Surfing Life's Ups and Downs

In a world of constant change, everything is subject to impermanence.  Trying to concretize what is essentially changeable is both impossible and unwise. No one can be praised all the time and every time.  When praise is present, there exists the possibility for blame.

     Outside my kitchen window is a camphor tree.  It is a statuesque sculpture of a tree with sinuous splayed branches bearing bunches of leaves like baskets. Every day as I stand at the counter, washing dishes or cutting vegetable, I see people walking their dogs.  And every single dog is drawn to sniff, pee or poop at the base of it. What I am struck by is the tree’s ability to still remain beautiful.

       Even though this tree suffers humiliations and ‘insults’ every time a dog visits it, none of it is evident.  The tree doesn’t shrink in shame or change in any visible way.  It remains open to receiving who ever may visit it. 

       One evening we came home to find a young man standing in front of it with his head bowed, knees slightly bent, and arms spread open in a receiving gesture.  Concerned we asked him if he was okay.   He said he had to stop to accept the tree’s powerful calming energy. Half an hour later, he was still absorbing its strength.  This tree experiences indignity and worship and through it all, it remains unfazed.  

      How well do we adapt to the ups and downs in our life?  We are drawn to always seek praise, fame, and recognition and to avoid blame, correction or insult.  When someone fails to thank us or acknowledge our effort, or even notice us, we feel lessened.  Something in us caves in and leaves us feeling hollow.  To cover up this hole or ‘bad feeling’, we get upset with ourselves or the person.  However, we don’t have to look at the feelings we experience as bad.  We can use them as a reminder to become aware of what we do when we feel pain, shame, or sadness.  The same goes for when we are praised, admired or recognized.  

     With kind curiosity, you can begin by noticing the thoughts that immediately pop into your mind when you are not honoured.  Note how the mind creates a story to either defend yourself or denigrate the other person.  If the person praised you, see what story the mind makes up about that person’s wonderful qualities.  These are attempts by the ego to reject or grasp onto something that is destroying or building it up respectively.

     In a world of constant change, everything is subject to impermanence.  Trying to concretize what is essentially changeable is both impossible and unwise.  No one can be praised all the time and every time.  When praise is present, there exists the possibility for blame.  As much as we know this, our habit is to strive towards wanting to feel good all the time.  It isn’t easy learning that life can be painful.

     We can train in learning to deal with its unsettled nature though.  The basis for this practice is to begin to know your ideas and thoughts, and their influence on your reactions and interactions in situations.  To begin catching the stories we weave when we are upset or happy, the practice of mindfulness is very helpful.

    Mindfulness is paying attention to what’s happening in the moment without changing anything.  It is the skill to keep the mind on whatever you want to keep it on.  With this training, you’ll begin to see when your mind drifts away from the focus.  Then you note where it went and gently return to the thing you want to be paying attention to.  You do all of this with a sense of curiosity and interest as if it’s happening outside of yourself; you become an observer of your mind’s antics from moment to moment.

     The benefits of training in this way is that it helps you:

1.      see clearly what’s happening in the moment as it is happening,

2.      trains you to let go and come to back to what you are choosing to focus on,

3.      grow your attention and lessen your distractibility and reactivity, every time you come back.

It also lessens stress, improves relationships by making you more present and most importantly, it helps you begin to know and grow to accept all the perfect and imperfect parts of yourself completely. 

            May you awaken to life’s impermanence.

Interpreting our way to greater happiness

      Some situations in life aren’t taught to us, and yet when faced with them, we assume we should somehow know how to deal with them.  How do you handle the situations in your life?  How many shoulds, coulds, woulds do you impose on yourself?  And how much of the interpretations of “should have done”, or “would have to do,” influence how you feel about yourself and the situation you are facing?  

The interpretation we ascribe to situations directly contributes to how much or little stress we’ll consequently feel.  We can ask ourselves: “are my interpretations of occurrences in my life beneficial or harmful to me?  Do they ease or burden my life? 

  All of us had to, at some point, learn to walk, drive, interview for a job, cross the street, answer a research question – we weren’t born knowing these.  In the same way, we also have to acquire and practise skills for many other common occurrences.   

For example, do we understand the crucial difference between taking offense versus being harmed?  An incident, from many years ago, made this clear to me, and it also awoke my inner critic “how could you have not known this before?”  One day, a friend said to me: “you take things too personally.”  I immediately defended my position, but later on I pondered her odd remark. Even though, I reacted by righteously defending my interpretation of the situation, I will always be grateful to her for that comment.  Her remark showed me -- another interpretation or response was possible.  I hadn’t known this.

Reactivity by nature doesn’t allow room for any other perspective to emerge – the unconscious instantaneous birth of reactivity automatically swallows up the gap of space to breathe, be present and reflect on what’s occurring.  Reactivity shuts down possibilities. 

So let’s return to the difference between being offended and being harmed. According to Lou Marinoff in his book, “Plato, Not Prozac,” the difference is essentially one of interpretation.  He explains it this way.  If someone slaps you in the face, then this is being harmed.  There’s only one interpretation possible.  If, however, someone said you were lazy and useless, here there is more than one possible interpretation.  You will have to do some self reflection and then determine how close to true the remark is or isn’t.  In this instance, you CHOOSE whether to be offended or to shrug off the remark.  The latter is largely dependent on your interpretation of the accuracy of the remark, whereas the former is determined by the physical pain you experience, which isn’t subject to interpretation.

While this lesson may have been self evident to many of you, it wasn’t for me.  When we approach situations with the attitude we should know how to deal with whatever is going on, then we are setting ourselves up for high stress.  

The disadvantages of applying the “should know” interpretation is that we –

·         fail to appreciate and tap into the essential experience of the moment,

·         expect perfection from ourselves,

·         become combative with and judgmental of ourselves

·         don’t learn from the situation or about our coping ability,

·         don’t allow all possibilities to come to bear in the situation.

My friend’s comment helped me see an option existed to respond in ways that would benefit me and possibly others.  Reactivity is so primal that it functions at a binary level of survive or die.  Because it occurs in an environment where we coexist with others, it can cause us to become competitive rather than cooperative.  And competition doesn’t allow for compassion and consideration of self or others. 

With mindfulness, we use ourselves as the ground to practise kindness to self first; we begin with learning to accept ourselves, as we are.  The training is to remain aware and open and not to react.  Over time, this grows our ability to be more mindful and less reactive in life.  When we are able to acknowledge and accept all aspects of ourselves, we enter the path of compassion. And self-compassion is a stepping stone to being a happy human being in the world.  And happy people make a happy world.

      May you, too, benefit from this reminder. 

If you'd like to learn techniques for being mindful in your work, relationships and life, I have a workshop coming up this weekend (20-21 April) and another one on (18-19 May).  These are weekend intensive workshops on "Mindfulness:Strategies for Daily Living to Reduce Stress".  Please email Casey at acceptancehealing@gmail.com for more info.   Or check out the link (top right) on Upcoming Workshops.