fact:  you engage with your conditioned habits.

Do you seek approval or limit yourself?  Are you stuck in doubt or self-critical thoughts?  Do you overeat, over-buy, overthink, overdo it in any area of your life?  Then you are interested in automatic, familiar ways of thinking and behaving.

And have you noticed? What you are interested in is what is expressed in your life.

If given the fuel to run, habits will take over, and you will end up feeling like a victim of your own life. Stuck like a hamster on a wheel and wondering why you’re not happy.

Touching vs. Not Touching

But here’s the good news:  you are not your habits.  You can identify with your habits and turn them into your reality – if you want to.  But you have another option because they are not the truth of who you are.

Who you are is free of fear, unlimited, magnificent, pregnant with possibility, infinitely full and alive.

So how to know this directly in your own experience?  What to do with habits that consume your interest and attention so you can uncover the splendor of you?

Don’t touch them.

When you touch something, you reach out toward it, you interact with it and become one with it.  It is your reality in that moment.

When you touch your habits, you give them your attention.  You think habitual thoughts and feel familiar feelings.  You experience an urge or tendency and you act on it. This is the definition of suffering.

The Fog of Habits

If you aren’t happy, you are touching your habits – a lot.

  • You get lost in a story of why you aren’t getting what you want.
  • You convince yourself that you are lacking.
  • You live in fear, guilt, sadness, or regret.
  • You behave in ways that you know don’t serve you.

Habits are flat, automatic, lifeless, repetitive, compulsive, agitating.  They stir up the moments of your life into swirls of stress and unhappiness.  Are you touching these tendencies with your attention?

The Art of Not Touching Habits

If you realize that you are touching habits – the ones that make you suffer – then here is your invitation:

  • A familiar thought beckons your attention.  Don’t touch it.
  • A feeling or desire comes over you.  Don’t touch it.
  • Your mind tries to justify the need to engage with the habit.  Don’t touch it.
  • A fascinating urge entices you.  Don’t touch it.

Not touching habits means that your attention rests in presence where you stay peaceful and unengaged, but totally alive. You are open and receptive, uninvolved with the arising and passing of thoughts and feelings.  You know that place in you that is not in resistance to anything.

Your reality is all about where your attention goes, and, amazingly, you get to decide.  You don’t need to get rid of or change one single thing.

When repetitive thoughts and feelings appear, let attention melt back into this now moment.  Do it a thousand or a million times.  Who cares?  You will always arrive in the same place.  This now moment that is so fresh, so effortlessly new.

And don’t worry.  You will function just fine without habits.  What you need will appear; this can be trusted.

Try it out – don’t touch your habits. It might be hard at first, scary even. But eventually you will notice that suffering diminishes and life becomes much less complicated. And here you are: peaceful, smiling, happy.

Are your habits drawing you in? What happens when you don’t touch them? I’d love to hear…

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The Wisdom of Forgetting Everything You Know

“Right now, and in every now-moment, you are either closing or opening. You are either stressfully waiting for something – more money, security, affection – or you are living from your deep heart, opening as the entire moment, and giving what you most deeply desire to give, without waiting.”
~David Deida

Just for a minute, can we please stop frantically trying to control, plan, and delude ourselves into thinking we know what we don’t know? Do you spend your time preparing for every possible outcome and worrying about all the negative consequences that could befall you?

We are so afraid to let go, to just be, to allow the unfolding of this marvelous life without getting in the way. This fear keeps us paralyzed and stuck. And longing for the peace that is possible – if only we would put down all the efforts we make to know.

There is no greater gift you can give yourself than the invitation to enter the world of not knowing.

Why? If you are always going to know what you know now, things will always stay the same. How could they change? And by thinking you know what will happen, you are closing yourself off to the unimaginable – endless peace, unspeakable joy, awe and wonder.

If you cling to what is familiar and comfortable, that is where you will live. Until you decide to take the plunge and let yourself not know.

And consider this: Is the familiar and comfortable working for you? If you are happy, there is nothing to be done. Yay! But if you struggle with people and emotions, if you are frustrated when the world doesn’t go according to your plan, forget what you know and take a bold, brazen step into the unknown.

Getting Unstuck

Here is what not knowing looks like:

  • You wake up on a weekend morning without any plans, and you let your day unfold.
  • You stop saying the same unproductive statement to your partner and let yourself not know what will happen next.
  • You sit and take a breath rather than propelling yourself forward into the next activity.
  • You press pause on a habit without knowing what you will do or say next.
  • You let your routine fall away so you can be guided by the natural flow of things.
  • You let go of, “I have to…” and let yourself rest for a moment.
  • You tell yourself the truth about the motivation behind the things you do, and surrender to not knowing.
  • You forget who you think you are. Instead of same old, same old, you show up fresh, new, and unencumbered.

Just contemplating any of the examples on this list may make you gasp for air. How could you have no plans for a whole day or stop carrying out familiar routines?

How to Forget What You Know

Center yourself in the wisdom of not knowing:

  • You are aligned with the truth of things as they are.
  • You open to the possibility of freedom from habits that are limiting and painful.
  • You live in reality and not in your mind-constructed version of a false reality.
  • You are here, alive, embodied, available.

Then, from this space of your truest desire, simply stop. Have the courage to let life unfold. Put the mind aside and be receptive to what happens next. This is the sacred shift from doing to being.

Maybe you’re afraid you won’t get out of bed all day or you’ll end up like a slug on the couch. Maybe you fear not being able to contain joy or love. Maybe you wonder if your life circumstances will change dramatically.

It is natural to be afraid to let go of the known. Remember that life wants you to live fully and to express yourself in beautiful and amazing ways. But you can’t know what they are.

Be willing to forget everything you know – about yourself, others, and the way you think the world works. Stop, be quiet, and don’t know. You just might discover exactly what you have been looking for your whole life.

What is your experience with the unknown? Does fear keep you stuck? I’d love to hear…

Note: Please feel free to take a look at the book written by one of our readers, Galen Pearl. Here is my review: “10 Steps to Finding Your Happy Place (and Staying There) is an absolute treasure. Galen is a master story-teller who skillfully guides readers right to the heart of what it takes to be happy. She so beautifully walks the walk. Follow in her footsteps, and you, too, will radiate happiness from the inside out.” All proceeds from the book are donated to a program for disabled people.

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The Value of Staying – Even When It’s Hard

“When you say or do anything to please, get, keep, influence, or control anyone or anything, fear is the cause and pain is the result.”
~Byron Katie

A friend of mine took a yoga class the other day, the kind in which you stay in the poses for a really long time, and it was fascinating to hear of his experience. Bliss, relaxation, struggle, pain, comfort, resistance, release – all of it happened in a matter of minutes.

This is the value of staying – even when it’s hard. You get to actually experience reality. You get to be with what’s going on. And you get to recognize that simply being aware is the gateway to the deepest peace.

Are You a Runner?

Our modern society teaches us to run. We are masters at avoiding, distracting, and resisting. We think that if we keep moving forward, to the world out there and away from ourselves, that we will find the peace and happiness that we long for.

This tendency feeds all kinds of problems – addictions, habits, frustration, alienation, bitterness, envy, personal inadequacy. You live in need rather than fullness, lack rather than peace and contentment.

It’s an endless cycle of suffering and heartache, that maybe you are caught in. Have you ever gotten the object or job or relationship you were craving? How long did your happiness last before you weren’t so satisfied anymore?

The radical choice for all of life’s ills is to stay. Really, it’s the only sane solution. Continuing to avoid yourself and seek something other than what is here right now keeps you completely stuck. Mired in wanting. Consumed by dissatisfaction and lack of fulfillment. Disconnected from yourself and from love.

Are you happy and content? Then you are happy and content in the present. You aren’t locked into desire or distraction. You aren’t disturbed by negative thoughts about yourself or the past or future. You are simply here, enjoying the moment.

How to Stay

The instructions for staying are so simple: don’t do anything and simply be.

  • Recognize that you are aware, and center your attention in awareness.
  • Get familiar with this space of non-doing. It is open, peaceful, boundless, alive.
  • Anything can arise in it, and you stay as awareness.

It’s really that simple. Rest in non-doing for a few minutes to start, and right away your whole perspective will shift. Then spend as many moments as you like in this quiet space. Don’t make it a chore. Do it for enjoyment and freedom, for ease and well being.

As you stay as awareness, you will notice thoughts or feelings or the tendency to move into familiar habits. Instead of starting to rev up and do again, simply stay with being. This is exactly what my friend did in his yoga class. No matter what arose, he stayed and let everything be.

It might seem unnatural at first to stay, but eventually you realize that it is relaxing, effortless, and natural. Your attention rests in being, and from here, nothing that arises is a problem.

Glorious Staying

If playing out conditioned habits isn’t working for you and you are looking for a peaceful state that you think is not present now, experiment with staying. Here is what you might experience:

  • The force to carry out habits and patterns weakens. You realize you can stay and let the momentum to do run itself down rather than acting on habits that aren’t serving you anyway.
  • You are flexible and open. Running on automatic keeps you caught in one way of being. Staying offers options, insights, and clarity you haven’t had the space to see.
  • Presence shows you the truth about your experience. You see thoughts as simply mental chatter, feelings as stories and physical sensations that don’t have any essential meaning. As aware presence, you are alive, functioning well, and totally okay.

Staying creates the possibility for you to tap into being. Without the distraction of mind-made pressures, your idea of yourself as a separate person with needs and desires to fulfill falls away.

Miraculously, you realize you are one with the totality of being and intimate with all things – right now. You are endlessly peaceful, completely content, seeing and being love with no separation. This is the possibility for you.

Staying starts a revolution. Are you in?

What makes it hard to stay? What is your experience with staying? I’d love to hear…

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Are You Keeping the Past Alive in the Present?

“Whatever you have forgotten, you can remember. Whatever you have buried you can unearth. If you are willing to look deep into your own nature, if you are willing to peel away the layers of not-self you have adopted in making your way through the tribulations of life, you will find that your true self is not as far removed as you think.”
~Meredith Jordan

I have so much compassion for those deeply-held patterns that we find ourselves trapped by. The pattern might be a fear of not having enough or being enough, a tendency to need approval or acceptance, or an out-of-control desire for control.

We feel a basic sense of lack and are driven to complete ourselves. “If only I could find the missing link, then I would be happy.” Doesn’t this describe the human condition?

The Origin of Lack

These patterns form when we are very young in response to circumstances and relationship dynamics. The people around us meant the best, but sometimes they fell short of providing the support and attention that we really needed.

This unfortunate situation creates the fertile ground for troublesome programming to thrive. We learn survival patterns that take hold of us like a hungry tiger, and they spread their tentacles into our hearts, minds, and bodies.

And now here you are, in your 20’s or 40’s or even older, acting as if you were five again. This is what has happened: the past is very much alive in the present.

Identify Your Identities

The pull of these unresolved experiences is very strong. They infiltrate you and become who you think you are. They seem to stuff the wholeness of you into a tiny box, and they drive you with need and desperation.

I had very early experiences that gave me the message that I wasn’t safe in the world. Since my basic security felt threatened, I grew up filled with fear. Sometimes it has played out as passivity and sometimes as a sense of bravado that hid the fear that was driving me.

Either way, whenever I respond with passivity or bravado, I am keeping the past alive in the present.

Return to Sanity

You have probably heard of the metaphor of the inner child. When these experiences from the past have not gotten the loving attention they need, it is just like a child living inside you. You feel the emotions of that earlier time, and they drive you to limit yourself in so many ways.

Believe me, I know this well in my own experience.

But I know this also: Total freedom requires us to unearth these tendencies. They are not real, and they are not who we are. They drive our behavior, and they shield us from the natural life that is our birthright.

We must see them with laser-like clarity or they continue to live in us outside of conscious awareness.

Isn’t it time to heal these so-called wounds and return to natural wholeness?

Tell the truth about how you bring the past into the present. Name the tendencies that operate through you. Step back from them so you can see them as they are. Know that they have landed in you, but they are not you.

Be ruthless and compassionate. Yes, undesirable things happened, but stay rooted in your quest for freedom, for wholeness. Be willing to do whatever it takes.

Tell the story and feel the pain. Don’t hold back in experiencing the pain of these patterns. How do they make you feel? How have you betrayed yourself? What has been the effect on others? Feel the truth of the pain so you see it clearly. But don’t wallow in it.

Soothe the inner child. Let him or her feel your support and reassurance and love. And know that I love you, with all my heart.

Contemplate living without these tendencies. What would change? What would freedom feel like? This is the natural, unconditioned you.  Experiment with living it.

Stay aware. These deeply-embedded patterns hold on tightly. Know them so well that they come to light in an instant. Then, over and over, relax into wholeness. Let go of all barriers and live in this open, receptive space, free of boundaries and structure.

Then one day you will notice, ah, peace and happiness…effortlessly.

This is your time. What pattern do you need to resolve? How do you stay committed to the process? We would all love to hear and support you…

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The Art of Navigating Difficult Feelings

“You can’t punish yourself into change. You can’t whip yourself into shape. But you can love yourself into well being.”
~Susan Skye

Feelings are a natural part of the landscape of human experience. Joy, sadness, concern, anger, excitement, jealousy, fear, misery. These emotions are intimately woven into the stories of our lives.

Yet we avoid certain feelings like the plague, and understandably so.

  • Intense and painful feelings can be frightening or overwhelming.
  • We feel out of control and don’t know what to do with them.
  • We have no role models to guide us.
  • Our schools and families fail us in this most essential instruction.
  • Everything about our post modern, feel-good, get-ahead culture encourages us to deny their existence.

How surprising to discover, then, that taking the radical approach of turning to meet feelings rather than avoiding them is the cure for our dis-ease. If we want to be truly happy, we need to stop erecting barriers to our feelings. Instead, with an open heart and curious mind, we must learn to deconstruct them into their most basic elements so we can know exactly what they are.

Only then do they stop driving our choices.

Avoiding Feelings Creates Trouble

Unexamined feelings cause trouble – have you noticed? The avoidance of feelings is the undeniable culprit in your addictions, self-defeating behavior patterns, and interpersonal strife. They contribute to feeling separate, alienated, and alone.

Take a look at any area of your life that isn’t working for you, and I guarantee you will find some painful feelings lurking.

Certain feelings seem so commonplace that we don’t question them. I used to wake up every morning with a subtle sense of anxiety and dread. Some of us live with a low level of sadness or confusion. We take these experiences as normal until we get serious about being truly happy and begin to investigate them.

I say, “No more.” No more “good enough.” No more resigning ourselves to a fraction of the happiness that is actually possible. No more playing out of patterns that hurt ourselves and others under the guise of normalcy. Learn to navigate the terrain of your feelings and you will cease being a victim to them.

Relentless Dedication is Required

The very good news is that we can learn to deal intelligently with feelings. How do I know? It’s been my journey. I finally got fed up with my personal struggles and found the way through to happiness. And I can tell you that it is imperative to learn how to embrace feelings. Only then are you available to the truth of the moment that allows you to make conscious and appropriate choices about what you say or do.  In other words, sanity.

Leave feelings unexamined, and you will be driven by them. Take an entirely different approach of bringing feelings out of the shadows, and the possibilities for joy, peace, and fulfillment are endless. You can be a slave to your feelings, or you can be free. What do you choose?

This path of freedom which leads us into the foreign land of feelings is not for the timid or faint of heart. If you are attached to your dramas or afraid to step away from what is known and predictable, you won’t get very far. The more you put up for grabs, the more willing you are to examine every single thing about your experience, the greater the riches that are available to you for sure.

Prepare Yourself for the Lessons

Recently, a client came in absolutely elated. She had been diligently applying the lessons about feelings to long-standing, persistent anxiety. She was thrilled that she had barely felt anxious in weeks. She says, “Before, I thought I had to combat it. I tried to breathe it away or exercise it away.” And now? “I accept it. I notice the bodily sensations that I experience and feel compassion toward them.” So simple, but a revolutionary outcome.

What are these lessons? We will spell them out in the next post or two. In preparation, bear in mind that these are not just words to bring a few minutes of a pleasant feeling to your day. Absorb each of these instructions into every cell of your being. Apply them relentlessly to the moments of your life. Dedicate yourself to happiness and freedom consistently in all of your actions, and you will realize the peace you are looking for.

Do less, and your suffering will sustain.

Are you ready? Begin by contemplating these questions:

  • How you run from your feelings. What habits and tendencies do you play out that are driven by unexamined feelings?
  • What are these feelings?
  • What are you willing to change, give up, or let go of to be free from suffering? Are you fed up enough to try a new way?

You are welcome to share your answers in the comments, or simply respond in the privacy of your own experience. In the next post, we will get down to the nuts and bolts of what you need to know to intelligently address your feelings and how to integrate this understanding into your everyday life. In the meantime, relax and be kind to yourself. Breathe and soften. The true medicine is on its way.

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