Dr. Gail Brenner

Sacred Space for Awakened Living

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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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10 Life-Changing Facts About Anger

anger“Yes, I was angry. And I was a little afraid. After all I’ve not been free in so long. But, when I felt that anger well up inside of me, I realized that if I hated them after I got outside that gate, then they would still have me. I wanted to be free so I let it go.”
~Nelson Mandela upon leaving prison after 27 years of confinement

Frustrated, impatient, pissed off, raging…aaarrrrrrgh! Yes, it’s normal to feel angry – you are human, after all. But if anger causes problems in your life – if it interferes with your health and happiness – then consider these 10 life-changing facts. Get curious about anger, and you just might discover an untapped well of vital energy that improves your life circumstances and wakes you up to the whole of life.

1. It’s easier to feel anger than hurt.

Anger tends to be a surface emotion. But if you look at what is driving the anger, you will often find hurt, pain, or fear. Can you tell the truth to yourself about what you are actually feeling? Can you meet the depth of your experience with supreme kindness? You might be surprised at the freedom you discover.

2. Anger has a strong physical component.

Bring out the microscope when you are angry, and you will find strong physical sensations – tightness, contraction, burning. Anger is a fiery emotion full of energy. If you don’t want to be caught in anger, bring your attention right into these physical sensations.

Without running a story in your mind, fully allow yourself to feel what is present. It might be difficult, but you won’t actually combust, I promise you. Be real with your sensations, and eventually the anger will stop controlling you.

3. Perfectionists are angry.

Are you a perfectionist? Then take an honest look at what you are saying to yourself. You will undoubtedly find a repetitive loop playing in your mind that is harsher than you might imagine.

Don’t kid yourself – this is anger. If you don’t want to be a slave to your perfectionist tendencies, then go to the root of the problem and learn to meet your anger with love.

4. Stories sustain anger.

Angry stories barrel through our minds like an out-of-control train careening down the tracks. To find freedom from anger, you must recognize the story and see that repeating it doesn’t serve you. Yes, what happened happened. But how much longer are you going to let it be your ball and chain?

Here are some strategies to help you soften the story:

  • Open up with compassion to everyone involved, including yourself.
  • Recognize that you are bringing the past into the present by repeating the story endlessly.
  • Bring your full attention into the sensations you are experiencing in the moment.
  • Commit to bringing all your actions in alignment with what you really, really want.

5. Anger comes from an overblown sense of self-importance.

Often, what underlies anger are statements like, “I’m right” and “I want my way.” There is a huge attachment to “I” and the beliefs of that “I” that causes separation and disharmony.

Recognize these “I”-focused statements and know that they keep you locked into one way of thinking. Then inquire:

  • Am I really right?
  • Does this wanting to be right serve me – and others?
  • What does it mean to want my own way? What are the implications?

Exploration of these “I”-focused beliefs can lead you to untangle the deepest knots that block your happiness.

6. Anger causes separation.

Speaking of separation, what are the effects when you are angry? Anger pushes people away, scares them, makes them fight back or shut down. Relationships don’t have room to breathe when they are defined by anger. “How could you?” “You shouldn’t have…” Sound familiar?

Remember that anger – or any reaction – is not the fault of the other. If you are angry, look within yourself. Lovingly investigate what has been triggered in you, and your whole perspective on the situation will shift.

7. Anger gets attention.

Maybe you express anger because you want attention. Depending on the circumstance, this could be a useful strategy.

But consider this: there may be other ways for you to express yourself so that you are heard. Open up your mind and heart to all the possibilities.

8. Unexplored anger can mute your experience of life.

Are you sitting on a hotbed of anger, but keeping it so underground that you can hardly live? Some people are so intent on keeping peace that they minimize the truth of their experience.

Are you asleep at the wheel, attached to inner peace and pleasant living? Exploring the seeds of anger can enliven you to all of life.

9. Anger can transform into useful action.

Taking in all the problems in the world can bring about a sense of injustice. Yet, if you move from anger, you are missing out on the whole picture.

Meet your anger with love and let your heart break open. Then move forward with actions that are wise and skillful.

10. Anger traps you.

The arising of anger is not necessarily a problem, and is not even under your control. What matters is how you relate to anger once it is present. If you dwell in the energetic sensations and convince yourself that your thoughts are true, anger overtakes you.

But there is an alternative: feel the sensations and tell the truth about the story. Then anger is your ally – revealing more and more deeply the essence of you.

How does anger impact your life? What is your experience of dealing with it? We’d all love to hear…

Note: This post is part of the Life-Changing Facts series. Check out the others: fear, attachment, habits, healing the inner critic, happiness, and healing the pain of the past.

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Take Care of Yourself From the Inside Out

Announcing two new events: I’m very excited about offering a free tele-call on fear and Flourish in the Face of Fear Intensive. Please visit Events page for information and registration.

take care of yourself“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”
~John Lennon

I don’t often write about my work as a therapist. But today I found myself giving the same suggestion to each person I met with. Maybe it’s the season, maybe it’s in the air. And maybe you can benefit, too. What I said repeatedly was, “Take good care of yourself.”

Somehow it’s seems so easy to forget to pay attention to our own needs. We push through, keep going, and ignore ourselves until the well runs completely dry. Then you wonder why you are exhausted, why you feel anxious and disconnected.

You Matter

Taking care of yourself means counting yourself in. You matter, you absolutely do. And your quality of life suffers when you neglect yourself. You lose a sense of your priorities, and you end up grasping for solutions just to keep your head above water.

Maybe you think that taking care of yourself is selfish. This is a common misconception that is patently untrue.

Being caught up in your own stress doesn’t serve you or anyone else. Commit to taking care of you for you, for your quality of life, so you can live with a full and open heart. Here is the paradox: When you take good care of yourself, you get out of your own way. You are less self-focused. You aren’t captured by your needs, dramas, and obsessions.

Start with you, and you will experience great freedom in being open, peaceful, and awake to your life and everyone in it.

Caring for Yourself Affects Others

Today, I told a client that learning to take care of your own needs and feelings is one of the healthiest things you can do for a relationship.

When you learn to acknowledge your feelings and tend to those fragile places inside, you can show up for your partner full, loving, and available. No longer needy and lacking, you are set up for the simple joys of pleasant conversation and emotional intimacy.

In fact, not taking care of yourself does a disservice to your relationships. You can’t be present for your children, you miss opportunities to support your friends and loved ones.

Tend to yourself, and you have the space to emanate peace and express love. You become a beacon of sanity in an overwrought world.

Takes No Time

There are unlimited ways for you to take care of yourself. Some of them take no time at all – they are simply a shift in perspective. A few months ago, I realized I was waking up thinking about my to-do list and anxiously making it through the day. Finally, I said, “no more.” I got curious about my thought process and saw so clearly that I was half-present while worrying about future events.

Now, when I feel the stress in my body, I happily focus on just what is in front of me. I refuse to put my attention into those anxious thoughts. And the stress has reduced dramatically. No time needed – just a willingness to see the truth and be aware.

Other means for taking care of yourself do take time. You get to spend a few moments in stillness or go to a yoga class or begin to follow a passion.

Obstacles to Self-Care

See what gets in the way of your self-care. You will find that the obstacles are beliefs.

  • Believing you should or need to spend your time in a certain way.
  • Believing that you have to come last.
  • Believing that the world will fall apart if you stop playing out the mental and emotional habits that don’t serve you.
  • Believing that you aren’t worth your own loving attention.
  • Believing that being stressed is a normal way of living.

The first step to taking care of yourself is to investigate these beliefs. Are they true? Do they bring you what you really want?

Are you willing to try the essential experiment – to let go of these beliefs and take the radical step back to yourself, into self-care?

Self-Care = True Happiness

You might notice that I’m not including a list of ways to take care of yourself. You can find those on countless self-improvement blogs, and besides, I trust that you know how to do it. More important is to wake up to the necessity of it, to understand how self-care unearths your potential for happiness, and how your happiness touches everyone and everything.

Tell yourself the truth about how happiness works, and you can’t help but start with the landscape of your inner experience.

Self-care is always on my radar, and I’ll share with you how I do it:

  • Being aware when I am triggered and meeting my experience with deep acceptance. (See “Oh, this.”)
  • Taking time to listen to the people I love, especially my partner.
  • Exercise – running on the treadmill and yoga. (Yoga is exercise plus so much more.)
  • Resting when I am tired or starting to feel sick. Not pushing myself beyond my capacity.
  • Letting go of stressful thoughts about the future so I can be present.
  • Being still.
  • Walking away from the computer when I’ve been on it too long.
  • Keeping my home in order; not letting tasks pile up.
  • Being open and non-defensive – even in hard conversations.
  • Planning enough time so I don’t have to rush and worry about being late.
  • Flowing with life especially when unexpected things happen.
  • Contemplating the true nature of existence, which puts everything into perspective.

I could go on, but I think you get the picture. Now it’s your turn. How do you take care of yourself? What are your obstacles to self-care? I’d love to hear…

Confused? How to Find Laser-Like Clarity

confused, make a decision

“By letting it go it all gets done. The world is won by those who let it go. But when you try and try. The world is beyond the winning.”
~Lao Tzu

Indecision…confusion…lack of clarity. If these define your current reality, then this post is for you.

A friend of mine had been living in this state for months. He was facing a major life decision, and although he longed for clarity about it, all he got was uncertainty. He tried figuring it out every which way, but nothing seemed to clear the fog.

Letting Everything Go

Then he did what needed to be done – he died to everything. He let everything go.

  • His preferences for what he wanted
  • His hopes for how things would turn out
  • His identities – the kind of person he prided himself on being
  • All attachments – to relationship, money, status, appearance, even to life itself.
  • All should’s, all expectations

He opened to things being messy, crazy, and completely up for grabs. He was willing to accept the answer, no matter what it was.

From this emptiness, with everything out of the way he was able to truly listen, and undeniable clarity emerged. No longer iffy or doubtful, the answer shone like a beacon and his path opened up without question.

Clinging Is Resistance

He had been entangled in the mind-stuff, trying to determine the answer without having to face his attachments. He described the conflict as one between his head and his heart. In his head, he was busy bargaining and strategizing. There was too much mental noise, too much grasping, to hear the voice of his heart.

What it took was a willingness to drop everything. And I mean everything. To not resist any possibility, to not know anything, to be so incredibly open beyond any imagining. To be willing to say, “Yes!” to whatever appears.

Your Turn

Now, what about you…are you ready? Are you courageous enough to take off all the blinders and hear the truth? Here is how to die to everything:

  • Take everything you know, everything that defines you, and throw it into the holy fire.
  • Surrender anything you are holding on to – any ideas, attachments, hopes, desires, preferences.
  • Open every cell of your being.
  • Listen deeply with nothing in the way, no expectations at all about what you will discover.
  • Be so devoid of any personal will that you are willing to embrace whatever path shows itself to you.

Gaining clarity about a decision does not mean that your confusion won’t return for a visit. In fact, expect it. The last thing fear wants is the exhilaration of freedom, so it will beckon you. Here is your job: stay grounded in the clarity that you know to be true. Surrender, die to everything, over and over and over.

Truth is fierce business, as you can see. It is not for those who want the easy way out, not for those who want to cling to what is limited and familiar.

But, oh, the fruits of surrender. Laser-like clarity…the deepest intimacy with all things…peace beyond peace…

Where are you stuck or confused? What is masking truth and clarity? I’d love to hear…

Feeling Inadequate? A Guide to Discovering Your True Magnificence

not feeling inadequate“Whatever you think the world is withholding from you, you are withholding from the world.”
~Eckhart Tolle
Are you pretending that there is something missing? Feeling a sense of lack is so pervasive in our society. And believing in your inadequacy prevents you from recognizing the brilliance that is already always here.

Just watch ten minutes of commercials on TV. You will be told that you aren’t young enough or stylish enough, that you need exactly what you don’t have. We live in a culture of non-acceptance and dis-ease, compounded even further by what we learn from our families as we grow up. It’s a legacy of lack.

A Personal Sense of Lack

Of course, this sense of lack seeps into our personal psyches. Do these sound familiar?

  • Piling on the “should’s” – what you should and shouldn’t do or be
  • Needing others’ approval to feel OK about yourself
  • Criticizing yourself endlessly
  • Feeling that there must be something more
  • Compulsively seeking objects to fill yourself up

It’s like the bucket is always leaking so you can never feel whole, relaxed, full, and at ease.

The Way Out

If you take one point away from this post, let it be this: there is a way out. It is absolutely possible for you to live the moments of your life in peace rather than poverty, fullness rather than fear and despair.

Do you know how to pay attention?
Are you capable of love?

Then you have the tools to realize the relief you seek. And where do you end up when you use them? Smack in the middle of the land of happiness. The well being you have always wanted is here, available, possible for you. You can stop trying so hard. You can relax and be still.

The Art of Paying Attention

If you are living in lack, then you are caught in a story that has convinced you of your inadequacy. You are giving your most precious resource, your attention, to believing in not being good enough. And this problem will never be solved by thinking more about it.

Know this: what you feed is what will grow. Feed lack, and you get more lack. Bring your attention into what you are experiencing in the moment, and you can be free.

Whenever you spin in the story of inadequacy, stop. See what emotions you are feeling, and welcome them. Notice the sensations in your body, and breathe with them. The story diminishes, and in that moment, you are free.

Add up these moments, and the fire of inadequacy becomes a pile of ash.

Every time the inadequacy rises up, now you know what to do. Bring your attention away from the story in your mind, and be in the moment with your feelings and physical sensations. Time after time…peaceful moment after peaceful moment.

The Art of Loving

Now comes the juicy part. You get to steep yourself in love. Whenever the sense of lack arises, counter it with kindness. Give yourself what you think you are lacking, which is love.

Take every thought, every painful emotion, and bathe it in love. How to do that? Accept it, welcome it, allow it to be as it is. Put down the fight with what is present in your experience, and wholeheartedly let it be.

Can you see how your entire experience can be transformed? No longer stuck in the story of lack, no longer pretending you are a fraction of your true magnificence.

Practice paying attention to your in-the-moment experience. Practice being a loving host to whatever arises. Rinse and repeat in every difficult moment. In the face of this intelligent practice, inadequacy dissolves.

And when it does, You are revealed – shining, open, peaceful, loving. Shed the story of lack, and discover that you are already overflowing.

Do you have problems with inadequacy? Does the practice I am offering here make sense to you? I’d love to hear…

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