A New Beginning

by Curtis Grindahl, M.F.T.

So, how do we extricate ourselves from all this pain? This is surely the first and most important question we ask once we’ve finally been able to accept the fact that what we are experiencing is pain. It is too easy to interpret our struggles as something else. Most likely we’ve convinced ourselves we struggle because there’s something wrong with us. We tell ourselves that if only we could try harder, work more diligently, then everything would come together. Perhaps we should go on a diet, get a membership in a gym, take up dancing, join a single’s group. None of these are bad things, of course, unless we do them in an attempt to make ourselves more acceptable. Because at the heart of our pain is the belief we’re not acceptable as we are.

I’ve never met anyone struggling with addiction who didn’t learn early in life that they were not okay. The message usually came from a parent who had neither the maturity nor emotional resources to tolerate our aliveness. Of course, they were in pain as well, doing the best they could to cope with a life that seemed overwhelming. Very often our presence, first in our mother’s belly and then in the crib crying for food, was more than this mother or this father could handle at the moment.

The stories are different, but the essential ingredients are the same. Being the sensitive creatures all children are, we picked up on those feelings and tried as hard as we could to not be a problem. Since our being alive was at the heart of the problem, we learned to stifle our aliveness. This strategy worked so well for some of us that we remained depressed our whole lives, all emotions smoothed out, stuffed. Many of us couldn’t tolerate the internal pressures and exploded, wreaking havoc wherever we went.

We use many strategies for coping with pain, including the behaviors that bring people to twelve-step rooms. Sex, food, drugs, gambling offer release to the person in pain, if only for a moment. We end up in recovery when we realize at last that our acting out behavior only prolongs the pain, it doesn’t end it.

So, how do we end the pain? It is at once simple and surely the most challenging of life’s struggles. Our pain has real roots. Something bad happened in the past that led us to abandon our aliveness in the quest for safety, for approval, for love. To reclaim our aliveness we have to risk letting go of old strategies, which necessarily involves facing powerful demons. We believed as children that without the safety, approval and love we sought, we would die. In fact, though we didn’t know this as children, many children do die when their parents lose control and attack them. Whether our parents, or whomever was our caretaker when we were young, were in fact capable of such a heinous act, we believed our survival was dependent on not causing them to withdraw their affection and care.

It is difficult to accept that this early fear, which in reality was more like terror than anything else, could still operate in our lives, still drive us to our old defensive strategies. Yet such is the power of our early experience, living twenty-four hours of every day, 365 days a year, year in and year out within the embrace of this troubled family.

The first task confronting us when we seek to end the pain, is to learn to be gentle with ourselves. Regardless of what we’ve been told, what we came to believe about ourselves, WE ARE NOT A PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED! There is absolutely no doubt that we internalized the criticism of our parents and became our own worst taskmaster. Our parents may have believed it was essential to their role to shape you up, to “protect” you from your worst instincts, to show you the road to success and happiness. In a healthy home such guidance may be useful. But in a toxic home where uncontrolled feelings get acted out, often in rage, it is impossible for a child to separate useful guidance from attacks that are so hurtful. We don’t need to continue demeaning ourselves! And our voice, the voice that criticizes our every move, judges every action that is less than perfect, is not helpful. In truth, this voice is a primary agent in perpetuating our pain.

What you needed as a child was loving-kindness. What you need as an adult, from yourself and from those with whom you share your life is loving-kindness. You begin by offering it to yourself.

Now what does that mean? You could make it into another self-improvement project and then evaluate your success in being kind to yourself, criticizing your efforts when you’ve been less than perfectly kind. That is the way we typically operate, but it simply won’t do if one is to find a way out of the morass. Loving-kindness begins with the present moment and the choices we make about how to be with ourselves and the world around us.

Pema Chodron, a Tibetan Buddhist teacher, says her favorite mantra is “Om, grow up!” Taking responsibility for one’s life and experience is not an easy task. The stories of our lives are so compelling, it isn’t easy to set them aside and simply live in the present moment. In fact, being with oneself in the present moment is very much like a meditation practice. I’ll use one familiar practice as an example.

In Vipassana practice one follows one’s breath, noting the passage of air at the nostrils. When the mind wanders, as it invariably does, the meditator is encouraged to gently bring attention back to the breath. That is all there is to the practice. Bring attention back GENTLY to the breath at whatever moment one becomes aware that the mind has become ensnared in one of its many story lines.

Being with oneself in loving-kindness is exactly the same. When the mind becomes absorbed in a story, perhaps one of the familiar self-critical rants, or the dream of grandeur, or the lament over lost opportunities, you simply let go of the story and bring yourself back to the present moment. You might choose to bring your attention to your breath or your belly.

I can hear the screaming.

“I really did make a mistake!”

“I really have to figure this out, right now!”

“If I don’t get this right, who will?

Let me say simply there is nothing in the story that requires your attention, absolutely nothing. It is your absorption in the story that creates the pain.

I’ll share a quote from an Indian teacher who speaks extensively about the trap created by the mind.

Emotional reactions, born of ignorance or inadvertence, are never justified. Seek a clear mind and a clean heart. All you need is to keep quietly alert, enquiring into the real nature of yourself. This is the only way to peace.

Sri Nisargadatta

Nisargadatta’s famous book is entitled I AM THAT. On the rear cover, the book’s publisher states the case succinctly –

“The teacher does not evaluate; his sole concern is with ‘suffering and the end of suffering’. He knows from his personal and abiding experience that the roots of sorrow are in the mind and it is the mind that must be freed from its distorting and destructive habits.”

Every move of the mind away from stillness is a movement toward suffering. One of my favorite quotes from Nisargadatta says –

At every moment, whatever comes to you unasked comes from God and will surely help you if you make the fullest use of it.

It is only what you strive for out of your own imagination and desire that gives you trouble.

Be not afraid of freedom from desire and fear. It enables you to live a life so different from all you know, so much more intense and interesting, that truly, by losing all, you gain all.

Sri Nisargadatta

What twelve-step literature refers to as a “spiritual awakening,” is really a simple dis-identification with our story, an act that opens us up to the world in a whole new way. So long as we remain absorbed in our story, in what is wrong with us, we will never actually see the beauty of a flower, or the love in another person’s eyes.

So we begin with gentleness, with self-acceptance. We let go of old stories that tell of our character defects. We let go of the behaviors we’ve always relied upon to prove to ourselves and those around us that we really are unworthy. Of course, we use whatever tools are available to us to change our behaviors, in the same way we use a meditation-like practice to bring our minds to rest. And when we stumble and fall we gently pick ourselves up, kindly brush ourselves off and move on with our lives. There is no need to indulge the story or the familiar practice of self-recrimination.

This really is a “hard-work miracle.” It is “Om, grow up!” No one does this for us. We have to show up for our lives, to take responsibility for the consequences of our actions. We need to make direct amends for the suffering we’ve caused others. We need to make living amends by cleaning up our act moment to moment. We may wish to use the Buddhist Eight-Fold Path, which includes Right Intention, Right Speech, Right Action, to guide our daily lives and our interactions with others.

And every moment of every day we release the story and bring our attention back to spaciousness, stillness. We will discover that the journey away from self becomes shorter, the intensity of pain we encounter along the way diminishes. We begin to experience more time in the moment with our belly soft and our heart open. This, of course, is the only goal of our journey, inhabiting the middle of ourselves in the middle of each moment. From here joy is possible, spontaneity arises, love is everywhere present in this wondrous world.

Be eternally gentle with yourself!

I’ll end with a quote from the Zen master Dogen on the subject of meditation.

The Practice of Meditation

Truth is perfect and complete in itself. It is not something newly discovered; it has always existed.

Truth is not far away. It is nearer than near. There is no need to attain it, since not one of your steps leads away from it.

Don't follow the advice of others; rather, learn to listen to the voice within yourself. Your body and mind will become one, and you will realize the unity of all things.

Even the slightest movement of your conceptual thought will prevent you from entering the palace of wisdom....

Your search among books, sifting and shuffling through other people's words, may lead you to the depths of knowledge, but it cannot help you to see the reflection of your true self. When you have thrown away all your conceptions of mind and body, the original person will appear, in his fullness....

Meditation is not a way to enlightenment, nor is it a method of achieving anything at all. It is peace and blessedness itself. It is the actualization of wisdom, the ultimate truth of the oneness of all things.

In your meditation, you yourself are the mirror reflecting the solution of your problems. The human mind has absolute freedom within its true nature. You can attain this freedom intuitively. Don't work toward freedom; but allow the work itself to be freedom....

There have been thousands upon thousands of people who have practiced meditation and obtained its fruits. Don't doubt its possibilities because of the simplicity of its method. If you can't find the truth right where you are, where else do you think you will find it?

Life is short, and no one knows what the next moment will bring. Cultivate your mind while you still have the opportunity. You will soon discover the treasure of wisdom, which in turn you can share abundantly with others, bringing them happiness and peace.

Dogen (1200-1253)

from The Enlightened Mind

edited by Stephen Mitchell and abridged