Category: Make the most of life

What is good about disappointment

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I frequently say to people I work with that one of the key things is how we deal with disappointment. It is a necessary skill,  because it is a frequent and inevitable occurance in an imperfect world. Each one of us has our own way of working with the  discomfort coming from disappointments in our plans or in other people. These ways are often based on how well our parents helped us deal with early shocks and disappointments, or whether they tried to shield us from the ups and downs of reality. Sometimes a parent can think that the best way to raise their child is to shower them with protection and insulate them from moments when they or the world are less than perfectly loving. However, the child has to learn to live in the real world, and the real world isn’t perfect. In other words, it is right –  and leads to the development of a healthy psyche – that the child is gently disappointed and comes to understand that it is not always possible to have people around them who understand and respond perfectly to their every wish. Even from an early age we have to learn to share, take our turn in games, postpone our own gratification and  acknowledge that other people have needs, moods and different agendas.

Rather than a parent having to being perfect  all the time, English Psychotherapist Winnicott said that they just had to be “good enough”.  This means that the parent provides enough support –  or “holding”  – to support the child without going to the extremes of  stifling it or of abandoning it.  The skill of the “good-enough parent” is to give the child a sense of loosening when faced with new situations rather than the shock and subsequent fear of being ‘dropped’. This allows the child develop resources, maintain a sense of control and  stops them from feeling that the world is unsafe all the time.

If this happens successfully,  the challanges of life do not frighten because the child builds up interior resources. It means that relationships does not threaten because, paradoxically, a smothering early closeness can trigger fears of engulfment in later life. And it means that the adult has a healthier structure for dealing with disappointment because as a child he or she has learned that life and people can not be perfect all the time. Often our disappointments do not arise so much from what actually happened, but more from how we compare what happened to our expectations, our inner patterns or our fixed version of reality. Disappointment show us that life –  like the good enough parent –  is not always available to us in the fixed way we want or whenever we demand it, but is still good despite that.

For this reason disappointments are good teachers. They allow us to see that there is more to us than our conscious thoughts and desires. They reveal how we can be attached to a specific version of how things should be, or of what life owes us. This does not mean they are easy because trying to avoid what disappoints is deeply ingrained in the human psyche. However, we grow more quickly if we are open to working with disappointments rather than avoiding them. Rather than being negative, they can become positive moments of growth,  leading us away from the suffering which is based on our lack of understanding of the deep reality of change.

Our culture has evolved into one that is pleasure-based and ego-identified, and that emphasizes immediate gratification. It also began to define success as your ability to control outcomes. Today, we teach our children that if you are an effective person, you can control your life. You can get and do what you want. If you do, you win in life. This modern image portrays “winners” as people who have it all together. You are not supposed to have internal conflicts, stress, or anxiety—that means you are incompetent. …… But this perspective flattens life. It denies the possibility of finding a deeper meaning to your experience. If you measure your self-worth and effectiveness according to these superficial cultural standards, then each time you suffer you are forced to interpret suffering as humiliation. Why would you choose to acknowledge suffering if it only stands for failure?

Phillip Moffitt, How Suffering got a Bad Name

If I let go will I float?

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Everything is meant to be let go of.

Meister Eckhard

Got some reminders today that changes of direction and endings are an inevitable part of our lives, touching our plans, our enthusiasms,  our things, our friendships. In fact, one of the core things we realize in meditation is that nothing is permanently satisfying or reliable. This challenges our need to be in control at all times, a need which is often driven by fear. The opposite of this need for control – of the future, our our plans, of others – is to trust, to let go. Deep down there is nothing to hang on to. Our mistake is that we look for certainty, for solid ground, when in actual fact, the deep reality which we come to accept is that nothing is really lasting or solid. Ironically, realizing that brings us the greatest freedom.

And to die, which is the letting go
of the ground we stand on and cling to every day,
is like the swan, when he nervously lets himself down
into the water, which receives him gaily
and which flows joyfully under
and after him, wave after wave,
while the swan, unmoving and marvelously calm,
is pleased to be carried, each moment more fully grown,
more like a king, further and further on.

Rilke

Where to look when things are not clear

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Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart…

Who looks outside, dreams.

Who looks inside, awakens.

Carl Jung

Oh no, rain….

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It’s like lying in bed before dawn and hearing rain on the roof……..

This simple sound can be disappointing because we were planning a picnic. It can be pleasing because our garden is so dry. But the flexible mind  doesn’t draw conclusions of good or bad. It perceives the sound without adding anything extra, without judgments of happy or sad.

Pema Chodron, Comfortable with Uncertainty

No regrets

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I am reading  some books by Stephen Levine. He has worked extensively with those who are dying, and writes about grief and loss. What he has found is that many arrive at the end of their life with regrets, wishing that they had done this or that, lived more fully here or there, realized their potential in this way or that. This has led him to emphasize living each moment fully, not limiting ourselves in this moment to our past or waiting for our future,  in order to have no regrets:

Most of life only lasts a moment. Then our life becomes a memory, a dream. We are only alive a millisecond at at time. This moment! Or as one teacher put it, holding his thumb and forefinger about a quarter inch apart, “All of life is only just this much–just a moment in time.” When we open to this very instant in which awareness produces consciousness, we are fully alive. Completely preent. Big-minded.

To the degree we are present for “just this much” this living moment, we are alive. Otherwise we numb to the vibrancy and beg upon our deathbed for one more chance.

Most think that living a “full life” means living into old age. But if you are not alive this moment, what makes you think you’ll be alive then? To live fully is to be filled with this moment. Present for this millisecond, this day, this week, this life.”

Stephen and Ondrea Levine, Embracing the Beloved

In this he echoes the words of Daniel Gilbert in his book Stumbling on Happiness. He too draws attention to not neglecting to do the things we want, to dare to choose certain paths that open up in front of us.

... most people think they will regret foolish actions more than foolish inactions. But studies show that nine out of ten people are wrong. Indeed, in the long run, people of every walk of life seem to regret not having done things much more than they regret things they did.

Patience

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In a sense,  sitting practice is waste of time because it is a dedicated period of non-doing. On an outward level it appears to achieve nothing. To make things even worse, nothing really seems to change from day to day: you sit, you get distracted, you return to the breath, you get distracted…. It may seem pointless. It feels hard to presevere because the results are not immediately tangible while the actual practice can be difficult.

However, the “point” to meditation,  is precisely by doing “nothing” and slowing down, gaps are created between activities and we develop our capacity to be aware of what is going on. And it seems that when one is aware, things have a greater tendency to fall as they should, in harmony with our deepest self.

There is increasing scientific backing showing that this “pointless” activity is, in fact, achieving something simply while we are sitting. It has been found that people who meditate activate the part of their brain that is associated with less anxiety and a better outlook on life. By not activating the anxious parts of the brain  for certain periods of each day, our bodies are less likely to be tense, and our minds less likely to trigger well-conditioned patterns when faced with difficulties.

Tara Bennett-Goleman  suggests that meditation works because it changes the relationship between the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex. The amygdala is the part of the brain that decides, among other things, if we should get angry or anxious. The pre-frontal cortex is the part that makes us stop and think about things. However, the amygdala can be over-cautious and makes mistakes, such as seeing problems or exaggerating anxiety where there is none. It can make us anxious even when there is no real danger present.  Because there is a time gap between the time an event occurs and the reaction of the amygdala, the slowing down we practice in meditation may allow the pre-frontal contex intervene before an automatic reaction takes over. We can redirect it into more constructive or positive feelings. In other words, meditation develops emotional brain fitness and therefore this pointless activity may not be pointless after all.

In the case of meditaton, your goal is to transform yourself over the course of months and years. The progress you make is usually hardly noticeable from day to day
like the hands of a clock you hardly see moving.

Haste and meditation do not go together ; Any profound transformation is bound to take time.

Matthieu Ricard,  The Art of Meditation