Research is just beginning to be done on the long-term effectiveness of mindfulness in promoting both physical and mental health. But as a longtime practitioner, both in my own life and as a teacher, workshop leader, and psychotherapist, I can attest to the near-miraculous effects of mindfulness practice. If you set aside as little as five minutes a day, five days a week, to devote to some of the exercises in this chapter, you’ll begin to notice that you’re calmer, more open, less stressed. You may notice that you’re sleeping better, getting along better with loved ones and colleagues, and feeling more hopeful. You may also learn more about yourself, discover hitherto unsuspected dreams and desires, or develop a new relationship to your spiritual life.
I personally would recommend a mindfulness practice that includes at least twenty to thirty minutes a day, five days a week. It may be helpful to do even more during those times when you are facing particularly severe stress. But mindfulness practice should not become another source of guilt, shame, or self-blame! Do what you can, as you can do it, and let your practice take its own course. Read through this chapter and let your intuition be your guide as to which exercises will be most meaningful or helpful for you.
When defining mindfulness, I like to rely on the definition I learned from Jon Kabat-Zinn when I first studied with him fifteen years ago: “Mindfulness is awareness, from moment to moment, on purpose, without judgment.”
Awareness is another word for the condition of being awake. As I said in Chapter 14, being awake means being “Engaged, yet detached. Active, yet calm. Moving, yet still.” Purpose is another word for “intention,” the quality of choosing and acting consciously, rather than reacting automatically. And being without judgment requires us to expand our capacity for acceptance—both self-acceptance and acceptance of others.
I recently read a lovely story about acceptance in the works of Islamic philosopher Idries Shah. Like many ancient teaching stories, this one involves a wise fool, sort of a sacred clown, who manages to fumble his way into wisdom—Mullah Nasrudin, the foil for many Islamic tales.
In this story, Mullah Nasrudin has taken up gardening. He loves the flowers and vegetables that he grows, and he becomes an adept gardener. But his garden is plagued by dandelions, and Nasrudin begins to grow more and more frustrated at his inability to control them.
Finally, Nasrudin can bear the dandelion invasion no longer. He travels to the city to consult the Prince’s gardener, acknowledged throughout the land for his mastery of gardening, and begs for help. The royal gardener gives Nasrudin instructions for the most effective remedy he knows.
Mullah Nasrudin goes home, full of enthusiasm, and follows the royal gardener’s instructions to the letter. But still, the dandelions return, just as they always have.
Really angry now, Nasrudin goes back to the master gardener. “You’re a fraud!” he declares. “Your remedy was no better than the rest! What else can I do about these dandelions?”
The master gardener looks thoughtful and strokes his chin. Finally, he says softly, “Mullah Nasrudin, there is only one thing to do. You must learn to love the dandelions.”
In a similar way, mindfulness practice suggests that we give up on self-improvement and instead begin a course of self-acceptance. The way out of our unhappiness is not to fix ourselves. We can’t root out our flaws any more than Nasrudin can destroy every single one of his dandelions. We might try for years, and the dandelions would still remain.
There is only one thing to do. We must learn to love the dandelions.
Imagine that you are sitting beside a stream, comfortably situated on the bank. You are completely calm and at ease, awake and alert. As you sit there, you notice something floating in the stream—a log, a piece of debris, perhaps a boat or something else that interests you. You remain still and continue to observe, as first one thing and then another passes by, some that interest you, some that do not. But however you feel, whatever you think about the items in the stream, you simply sit, noticing each object as it comes, letting it pass, and then turning your attention to the next object that comes along.
This is what it is like to align yourself with the observing self. Although it notices everything that passes by on the stream of your consciousness, it remains coolly unaffected. Your thoughts proceed, one after another, some dull and routine, others more interesting and unusual.
Sometimes, a really dramatic or compelling thought may come along. When that happens, your small self is so attracted that it wants to jump into the water. Sometimes your small self thrashes about, agitating the previously calm surface of the stream. Other times it tries to hold on to the object, refusing to let it pass farther downstream. “This is the most important object in the world,” thinks your small self. “This is reality! I don’t want to let go.”
But the larger observing self just stays on the bank and calmly takes it all in. It does not judge what comes by as good or bad but recognizes each thought as something that is produced by your mind and does not represent the whole of reality. The observing self does not even judge the small self for getting so caught up in jumping into the stream. It understands that every item that comes along is only a thought, with no more power than we choose to give it.
What makes this practice so useful? When you observe this process, you begin to understand that the mind’s job is simply to generate thoughts. Some are more useful than others, but none in themselves are either good or bad. But when you understand that the mind is only generating thoughts, then you can choose which thoughts to entertain, which to believe, and which to discard or let die.
Remember that mindfulness, like everything else, takes practice. Expecting it to work effortlessly, or overnight, is a recipe for disappointment. But sooner or later, you will begin to see the effects of your practice. And then, when you want to rely on your larger self to get you through a crisis, you’ll know you can.
A good place to begin meditation is by becoming aware of your breathing. Indeed, some advanced practitioners rely on conscious breathing as their primary form of practice. Your breath is always there, always moving, always reminding you that life is built upon cycles.
Awareness of Breathing
• Sit comfortably, with your back upright but not rigid.
• Close your eyes, or look gently at a place on the floor four to five feet in front of you.
• Place the tip of your tongue on your palate just behind and above your teeth.
• Breathe through your nose, if you can.
• Focus all your attention on each breath, with as much interest as if it were something you had never before experienced.
• Observe the movement of your belly up and down. Experience it as if you were riding upon gentle waves.
• You don’t need to change your breath in any way—just observe it. Notice everything about your breathing: the movement of air in and out of your nose; your breath’s temperature as it comes in and goes out; the flow of air into your chest; the expansion of your chest in all directions; the still point between inhale and exhale. Then notice the whole process in reverse.
• Do this exercise for five to ten minutes, once or twice daily. Each time you realize that you are no longer aware of your breath, gently release whatever thoughts absorbed you and return to a deep experience of your breathing.
Sitting meditation is intended to give you a lens into your inner life—to let yourself focus on the thoughts and feelings that flow through you. You don’t undertake this process with any goal in mind; your only object is to have whatever experience comes up for you. You’ll get the most from your meditation by grounding yourself in the notion that whatever happens is fine—no matter what occurs, you can observe it and learn from it.
People who’ve never meditated before often have preconceived ideas of what you “should” and “shouldn’t” feel. I can testify from my own experience that sometimes you’ll feel deeply relaxed, and other times you’ll be so restless you wonder why anyone bothers with this annoying practice. Sometimes when I meditate, I feel real contentment; other times, I feel bored; still other times, I ache with the pain of difficult emotions, troubling memories, or just a diffuse grief that seems to have no source. Occasionally I’m visited by great ideas and unexpected insights.
No matter what comes up when I meditate, I try to simply observe without judging. I admit, I sometimes find it hard not to decide that contentment is good and pain is bad, to feel proud of having a serene and joyous experience when I meditate and ashamed of being restless. What I try to do, though—and what I counsel you to do—is simply to observe and learn. Think of yourself in the spirit of a scientist studying gorillas in the wild—filled with curiosity, wonder, and awe.
By the way, sitting meditation is a bit harder to learn than some of the other practices in this chapter, so I recommend you seek some guidance, especially early on. Many people are able to learn this technique by using a tape, but when I was first learning to meditate, I appreciated having someone to answer my questions, and I also found it helpful to hear about the experience of my fellow students. Look for a class in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, the process developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn.
Sitting Meditation
• Sit comfortably, your back upright but not rigid. You may sit on a meditation cushion, bench, or chair. Try not to slouch or lean back in the chair. Imagine yourself sitting up straight (but relaxed), with your head erect and floating directly above your spine.
• Close your eyes, or look gently at a place on the floor four to five feet in front of you.
• Place the tip of your tongue on your palate, just behind and above your teeth.
• Breathe through your nose, if you can.
• Check your posture to make sure you’re comfortable. If you need to shift your body at any point, go ahead, rather than letting discomfort interfere with your meditation.
• Begin with a few moments of Awareness of Breathing. Use your own breath as your touchstone. Return to it whenever you realize that your mind has wandered off, and stay with your breath until you’ve regained your conscious awareness.
• Expand your field of awareness to include your body and any sensations floating through it. You might notice again how you are sitting, remarking upon any discomfort you feel, or keying in to the feeling of your warm and heavy hands resting upon your legs. Allow anything in your body that calls to you to be the focus of your awareness.
• You can also become aware of outside sensations, like the movement of the air or any sounds around you. Instead of seeing these external events as a distraction, experience them as part of the moment. Anything in your world—anything at all—can be approached with openness and awareness.
• After a few moments of sensory awareness, expand your focus again to include the act of thinking. Hold in your mind the image of yourself sitting by the banks of a river as your observer self watches your thoughts arise, and then fall. As soon as one thought evaporates, another comes to take its place. Just sit and notice, trying not to let any thought carry you away and out of the moment.
• You can use anything as a moment of mindfulness: even your distraction and your sense that your awareness has weakened. Without blame or judgment, simply say to yourself, “Ah, I see that my mind has taken me away again.” And again, and again, and again . . . It happens repeatedly to all of us. Just notice the experience, let it go, and return to your breath for a few cycles. Then focus on simply sitting and observing your thoughts.
• Practice sitting in this way for fifteen to forty-five minutes, as often as you can.
Another way to engage the body in meditation is through Walking Meditation. Like the Awareness of Breathing Meditation, this is a favorite with both beginning and advanced practitioners of mindfulness. Because it involves movement, it’s a nice option when one is sleepy or the mind is scattered. It may be particularly appealing for Air types, who like movement, or for Earth types who are trying to overcome sluggishness. You can use it as either an alternative or in addition to a more formal sitting meditation. You can also incorporate it into your daily activities, for just a few minutes or for up to an hour.
Walking Meditation
• Try to do this meditation without focusing on a goal. Try walking just for the sake of being aware of walking, and not for exercise, seeing the sights, or getting somewhere.
• Begin by standing still with your feet about hip width apart. Try to distribute your weight evenly between both feet, and also between the heels and balls of your feet. Place your hands in front of you, waist high, palms up with one on top of the other and thumbs touching. Or place your hands behind you with your fingers laced together.
• Keep your eyes open, but with only a soft focus on the ground a few feet ahead.
• Start out very slowly, noticing how your weight shifts onto one foot as you raise the heel of your opposite foot off the ground. Pay attention to the bending of your knee, the way your whole foot comes off the ground, your leg rising and coming forward, your hip shifting, your knee extending as you prepare to plant your foot in front of you.
• Experience your heel coming onto the ground, followed by your midand forefoot. Feel how your toes stretch out and balance you. Notice how your weight now shifts onto this forward foot, and the way your other heel lifts gently off the ground as your weight shifts.
• Try to experience each aspect of your movement in minute detail, at least initially. Allow your attention to be drawn to your body as the movement continues.
• After a few minutes, when it feels as though you are really present in the experience, try moving a little faster. Vary your speed, always keeping your moment-to-moment experience foremost in your awareness.
• You don’t need to go anywhere. You may simply want to walk back and forth over a stretch of several yards. Again, your focus is on the experience of walking, and not what you see or where you go.
• As with any meditation, your mind will occasionally wander. As soon as you notice this loss of focus, just bring your awareness back to the present moment and to your experience of walking.
Pema Chodrin is one of today’s most beloved Buddhist teachers. She uses a lovely metaphor to describe the heart and the problems that occur when it is closed.
The heart, she says, is like a sea anemone, a small creature that plants itself on the ocean floor and feeds on nutrients in the water. Its mouth is an opening at the top that is very soft in the center, surrounded by numerous waving tentacles that help to draw food inward. But when the anemone feels threatened, it closes up tightly, pulling its softness inside for protection and presenting a tough exterior to the outside world.
The anemone, says Chodrin, is protected. But closed off and shut up tight, it can’t access the nutrients in which it is bathed. If the anemone stays closed for too long, it will starve.
Closing down in the face of danger wouldn’t present a problem if we opened up again as soon as the threat was gone. But many of us have closed down so often, or for such long periods of time, that we have forgotten how to open our hearts at all. Our innocent attempt to protect ourselves comes at a great personal cost. And if we stay closed down long enough, we may begin to believe that no food exists. Eventually, we, too, risk starving in a sea of plenty, when all we needed to nourish ourselves was to open our hearts.
One of the reasons that our hearts become heavy or closed is that we have trouble enduring the difficult emotions—fear, anger, or sadness. Although we are designed to experience a wide range of feelings—from joy to despair and everything in between—we often decide that we should always feel happy or satisfied. When these longed-for emotions don’t arise, we slip automatically into our favorite strategy: grasping, pushing away, or shutting down. Then our reaction to any less-than-pleasant emotion makes us feel worse than the feeling itself.
How much happier we’d be if we could simply accept our emotions—the negative as well as the positive—without judging either ourselves or our lives when we “feel bad.” The mystic poet Rumi invokes this idea in his poem “The Guest House,” in which he says that the human condition is like a guesthouse, with each of us receiving visitors every day—emotions and insights. We should welcome them all, Rumi suggests, even “a crowd of sorrows,” for they may be preparing us for something new, something greater. “Be grateful for whoever comes,” Rumi concludes, “for each has been sent as a guide from beyond.”
I often tell my patients that emotions are actually thoughts translated into physical experience. Think about something sad, and you will likely feel sad. Your eyes may tear up, your heart feels heavy, and you being to feel slow and tender. Think about something maddening, and you’ll probably feel anger as your breath quickens, your heart races, and, perhaps, your chest tightens. The more powerful your imagination, the better you are able to generate feelings with your mind. And the more you believe in what you’re thinking, the more likely that your mind will turn your thoughts into an emotion.
When we’re functioning as our healthy, resilient larger selves, our emotions can come and go like visitors, moving through our bodies but not taking up permanent residence. When we’re stuck emotionally, struggling with low resilience, or committed to clinging to negative thoughts, our emotions may lodge in our organs, muscles, or bones, causing discomfort, pain, or even disease.
The irony is that we need all our emotions, the negative as well as the positive. If we can’t experience our emotions, we don’t know when we’re being hurt and we can’t take steps to solve a problem or move away from the people or situations that are hurting us. I often see people in unhealthy relationships or workplaces who don’t act to help themselves because they’re ignoring the signals that their emotions are sending them. Either they’ve become numb to their painful feelings, or they’ve never learned how to interpret or act upon them.
Feelings can also be our guide to our current state of mind. Having an unpleasant feeling can signal us that something is off in our thinking. If we find ourselves feeling anxious, envious, or numb, we can realize that we’ve fallen prey to faulty thoughts, which in turn have given rise to these emotions. Instead of investing in the negative feeling, we can treat it as a guide—a sort of warning light flashing on our dashboard, signaling us that we’re low on gas or that our car’s electrical wiring is malfunctioning. “I’m envious,” we might think. “So there’s something I’m missing about how full my life is, or how much I need to make some changes. I’m caught in a mistaken belief that someone else’s happiness comes at my expense, or that there’s not enough in the world for me, too.”
Or, “I’m anxious. Why? I feel so alone and abandoned. I’m having the thought that my life will always be empty and friendless. But it’s only a thought. I can’t really know what the future will bring. My mind is drawing me into one frantic thought after another—and these thoughts are making me anxious. How can I correct those thoughts?”
Observing our feelings without judgment or blame frees us to correct our faulty thoughts and to seek perceptions that are truer. We can actually welcome our negative emotions—and then release them, rather than either suppressing our feelings or holding on to them.
What do we do when a negative emotion really takes hold, lingering over us like a damp, dark cloud? A “bad mood” of this type can be particularly frightening for anyone who has ever undergone depression, because you know that these moods can easily turn into full-blown depression.
The best thing you can do with a bad mood is to welcome it with awareness and acceptance. Reacting automatically with grasping, rejecting, or shutting down only serves to pull you further into the mood. Giving your mood too much attention—commiserating with a friend or ruminating about what’s wrong—may only feed your bad feeling and give it more strength. Numbing out and trying to comfort yourself with addictive or unhealthy behaviors will also make your mood worse.
On the other hand, distracting yourself intentionally might help your mood to lift. Sometimes it helps just to occupy your mind with something else: a change of scenery, a funny movie, a friend who’s healthy enough (at the moment, at least) that he or she won’t support your negativity. Doing something purposely to break a bad mood is not denial. It’s just good common sense.
If you wait patiently without feeding your bad mood, the mood may simply move on. Bringing mindful awareness to the situation can really help, because it gives you plenty of evidence that moods are constantly changing—that is simply their nature. Even in the midst of a hard time, you experience good feelings as well as bad, though many of us don’t realize that this is so. Learning to become more observant, to notice the ever-changing play of sunlight and shadow on the stream of our consciousness, can help you remember that emotions come and go, freeing you from the grip of your bad mood and inspiring faith that you’ll come out of it. That faith in turn loosens the grip of fear, anger, and confusion, making it even easier to move on.
Imagine that you are clutching a pen in your hand. How do you release it? You open your hand and let it go. But even with such a simple act, the process begins with your mind. First you create a thought, or an intention: “I will release this pen.” Then your brain sends a signal to your hand to release the muscles of contraction that have been holding the pen. Once these muscles have released their grip, you need only a small amount of effort from your muscles of opening. Finally, you release the pen.
This is how your heart operates as well. When you become aware that you are holding on to some emotion that no longer serves you, you can decide consciously whether you are willing to release it. If you are, then you can create that intention in the mind and set the mechanics of release in motion. Most of the work is done just by ceasing to grip the emotion.
Of course most of us have more trouble letting go of unpleasant emotions than releasing a pen from our hand. For a time, you may repeatedly pick up an old emotion, perhaps out of habit or because you’re not really ready to be done with it. But with a mindful approach, you’ll soon realize what you’re doing and can then choose how to respond.
Just as with the pen, you release a nonuseful emotion in a series of steps. First, you must realize that the negative feeling exists in your own heart. Becoming aware of your emotion is necessary—and surprisingly hard for many people, who bury their grief, anger, and fear so deep that they’ve stopped being conscious of all the weight they carry. So awareness, as always, is the first step.
Once you’ve noticed your troublesome feeling, you must “own” it. Often our self-image interferes with our ability to acknowledge the feeling we’ve identified. “I never get angry, it’s just not worth it,” a sweet-tempered woman might say. When her anger makes itself unmistakably known, she gets stuck in denying that someone like her could possibly feel such a thing. Or a man might insist that he’s not really sad, just a little tired. Resentment, envy, greed, and fear are only some of the emotions that we often find difficult to acknowledge.
Next comes the realization that your feeling has served its purpose. You felt fearful of speaking in public because you once had such a fragile sense of self that you needed to protect yourself from every possible occasion for ridicule—but you’re stronger than that now. You felt sad about a broken romance, but you’re done with mourning and ready to move on. You felt angry about a perceived injustice—but you’ve responded to the best of your ability and must now let your anger go.
Having understood that you no longer need a particular emotion, you form an intention to release it, and—whether you do this immediately or take a while—you eventually become willing to let the feeling go. Finally, you take action to release the emotion that no longer serves you, making room for a new feeling to take its place.
Now imagine a man whose hand is so strongly contracted that anything he picks up has to be pried from his grip. Perhaps he’s been clutching that particular pen too hard, or his hand has been contracted for so long with other things that it’s forgotten how to release. The man may need another person to help him remove the pen. But with time, hopefully, he can be taught to relax his grip.
Sometimes our heart has constricted so strongly, or our emotions are so sticky, that we have trouble releasing our feelings. If your heart is too tightly closed, or if you don’t know how to open it, you can work on cultivating what Buddhist psychologists call a “good”—that is, a loving—heart.
Working Through Emotional Blockages with Awareness
• Turn your awareness to the heart. Let yourself become aware of the feeling and of your willingness to let it go.
• Make the connection between a physical sensation in the body and a particular negative emotion. Learn to pinpoint the emotion to a specific location in the body, and to describe the physical feeling in words.
• Become aware of negative emotions as soon as they arise. Don’t judge either yourself or your feeling as bad. Simply see it as a sign that you have been pulled off center—just for that moment. Use that awareness to bring you back into the moment.
• Accept your feeling completely. Don’t feel the need to push it away or focus on wishing it were otherwise. When you accept a negative feeling, the negativity loses some of its hold on you.
• Knowing that you have created this feeling (however legitimately in response to your circumstances), realize that you are the only one who can release or “uncreate” the feeling.
• Bring your awareness to your breath. Then, if circumstances allow, focus directly on the negative emotion itself. Let yourself feel it fully, without fear. Notice all that you can about it—where it is in your body, how it feels, whether it moves or changes from moment to moment.
• Be honest with yourself as you assess whether you are ready to release this feeling or if you’d prefer to hold on to it a while longer.
• If you feel ready to let go, allow yourself to become aware of a sensation of movement, flow, or expansion, somewhere in your midsection (usually the heart center).
• With each inhale, let yourself be fully aware of the feeling, fully accepting of it. You may say to yourself: “As I breathe in, I feel————.”
• With each exhale, invite the feeling to recede, to flow out of yourself. You may say, “As I breathe out, I release———.”
• Invite your heart to open and the negative feeling to be released. See yourself let it go. Visualize it floating away, like a log on a river or a pen falling from your hand.
• Do this for as long and as often as needed. End with a ritual, like writing or a symbolic releasing.
Note: If it’s unclear why you’ve created the feeling, why it won’t leave, or why it keeps coming back, you may find it helpful to do a dialogue journal (discussed later in this chapter), or discuss it with someone trained in this approach.
Heart-Opening Meditation
• Sit quietly in a comfortable position.
• Focus upon several breaths, allowing your mind to settle.
• Bring your awareness to your heart center, the area in the middle of your chest, just below your breastbone. You can gently place your hand over this area.
• Notice whatever feeling arises in your heart center, setting aside all judgment or need for your feelings to be different than they are.
• Become aware of the degree of openness that you experience at this moment. When your heart is open, you will notice a sense of expansion, flowing, fullness, lightness, or warmth. When your heart is closed, it feels tight, stagnant, empty, heavy, or cool. Try not to judge one condition as good and the other bad. Just notice and accept whatever is true for you now, and know that your feelings are always changing.
• Now bring to mind a time in the recent past when you were moved by something that touched your heart—a kind word, a thoughtful act, a compliment, a caress, a surprise of beauty, a shared sorrow. Recall the experience as vividly as you can, including the other person(s) involved, the setting, and any associated smells, colors, or sounds. Experience, for as long as you like, the feeling that you had at the time.
• Invite your heart to open ever so slightly. Observe it. Experience the feeling that you have when it opens.
• If no specific image or memory came up for you, simply hold the intention to let the heart soften and open now, in this moment.
• End with total acceptance and gratitude for whatever your experience of this process has been.
Think of someone you know who seems to be really happy. What’s his or her relationship to giving and receiving? The happiest people I know are clearly generous. They seem able to give and receive with equal delight. They don’t cling or try to keep things, people, or experiences for themselves. They get as much joy from seeing someone else do well as they do from having their own triumphs. They might as well be saying, “Your happiness is my happiness.”
Working with the heart in the intentional way I’m describing in this chapter gives us a wonderful opportunity to create the kind of life that we truly want to have. Even if we start out not believing ourselves to be happy or generous, we accept that it’s at least possible that we possess these good qualities and seek to become good by creating the conditions within ourselves that make it possible. With the mind, we can look at our beliefs about abundance. We can see it up close and personal, which gives us at least a fighting chance of changing it. Working with the heart, with even a sliver of an opening, we can go in and repeatedly plant the seeds of generosity. We can cultivate the feeling of gratitude, and we can endeavor to wish well for others.
You can engage in the following meditation for just a few minutes, or for an extended period of time. You can also incorporate it into your daily time for mindfulness meditation. However you engage in this meditation, do this often. I particularly recommend it for the close of the day, reflecting back on what you are grateful for from the day.
A Meditation on Gratitude
• Sit quietly in a comfortable position.
• Focus upon several breaths, allowing your mind to settle.
• Bring your awareness to your heart center.
• Notice whatever feeling is in your heart at this moment, and accept it just as it is.
• Maintaining some awareness of the heart, bring an image to mind of someone who has helped you or been kind to you, now or in the past. You may think of a teacher, a mentor, a friend, a loved one, or even a stranger.
• Allow the image of this person, and the good he or she has done for you, to become very clear.
• Imagine that the person is standing right before you. Invite him or her to come closer. Look the person in the eye, and give him or her your thanks.
• Try to be as specific as you can in saying what you are grateful for.
• Allow the image to fade, but spend a few more moments lingering with your awareness of gratitude.
• If you like, repeat the process with other people, things, or events for which you are grateful.
• You might want to write down what came up for you after the meditation.
Would you like to know the true secret of generosity? It’s another one of those principles that seems so simple but can be so difficult to assimilate: Giving and receiving are one and the same. Whatever you do for others, you also do for yourself. The best way to make yourself feel rich and full is to make a heartfelt gift to someone else.
“Never suppress a generous impulse,” counseled the Greek philosopher Epictetus. Whenever you have the thought to give something away, do so. Our gifts might take a humble form—a smile, a touch, some of our time, our listening presence, assistance, money—but whatever they are, we can give generously, with gratitude that we have it to give in the first place. Today, as I was walking through an unfamiliar neighborhood in a nearby city, I encountered a homeless man who held out a cup for spare change. My arms were full of packages, and it had started to rain. I apologized that I wasn’t able to give him anything, and he smiled at me.
“That’s all right, man,” he said with a genuine warmth that caught me off guard. “You better get on now—the rain’s going to come down harder any minute.”
I was so taken aback by his concern for me that I began to rearrange my packages so I could get at my wallet.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” he kept saying. “Just get out of the rain.” When I described this encounter to a cynical friend, she insisted that the man’s apparent concern for me was just a clever ploy to get me to give him more money. Perhaps she was right—but I don’t think so. This homeless man had somehow retained an open, generous heart, and even in the midst of his suffering and need, he’d found a way to make himself feel rich.
Cultivating a Generous Heart
• Sit quietly in a comfortable position.
• Focus upon several breaths, allowing your mind to settle.
• Bring your awareness to your heart center.
• Notice whatever feeling is in your heart at this moment, and accept it just as it is.
• Bring to mind someone who is really happy and successful. With a clear image of this person, and as much generosity as you can muster, offer this person a phrase such as:
- May your happiness grow and be with you always.
- Your joy makes me happy.
• You may continue this with others who have varying degrees of happiness.
• This practice can be done not just when meditating, but when you are out among people and noticing their joy or good fortune.
If I had only one spiritual prescription to make for those of you suffering from depression, it would be to become more compassionate. Find new occasions to feel genuinely for the sorrow of another, and to express your compassion accordingly.
Now, why would I suggest that someone struggling with depression try to become more compassionate? At first glance, you might think people with depression are the ones who need compassion, not the other way around.
In fact, the effort to develop compassion involves precisely this shift in our identity. Are we someone who suffers or who relieves suffering? Are we a person who is driven by fear or someone who is moved by love? Encouraging ourselves to act with compassion is to embrace a vision of our larger selves, to understand that we are loving people who, despite our depression, can experience the essential human response of reaching out to care for those whom we see are suffering. Many obstacles can interfere with this natural response, primarily our own fear. So acting from a courageous, loving place reinforces our strength, our joy, our ability to celebrate life. Paradoxically, seeing the suffering life brings and then acting to relieve it is one of the most profound ways of saying yes to life.
The story is told that Gandhi was once approached by a man with a gun who intended to shoot him. But at the last minute, the assassin couldn’t bring himself to commit the murder, and he was captured. As the man was being taken away, Gandhi is said to have remarked, “Oh my, what will happen to that man now?” That is an example of a heart that is free from fear—and full of compassion.
• Sit quietly in a comfortable position.
• Focus upon several breaths, allowing your mind to settle.
• Bring your awareness to your heart center.
• Notice whatever feeling is in your heart at this moment, and accept it just as it is.
• Bring to mind an image of yourself, now or in the past, when you needed kindness or comfort but did not receive it. Allow your feeling to change in response to the image, and keep your awareness focused on what you feel.
• Imagine that the part of you with no fear is offering comfort to the image of your suffering.
• Recognize that you don’t need to change anything. You don’t need to be “fixed.” Practice simply accepting what is.
• You may offer yourself a silent blessing, such as “May you be free from suffering.” Or you can simply sit with awareness, with an open heart, and without fear.
• When you’re ready, let go of the image of yourself suffering. Bring to mind another person who is suffering in some way.
• Sit as long as you’d like with an openhearted awareness of the other person and a genuine desire to see his or her suffering relieved.
Practicing loving-kindness is hard. We often feel envy, or resentment, or bitterness, or even hatred—that’s just the way it is. Or we harbor an unwillingness to forgive, even if we think we should. We can’t expect ourselves to never have these thoughts or feelings. So rather than seek perfection, the solution to is to create a peaceful heart. And out of that peace, it is possible to wish another well.
This is not denial or wishful thinking. We all have painful experiences. We all know people who have hurt us or whom we have hurt. Sometimes, we are even the ones hurting ourselves. We don’t need to deny any of this. In fact, it’s crucial for us to tell the truth about it, to feel the painful feelings of which we’ve just become aware. But we don’t want to get stuck with that pain, so we practice cultivating the heart, opening it, and letting go of what burdens it.
One of the most challenging aspects of a heartfulness practice is forgiveness. Intuitively, we know that holding on to bitterness or resentment only extends the harm of the original injury. We know that it’s in our own best interest to forgive another, but somehow we just can’t. Sometimes it seems to me that the more painful is the wound, the more tightly we hold on to it.
Sometimes when the notion of forgiveness is brought up, people say “He (or she) doesn’t deserve to be forgiven.” That may be so. But you deserve to have the capacity to forgive, whether you decide to grant this boon or not.
Some spiritual writers have suggested that we humans are not able to forgive, that we need God to open our hearts to the possibility of forgiveness or letting go. I personally wouldn’t argue with that perspective. But even if the final step in forgiveness is divine intervention, we are the only ones who can create the inner conditions to welcome this intervention and permit the divine to do its work.
A Meditation on Forgiveness
• Sit quietly in a comfortable position.
• Focus upon several breaths, allowing your mind to settle.
• Bring your awareness to the person needing your forgiveness, whether that is yourself or another. Hold an image of this person in your awareness.
• Notice whatever feeling is in your body at this moment, and accept it just as it is. Recognize that you don’t have to have “good” or “positive” feelings. Be honest with yourself and accept whatever is true for you right now.
• Turn your awareness to the center of your chest and invite your heart to open, even slightly. If you are unable to open your heart, don’t worry. Just hold the intention to be openhearted.
• If you have not done so before, tell yourself the truth about what happened. Include both your part in the situation and the other’s.
Note: If telling yourself what really happened is difficult for you, you may want to complete this step outside of the meditation, working with a person who is skilled at listening. Or you could write about what happened.
• Experience whatever emotions come up. Try to observe them with open curiosity without fanning the flames or holding on to your feelings. Just watch your emotions arise, hold them lightly with your observing awareness, and watch them change. Eventually, they will pass (although it may take many meditations before they do).
• When you’re ready, invite yourself to release the negative emotions— anger, resentment, bitterness, hostility, hatred—whatever is there.
• If and when it feels right, you may offer the other a blessing. Try to make it an honest wishing well. “May you be free from suffering. May you be released from anger. May you be judged fairly. May you be forgiven.” You needn’t say anything that doesn’t feel true for you. If you sincerely want the other person to be happy, you might wish, “May you be filled with joy and happiness.” If “May you be judged fairly” is all you can manage, that’s okay, too.
• Close with a moment of thanks to yourself that you are willing to engage in such a difficult but transforming practice.
As with the mindfulness practice, you will find that you continually fall away from your heartfulness practice. Although you’d like to be loving, compassionate, generous, forgiving, you simply don’t feel that way all the time. And as before, that’s just not a problem. Every time you realize that your heart is not open or benevolent, you simply need to recognize that fact and try as best you can to return to a loving state. The practice is not “feeling love all the time.” The practice is “becoming aware of the state of your heart, and continually returning to the highest, most loving state that you can imagine for yourself.”
Miraculously, your idea of what is highest and what is possible will change. With every step toward wholeness and joyfulness, the possibilities expand further. You are enlarging your container, and there is no end to that process.
It is Unity that doth enchant me. By her power I am free... happy in sorrow, rich in poverty, and quick even in death.
—GIORDANO BRUNO, On the
Infinite Universe and Worlds
One of the great enemies of joy is the misguided belief that we are ultimately isolated beings. We believe that we are each a separate self that needs to be protected, nurtured, and sustained. Yet it is the very nature of separation to make us unhappy and unfulfilled, so that we feel as if we don’t quite belong, as if the flow of life somehow passes around us without touching us. These beliefs are continually reinforced in our culture, where nearly everyone shares them. But I would like to suggest to you the possibility that this notion of the separate self is only an illusion, albeit a very powerful and well-supported one.
Our belief in separation is perhaps never quite so strong as when we are in the midst of depression. Feeling alone, unworthy, and unloved at such times adds further to our suffering. The more alone we feel, the more we withdraw, in a vicious cycle that only reinforces the illusion that got us unto trouble in the first place. “Why are you unhappy?” asks the ancient Chinese sage. He answers: “Because nearly everything that you say and do is for your ‘self,’ and there isn’t one!”
This notion of human unity is a very difficult concept for those of us who are embedded in Western culture. Much of the American story involves the rise of the individual, with a focus on individual rights and responsibilities, accumulation and protection of private assets, and personal growth and self-actualization. So when philosophers talk about “unity,” we have trouble even understanding what they mean, much less accepting it.
I’m not suggesting that you give up your appreciation for your individual self, a person with your own boundaries—and your own unique gifts to share with the world. I’m only saying that until you also experience yourself as part of the whole, you’ll never have a reliable access to joy.
As Bruno observed in the quotation above, happiness is possible at any moment, even in the midst of sorrow. Joy is not the absence of suffering, nor the opposite of sadness. Joy is simply the natural outcome of knowing and feeling the connection that your soul longs for.
Though we are in fact always connected, most of the time we don’t know it. We choose instead the illusion of separation, without even realizing that we’re making a choice.
Joy isn’t an object or an achievement. It’s more like a gentle breeze that simply comes, on its own, when it’s allowed to do so. But if joy is really natural, why doesn’t it come to us more often and more easily?
Usually, joy is not present because we haven’t allowed it to be. We block it chemically, with unbalanced biochemicals in our brain, with poor nutrition that depletes our bodies, or sleep patterns that disrupt our relationship to nature and our own cycles. We block it with our thoughts, when we strive to control the uncontrollable, to grasp after happiness, to push away love and connection, to blind ourselves to internal and external reality. We block it with our hearts, too, when we close down in fear or resentment or confusion. You cannot receive an object when your hand is clenched. You cannot receive food when your jaws are clenched. You cannot receive joy when your mind is clenched. And you cannot receive love when your heart is clenched.
We also block joy when we refuse to become aware. People who aren’t conscious don’t realize what they have, don’t feel the energies that flow continually in them and around them. They don’t know that they reside in a sea of plenty. Unconscious people may experience moments of happiness, when one of their wants is satisfied. But such temporary satisfaction can never lead to lasting joy.
People who are blocked, closed, or unaware are like people whose only source of water is the rain. The rain comes when it will, allowing them to quench their thirst and find happiness for a while. But the rain can’t fall forever, and eventually, thirst returns. If the rain stays away for weeks or months, then the earth dries, the crops wilt, and all the land is parched.
But people who are conscious don’t need to depend on the rain, though they, too, may enjoy it when it comes. It’s as though they’ve realized that the earth holds an unending supply of fresh water, just below the surface. Conscious, mindful people don’t have to search frantically for water to satisfy their thirst. They simply tap into that reservoir and draw from it freely, using it lavishly and with abandon.
Of course no one is mindful and awake all the time. Even when you know the secret of the endless reservoir, you might find a way to block its flow into your heart and soul, or you might fail to maintain your connection to this underground source. But so long as you remain conscious, you will know that joy is there. You will understand that a blocked flow is by definition a temporary problem that simply needs to be addressed.
So if you want to achieve “enlightenment,” wake up to this awareness that joy and love are all around you—but they’re only accessible if we send our taproot down. Send it deep enough, and you can strike the reservoir and drink from it daily. Each of us has such a taproot living within us. This is what I would call the soul.
My sense is that the soul always wants to communicate. But we aren’t very good at listening. Maybe our lives are too hectic or our minds too busy to take the time and patience to hear its “still, small voice.” Perhaps we’d rather not hear what our soul has to say, fearful that we might have to change our lives in challenging ways, give up a prized attitude, take fearsome chances. Or maybe we simply don’t recognize the importance of listening to the soul.
I believe that soul always wants what is best for us, even if we can’t see that at the time. It will never lead us astray. Indeed, when we fall out of touch with our souls, we become troubled. Then the soul may be forced to emerge somehow, to make its presence known, to do whatever it must to slow us down, to give us pause, to help us to hear.
Sometimes, depression may stem from such a communication: “Stop! Slow down! Listen to your life! You have taken a wrong turn— change course now, before it is too late!” From this point of view, depression—despite or perhaps because it causes us to contract our lives and disengage from the world around us—can also serve as an opening.
To imagine this opening, I like to draw on theologian Marcus Borg’s use of the Celtic concept of “thin places”: the times in life when the situation we’re in contrives to open us up so that the divine might enter. Particularly in times of hardship, we become more permeable than usual, more open to the forces of love and enlightenment or spirit. Depression can be such a thin place.
What can you do to be more open to the voice of the soul? First, I’d counsel you against rushing too quickly back to life as usual. After all, something about “life as usual” probably had a role in creating your depression. Of course I’m not suggesting that you remain depressed. But you may experience a time of tenderness, of vulnerability, that you’ll notice if you listen carefully to your heart.
The early days of recovery are an excellent time to practice loving-kindness toward yourself, both in meditation and through action. It is also a time to let others practice kindness toward you. Allow friends to call upon you, to express their love and caring, to be generous toward you. Accept it gratefully. Often, others don’t know how to respond to a person who’s depressed. If you know such people, you might consider telling them what you’d like. Author and teacher Parker Palmer tells the story of a most helpful visitor who spoke little but who sat with Parker during his depression and rubbed his feet. The love embodied in that gesture, along with the connecting power of touch, did a great deal to keep Parker going through his darkest times.
Because you can be more open at this time, you may receive more wisdom than when you’re caught up in business as usual. But mind your language, so that you don’t berate, criticize, or diminish yourself in any way. The soul reveals itself only under the most inviting conditions.
So hold open the possibility that deep healing may come from your experience with depression—healing that you couldn’t have accessed any other way. Mindfulness, heartfulness, and soulfulness can all help you heal. Perhaps this raw and tender time is softening you up for joy.
Depression can be a devastating experience, one that literally lays waste to the familiar landscape of our life. But in the silence that follows a destructive storm, we may be attuned to hear new sounds; and in the exhaustion that follows a bout with depression, we may finally be ready to listen. In such circumstances, one of the most healing things we can do for ourselves is to begin a dialogue with our soul.
Creating a relationship with your inner self—your soul or essence—is similar to developing any meaningful relationship. You meet, there is some degree of attraction, you spend time together, you talk, you listen, you respect each other. Over time, perhaps you grow very familiar and even come to love each other. Although many of us have had this experience with other humans, very few of us have established relationships with our souls. We may not realize that we need time to build this relationship, just like any other, or that we need the patience to allow the other to reveal itself in its own time, its own way.
Meditation is one way to reconnect with your soul. Prayer is another. But I also find it useful to speak directly with your essential self, through a technique I call “Dialogue with Your Inner Voice.” Here’s a description of how to begin such a dialogue.
Dialogue with Your Inner Voice
• Set aside enough time to establish a meaningful dialogue. You might commit to spending one hour a week for three months, or develop some other schedule that feels right. But having made the commitment, stick to it. Although your soul may be longing to speak to you, it may be more cautious than you expect. If you were trying to coax a wild animal out of the forest, you couldn’t expect it to emerge on your first or even your fourth try. You would need to sit quietly at the edge of the woods, waiting for the relationship to take its own shape.
• Buy a special journal to use just for these dialogues. Keeping a separate notebook makes a statement to you—and to your soul—that you value it in a special way and that you intend to take these dialogues seriously.
• Find a quiet place to write free of interruptions. Just the process of committing to this separate, private time makes a powerful statement to your soul that you are ready to listen in a new way.
• Begin by quieting your mind. Close your eyes for a moment. Ask for guidance and request the presence of spirit during the time of your dialogue.
• Frame a question, a concern, or a dilemma on which you seek guidance. If you had access to the world’s wisest sage, what would you ask? Find that question and prepare to ask it.
• Write the question in your journal. Then begin to wait. Sooner or later an idea, an image, or words will form in your mind. (Hint: The more relaxed you are about the arrival of this response, the sooner and more easily it will come. You know the expression “A watched pot never boils”? Well, an eagerly awaited “soul answer” may not “boil” either. Wait patiently—and not too avidly—for your soul to come to you.
• When you feel that something is coming to you, write it down, just as it comes. Don’t censor, edit, analyze, or force the answer. Just write until it feels complete.
• When you’ve written what you’ve “heard,” go on to write down your next contribution to the dialogue, either a response to the answer that has just come, or another question. Continue for as long as you have time, or until you feel finished. Then do your best to follow the guidance that you’ve received.
• Return to this practice as often as you would like, especially when faced with difficult decisions or stressful times.
Civilization is a process in the service of Eros, whose purpose is to combine single human individuals, and after that families, then races, peoples and nations, into one great unity, the unity of mankind.
—SIGMUND FREUD,
Civilization and Its Discontents
Over the past hundred and fifty years, the West has seen a well-documented transformation from a society based on community to one based upon the individual. Whereas we once felt a moral obligation for one another’s welfare, we now rely more upon law and contracts to determine how to treat one another. And instead of being connected by stories of meaning—religious teachings, mythic tales, political principles, or other ideals—we now draw our binding principles from science.
I believe our experience of depression, while having been eased in many ways by the focus on science, has also been made harder on that account. Of course depression has never been an easy or welcome experience. But it used to be viewed as an opportunity to come to terms with our lives in new ways. For example, the biblical psalms tell the story of King Saul finding comfort in David’s music. Dante’s Inferno recounts the tale of young Dante, “lost in a dark wood,” descending to hell and struggling to find his own way out. The Christian mystics’ “dark night of the soul” and the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke are other examples of the richness that had been found in the experience we now call depression—richness that the sufferer then shared with the community.
Contrast that spiritual and communal perspective with our modern approach to depression, which we have come to see as an illness that can be medicated and treated with a few outcome-focused therapy sessions. The individual, facing a hell that we all might know, is nonetheless left essentially alone to deal with the crisis, which is understood in purely medical terms. In my view, this isolation only contributes to the depression; indeed, feeling disconnected may have partly caused the depression in the first place.
As much as anything, depression is a call to community, a stark reminder that we cannot go it alone—we are simply not designed that way. In the end, I believe, we need one another to heal, and the creation of community is just as important to our well-being as is the inner journey of coming to know ourselves.
Poet David Whyte has devised the expression “building a house of belonging,” an effort he believes is central to the attempt of “making a home in the world.” To build your own house of belonging, you need to start with a clear vision in your mind of the home you wish to inhabit. Here’s an exercise to help you start developing that vision.
Building a House of Belonging
• Sit in a comfortable position.
• Close your eyes and take a few calming, mindful breaths.
• Bring to mind your own ability to create a loving community. Know that this creation is within your power if you focus your intention and take a few simple actions.
• Know that the belief that we are separate beings who must look out for ourselves is false. The deeper truth is that we are connected to one another and are here to care for one another.
• Direct your attention to your heart center. Allow for as much softening of the heart as you can. Invite an awareness of your deep longing for connection. Fully accept your own need for relationship and love.
• Bring to mind several meaningful people in your life, from now or from the past: loved ones, children, friends, colleagues, teachers, neighbors, mentors. See each person in his or her most loving form.
• Invite these beloved people, one at a time, to enter your heart center. Experience gratitude for what each one has meant to you. See yourself thanking them, embracing them. Release each image to bring up another. Repeat this process until you feel replete.
• See yourself as open and loving, part of a community of closeness and support. Envision yourself giving as much as receiving.
• End with a few moments of simply sitting, aware of your own heart and of your gratitude for all the loving people in your life.
• Repeat this practice daily, or as often as you like. You might consider adding someone new each time, either from your memory or from your daily experiences. Stay alert as you move through each day, seeking a new person whom you might add to this exercise.
Although we’re used to thinking of inner work as a journey we must take alone, I often feel that just the opposite is true. Often, we’re best able to access our own inner wisdom when we’re working in community, embedded within what Parker Palmer has called a “circle of trust” composed of like-minded souls. With a little effort and intention, we can create favorable conditions for the shy soul to appear and be heard in the presence of others.
Building a Soul Community
• Abandon the notion that we know what is going on with the mystery of another—but don’t abandon the other. Instead, firmly and gently hold a place for each of us to explore our own mystery.
• Believe that we all have the inner resources to find our own answers and solve our own problems.
• Don’t try to “fix” others, or even see them as needing to be fixed. Refrain from offering advice, suggestions, or remedies.
• Don’t judge or criticize, but rather listen with an open heart and acceptance.
• Honor silence. A still space is often the haven from which new insights or awareness can flow.
• Invite participation, but don’t force it.
• Remain open to learning from one another.
• Value questions as much as answers and accept the wisdom in not knowing.
The Buddhist term kalyanamitra refers to “soul friends,” companions who help one another along their spiritual paths. This concept is also one found in the Christian tradition, in which a person who’s completed a spiritual journey serves as a mentor or friend to another who is embarking upon that journey. In both the Buddhist and the Christian tradition, deep listening is the cornerstone of these soul friendships.
We all need someone in our lives who really knows how to listen. When someone listens not with their ears or their thinking mind, but with an open heart and a nonjudging mind, then the soul feels safe to come out and reveal itself. The speaker has been empowered to go deeper into the story than before, to speak from the heart, uncensored and unfiltered. This kind of exchange is a gift for both the speaker and the listener, a relationship that goes beyond the unequal roles of helper and helped, therapist and client, healer and wounded one. Rather, the exchange is a relationship of two souls, in which “the god in me meets the god in you” and both parties are the richer for it. The remarkable thing about such a soul relationship is that whether you are the speaker or the listener, you benefit a great deal.
Deep listening depends more upon the presence of the listener than on his or her technique, upon being rather than doing. Most of us Westerners are conditioned to react, to take charge. We tend to forget that the best course of action is sometimes nonaction, as embodied in the twelve-step motto “Don’t just do something—stand there!” Mindfulness helps train us to listen in this way—calm, detached, present, but not interfering or reacting, simply observing.
The thinking mind must be relatively quiet for you to engage in this kind of listening. If you’re listening, you don’t need to figure anything out or fix the other’s problem. You don’t even need to support, advise, or share a similar story from your own life. As you listen, you aren’t thinking of what you’ll say in response or when it’s your turn to speak. Instead, you’ll sidestep your own thoughts and simply be present.
At such times, I find it most helpful to turn to heart awareness, because for me this automatically quiets the mind. And when I am open to receiving another’s story, I am invariably touched by it, and that opens the heart even further, making my listening more effective. You can be sure that if you feel moved by what a person is saying to you, they sense that and know that you are truly present with them. You don’t need to say a thing, because this knowing is communicated without words.
In addition to presence, deeply listening requires time. Although the highly skilled listener can become fully present in just a moment, it takes time to create the context for deep listening, the sense of spaciousness required for the other to feel safe enough to truly open up.
Time, presence, nonjudging awareness, seeing the wholeness in another, listening to a story without needing to comfort or fix—these are the makings of a deep friendship. Learning to listen well, and finding someone willing and able to do that for you, are great ways to cultivate deep friendships.
Deep Listening Exercise
• Find another person whom you trust and who is willing to both speak and listen.
• Set aside thirty to forty-five minutes when you won’t be interrupted.
• Take turns as speaker, allowing ten to fifteen minutes for each person.
• You may speak about any topic that is important to you, or just speak about your current experience. Examples of topics might include:
– Describe when you are most alive and what brings you to life.
– Recall a time when someone saw more in you than you saw in yourself. Describe the person, listing the qualities that allowed them to see so much in you and telling what effect their listening had upon you.
– Discuss your experience with vocation. What were your first signs pointing you toward your life’s work? What has influenced your career choices? Do you feel a sense of calling in what you do now? If so, how can you support that calling; if not, how might you get back to a sense of vocation?
– Discuss a dilemma, a choice you have to make, a problem that you can’t see through clearly and would like help in discerning.
• It doesn’t matter too much what you choose. The important thing is that you choose a topic that has real meaning for you and that you have the experience of being deeply heard.
• When it’s your turn to speak, speak from the heart. Don’t think too much about what to say or how to say it. Don’t censor your speech. Let go of any need to please the listener, impress, or entertain. Just speak what is true for you.
• When it’s your turn to listen, just listen. Let the words fall upon you like raindrops, effortlessly. You don’t need to strain to discern each one, or to think about a response. You don’t even need to respond at all. If you feel like jumping in with a thought or a suggestion, restrain yourself. Stay with listening. If you say anything at all, it should only be to ask a clarifying question about which you genuinely wonder, not a prompt for which you think that you have an answer.
• Avoid the usual gestures by which we mark so much of our communication—the head nod, the smile, saying “uh-huh,” or any other way of letting the person know you’re listening. As speaker, try not to look for these signs. It may free you both if you don’t even make eye contact during the exercise.
• If an emotion arises, just let it be. You might notice your urge to comfort or try to make things better. But feeling what is truly there may be just what your partner needs, far more than being consoled or advised. Notice, too, if you are uncomfortable with expressions of emotion. If your partner has entrusted you with his or her truth, just hold this awareness lightly and then return to listening. Your partner can take care of him or herself, finding great comfort in your quiet presence.
• Be comfortable with silence. Don’t feel a need to fill it with speech, either as speaker or as listener. If the silence feels awkward, just sit with the awkwardness.
• Take care not to judge each other. Whenever a judgment arises, notice it and let it go. If you think you “see their problem” or know how to “fix it,” let those thoughts go, too. The truth is, you don’t know. Resist the temptation to offer “help.”
• Allow for ample time for each person to speak. Know that you don’t need to “get it all out” or come to any resolution. There will be opportunities to return to conversation it if it is truly important.
I believe that our highest purpose is determined by the soul, which enters this life with something “written on it.” Our soul’s purpose is not a blueprint, with all the instructions clearly spelled out, nor a mission statement, with specified goals and objectives. Our soul’s purpose is more like a thread that runs through your life, gently pulling you toward your destiny. The thread is unbreakable, though it can become frayed, tangled, or unraveled, drawing you forward by inspiring you with longing for your deepest desires. You know you are following your soul’s thread when you feel a sense of completeness, of deep satisfaction, or when the voice of longing becomes silent because you have that which you most truly desire.
But finding your own truth is not a once-and-for-all task. Your soul’s purpose reveals itself a little at a time, a road “you make by walking.” But even as you create your own new path, you still need specific landmarks or destination points to guide you along the way.
One such signpost is the point at which things become unnecessarily difficult. A certain amount of difficulty can be stimulating, even inspiring, but if you’re not enjoying yourself, are experiencing undue stress, or are feeling bored or tired, that may be a message that you have lost the thread. Sometimes unhappiness is your best guide.
Another signpost is to notice what draws you. So often, we’re motivated by what we think we should do, or by what we think others want or need from us. It’s so much healthier to let yourself be drawn by that which holds a deep attraction to you, so long as your longing doesn’t turn into grasping or need. If you let yourself be guided by what you most love, you’ll have found a fairly accurate guide to your purpose.
Guided Imagery Exercise: Tending Your Inner Garden
• Sit in a comfortable position.
• Close your eyes and take a few calming, mindful breaths.
• Imagine yourself standing in a garden in the early spring, after the ground has thawed but before the plants have come up.
• Look around you and survey the landscape. See where you are drawn, then go there.
• Bend or kneel down and remove the debris from last fall and winter. What does that debris look and feel like? What does it symbolize in your life now?
• Now look and see the old, dead remnants that lie beneath the debris. Are there new shoots? What is the new life, waiting to come forth in your life? What needs to be cleared before they can emerge?
• See yourself cutting and pulling, raking and clearing the garden space.
• Look again at your garden. Is it overly crowded, or too sparse? If there are openings, what would you like to place there? If there is no room, what is most important to you, and what can you remove so that the important plants can thrive?
• Spend as much time as you would like with these images. Then allow fifteen to twenty minutes to write about what you observed.
• If possible, find a good listener to talk to about this experience.
One of the most compelling images in the spiritual literature is that of one who has wandered in the desert but eventually finds the way home. In such stories, the desert can be seen as a metaphor for suffering, while home is a symbol of joy and belonging. Depression is surely a desert experience. But what is the home to which you return when the journey is over?
One of the great mysteries of depression is how such a desert experience, such a time of misery and loneliness, can leave you enlarged and deepened. Here are some signs of having successfully completed your journey through depression, some things that you may hope for on the other side:
• A body that is aligned and free of pain.
• A mind that is balanced and calm, free of fear and anxiety. A mind that serves you, but does not control you.
• A heart that is large and open and filled with love and kindness for all—including yourself. Your heart feels safe and secure, with no need to hide nor close itself off in protection.
• A soul that remains as healthy and resilient as it has ever been. By definition, your soul has always remained true to you. But now you are listening to it, being directed by it, abiding by it.
The chemistry of joy is based on aligning your body, mind, and heart in service to your soul and its design. Your soul will teach you how to be fully in this world and how to give yourself to that which you are meant to do. Choose to follow this path with all of yourself, wholeheartedly, and you will be a whole, vital, joyous human being.
Perfection is a deadly, impossible goal, and seeking it will bring us only frustration. What we need to seek instead is fuller growth into who we really are, the possibility of being here now. Sometimes this quest for being will bring you joy, serenity, even a kind of triumph as you feel yourself overcoming old blocks and reconnecting to your true potential. Sometimes the same quest brings further lessons to learn, an illness or misalignment that needs healing, or the need to be loved or cared for by another. This is a never-ending journey, for there is always more that you can be. Joy is available to you at every step, not as a goal that you are moving toward, but as a pleasing companion along the journey.
Declare this desert experience to be over. Accept yourself and your experience, and in that very acceptance of where you are, become ready to move on. Be willing to be reanimated with energy and purpose, to allow your heart to reawaken and reopen. Be willing to let spirit reenter your life, guiding your next steps in the journey. Allow yourself to become a crucible for the chemistry of joy.