Dr. Gail Brenner

Sacred Space for Awakened Living

TwitterYoutubeFacebookGoogle +

Tools for Compulsive Thinking

tools“The more you think and talk, the more you lose the Way. Cut off all thinking and pass freely anywhere.”
~ Zen Patriarch Seng-T’san

In our last post, I invited you to reflect on four insights about thoughts and thinking, and how they apply to your own experience. How did it go?

As a refresher, the insights are:

  • You are not your thoughts;
  • You can choose how you relate to your thoughts;
  • You don’t have to buy into the content of your thoughts (very powerful to know!);and
  • You can function very well in life without paying attention to thinking.

Now it’s time to get even more practical. Today, we’re going to talk about some specific skillful means you can bring to your experience of thinking once you realize you’ve been lost in thought.

You may have noticed that thinking has a strong momentum to it. Certain thought patterns have been reinforced for decades, and they cycle around in your mind without actually helping you feel better or navigate life more intelligently.

It’s a sacred moment when you realize that these patterns have taken hold. Because now you have enough consciousness to do something other than compulsively continuing to think. It’s a celebration, a “Yes!,” a moment when the veil of thinking drops away and you have choices available to you. And here are some of these choices.

Stop and Breathe

When you become aware that you’ve been thinking, stop. Breathe. Feel the breath in your body. Immediately, your relationship with thinking shifts. You experience more space
more presence


Shift Attention Away from Your Thoughts

Notice that your attention has been involved in the stories your thoughts are telling you. This is what thinking is—being involved with the content of thoughts—churning endlessly!

Here’s the medicine: shift your attention away from this narrative. Lose interest in what the thoughts are telling you because they’re not helping you be happy and peaceful.

Instead, take a few conscious breaths, look around you and use your senses to reconnect with your surroundings, feel your body, and notice that you’re present and alive.

Now you’re out of the mental chatter. Even though it may still be going on in the background, you’re back here to the actual, living reality of the moment.

Feel the Sensations in Your Body

Underneath sticky thought patterns are often feelings that haven’t been explored. Stuck in thought, it feels like you’re one big head completely disconnected from your body.

Instead of continuing to think, move your attention into your body to feel the sensations that are present in the moment.

Welcome any tension, contractions, or subtle energies. Create a warm and open space for any sensations you notice. Spend a few moments or more letting them be without moving away from them.

Unexplored bodily sensations are the fuel for compulsive thinking because they’re interpreted as signs of threat and fear. If you ignore them, the anxious stories will keep running.

As you breathe with physical sensations, you’re uninterested in the content of your thoughts—and you’ll begin to enjoy the peace that’s here now.

Expand into Presence

Being aware is the steady, stable, ever-present silence from which thoughts arise.

You can be aware of things such as thoughts, physical sensations, objects in a room, or other people. And you can rest in the totality of being aware, free of objects.

When you expand into the being aware experience, you’ll get a taste of the space that is sometimes called thoughtless awareness. Rest your attention here, in this stillness, and you’ll notice great peace and relaxation.

Be Open to Fresh Options

You don’t need to rely on thinking to live. And if this insight is new to you, you may wonder how you’ll know what to do. Here are some possibilities:

  • Trust the truth of the moment and not your thoughts.
  • Be open to what the moment is calling for.
  • Instead of being motivated by fear and anxiety, ask, “What would love do?” or “How does life want to move me right now?”
  • Rather than trying to figure things out, listen and be receptive to what you hear.

Vigilance and Dedication

Thought patterns are highly conditioned, and will return, so expect to get hooked by thinking. Take each moment as an opportunity to untangle your attention and re-establish yourself in the present moment.

Be vigilant and dedicated—because it’s your happiness that’s at stake!

~~~~~~~~~

There’s a flow to thinking, then losing interest in the contents of the mind and releasing into the aliveness here now.
Isn’t it amazing that this release is possible?

Keep it simple and stress-free. Let compulsive thinking come and go without latching onto it—and let the experience of being aware be infinitely vast and open like the sky.

Layers of conditioning melt away, and here you are…in your original innocence…and wildly free…

image credit

Devotion…Surrender…

surrender“Until you practice surrender, the spiritual dimension is something you read about, talk about, get excited about, write books about, think about, believe in – or don’t, as the case may be. It makes no difference. Not until you surrender does it become a living reality in your life.”
~Eckhart Tolle

There is an open secret to the spiritual life, and it’s called surrender.

We can try our best to understand the nature of reality and our conditioning. We can hope forever that our troubling thoughts and feelings will subside so we’ll finally be at peace.

But until we surrender, the happiness we long for will elude us.

The word “surrender” means to give back completely, to release our ownership of something and offer it back.

What do you surrender?

  • Your personal needs and desires
  • Attachment to the content and meaning of all thoughts
  • Attachment to things being familiar and known
  • The need to know
  • The need to understand and analyze with your mind
  • The need to control

Thats a lot! It’s everything you hang onto that keeps you feeling separate—from others, from yourself, and from life.

In fact, you never owned these things—they were never you. Surrender brings you back to what was always true.

Surrender everything that makes up your personal identity, and where are you? Who are you?

You’re empty, willing, and totally receptive to let yourself be the instrument of something greater. And that something greater is the natural intelligence that is the pure substance of life.

Everything is given—the people you know, your talents and skills, the situations you find yourself in, the challenges and joys that make up your life.

You can subtract your personal desires and ideas about things, and your life is still here, beautifully unfolding as it is.

And things get a lot easier once we stop resisting this movement. We’re coming into alignment with things as they truly are.

To me, surrender arises from absolute devotion to the intelligence of the life force that is all-knowing, all-encompassing. I bow down with utter humility, beyond receptive, open with nothing personal in the way.

I don’t need to carry any concerns or figure anything out. I don’t go into my mind for answers.

I simply let myself be taken by the river of life that is already flowing, receiving everything that’s given without one second of hesitation.

What’s invited is pure devotion, releasing everything until you are nothing and letting yourself be the vessel that you truly are.

You love what’s given with all your heart. You’re a thousand percent willing to do the bidding that’s offered.

Surrender leaves nothing out, not one stone unturned. But don’t get deterred by the totality of what is being asked of you. Take a baby step in the direction of surrender.

  • Stop questioning one idea you’re attached to and flow with what’s given.
  • Put aside your view on how you want things to be in one situation and wholeheartedly embrace what’s actually happening as it is.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Bow down with humility to your one true home, and there’s just infinite luminous pure being.

“Life is a mystery. You cannot understand it unless you surrender, for your intellect cannot grasp its expansive and infinite nature, its real meaning and fullness. Bow down low and be humble; then you will know life’s meaning.”
~ Amma

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

A Wise and Kind Relationship to Your Feelings

​​​​​​For the past two weeks, we’ve been studying emotions. You can find these past posts here and here. What have we discovered?

The Essence of Meeting Emotions

  • The physical body is primed to experience emotions. They’re normal.
  • Things get complicated when our thinking minds try to make sense of what’s happening. This creates rumination, worry, confusion, and irritation. Your mind just can’t let go of the story.
  • Avoiding emotions will keep you stuck in them.
  • Even though you want to avoid them, turning toward emotions is the path to being free of their grip.
  • Turning toward our emotions creates a new and friendly relationship with them.
  • Taking a slow and conscious breath is a helpful first step.
  • How to turn toward? Welcome all sensations, even the ones hiding out in the shadows of your body. Let everything be welcomed in the stillness of your being.

Being with Your In-The-Moment Experience

Here’s the paradox when it comes to emotions. Logic will tell us to avoid them because who wants to feel pain?

But turn toward them and worlds open up. Without paying attention to the story running in your mind, you get to notice your in-the-moment experience.

There are physical sensations
energies
vibration
and the space these experiences arise in. It’s a moment of peace when you meet your feelings as they are.

Avoiding feelings is divisive within and separates us from ourselves. We might call it inner war.

Turning toward and meeting emotions is the path to coming to peace with ourselves.

But don’t take my word for it. Right now, go inside and be with whatever is occurring. Without the mind’s interference, what do you notice? You’re simply allowing what’s here to be here—and it’s way more peaceful than resisting.

A New Relationship with Emotion

I received an email recently from someone who is on fire to explore her experience—even if it hurts (because that’s what it takes). And she made an amazing discovery. She is starting to notice how much fear underlies the addictive behaviors she plays out in her life.

What a revelation! Caught in the addictions, the fear goes unnoticed. But making the courageous move to be curious about her inner experience, she realized the depth of the fear that’s been driving her unsatisfying behavior.

Then her question was, “How do I overcome this fear?” Which means, “How do I win the fight over it? How do I conquer it?”

Basically, she is asking how to get rid of the fear. From my experience, that’s not possible.

First, she avoided the fear completely, not even realizing it was present.

Then she wanted to get rid of it.

And I am suggesting a third approach, which is to get curious about it.

The invitation is to form a new relationship with fear—or any emotion—that is friendly and kind.

  • Instead of panicking when an emotion is present, or hating that it’s here, you take a breath and say, “Hello, Emotion.”
  • You explore how it feels in the body.
  • And you make space for it to appear then float on.

This is the paradox when it comes to emotion. We turn toward our feelings with loving acceptance, and they stop derailing our happiness.

Like a miracle, we discover that by including our emotions and letting them be, there’s peace
lightness
and the sense that all is deeply okay.

image credit

 

What You Need to Know About Emotions—Part 2

“Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.”
~Rabindranath Tagore

​​​​​​​Last week we started talking about emotions. Why? Because they’re part of the human experience. Many of us find emotions overwhelming and don’t know how to be with them. If you’d like to review, please go here.

Why We Fear Emotions

What makes our emotions so challenging? Why are we motivated to avoid them at all costs? Here are some possibilities:

  • You’re scared to meet what you’ve been avoiding for so long.
  • You’re not confident in your ability be with your feelings.
  • You’re afraid you’ll be overwhelmed and won’t know what to do.
  • If you turn toward the pain, you’re afraid you’ll cry forever.
  • You’re afraid of being uncomfortable.

Or maybe you believe you’re justified in holding onto your feelings because you’ve been wronged by someone or you’re waiting for an apology that you think will make everything right.

Do any of these resonate with you?

There’s something that each of these reasons has in common. If you continue to avoid your emotions, you’re bound to stay stuck.

  • If you don’t turn toward the anxiety you feel, you’ll spin in worry forever.
  • If you don’t meet your sadness with loving acceptance, it will always be tugging at you and keeping you from being truly happy.
  • And letting anger run wild? Well, we know how that affects us and those we love.

Turning Toward

Even though it sounds paradoxical, turning to meet our emotions sets us free from them. We stop spinning in the story fueled by the emotion and instead go right to the core of what we’re experiencing when we’re feeling something.

And what do we find?

Some energy in the body
some physical sensations. Maybe memories surface or tears come. And this array of experiences appears in the open space of being aware. They’re not personal—they just arise, stay a while, then pass on.

Even though it might feel painful to turn toward emotions rather than avoid them, we’re being authentic with what’s here in the moment and we’re paving the way toward discovering our essential wholeness.

Avoidance of our feelings leaves us divided from ourselves and life. Embracing them fully brings us to the altar of endless peace.

Every time I invite clients to stop the forward movement of the story and check into their bodies, they always take a deep breath and sigh it out. One person just told me she immediately feels lighter.

We all feel relief when we stop acting out on the inner tension by jabbering nonstop—and just stop and feel what’s here.

This is what grounds us in the here-and-now. It’s what slows us down and winds us back into ourselves. It’s what brings us to the doorway of the fall into presence.

Gracefully Being with Emotions

How do we meet emotions? It’s really not that complicated.

First, notice if fear or resistance are present. Acknowledge those experiences and honor them. Even if you’re afraid, take a baby step in toward yourself and feel what’s happening in your body.

That’s it. You stop feeding the mind and open your attention into the fullness of what you’re experiencing. It’s like being the sky and loving every single cloud that floats by no matter what it is. You’re a friendly host, a mother or father gathering in your long lost children.

Opening fully to things as they already are is the kindest thing you can do for yourself.

In the last post, we talked about taking a slow, conscious breath as a way into presence. Take that breath, then open into awareness and notice everything—every sensation hiding out in the shadows of your body, every bit of trapped energy that’s waiting for liberation.

Just breathe and allow…

I had trouble focusing the day I wrote this, and later on I noticed that my mind was foggy. I felt frustrated that I wasn’t crossing off items on my to-do list. Then I took that breath and stopped.

Oh, no wonder I was foggy! Turning inward, it felt like there had been a silent symphony playing that suddenly had the space to be heard. I didn’t even realize it, but I felt stressed, a little sad, and out of sorts. There was a sweet tenderness I had missed by trying to stay on task.

But turning inward to feel changed everything. Immediately, the frustration disappeared, and I was home again—connected, here, and utterly peaceful.

Why not try it? Right now…take a slow breath…expand your attention beyond your physical form…notice what’s arising in your body…being one with the unfolding of life…

image credit