“Love is what we are born with. Fear is what we learn. The spiritual journey is the unlearning of fear and prejudices and the acceptance of love back in our hearts.”
Marianne Williamson

In Part 1 of this series, we learned how our original state is one of freedom, innocence, and openness. We saw how habits form as a strategy of survival in response to challenging relationships in our lives, obscuring this original way of being.

The first essential step to unlocking the prison door is to realize you are behind bars. We reclaim our innocence by identifying when we are caught in a habit. This is easier said than done, as some habits seem like such an integral part of our identities that they are hard to pinpoint.

This post offers a descriptive map to help you find all habits, including those that may be hiding out unseen, and the next three articles in this series detail the path to relating to them in a completely different way. Approach these waypoints with an open mind. Freedom asks us to consider all aspects of our thinking and behavior to see if we are trapped or free. It helps to abandon our expectations, to not take any familiar ideas for granted. Illuminating our habitual ways of being clears the way for our natural radiance to shine.

In what areas of your life are you rigid and inflexible?

When you are caught in the web of a pattern, you are in a well-worn groove, feeling, thinking, and acting in automatic, standardized ways. It’s like having tunnel vision, with only one option available for reacting to or handling a situation. It may not even occur to you that a new and different perspective is possible.

Consider an alcoholic who is offered a glass of wine. The momentum of the habit is so strong that the only possible reaction is to drink up.

Inflexibility can show up anywhere in your life. Take a look at all the beliefs you hold about yourself, your abilities, how you and others should think and behave. Consider how you react to certain situations or people with exactly the same emotions every time and how you try to get what you want from people. Maybe your pattern is depression or anxiety. Perhaps you feel shy or lonely or are ruled by shame and guilt. Maybe you think you are right and are unwilling to entertain other perspectives.

Once these habits begin to relax, we are in the natural state of openness, free of all expectations of ourselves and others. We receive what is happening in the moment and respond as if for the first time. We see situations as they are with clarity, and our responses are fresh and unencumbered by the past.

Are your thoughts, feelings, or behavior uncontrollable?

When a pattern is carrying on unconsciously, you are the robot, the hamster on the wheel. You are propelled by forces outside your awareness that make you behave in self-defeating ways. You observe yourself doing things you don’t want to be doing and expressing your emotions in ways that deplete or frustrate you – but you don’t seem to be able to stop.

If you keep trying to make changes, but continually fall off the wagon, the habit is still in control. The moment of realizing this is a crossroads – a call for celebration. When all your methods and strategies fail, you are ready for a different approach.

The solution to uncontrollable habits is not to try harder to control yourself – the solution is to investigate the habit. Observe how it appears, what the components are. Map out a timeline of how you experience the habit beginning with the very first trigger. Get to know what an urge or craving feels like. See what familiar stories you are telling yourself about the habit.

Are you a victim of your habits?

If your habit is in control, you are a victim. You feel passive and powerless. You may be telling yourself that this habit is who you are, that you will stop “some day.” You give up your power to the strength of the habit.

At any moment, you can decide to stop being a victim. The beginning of the end of a habit is your willingness to be aware of it. If you are willing, you are ready, prepared, and inclined toward something. When you are willing to be fully aware, you bring enthusiasm and interest to directly investigate the habit. This active, empowered approach shifts your experience from stale and resigned to alive and new.

Are you hiding from fear?

As we learned in Part 1 of this series, habits protect us and keep us feeling safe. They develop to shield us from unacceptable and painful feelings.

Simply said, fear activates habits. Fear of being wrong, of loss, rejection, love, failure, success, to name a few. And above all the fear of feeling the emotions that would surface if the pattern stopped, a fear so intense that we engage in all kinds of undesirable activities to avoid them.

Take emotional eating as an example. When people eat mindlessly, especially at night, they are usually escaping from uncomfortable feelings lying outside of their awareness. Fear of experiencing these feelings keeps the pattern in place and the one who is eating at its mercy.

The path out of a habit is to befriend these deep-seated emotions. When seen with understanding, a habit, then, becomes a source of support and guidance. Habits offer us exactly what we need to wake up from them. When we realize we are caught in a habit, we can rejoice in the opportunity to untangle the knot and release ourselves from its trap.

By turning our attention inward toward the habit, we get to tell the truth. We shed light on the belief systems that derail us. We actually feel the feelings that have been ignored for so long. With great compassion, we discover how the habit has lodged in our bodies, and we experience the contractions and tensions directly. We allow what has been suppressed to breathe in the light of day.

In Part 3 of this series, we will put on our miner’s hats to go straight into the darkness to discover the hidden aspects of our habits. For true freedom comes only by shining the light in every corner, by seeing the identities we take for granted and the assumptions we live by. We welcome all of our feelings like honored guests.

Prepare yourself for a wondrous journey.

What do your habits feel like? Maybe you enjoy them? Anything you would like to add?

“Why do you stay in prison when the door is so wide open?
Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking. Live in silence.”
Rumi

Habits so easily operate outside of our conscious awareness. Have you ever eaten a box of cookies before you realized it? Or smoked three-fourths of a cigarette before you became aware you were even smoking? Do you find yourself in an argument with a loved one, even though you intended there to be peace this time? Are you depressed, jealous, stressed out, irresponsible, passive, angry?

These emotions, thought patterns, and behaviors are all habits. They occur with such regularity that they happen without our actually being aware of them. Not all habits are problematic – we look both ways before crossing the street, we carry out the actions of driving. Our bodies seem to know what to do automatically.

The trouble arises when habits interfere with our happiness. And if what we want is to be happy, the solution is to unwind these patterns, to find our way back to our natural state of wholeness and ease. We move from sleepwalking through life to being awake and alive to our moment by moment existence.

How Habits Arise

So how do these habits develop? When we come into this world, we have no habits. Our original state is innocent, open, and free. If we distinguish between “being” and “doing,” as newborns, we are being. We just are without trying to control our environments or the people around us. Our behavior doesn’t have any particular intention – when we feel hungry we cry; when we are full we stop. Newborns live in the unconditioned, prior to any learning.

Very early on in life, the doing begins. As infants, we figure out how to strategize so that our caregivers will give us the attention we need. We smile, cry, or behave in irresistibly cute ways to get food and diaper changes. We want to be noticed and loved.

Habits Become Identities

As life progresses, things get complicated. We may not be able to get our needs met no matter what strategies we try, so we feel anxious and despairing. We are told that some of our behavior is unacceptable, so we feel ashamed. We are criticized, so we vow to prove ourselves or we get lost in self-doubt. Our motivation is survival, safety, and protection. We send painful feelings underground and develop strategies and habits that enable us to cope as best we can.

The results? Addiction to substances or unhealthy behaviors; avoiding conflict at all cost; pushing to get our way; perfectionism; overworking; low self-esteem; arrogance. These habits become our identity – who we think we are.

Our Original State Is Still Alive

So what happened to the original state of being innocent, open, and free? In addition to our habits, we experience joy, delight, beauty, laughter, and love. These are irrepressible signs that our natural, unconditioned existence is not completely buried.

In the moments when our habits and strategies aren’t in play, the light of our true nature has space to shine, sometimes brilliantly. We express ourselves with abandon; we feel expansive and boundless. The unconditioned is always alive.

I remember a lovely day I spent at the beach with a young family not long ago. Over and over, 9-year-old Ellen threw herself into the waves and rolled in the sand, gleefully exclaiming, “I feel so free!” Such a beautiful expression of the natural state.

This is the human condition: we identify ourselves by our habits and live in our minds trying to figure out how to be happy and comfortable. At the same time, we resonate deeply with nature, children, love, happily rolling in the sand and waves – reminders of freedom that are all around us. We long for an end to suffering.

Habits Are Our Friends

And this is the possibility: to recognize our habits and use them as a path leading back to the natural state. Peace, love, effortless joy are right here – so close and so available. When we use them well, our habits become our allies, our teachers. We start where we are by bringing our awareness to whatever we experience in this moment, then peel the onion to journey back to the source.

As we do so, the energy of our habits that has been constrained for so long is seen, freed, released. We return to the natural state where habits are no longer needed. Every aspect of them becomes a gift to support our awakening.

This might sound easy, but conditioning is powerful and some habits are subtle. In Part 2 of this series, we continue by learning how to recognize a habit and how to use the key of awareness to open the prison door.

I used to be very rebellious, and it got me into some trouble. In the name of freedom, I felt like I could do whatever I wanted without restriction, and I certainly didn’t want my autonomy compromised by someone else’s rules. (Just ask my parents.) Truth be told, my willful behavior did not make me happy. It was defiant and resistive and kept me from getting what I really wanted in some important areas of my life. I am so thankful that I finally discovered the wisdom of restraint, the simple practice of stopping that has paved the way for more freedom than I ever thought was possible.

What we think of as our unrestrained behavior coming from free will is most often the reenacting of automatic, unconscious habits. Say you feel angry at someone and have the urge to lash out at them. If you don’t pause to investigate the urge, you end up making a remark you are likely to regret when you calm down later on. Or say you have the intention to exercise, but, without stopping to think, you act out your desire to eat a bag of chips rather than go to the gym. Is this wisdom…or freedom?

Our lives are filled with conditioned habits like these that we call “living life.” Some are benign and others interfere greatly with our happiness and well-being. Do you recognize any of the following: procrastination, low self-confidence, passivity, hostility, judgment, pessimism? Without restraint, we stay stuck in the same predicament that keeps us bound and limited. Restraining ourselves offers a window of opportunity for change to happen. When we pause before the pattern has us barreling down the road to the same disappointing outcome, there is the chance, finally, to discern the appropriate, conscious, desired response.

In this way, our self-sabotaging desires themselves become our allies. Rather than wishing to banish them or make them disappear, they signal us to stop and step away from the developing pattern.

The common meaning of the word restraint speaks to holding back, repressing, and keeping control. The implication is that by restraining ourselves, we relinquish freedom and forgo spontaneity. In fact, just the opposite is true. Real freedom comes from not being ruled by our habitual patterns that are based on fear and confusion. And real spontaneity arises from the space that remains when the habits are put to rest.

Practicing Restraint

Restraint offers a respite, the possibility to regroup, take a different, conscious path, a chance to let go of unproductive thinking and reconnect with what you really want. Elsewhere I discuss the full process for changing habits. Here is how to do the first essential step: restraining yourself. It may be the only practice you need.

1. Find within yourself the sincere intention to refrain from continuing a pattern of behavior that no longer serves you. The pattern can be anything problematic: eating poorly, arguing too much, criticizing yourself or others, showing up late, smoking. Make a vow to yourself, a true commitment to exercise restraint. Your intention needs to be stronger than your urge to enact the pattern.
2. When you notice you are in the pattern, stop. Pause. Take a breath. Step away from it. Put some space around it.
3. Congratulate yourself! You have just succeeded in creating the possibility for the habit to fall away.
4. Repeat 1, 2, and 3 as often as necessary. Every time the urge to continue the pattern arises, stop and refuse to go further into it. Again, step away from the pattern.

A couple of helpful points:

• When you begin, you may not “wake up” from the habit until you are well into it. This is completely normal and demonstrates the power of our automatic tendencies. Whenever you do become aware, remember #3, that realizing your commitment to restraint is a moment of freedom. If you stay the course, and keep exercising restraint, your awareness will eventually kick in earlier.
• OK, I’ve stopped. Now what? Experience the fresh opportunity to be present with your thoughts and emotions, be open to this new and unfamiliar place, see if you gain an insight into the habit, laugh, rejoice, feel relief, feel free.

Regarding restraint, I know whereof I speak. I have become aware of many habits and have chosen to stop. Maybe millions of times. My willingness has been so strong, and it had to be. I wanted to be free of the suffering these habits engendered more than anything. What seemed like difficulty to start has transformed into such sweet joy. I am happy to restrain myself when even the tiniest fruitless urge arises and embrace whatever I experience with full acceptance. Restraint is the beginning of the journey to freedom you can’t even begin to imagine.

Have you ever restrained yourself? What was your experience? I welcome all your comments, questions, etc.