Dr. Gail Brenner

Sacred Space for Awakened Living

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The Art and Craft of Befriending Your Experience

peaceful“I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself.”
~Maya Angelou

I was in a yoga class the other day, and I wasn’t happy. I simply didn’t agree with how the instructor was leading the class. My body seized up, my mind felt dense and pressured, and the dark cloud of needing to be right descended.

Then I woke up. The clouds parted, and the light flooded in. “Oh,” I said to myself. “What is actually here?” I felt the tension in my body and welcomed the strain behind my thoughts. Everything relaxed as the whole problem dissipated. I had returned home.

What happened to me in those moments is a microcosm of what is possible for all of us always. We don’t need to wait for situations to change or for others to realize the error of their ways. In fact, if we do so, we are barking up the wrong tree, placing our happiness in the hands of things we cannot control.

Do you really want to wait for the circumstances of your life to change, while you are missing out on the glorious now?

Meet Yourself as You Are

So many of us go through our lives with painful emotions nipping at our heels. We are chased by discomfort, so we run full speed ahead into busyness, addictions, and passivity. When we try to avoid what is true, we are far from peaceful and happy.  And we’re certainly not free.

But here’s what it takes to change everything: a U-turn of your attention. Put the brakes on the momentum of these patterns, turn around, and meet yourself as you are. It is a meeting you won’t regret.

Most of us live in stories that roil around in our minds. We endlessly tell ourselves what we shouldn’t have done and what ought to happen. We criticize, judge, resist, label, sort through, and imagine in a non-stop running commentary. We keep the past alive by thinking about it and needlessly worry about the future.

Then we wonder why we’re not at peace.

But there is a solution, a way out which is actually the way in. In any moment, we move attention away from the workings of the mind and inward to befriend our own direct experience.

This is the end of avoidance. We stop resisting and we turn to welcome the truth of ourselves.

What is Direct Experience?

You discover your direct experience by turning your attention away from the objects of the world. Simply notice what is happening in your inner landscape in any given moment. Break down what you are experiencing into it’s most basic elements, and here is what you will find:

  • Thoughts, which are sounds in the mind
  • Sense perceptions – hearing, seeing, tasting, touching, smelling
  • Physical sensations – what you feel in your body

That’s it. There’s nothing more. And please don’t take my word for it. Do the experiment. Shine the searchlight of your awareness into yourself and see what you discover.

How to Befriend Yourself

You cannot be more loving toward yourself than to let yourself be as you are. Conflict ends, struggle is put to rest. The how-to is very simple. When you befriend your direct experience, first notice it, then allow yourself to feel it as it actually is.

Say you look inside and you notice fear. Ask yourself, “What is this fear?” You will become aware of thoughts about fear and physical sensations. Draw your attention away from the thoughts, and go right into the sensations in your body.

Whatever you notice – tension, contractions, burning – feel it completely. Give the sensations space to be without turning away. Take the time for them to be felt completely. Then keep exploring to the next layer, and the next, to see what you discover.

These are the inner experiences that have been driving you – and waiting for your loving attention. Because it’s love that heals our inner turmoil.

Why not try it right now? Simply be at ease with whatever arises in your direct experience. Welcome it. Allow it to be all the way through.

Q & A

But what now? The problem is still here.

Is it the problem that is still here or your thoughts about it? Drop away from the story, go inside, and receive your direct experience. If a decision needs to be made, shift your attention away from trying to figure it out. Listen, and let the answer come to you.

This is hard to do. I’ve been in this habit for so long.

Embracing your direct experience may be difficult in the beginning because you don’t know what you will find. There is an old teaching story about a man walking down a path who freaks out when he thinks he sees a snake. When he gets closer, he realizes that what he thought was a snake was actually a rope and his fear was unwarranted. Maybe your snakes are just ropes, but you will never know unless you turn and take a look.

Hint: Your fear of welcoming your feelings is probably much worse than the experience of actually welcoming them.

I’ve done what you are suggesting, but things are still the same.

As counterintuitive as this may be, the goal of befriending your experience is not to feel better. The goal, which is not a goal at all, is to find peace in the moment. Any tendencies or habits that play out through you have a momentum that may last for a very long time. So the goal is not to get rid of anything.

The “goal” is simply to be with yourself as you are. To receive whatever is happening without resistance and to be at ease with what is. To know what is actually true about reality, over and over in every moment.

Simply be as you are, and all is well.

Have you befriended your experience? Any questions or reports? I’d love to hear…

There Is Great Freedom in Simply Being Aware

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“The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.”
~Henry Miller

Have you noticed how embedded our habits can be? Even with the best of intentions to act or feel differently, before we know it, we are barreling down a familiar track doing the same old, same old.

You want to change, but over and over you find yourself taking on another project when you’re already completely maxed, digging into that bag of chips, spinning in worry or self-criticism, captured in the same argument with someone, lolling about on the couch, again.

Wouldn’t you love to be free of your most confining habits? Imagine being in control rather than controlled, mindful rather than mindless, fully alive rather than stuck in a very deep rut.

Be Happy Now

There’s nothing wrong with habits, but when they detract from our joy in living life to its fullest, we owe it to ourselves to take a closer look at them. For it is our birthright to enjoy ourselves, to approach the moments of our life with openness and enthusiasm.

Simply said, we deserve to be happy.

Awareness Is the Key

So let’s get down to business and discover how you can step out of the prison of your habits. And it starts with being aware.

The nature of habits is that they occur outside of our conscious awareness. When we’re trapped by a habit, we are like a wind-up doll, programmed to play out the same behavior over and over. It’s a script we know by heart, and we act it out without thinking.

And this is great news! Once we realize that habits operate unconsciously, the way out becomes clear. We take each one and unwind it into its elements. We become aware of every nuance of thought, feeling, and reaction that makes up this habit.

Becoming an Expert

We develop into habit experts, knowing the habit so well and in such detail that we could write a thesis about it. And we don’t shy away just because what we discover is hard or painful.

Each moment is an opportunity to cast a vote for our happiness by becoming aware. And as we become aware, we realize the possibility of making a different choice.

Awareness is freedom. So if you long to be free, become aware of your habits. De-program yourself, throw away the script, and let the tracks of your habits be washed away.

A Strong Foundation for Becoming Aware

As we start to investigate habits, here are some important points to keep in mind.

It’s all in the present moment. The past is useful to learn about our patterns, but the rubber meets the road in the moment. So when you are triggered, when you feel your anger rising or you are reaching out for the ice cream when you know you don’t need it, this is the moment to be aware. No matter what you’ve done before, every moment offers an opportunity to be aware, to pause, to embrace your experience.

Awareness illuminates choice. As we untangle our habits by becoming aware of them, we notice options we never saw before. A friend was working on a habit of being concerned about what other people thought of her. As she investigated the pattern, she realized that people weren’t thinking about her nearly as much as she had assumed. She discovered a new option of not paying attention to a thought that wasn’t true. The result? Freedom.

Don’t force yourself to change. Rather than focusing on a goal, keep your attention on each moment. Lovingly embrace things just as they are. Take every fear and disappointment, every tension, every whirlwind of thoughts and create a warm and accepting space where they can be received. The habit can’t hold up to the power of loving attention, and change begins to happen effortlessly.

Your natural essence is whole and healthy. Habits are conditioned. We learn them to manage difficult feelings and situations. As we unwind our habits, the should’s, pressures, and rationalizations fall away. We realize that peace is possible, that freedom is available always.

A Loving Process for You

  • Start by being curious and open, willing and patient.
  • Bring to mind a habit you’d like to work on and a situation in which this habit played out.
  • Begin to ask questions:

    • -What am I thinking? What story am I telling myself? What expectations do I have?
    -What am I feeling?
    -What physical sensations do I notice in my body?

  • Peel back the layers until all is revealed.
  • Welcome these experiences like a long-lost friend. Say, “yes” to each one. This is the end of the inner fight and the beginning of real possibility.

With great compassion, shed light on the experiences that make up your habits. They will start to fall apart right before your eyes, leaving you spacious, open, and happy.

What have you discovered about letting go of habits? How do you get stuck? I’d love to hear…

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To Change or Not To Change? That Is the Question

actorNo, I’m not channeling Shakespeare, but I imagine I’m not alone in wondering what to do with difficult thoughts and feelings that recur in our lives over and over. Maybe you are limiting yourself by a story about the past, yet you keep repeating it in your mind. Or, even though you long to express love and compassion in the world, you find yourself judging others. Perhaps your emotions get the better of you when you thought you had already untangled that mess.

We know so clearly that we want to be happy, peaceful, and kind, yet these unsavory thoughts and feelings keep arriving. We desperately want to improve, yet our efforts to eliminate these trouble spots continually fail. Are we stuck forever in this endless loop of trying to fix ourselves?

Here is the good news: there is a way out of this frustrating cycle. And it starts by understanding what we can and cannot change.

What We Cannot Change

Some years ago, my happiest times were setting out on a mountain trail with a backpack on my back. It took only a few minutes until my whole body would relax, and I became part of the natural world. I loved that I couldn’t control what came my way: an unexpected summer snowstorm, a hungry skunk helping himself to our food, a delay that required hiking until late at night.

The lesson I learned? Intelligently go with the flow. My job was not to change what was unchangeable, but to accept, receive, work with, navigate.

“We can’t stop the waves, but we can learn to surf.”

~ Jon Kabat-Zinn

Just as I couldn’t wish that snowstorm away, we can’t eliminate thoughts and feelings. And this bears repeating: We don’t have the power to control the thoughts and feelings that arise in us. A judgment, a grudge, a wave of jealousy or anger – we can’t stop any of it from happening. But we can learn to accept, receive, work with, navigate.

The trouble with these challenging thoughts and feelings is not that they arise, but that we react to them. We judge ourselves for judging. We expect ourselves to be perfect, then slam ourselves when we aren’t. We say, “Oh, not that feeling again.” Then we judge ourselves for even these reactions. We may wish to change, but all of this resistance keeps the patterns firmly in place.

There has to be another way.

What if… a judgment appears in your mind, and you say, “Oh, this,” and breathe into the pain you feel. That mean-spirited story about your co-worker starts spinning in your mind, and you feel compassion for yourself and for her. Your simmering anger starts to boil, and you feel the intensity without saying or doing anything.

You stop blaming yourself for thoughts and feelings that you cannot control, and you let them be.

Meet Yourself as You Are

The goal is not to eliminate your reactions – because this is impossible. Rather, recognize them, relax with them, pause, breathe, and then the most appropriate response is revealed. It’s so simple and such a relief. You stop fighting with yourself and instead notice your present experience. You intelligently go with the flow. And when you do, here’s what happens:

  • You are more at ease with things as they are.
  • Your attention is on your actual experience, so the mind chatter loses its power.
  • You are patient with yourself.
  • You feel compassion for yourself and others.
  • You give yourself permission to be as you are.
  • You stop blaming yourself for not changing.

Then do you change, or not? Wisdom will show you the way. Maybe change emerges organically as you realize that unrecognized pain is at the core of these ways of being you don’t like about yourself. Maybe you cease giving judging thoughts any weight because they don’t express your true heart. Maybe you discover that loving the tender places in you allows the feelings to ebb.

Be as you are, and all is at peace.

What are your thoughts about change? Have you succeeded at changing? Are you harsh with yourself because you can’t change? I’d love to hear…

Still wanting more? Click to learn about one-on-one sessions with me for personalized, insightful help.

Why Studying Your Habits Pays Off Immeasurably

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Note:  This is the second in a series of posts to inspire and support awakened living.  The first post asked, “Is Your Deepest Longing a Part-Time Hobby?”

“The greater part of human pain is unnecessary. It is self-created as long as the unobserved mind runs your life.”
~Eckhart Tolle

Habits can be pesky little things, as you might have noticed. Before we realize it, we are embroiled in a conversation or thinking pattern that takes us down a road we prefer not to be traveling. We feel out of control, propelled by mysterious forces that make us question our sanity. We ask ourselves, “How did I end up here – again?”

I recently spoke with a friend whose mind was flooding her with harsh self-criticism. She just didn’t get it. She related how the past few months had rolled by with ease, and now this. Whatever your habit – food, alcohol, argumentativeness, obsessive thinking, self-criticism – you might notice that you are well into playing it out before you know it. It’s almost like being possessed.

We Need to Study Our Habits

So how do we get ourselves back? How do we regain a semblance of control so that we stop hurting ourselves? Get out the microscope.

Many of our patterns are so ingrained in us we don’t even realize we are doing them. The medicine is to become acutely aware of every aspect of them. Only then can we let them go. We become so familiar with them that we see them rearing their little heads – and when we do, we can choose differently.

The Fruits of the Analysis

You might be amazed when you begin to gain awareness of your patterns. Once I crossed the threshold to wanting to know everything about my experience, I realized that I was meeting much of my life with a fear response. When I put my reactions under the microscope, I saw a pulling in of the breath and a physical movement back and away. It was like a lion had just appeared in my path. Somehow I was reacting as if everything was threatening me.

This was quite a revelation. I had no idea the extent to which fear was driving me. But once I did, I was able to befriend the fear and untie the knots in my thinking that were keeping me boxed in. My awareness was so precise that I was able to go right to the root – fear – rather than playing out a pattern that left me feeling confused and unhappy. Then, just like dominoes toppling, many subtle tendencies started to unravel.

Can you see the power of penetrating awareness? When we place our habits under the microscope, we get to know them so completely that they can’t play out unconsciously anymore. Awareness is the get-out-of-jail-free card. It is the pathway to sanity.

The How-To Guide

If you want a sane, relaxed, drama-free life, put on a lab coat, and study your habits. Here’s how.

  • Press pause. When we stop our habits mid-stream, we immediately get some distance from them. This distance is essential to studying them. We step back and observe. We are witnessing what happens without being identified. Think of a specimen under the microscope. Be curious.
  • Proceed in slow-mo. Ssssllllloooowww it down. Start at the beginning or backtrack from the place you first become aware. Break it down into each step. Remember, you are focusing on your internal response – thoughts, feelings, physical sensations, pictures that appear in your mind. Know your habit so well that you could teach someone else to act it out.
  • Discover the root. Keep peeling the layers until you find that very first reaction. To find it, ask, “What else? What is under that?” This reaction is likely to be subtle, so take your time. It might be a physical response, like the drawing in of breath I described above, or an emotion or thoughts.
  • Give yourself love. Be so kind and compassionate toward yourself during this process. Welcome in whatever you find with a loving heart. We heal inner division, those cut off and hidden places in ourselves, with love. It works every time.
  • Connect with your inner wise one. Once the pattern is known so completely, it stops running like a madman. The emotional agitation and dramatic stories quiet down, making space for wisdom to arise. When you aren’t propelled by unseen forces, you might be surprised at the clarity that emerges.
  • Once is not nearly enough. The key to dissolving a habit is to work with it every time it arises. There is no goal, no such thing as a finished product. The habit appears in the moment, you study it, and it stops driving you. Every time. The more vigilant you are, the more willing you are to develop steady awareness, the deeper the possibility of being free.

A Concrete Example

Habits still come up in me, like the one this morning, for example. My schedule is already full, but someone asked me to add something to it. I immediately feel tension in my body. I physically lean back and my breathing gets shallow. I notice negative thoughts (“I can’t”), followed by more thoughts scrambling to figure out how to manage everything.

Then I realize, “Oh, I’m afraid.” I breathe into the fear, relax with it, bring compassion and understanding to it. As it subsides, I have the space to decide the best course of action. Calmly.

As the fear continues to come in waves, I ride it out with ease every time. That’s it. No endpoint, no goal. Simply being wise and loving with my own experience so that I am not controlled by it.

Next time a habit catches you, get out the microscope. Know yourself so well that your driving emotions have no place to hide. Inhabit your awareness – it is your true home. Be joyful, intelligent, and relaxed in the moments of your life.

What have you learned by studying your habits?  What are the obstacles to studying them?  I’d love to hear…

The No-Fail Secret to Reclaiming A Happy Life

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“Life is meant to be enjoyed, not half-lived as a shadow of its potential.”

How do we move from hanging on, making do, compromising ourselves, and trying to be happy to a flourishing life of fulfillment, openness, and peace? When we make deals with ourselves and justify decisions that we just

What is needed is this: turning our attention away from the people and situations of the world and pointing it inward to an investigation of our inner reactions and viewpoints. Finally, we are called to look inside. This 180-degree U-turn shines the light on the underlying belief systems we carry into our lives and project onto events and relationships. As we weed the garden of our inner lives, we prepare the soil for vital seeds to flourish.

Enjoy Your Life

The purpose of working through problems is to allow our natural radiance to shine through. Problems are veils that hide our true self. They can show up in our lives in many ways: relationship struggles, symptoms such as anxiety and depression, challenging life circumstances of any kind, difficulty quitting smoking or losing weight, being unclear about our life direction.

We know that our natural radiance is freely expressed when we are aware of any of these qualities: joy, inner peace, happiness, well-being, openness, love, gratitude, compassion, receptivity, clarity, quiet mind.

When we are at ease, we enjoy our lives. We are receptive to whatever happens, and we respond appropriately. Even when we are challenged by life, we don’t get lost. Peace remains undisturbed.

Veils that Hide Your Natural Self

When we are caught in a conditioned pattern of thinking, feeling, or behaving, we experience dis-ease, frustration, and unhappiness. Signs that you are stuck in a habit are:

  • Resistance to what is happening, wanting things to be different than they are
  • Blaming the other
  • Feeling like a victim
  • Denying/ignoring/pretending
  • Too much doing, busyness; unable to be still
  • Unhealthy behaviors
  • General unhappiness or dissatisfaction
  • Self-criticism
  • Spinning in thoughts and mental stories
  • Believing you are right or believing you are wrong
  • Feelings such as fear, anger, shame, defiance, sadness
  • Helping too much; unable to say “no”

Do you recognize any of these?

Unraveling Automatic Habits

Automatic, ineffective habits of thinking and behaving are asking for our attention. Paradoxical as it may seem, the very existence of these patterns is the doorway to releasing them. When patterns play out unconsciously, they invariably cause suffering to ourselves and those around us. Once they are seen in the light of conscious awareness, they relax and let go of their hold on us.

By bringing our full attention to the thoughts, feelings, and body sensations we experience when we are triggered, the patterns tend to lose their drive and fall away naturally. Your loving attention is the true medicine for suffering. If you continually work with these habits as suggested here, you will feel less reactive and be able to respond to situations in your life with greater ease.  There are few guarantees in life, but this is one of them.

This process uses all of your experience to support you in ending self-sabotage and living in freedom.

Keys to Freedom

  1. Essential qualities required: openness to change, flexibility, curiosity, willing to explore your inner world.
  2. Become aware of the pattern. Be mindful. Do this by developing an inner neutral witness that can observe your thoughts, emotions, and body sensations. Be curious, like an explorer, to see how the pattern develops and operates. Becoming aware is the moment of celebration. Now, you can make a conscious choice rather than being stuck in a habit.
  3. Exclude nothing; welcome everything. Be receptive to all of your experience – body sensations, emotions, thoughts, energies. Create an open, loving space in your inner awareness, and welcome whatever arises. Abandon all stories, and allow the bare experience as it occurs in the moment. You might notice that when these experiences are allowed to be, the drive or pressure behind them reduces, and they no longer trap you.
  4. See all situations in your life as a gift. As Byron Katie says, they are being offered for you, not to you. Every situation, every moment can be used as an opportunity to free yourself from conditioned patterns. By consciously investigating what is constraining you, the patterns release.  You are open and alive. Say “Yes!” to every moment, without resisting, and you are free!
  5. Continually inquire: What is my inner experience? What is asking for my attention? What is my inner guidance asking of me? What is needed? How can I take better care of myself? Live in this receptivity, no matter how many times a pattern or emotion arises. Things come and go of their own accord; our job is only to be lovingly present with what is.

Living in Renewal

Live the moments of your life with ease.

  • Take a few moments every day to relax and be quiet.
  • Eat well, exercise, and appreciate your loved ones.
  • Laugh, have fun, enjoy yourself.
  • Focus on your strengths and on what is working in your life.
  • Do what supports your well-being; let go of what brings you suffering. So simple.
  • Allow yourself to experience pleasure in all forms.

What have you discovered about living A Flourishing Life? What blocks you? I’d love to hear….