Tag: non-judging awareness

Being there

We traveled for 24 days. We were gone so long that the days ran together and the routines of home were completely displaced. The opportunity to travel is such a gift—the planning, the preparation, and being there–that I always forget that it also includes discomfort and stress. Tummy trouble, a lumpy bed, changes affecting sleep patterns, and very little time alone. Constantly surrounded by unfamiliar sights and sounds and customs, at the end of each day I feel both exhilarated and exhausted.

In a depleted state, I am vulnerable to an old habit of mind: judgment. Initially my thoughts are overwhelmingly positive—beautiful churches, interesting museums, and wondrous natural beauty. But as time passes, and the stresses mount, negative judgments increase. I’ve often joked that my life’s ambition is to learn to say, “Pay attention,” “Keep moving,” and “Single file,” in all the world’s languages.

“Come on, it’s a narrow two-lane bridge with even narrower sidewalks. Must you stroll arm-in-arm even if that means I have to step into oncoming traffic? Single file please!”

“I know you are entranced by the tile work in the palace but there are 200 people waiting in line to see it. Keep moving!”

“Yes, it’s delightful to visit one of the world’s great cities but the streets are packed and everyone’s maneuvering around you as you stand there talking on your phone. Pay attention!”

I can tell myself that fatigue induces impatience and impatience results in a sour view of humanity. But that’s not the whole story. To the extent that I am fixated on other people, I must ask myself, “What in me is disturbed by their behavior?” I see that they are taking their time, walking aimlessly, looking relaxed and at ease. In contrast, particularly during international travel, I’m constantly on guard, fearful of making mistakes, of embarrassing myself. Watching other tourists makes me more self-conscious and my ego fights back with negative judgments.

When I finally grew sick of that crabby voice in my head, I tried to counter it. Each time my eyes settled other people I identified something positive about them. But it was still all about judging. I finally remembered my favorite practice: non-judging awareness. I don’t want to use my energy to make irrelevant, inane, mindless assessments of the world around me. But as a client once wisely asked, “What am I supposed to do with my brain?”

Observe, observe, observe. Describe, describe, describe. And avoid using evaluative language. What a relief! The world was so much more interesting. Out walking in the swirling crowds I just noticed people. Naming their features—balding, tall, green shorts, I felt like a crime novelist providing descriptions of characters. I started asking myself, “What’s that person distinctive feature? One that can’t be easily changed?” You know, in case they had to go on the lam. We were in small enough places that I often saw the same people later and recognized them because I’d so closely observed them. I also brought this practice to art and architecture, museums and cultural attractions. I realized how limited and superficial my assessments had been. “Yeah, yeah, another beautiful church” which is so dismissive, was replaced with, “I notice that almost all of the iconography in this church is of female figures.” As I paid more attention to guides than to the behavior of other people in the group, I asked more questions. I wasn’t trying to become a bigger nerd than I already am. I was trying to eliminate toxic negativity and shallow positivity.

I can go to the most interesting places, learn things that sharpen my understanding of the complexity of the world we share, meet kind, funny, clever people from all over the world. But I have to take myself along for the ride and that turns out to be the biggest challenge. With each and every thought I can either defend myself against my own discomfort and anxiety or open myself to the present moment and just be there taking it all in.

Round and round I go

We had to make last minute airline reservations. The next morning I found two emails from our credit card company asking if I recognized the transaction. My partner, who made the reservations, had already gone to the gym. After I stopped screaming when I saw that the second email informed me the charges had been declined, I went downstairs in search of her phone to find the confirmation email of the reservation. There was no email. I felt a small measure of dirty relief that at least we now shared the blame: I hadn’t seen the emails from the credit card company and she hadn’t noticed that there was no confirmation email. I went back to the emails from the credit card company and hit the “Yes, I recognize the charges” button but I suspected that wasn’t going to preserve our reservations. I went to the airline’s website but couldn’t check our reservation without a reservation code—which would have been in the confirmation email. I looked to see if the flights were still available. They were not. It was now well after 7:30 the time at which Laura said she’d be home from the gym.

I sat at the table and thought about mindfulness and non-judging awareness and how, in this moment, they both seemed utterly irrelevant. In this moment, my habit of seeing the worst possible outcomes, my capacity for judging my partner, and my conviction that we were going to have an ugly, stress-filled morning felt perfectly justified. With a smirk on my face I answered the three key questions: What is my mind doing? Racing, panicking, raging. What emotions do I feel? Anger and fear. How do I feel in my body? Tense, tense, tense. Then I started talking out loud as if to further convince myself that my reaction was reasonable. “I am frustrated that this happened. I’m angry that I didn’t look at my email once more last night. I’m mad at Laura for not noticing that she didn’t get a confirmation email. I’m mad that she’s not back from the gym and I’m dealing with this all by myself.” Then I got up and went into the family room to straighten up. I don’t know why. But while I was in there I realized I could call the credit card company and see what they could do. As I was talking to the credit card rep, being assured that she could not reinstate the reservation but that the next time we tried it would go through, Laura came home. I got off the phone and told her what had happened. She said, “Oh, okay. Yeah, I wondered why there was no confirmation email.” She went to get a piece of paper where she’d written down the reservation code. When she came back we looked up our reservation and saw its status was “pending.” We called the airline, waited ten minutes for a callback, they resubmitted the reservation, and all was well again.

As we sat in the kitchen drinking coffee, I said, “You really didn’t seem upset by this whole thing” She looked at me, the picture of innocence, and said, “Well we talked about this. I’m trying to be calmer about things.” My laughter was loud and long. We had indeed talked about this just the day before when she asked me to teach her more about mindfulness. I said, “Well you sure are a quick study.” And I am not and that’s okay.

Family politics

My brother Jim is a smart guy and like everyone else in my family a news junkie with very strong opinions that he likes to share. Adjectives that describe this sharing might include adamant, insistent, emphatic, and loud. His style of sharing didn’t bother me until our political views started to diverge. A lot.

Initially, I was so surprised by that I either avoided the subject like the plague or said, “Uh huh, uh huh” until he ran out of gas. But inside, I felt awful for stifling myself and creating a feeling of distance between us. Then during a summer visit we were alone in his car when he started talking about politics and I found myself using the listening strategies I used to teach. Specifically, I listened to understand rather than to refute.

This was pretty helpful because it allowed me to respond in a way that affirmed him as a person without agreeing with what he was saying. I don’t agree with his point of view, but after listening to him I could honestly say I understood how he’d arrived at it. This was so much better than saying, “Uh huh, uh huh,” while thinking he was full of crap.

Another time, we were on the phone when he got going and a voice inside me said, “Go for it.” I matched him point for point. The conversation grew heated at times because political views emerge from our lived experience, our sense of how the social world impinges on and limits our lives. I heard us both identify core beliefs that have become core differences between us. In that sense there was nothing lighthearted about our exchange. I was tired at the end of it but also exhilarated. I don’t have a lot of conversations about politics with people who disagree with me and I enjoyed the mental workout. I suspect he’s in the same boat. Very few people in his life engage with him in these conversations probably because his passion often sounds like fury and overwhelms them.

Last week he sent me a youtube video, describing it as a “good history lesson.” Reasonably confident that I would not see it the same way my first impulse was to ignore it. Then I reconsidered because he matters to me. I watched it and sure enough I found the speaker’s point of view utterly ridiculous. Now what? I wrote him a message telling him my thoughts about the speaker’s argument but I’m not going to send it. What I realize is that I’m willing to engage him, my flesh and blood brother, but I’m not willing to create an exchange where we use other people’s words in an effort to educate and persuade each other. I know that if I do that, I will spend an enormous amount of mental energy arguing with him and his surrogates and that’s not acceptable to me. I’m comfortable with this boundary.

When I can do no more than listen, I listen to understand. When I have the energy to debate, I go for it. Above all, I keep my desire for an authentic relationship with him in the foreground and view him with non-judging awareness so that whatever form my engagement takes, it does not include trying to change him.

News junkie

Even when she was struggling to get by, my mother subscribed to the morning and evening newspapers. This was back when cities the size of Columbus, Ohio supported two daily papers. When my stepfather moved in he brought us Newsweek and the Sunday edition of the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Cleveland Plain Dealer. I spent one summer watching the Watergate hearings and providing summaries each evening to my mother and stepfather. Family gatherings always featured political discussions that devolved into political arguments. My siblings and I, just like my mother and her siblings, were far more likely to disagree, at full volume, about politics than about who was the favorite child. During graduate school I spent a summer watching the Iran-Contra hearings in the morning (I lived on the west coast) and writing my thesis in the afternoon. My partner also has a thing about current events. She was once asked her why she doesn’t like going to the movies and she said she’s afraid she might miss a breaking news story.

My family’s deep commitment to being up-to-date with the news of the day is born of the conviction that it is our duty as citizens to understand what’s going on in the world—near and far. How can you have an informed opinion if you aren’t informed? How can you make an educated decision at the ballot box if you aren’t educated about the candidates and the issues?

When a current political crisis was mentioned at my book group recently two of the women looked at us blankly. They told us they don’t watch much news. In the past I would have, silently, accused them of burying their head in the sand, questioned their right to vote, and seen their choice as part of what’s wrong with the world. In my newly evolving capacity for non-judging awareness I heard their comment not with disdain but simple curiosity about my own behavior. What’s happening inside of me when I start the day with national news broadcasts, check my news-filled Twitter timeline throughout the day, and read the spots off the daily papers?

When I was a kid my familiarity with current events made me feel smart when my inability to diagram a sentence and manage basic algebra made me feel stupid. But I’m not a kid anymore and I’m ready to admit that when I retreat into news coverage it’s to put myself beyond my own feelings of fear, uncertainty, and worthlessness. I’m well prepared to debate most any topic but emotionally and spiritually I am out of touch with myself and with the present moment. Watching the relentless horror of mass shootings, deadly political unrest, and government corruption I feel overwhelmed by rage and utterly helpless.

Having known and loved a lot of people with an addiction, I label my behavior as that of a news junkie with care. My behavior is that of an addict in the sense that when I bury myself in the news it is in order to escape dark feelings about my own life. It is also to engage in self-defeating behavior, behavior Jonathan Foust describes as “less than wholesome.” In an excellent talk titled “From Addiction to Wise Action,” he asks listeners to identify behaviors, anything from use of substances to repetitive thought patterns, which cause us suffering. What would happen, he asks, if we take that behavior to its extreme?

In this era of the 24-hour news cycle, I imagine myself never sleeping again. I imagine having no thoughts of my own as my head becomes filled not just with facts but with the opinions of all those talking heads from across the globe who fill our new sites and airwaves and timelines. In this world, I am utterly plugged in and completely disengaged at the same time.

When Foust then asks us to imagine our lives in the absence of these unwholesome behaviors and thoughts, I don’t imagine withdrawing from the news altogether because I agree with Thomas Jefferson that, “An educated citizenry is a vital requisite for our survival as a free people.” Instead, I try to cultivate behaviors that keep me grounded in the present—starting my days with writing, physical movement, or reading that is not about current events, avoiding shouting matches that call themselves newscasts, seeking news sources that educate me about unfamiliar people and places, and taking action locally where I know I can make a difference.

The view which the mind takes

My partner and I are thinking about moving. Nothing definite yet, just the exploration stage. We’ve been here before. This would be our third move in the last 10 years. Here’s what I’m discovering about myself as this situation unfolds in a context of self-acceptance, mindfulness, and non-judging awareness: “It is the view which the mind takes of a thing which creates the sorrow that arises from it.”

Who would guess that Victorian era author Anthony Trollope was a Buddhist? I shouldn’t be surprised at his insight since his work overflows not just with minute observations about the daily activities of his characters’ lives but also the social constructs shaping them, and the sense they make of their station in life. He conveys the challenge we all face when our essential self comes up against what the world appears to expect from us. Like Trollope, I understand, more than I have before, that the view my mind takes of thing creates the sorrow that arises from it.

When I think about moving there is sorrow when I fixate on the future—where will we go, what will it be like, will I make friends? And on alternate days when I dwell in the past recalling all the things about previous moves that overwhelmed me. But practicing mindfulness has helped me distinguish between constructive planning and obsessive stewing.

Differentiating between my concerns and my partner’s can a tangled source of sorrow. We are truly in this together but in our eagerness to do right by the other person we try to do the other person’s thinking and feeling for her. For instance, I push aside my hesitation or downright dislike of a location by telling myself that if a job is a good fit for her then I can’t stand in her way, and that I can adjust to any location, and that this attitude is the very definition of being a good partner. Recently, my partner told me that if she was single she would, most likely, have already moved by now. I said, “See, I am an obstacle.” “No,” she said, “That’s not what I meant. I meant that I try to think about which locations would best suit your needs.” When she said that I felt, of course, she is the most wonderful woman in the world. But I also felt irritated because I don’t want her to decide, on my behalf, where I’ll be happy. And, yes, I do see that we are mirroring each other’s behavior. When we try to think and feel for the other person, we have frustrating, circular conversations each trying her best not to be the cause of the other person’s possible unhappiness.

Non-judging awareness and self-acceptance are critical because they allow me to observe my thoughts and feelings, not be overwhelmed by them, and not push them aside because I assume they are an obstacle to my partner’s happiness. Together, we remind each other that we will take the journey as it comes and view the journey as one filled with compassion for and trust in the other person.

Family treasures

More than a hundred years ago my grandmother found the gleaming cherry bureau that now stands in my dining room. It was covered in a thick layer of red paint but she recognized the treasure that lay beneath.

My grandmother was a woman with a gift for seeing the possible. She was also a woman who raged at those around her. She died long before I was born but my mother told stories of her creativity and strength and wrath. It seems to me her fury was fueled by intellectual abilities that far exceeded her life’s limits.

The legacy of her anger is visible in my thin skin, easy sarcasm, and quickness to blame others for my pain. I saw it in my mother; I see it in my siblings. The anger inhabiting our homes is nearly as tangible as the corner cupboard, the camelback sofa, or the dining room table passed down to us over the years. But like these pieces of furniture we’ve lived with our entire lives, our anger is so deeply familiar to us that we cannot imagine our lives without it. I don’t know how to fill that corner of the dining room without the cherry bureau. I don’t know how to be in the world without my anger.

Tara Brach describes anger as an intelligent emotion. She doesn’t try to talk us out of it but instead urges us to acknowledge its presence with non-judging awareness. And then—take a pause and focus on the inner self, find the unmet need that evokes the anger. Even if the other person is as wrong as can be the anger is mine and paying attention to what’s going on inside, Brach argues, is the beginning of being able to respond with intelligence, empathy, and understanding. While Brach accepts that sometimes relationships have to end, her call to us holds real promise for deepening rather than dissolving them.

My grandmother owned a mahogany teacart and when it went out of fashion she had the wheels removed and a clean-lined table emerged. It’s in my kitchen and I sit at it to eat breakfast or read the mail. I did not know my grandmother but I am of her and I cherish the traces of her I find in the objects she transformed. I’m a catalyst for a different kind of change when I transform the inevitable experience of anger into a deeper understanding of myself and those around me.

Cruise control

Everyone in my immediate family drives as if they’re in a contest. You win if you stay ahead of the traffic by exceeding the speed limit and passing others without drawing negative attention from law enforcement. It helps to be a middle-aged white woman in a nondescript car if you’re going to play—as evidenced by my single speeding ticket in over 30 years of driving. Everyone in my immediate family also swears, a lot, while driving as we continuously observe and evaluate the drivers around us. Perhaps it’s unnecessary to say that cruise control plays no role in our driving experience.

Each day I try to perform daily tasks like making the bed and brushing my teeth concentrating only on the task at hand and my immediate surroundings. My goal is to increase my tolerance for staying present to the moment. I decided to add driving to that list because it’s a frequent task and, given my family’s approach to driving, a challenge to both mindfulness and equanimity. On a recent solo trip from western Illinois to the Twin Cities I had four hundred miles to see if cruise control could help me on my path.

I was reluctant to use cruise control on the county road that takes me out of town and 50 miles north to the interstate. I thought slowing down for all of the small towns would be a hassle but in the spirit of giving it a try, I turned it on as soon as I cleared the last stop light out of Galesburg. I gained a lot of practice at tapping the brakes to slow down as I entered each town and hitting the resume knob to get back to 60 mph on my way out. Once I made it to the interstate, I thought about turning it off because there was so much traffic—the condition that makes me feel the greatest need for control. With some trepidation, and in the spirit of trying and all, I used it for most of the 60 miles from Davenport to just west of Iowa City. I became increasingly comfortable passing when I needed to and learned that the car resumes the set speed when I take my foot off the gas. When I left the interstate to head north toward Cedar Falls, Rochester, and eventually the Twin Cities I stayed on cruise until I came to a giant construction zone just north of Cannon Falls that led directly to rush hour traffic south of St. Paul. Using good judgment, as my car’s manual suggests, I estimate that I was on cruise for about 300 miles of the 400 mile trip.

As I drove, and now reflecting on the experience, I ask myself two questions. First, what was my body doing? The primary thing I noticed was that my body was relaxed. Not couch potato relaxed but not dominated by tension. I didn’t have a death grip on the steering wheel and I didn’t get that weird cramp in my left hamstring that often happens on long drives.

Second, what was my mind doing? I am mostly aware of what it wasn’t doing. I wasn’t engaged in a continuous evaluation of myself and other drivers. Am I getting too close to the car in front of me, why won’t that guy get out of the left lane, should I pass this truck or wait for this car that’s bearing down on me to go first? I wasn’t constantly checking or adjusting my speed. I’d set it just over the limit (not encouraged by my car’s manual but I am my mother’s daughter). I knew I was going an appropriate speed, not unconsciously speeding up or slowing down when someone was trying to pass me. I was also strangely unperturbed when others passed me.

Jonathan Foust encourages the practice of non-judging awareness on the path toward equanimity. That was at the core of this experience. I would also say it was, for the most part, an experience of mindfulness. I was in a comfortable state of alertness. There was plenty to think about without overanalyzing myself and other drivers or drifting off to worry about the past or future. I was intensely aware of and engaged by my surroundings—the traffic around me and the beautiful rolling farmlands on either side of the road.