Dr. Gail Brenner

Sacred Space for Awakened Living

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The Value of Being Empty

Milk jug

“You can become blind by seeing each day as a similar one. Each day is a different one, each day brings a miracle of its own. It’s just a matter of paying attention to this miracle.”
~Paulo Coelho

We are so full these days. Have you noticed? Our lives are filled with work time, family time, social schedules, the daily upkeep of life, not to mention the inner busyness of plans, worries, fears, and self-judgments. Throw in some expectations, relationship concerns, grudges, and unexamined feelings. Phew! It’s a veritable jungle in there.

The Possibility of Emptiness

Just for a moment, think of yourself as looking out through a clear vessel. Nothing is in the way of seeing people and situations clearly. Your mind is quiet. You are no longer confused, no longer sidetracked by mental stories or strong emotions. Infinite wisdom moves through you without being blocked or ignored. Creativity has an open channel for expression. Your familiar idea of “you” dissolves into space.

This is the potential for all of us – to be open, present, and available, to live from inner intelligence, to be in harmony with life. In fact, this is our natural state. Consider for a moment – who were you before all the “stuff” got crammed in there? Who would you be without it?

The Clutter of a Full Vessel

Emptying out the vessel might leave us on unfamiliar ground. The contents are there for a reason – they protect us by organizing our perceptions of the world and providing a blueprint for what to expect and how to respond. But they also deter us from seeing things exactly as they are. When our vessel is full, we are looking through old patterns and belief systems that limit the information we are able to actually take in. No wonder we feel confused.

Early on in life, a friend of mine developed the tendency to act aggressively to get her needs met. She grew up in a home where if you did not fight for what you wanted, you were sure to lose out. She learned to be controlling and even manipulative in her interactions. When she looked through her vessel, she saw people as pawns to be conquered. She was determined to come out on top.

Although this way of being usually got her what she wanted by force, it left her feeling isolated and dissatisfied. Now, with a beautifully empty vessel, she is warm, openhearted, and happy. People feel moved to be close to her rather than wanting to escape her domination.

From Full to Empty

Maybe your vessel is so full that you cannot imagine it being empty. Or perhaps it contains only a few remaining remnants of clutter that block your view. Either way, if clear seeing and inner ease interest you, if you are ready to turn back toward yourself, consider emptying out your vessel. Here is how to proceed.

A Few Points About Emptiness

  • As we get started, take a moment to reflect on this essential truth: emptiness is our natural state. We have not always lived according to our personal patterns and viewpoints. Before they took hold, there was space, potential, limitless possibility. Remember?
  • Being empty invites us to befriend the unknown. Once we subtract expectations, “should’s,” and projections from the past or into the future, we realize how much we do not know. Here is where wonder and openness reside. And perhaps some fear. When old patterns fall away, it is normal to feel afraid about not knowing. Meet this fear lovingly.
  • Be careful not to confuse emptiness with boredom. Boredom feels flat and numb, whereas true emptiness is the capacity to be fully awake to each moment. When we empty out, we do experience less drama, a quieter mind, and a calmer emotional state. You might notice the loss of agitation that is familiar to you, and some people find this shift disorienting. As always, you have the option of deciding what you want, what you want your life to be about.
  • Be compassionate with yourself. Every moment of exploration and letting go is a moment of freedom. If your patterns reappear, forget the times you have examined them in the past, and be fresh with what is being asked for now.

Step by Step

As we explore the tangles of thoughts and feelings that cloud our vessel, stay connected with your intention. Long-standing habits have a momentum that defies their dissolution. For a shift to happen, the desire to look through an empty vessel needs to be stronger than the desire to stay with one filled with debris.

Take a look at what is obscuring your clear seeing. With the willingness to be honest with yourself, what patterns and tendencies are preventing you from feeling clear and at ease? What mental and emotional habits are distorting your view?

Now, put on your curious explorer’s hat, and inquire into whatever you discover.

You might notice a thought pattern that comes in the form of an expectation, memory, plan, hope, judgment, “should,” or inner criticism. Sometimes a thought is so familiar that we do not even think to question it. In the spirit of openness and exploration, similar to the process Byron Katie offers, ask yourself:

  • Is this thought true? Am I believing something that isn’t actually true?
  • How do I feel when I think this thought?
  • Could the opposite of this thought be just as true?

Next, explore feelings.

  • Notice how you react when reality fails to conform to an expectation you hold.
  • Notice how you feel when you are operating based on what you think you “should” be doing.
  • Invite in all the hurts, fears, and resentments to be seen, felt, and held lovingly. These are your long-lost children who have been waiting for your embrace. You might even be surprised at how easily they subside.

Eventually, bit by bit, we begin to feel clearer. We are no longer bogged down by the past. We notice just a little more happiness, joy, lightness, and ease. We realize there is no difference among the seeing, the vessel, and that which is seen. All is clarity, peace is omnipresent, and love flourishes endlessly.

How empty or full do you feel? What has helped you empty out? What has challenged you? What is your deepest intention? I’d love to hear…

It’s Not Too Late for a Thorough Spring Cleaning

“The winds of grace are always blowing, but it is you who must raise your sails.”
~Rabindranath Tagore

I love spring. I grew up in the northeast and was continually enthralled with the bounty of life that would begin to appear as the weather started to shift. The first robin, the crocuses pushing their way into the sun – awe-inspiring signs of growth and renewal. Spring is an exciting time where we feel the potential of the unknown ahead of us overflowing with possibility.

I now live in an area that was ravaged by fires last year, and this spring the wildflowers are stunning. Life is so enormously abundant – it can’t help but blossom endlessly.

If we let it.

Since summer arrives in a week or so, it’s not too late to start our inner spring cleaning. Time to dust away the cobwebs and clear the path for life to express itself through us – wondrously fresh, infinitely creative, clear, alive, open. Can we generously give ourselves the gifts of inward exploration and quiet contemplation? Consider the following three essential questions.

Is your life on track?

First, reflect on what you really want your life to be about. What is important to you? What are your values and priorities? What is your heart’s desire?

Now, take a look at your actual life – how you spend your time, what you think about, who you associate with, how you spend money, your overall level of happiness.

Notice any area of your life that is asking for your kind attention?

How are you getting in your own way?

Perhaps, when we are honest with ourselves, we know that we play out habits and compulsions that don’t serve us. What do we get out of perpetuating them? Maybe they keep us safe or protect us from facing an uncomfortable feeling or situation. Maybe shining the light on a stale pattern would bring great change to our lives that we don’t think we are ready for.

Holding on to these hidden places blocks the flow of life. They keep us living in the world of “no,” unable to receive the riches being offered to us in every moment. And examining them invites us to surrender control so we can fully live.

Is it time to get out of your way so you can be available to what life has in store for you? What would that mean for you – letting go of a relationship, a job, a pattern of thinking, an unhealthy behavior?

What old hurts need to be healed?

Living in the past is not really living. Clinging to an old grievance consumes our thoughts and hijacks our potential. If you take things personally, if you have trouble getting started in life, if you think you need to defend yourself because the world is out to get you, consider befriending that painful place inside you. Not doing so is like staying in prison when the key is in your pocket.

When we turn away from our own experience, we continue to be victims of it. We are propelled this way and that by our unexplored stories and the feelings that underlie them. The decision to turn our attention directly into our own experiences of the pain begins the healing.

As we learn to lovingly care for the tender parts of ourselves, the neediness and sorrow dissolve. We realize that what we think we lack has been here all along.

Clean with Care

I know you know this by now: no one is coming to save you. The quality of our lives is up to us alone. We can accept “good enough,” or we can drill down deeper. Take every dust ball, every smudge on the window. Love it, thank it, and walk away. Clean house like there is no tomorrow. Be in harmony with the way things are, and allow life to show you the way.

In what areas does your life need spring cleaning? Do you notice any resistance to looking into the hard places? I’d love to hear…

Still Attached? How to Have an Open Mind

Note to readers: I want to take a moment and let you know how much I deeply appreciate every one of you. Each week, I am blown away by your comments – your thoughtfulness, your good intentions, your willingness to face the hard questions in your lives and celebrate your insights and realizations. Each person’s comment is a source of inspiration to everyone else who reads it. We are a true community, joined heart to heart. Thank you.

“You must choose between your attachments and happiness.”
~Adyashanti

I am not a barfly, but I was enjoying a happy hour drink last week in a lively establishment. My companion struck up a conversation with the woman sitting next to him, and it was amazing to see what happened. Somehow they got on the topic of health care, and you could see her whole demeanor change. Her eyes went steely, her mouth tight, and she went off on the ills of the health care system. Obviously, he had hit a chord in her.

I saw right before me the power of holding a strong opinion. I can only imagine what it felt like to be her in that moment.

Are Your Views Making You Suffer?

In the last two posts, we have been exploring this most essential topic of attachment. First, we saw how attachment has to do with clinging to expectations of how we want things to be. Then, we went directly into the core of the experience of attachment to befriend the underlying fear and loss. Today, we explore attachment to views, beliefs, judgments, and opinions.

Not that there is anything wrong with being attached to our views. My interest always is in happiness and freedom. If your views bring you happiness, then there is no reason to question them. But if the attachment to a certain way of thinking leaves you scared, stressed, irritated, or tense, then you are faced with a choice: hold on to your views or question them.

For most of us, our views, beliefs, judgments, and opinions run deep. Some of them are so subtle that we don’t even know they exist – until they are confronted. I will never forget the first time I arrived in Kathmandu, also my first time in Asia. For those initial hours, I was completely overwhelmed, almost unable to take in the sights, smells, and sounds that were so different from anything I had ever experienced. Prior to that time, I had no idea how entrenched some of my beliefs were.

We saw in the last post that attachment is about being bound and tied to. When we are attached to ideas, our minds are sticky. We are looking at the world through a filter that judges experience as good or bad, acceptable or not. We bring our inner edges to the flow of life that is happening regardless of our beliefs about it. And it simply doesn’t feel very good.

The Choice to Let Go

Maybe you realize that some of your views don’t serve you. They cause separation, unhappiness, and inner division. Even so, we hold on tight, not really wanting to relinquish these treasured concepts that define our reality. Maybe you think the oil spill shouldn’t have happened or that terrorists should know better.

Instead, can you let your heart break with the outrage and sorrow that is driving these views.

If your sense of dissatisfaction is great enough, if you long for lasting happiness, if you know in your heart that these beliefs don’t bring you peace, then you are ready for an authentic exploration of them.

Happiness is Not in the Thinking Mind

All of these ideas – beliefs, judgments, views, opinions, expectations – are products of the thinking mind. When we take them to be true, we are clamping down on the free flow of life. We could certainly investigate each one and discover that we are believing something that is not absolutely true, that each contains a fallacy and an equally plausible alternative.

But why not take the short cut?

Freedom cannot be found in the thinking mind. It cannot be figured out or analyzed. Anything we think is ultimately not going to take us to happiness. More thoughts, more belief systems – more thinking.

True Openness

If happiness cannot be found in our thoughts, where is it? In a completely open mind, in a mind that doesn’t cling or grasp, in a mind so relaxed and spacious that no effort is expended to think, judge, or believe. This unattached mind is totally aligned with reality. It knows no limits and excludes nothing. It is friendly, loving, and benign.

In a mind this open, beliefs, views, and opinions are like clouds in a vast sky; hoping, wishing, and expecting just dots on a panoramic landscape.

Imagine for a moment that you were not at all attached to any views or beliefs. You don’t presume anything will be a certain way. You don’t define yourself or others by any constructs. Opinions or judgments might float into your mind, but they appear and disappear effortlessly. Can you get a sense of this degree of openness? So expansive. Anything could happen, and you receive rather than react. Your heart overflows as separation comes to an end.

If you give yourself a rest and relax away from thinking, just for a moment, here are some things you might notice:

  • A feeling of expansion
  • Lightness
  • An open, tingly feeling in your heart
  • Peaceful
  • A sense of well being

In an open mind, there is no resistance to anything, nothing is out of order, nothing inappropriate or wrong. Thoughts are seen, but we don’t attach to them. They come and go of their own accord and they are not a problem when they arrive.

This is the possibility for all of us: to realize that the views, opinions, beliefs, stories we take to be true are simply phenomena that arise and pass on. Do you want to be happy? Allow your mind-heart to open endlessly.

What views do you hold closely? What does it feel like? What is it like to try to let go of beliefs and views we take for granted? I’d love to hear…

 

The Secret Path to Finding Freedom from Our Attachments

“Ordinary riches can be stolen, real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.”
~Oscar Wilde

So many heartfelt comments to the last post about attachment. Thank you, all.

And what a tender topic. Who among us doesn’t struggle with attachment? The holding on can be so strong, the need to have things just as we want them so overpowering. If attachment appears, we have a choice: let it control our lives or allow it to lead us on an inner journey of self-exploration. I imagine you know what I choose, so let’s peel the onion of attachment just a little more to see what we discover.

The Mechanics of Attachment

Attachment is all about being tied up and constrained. According to dictionary.com, it is “a feeling (emphasis added) that binds one to a person, thing, cause, ideal, or the like.” Other definitions describe this feeling as affection or fondness. Now, I am all in favor of affection or fondness, but when readers commented about their struggles with attachment to material possessions or their children or what other people should do, something else must be at play.

And that “something else” is fear. When we are attached, we are absolutely terrified of not being in control and of being without what we think we have. If things don’t go as we want them to, if we lose the things and people that support our identities, if we really let go of viewpoints that don’t serve us, then we are stepping out into the unknown. Instead of addressing this fear, we clamp down on ourselves and the people around us, wanting everything to stay just as it is.

Attachment and Survival

The roots of attachment run deep, and it is all about survival. As young ones, we need to attach to the people around us to get our needs met. And who doesn’t melt seeing a mother duck with her brood.

The thing is, as wonderful as survival is, being attached to it is bound to cause suffering. Because no matter how hard we try, all life forms are created with an expiration date. To state the obvious, no one has made it out of here alive.

We start by being attached to survival, to those who make our survival possible, and it continues from there. We experience a great comfort with the known and the familiar and begin to fear letting go into what we cannot know or control.

Contemplating Loss and Meeting Fear

Take attachment to possessions as an example. I have a lovely Nepali friend who came to the US with nothing and was eventually able to realize his dream of buying a home. Now he is faced with possible foreclosure, and he is desperate. He is terrified of watching everything he worked for disappear before his eyes.

What he has done is nothing short of amazing, and it has been an honor to witness his journey. But somehow his home has turned into an identity, and he fears facing the loss and whatever may come as a result. I cannot see how this attachment to his home has served him – except if he chooses to investigate it.

Whatever we are attached to – children, partners, our health, success, our identities, life itself – all of it deserves exploration if we want to know peace. Playing the “what if” game can be useful. Here are the instructions:

  • Bring to mind something you fear losing.
  • Imagine the loss as realistically as you can.
  • Welcome whatever feelings arise and meet them with a full and loving heart.

I make a practice of this “game.” I have gone around my home, taking in all the things I enjoy and appreciate, saying, “What if this went?” I have contemplated the people I love, and considered their loss. I have imagined myself homeless, alone, and in a wheelchair. This hasn’t been easy, but meeting these fears and sorrows directly has revealed so much peace.

The unexamined fear fuels the mind with all sorts of terrifying thoughts. We scare ourselves and don’t even realize we are doing it. The truth is I have no idea what is going to happen if any of those losses actually occurs. And I have no idea how I am going to respond. Something beyond my wildest dreams could happen.

These scary thoughts are like the boogie man in the closet – they don’t have much validity or substance. When I move my attention to what is driving the thoughts, the fear is seen just as sensation, as energy. When anything is possible without restriction, nothing arrives – or departs – unexpectedly.

Investigating our attachments opens the path to a life that is authentic and real. If we bring our fears out of the shadows with a willingness to befriend them, if we contemplate the dissolution of everything we know, the heart can’t help but sing a song of gratitude. Everything could go, but reality remains – this moment – fresh, alive, and overflowing.

image credit ducklings

Thank You, Annoying People

“All violence is the result of people tricking themselves into believing that their pain derives from other people and that consequently those people deserve to be punished.”
~Marshall Rosenberg

I met someone recently who pushes my buttons, and not the good ones. When I am around him, I feel irritated, there are judging thoughts running through my mind, I am trying to figure out how I can get away, I want him to be different than the way he is. I actually think I am justified in my feelings because I know other people feel the same way I do.

But where does this get me? I’m right…but so what?

Truth be told, feeling right doesn’t even feel that good. I feel the arrogance of being “holier than thou” in my body like a ten-pound weight in my chest. Being right certainly doesn’t put me any more at ease when I anticipate encountering this man again, and it doesn’t bring any more love into the world. In fact, I am trapped, a victim of my judgments and opinions. And I am contributing to disharmony and strife.

Please Change so I Feel Better

What I am experiencing is a ubiquitous phenomenon that is at the root of all interpersonal difficulties: we want other people to change so our uncomfortable feelings will diminish. I want my new acquaintance to not be overbearing so I won’t feel invaded. Mary wants her husband to not throw his clothes on the floor so she can find relief from her frustration. Joe wants his coworker to stop talking so much so he won’t feel bored and irritated.

We give up our inner comfort to something we cannot control – the behavior of other people. And, oh, the lengths to which we will go to try to control them anyway!

When we don’t own our emotional reactions, we run the risk of wreaking havoc on our lives. We leave relationships, gossip, criticize, fight, manipulate, and spend our precious time rationalizing our opinions to ourselves and everyone else around us.

Is this what we really want? Do we want to promote friction and divisiveness – or do we want to be free of undesirable habits and meet the world with an open heart?

True Healing by Turning Our Attention Inward

It is so easy to blame and accuse. But the beginning of a bold and courageous enterprise is to turn our attention away from the other and directly into all the distressing emotions we strive so hard to avoid. We stop seeing others through the veil of our own pain, and compassion naturally arises – for others as well as ourselves.

Rather than being an annoyance, our reactions to other people can be viewed as a golden invitation served to us on a silver platter. They are a mirror that reflects back to us areas of unexplored emotion and inner secret places where we wall ourselves off. Being triggered by others becomes a time of celebration: we get to see where we are stuck, we have the opportunity to free ourselves, and as one book title suggests, we can say, “Thank You for Being Such a Pain.”

The inner investigation of our triggered reactions toward others reveals so much tender information. If you lash out at your partner, you might realize you are actually afraid. If you judge and constrict your children, maybe you feel helpless as a parent. Take any relationship that causes you stress or displeasure, and like a trail of breadcrumbs, follow your reaction back into yourself to its source. I can guarantee you your discovery will be illuminating.

The Opportunity to Clean Up the Past

Often, the strong feelings that arise in our interactions echo an unresolved relationship from our past. If you were criticized by an overly demanding parent, it won’t take much for a boss correcting your work to seem like a tyrant in your eyes. If you were abandoned in your youth, a friend calling to cancel plans at the last minute may cause you to feel like you are five again. Any reaction that seems too intense for the situation at hand has undoubtedly triggered some old, undigested feelings.

What to do with these emotions that are revealed? Love them with all your heart. Surround them with affection. Let your heartfelt attention permeate them entirely. And once they have drunk their fill, notice that you now see others in a fresh light. Where before you saw an aggressor or a nuisance, the clouds part and you see a tender being who is scared, hurt, or needy. Now the relationship, you and the other, have the potential to be transformed.

Author and teacher Byron Katie says, “Things don’t happen to you, they happen for you.” The challenges in our relationships are an offering, a gentle tap on the shoulder asking us to deepen in our commitment to freedom. Can we take care of ourselves and free our interactions from being repositories of our pain and suffering? Can we look into another’s eyes and rest in the space of non-separation? Can we declare an unmitigated, “Yes!” to truth, to life, to this very moment?

This is a topic that hits home for all of us. I’d love to hear how you are meeting these relationship challenges in your own life.

For an exercise in unconditional acceptance, have a listen to: You Are Welcome as You Are.

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