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When I was a teenager, I invested $400 in 20 years of anger and a big, hard, life-changing lesson. I had seen this guy around – a friend of a friend named Justin – carrying the exact model of guitar that I wanted, and there was a rumor that he was looking to sell it. I tracked him down in a parking lot by the beach where high schoolers hung out on summer nights.
He was among a group of kids smoking cigarettes on a Mexican blanket in the back of a van. I could surmise that the kids were smoking as I could clearly see the very similar vape I bought quite recently from the 180 Smoke vaporizers website, in their hands. As I approached one of them, he nodded at me in recognition, and I asked him about the guitar. He said he had paid $800 for the instrument but was willing to let it go for half of that because he needed money fast. So fast, in fact, that he wanted me to pay him for it on the spot even though he didn’t have the guitar with him. That way, he explained, he would know I was serious about it and he wouldn’t sell it to another guy that he had already promised it to. I went home and returned with my money, which I handed over, and he agreed to meet me at a coffee shop the next morning with the guitar.
Only, as you can probably guess, he didn’t show up.
I found out where he lived and went to his house. He answered the door flanked by a large, red-faced man several years older than us who looked twitchy, and had scabs on his knuckles. I asked for the guitar.
“What guitar?” Justin replied. “Are you talking about my cousin’s guitar?”
“Yeah,” the man asked, “are you talking about my guitar?” and he pointed to the guitar, which lay on a dirty couch behind them.
“Well it’s my guitar actually,” I stated, trying to sound tougher than I felt. “I paid Justin 400 bucks for it yesterday.”
“Why would you make up a story like that?” his cousin challenged, sneering to reveal a mouthful of broken teeth. “He can’t sell my guitar. Can you, Justin?”
“Nope,” said Justin. “I barely know this loser.”
“Did this little boy give you 400 bucks?” Cousin asked.
“Of course not. Cuz then I’d have 400 bucks. But I’m broke, see?” and he pulled out his wallet and opened it to show that it was empty.
“Well then,” said Cousin, turning back to me, “it looks like you just came here to try to cheat us and that’s not very nice.”
“You’re the ones who are cheating me!” I countered, but my instincts were telling me that no good would come out of pushing this.
“Is this little boy threatening us at our own house, Justin?” Cousin asked.
“It kinda sounds like it,” Justin replied. “It kinda sounds like he wants to fight.” The two of them edged toward me.
“I don’t want to fight,” I said, “I just want the guitar that I paid for.”
“If you don’t want trouble,” said Cousin, “then get off our porch and don’t show your face around here again.”
So I left.
At that age, in that time and place, I believed that getting an adult involved – even one with a badge – simply wasn’t an option. Not solving your own problems was looked down upon, and there was no real escape from retribution for squealing in a small town. No, the only way to manage such an issue was to beat someone up. My guy friends said things like, “You need to go back over there and pound the money out of him!” But I was a skinny pacifist and Justin and his cousin were the burly sons of lobstermen. I suggested that maybe a whole gang of us could visit Justin’s house, but my friends sheepishly declined, murmuring things like, “I don’t have any beef with him . . .”
I only encountered Justin once more in person. I ran into him at a restaurant a few months later, where he was sitting at a table with his friends (no Cousin, luckily). I walked over to him and said, “You still owe me 400 bucks.”
“Yeah?” he replied, “Get in line. I owe money to a lot of people.” And at this he shrugged and looked to his friends who all laughed and started yelling out how much he owed them.
I wish I could say that was the end of it, but I had hundreds – no, thousands – of encounters with him in my mind during and after this time. The incident generated many negative conclusions: that I was an idiot, that people are bad and untrustworthy, that I was weak, that Boston is full of thugs, that I wasn’t manly, that I couldn’t count on my friends, and so on. I had daydreams in which I would imagine myself destroying his life, or going back with a gun or a knife and getting my money, or stealing the guitar.
Sometimes I would forget about the whole thing for a month or six months or a year, but whenever I remembered it again I still felt upset.
It was many years before I entertained the idea of forgiveness. I didn’t like him and I didn’t want to give him anything he didn’t deserve, but I was beginning to get a sense of just how much my own resentment had poisoned me. So I tried it. I said to myself, “I forgive Justin for stealing my money,” and I felt a little relieved.
But shortly thereafter, I caught myself replaying the story and feeling angry. I hadn’t let it go. I was frustrated. I forgave him again. And then I caught myself again. And I repeated this cycle a few more times before a deeper understanding began to dawn on me.
First, I decided that it would be worth $400 to really let this go. So I reframed it – I decided I was letting him have the $400 willingly so that I could just be done with this. I hoped that if I could convince myself that I was choosing this, there would be nothing to resent.
Unfortunately, this strategy wasn’t enough to help me get over the whole thing, but there was value in being rational about the various costs and payoffs involved. I was getting nothing but pain for my $400 as long as I held onto my story. And, Briana once reminded me, if I had taken on those guys: “You would have been paying four hundred dollars to get your butt kicked.”
Second, I discovered that forgiveness is almost always a many-layered process and constitutes more work than we tend to expect. In my case, I had some anger about having gotten ripped off, but I was gradually getting to a place where $400 wasn’t that much money. The actual theft wasn’t the biggest thing. More bothersome was the sense that my instincts were wrong, that I was helpless, that I was a wimp, and especially that I should have done something differently.
I looked long and hard at all of this, and it took me on a deeper journey into my psyche that revealed that these thoughts all had deeper roots. There was a certain mistrust for the world that was important to recognize, but more importantly, a mistrust of myself, and lots of self-blame. I systematically unearthed everything I found and forgave it all.
Third, I realized that true forgiveness is not a single act, but a commitment. I’ve written about this idea in several articles and books, but never before told the story that led me to it. Until I had this revelation, I believed that a proper act of forgiveness should last forever and the resentment should never come back. Thus, I had also some self-blame around not having forgiven correctly, since it wasn’t sticking.
Then I learned that the “correct” way to forgive is to make an agreement with myself that I am going to forgive over and over, as many times as it takes. It’s also an agreement to be mindful enough to notice when I’ve picked up my resentment again, to stop indulging in it, and let it go once more.
So, in the end, perhaps $400 was a bargain for the insights I finally got.
What have you invested in (whether with dollars, energy, time, or some other commodity) that has thus far yielded only pain? Is it possible to reframe it such that you offer to willingly give what has already been given – in exchange for growth, insight, and freedom?
Where is forgiveness in order? Besides the most obvious object of forgiveness, what sub-resentments exist? (It’s worth getting a pen and paper for this, since it might be a long list.) Are you willing to make a lifelong commitment to forgive and thus be freed from a story that has kept you enslaved? It’s heroism, truly.
Be well,
Dr. Peter Borten
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I’ve been treating people for only 17 years, but in that small period of time there has been a change in the prevalence of certain problems. Every year, I see more people with anxiety, depression, poor mental focus, and difficulty sleeping. It’s possible that the incidence of these challenges isn’t really increasing. It could just be a matter of who my clients are, or a case of having a vocabulary to define these issues where one didn’t previously exist. But I don’t think so.
I think there is an actual increase in these issues, and there are several reasons why, but one stands out to me above all others: lack of space.
About a year ago, Briana and I started working on a book to teach people about whole-life wellness – wellness that goes beyond a healthy body and mind. Our methodology arose from our backgrounds in Eastern medicine. The systems we practice (Ayurveda and Traditional Chinese Medicine [TCM]) are founded on philosophies of dynamic balance. In TCM there’s the two-part balance of yin and yang. In Ayurveda there’s a three-part balance of sattva, rajas, and tamas. And both systems also express balance in terms of five elements. For our system, we chose an expression of balance based on three elements: Structure, Sweetness, and Space.
Sweetness is our term for all the feel-good, nourishing activities and practices of life. Building sweetness depends not just on deliberately engaging in more time with friends and long baths. It’s also a matter of finding the sweet and recognizing the beauty within all kinds of daily tasks, and relishing it.
Structure is the means by which we organize and plan a life that works (without feeling crazy and overwhelmed). It’s how we achieve goals, enact change, do our work, and bring our purpose into the world. Some people need more structure, others need less. The ideal is structure that’s healthy, efficient, and graceful.
As we were deep in conversation about how to distill our key concepts into something simple, the words Sweetness and Structure came to us in a flash. But we both felt there was a third element yet to be revealed. We tossed ideas back and forth for a while, then decided to sit quietly with it for a few minutes. And in that space, the word “space” entered both our minds simultaneously. “Of course,” we said, “space.”
When first explaining this concept to others, Space was a little hard to put a finger on, like space itself. And yet, nobody failed to understand when I said, “It’s what we’re filling – every spare moment of it – by keeping ourselves perpetually mentally engaged.” When you sit down on the toilet and experience disappointment at the realization that you don’t have your phone with you, that should be a red flag.
Life would feel meaningless without Sweetness. You’d never get anything done without Structure. And without Space . . . you’d go crazy (maybe a little, maybe a lot).
Space provides the opportunity to connect with our Highest Self. To bask in the peaceful vastness that we are. To experience that we are so much more than our thoughts. Space allows us the openness to receive – to receive love, healing, and inspiration. Space is the freedom in which we can let life be however it is, without needing to resist it, cling to it, or change it.
When there’s no Space in our lives, there’s no perspective to our thoughts. It’s like having daytime television playing endlessly in our brain. It’s easy for anxiety and depression to arise in such a vacuum. It’s also easy for us to respond to these unpleasant thoughts and feelings by getting even more immersed, not allowing any Space for fear of confronting what we’re experiencing.
The only absolute solution to these afflictions, in my opinion, is to access Space. In Space, you’ll remember who you really are and what’s really true. And the truth is, you’re okay. Life is beautiful. Only through Space can the mind’s distorted lens be seen for what it is. As your breath deepens, the stream of thoughts slows down, and the volume decreases.
I would like you to make a little Space in your week. For a few minutes, stop consuming and analyzing ideas, and just put your bare feet on the ground. Leave your electronic devices at home. And please trust me when I say that if you experience even the tiniest inkling of peace, perspective, or upliftment, there is so much more where that came from.
Love,
Dr. Peter Borten
[post_title] => Making Space for The Well Life
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In 1984, followers of the spiritual guru Osho (Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, 1931-1990) sprinkled salmonella bacteria into the salad bars of ten restaurants in Oregon, sickening 751 people. A few years earlier, Osho had left his commune in India due to pressure from authorities and purchased a defunct ranch in the Pacific Northwest. Thousands of his students moved in, but the land wasn’t zoned for that volume of habitation. They ran into more trouble with the law because of it, and had to find ways to conceal how many people were actually residing there.
Hiding the expansion of the community was difficult as their numbers grew because they wore highly visible red robes – plus they built an airstrip, restaurants, and fire department on the property. It probably didn’t help that they occasionally drove into town in a Jeep with a machine gun mounted on it. They clashed with locals, government officials, and environmental groups, but eventually hit upon a solution: this would all be legal if they could establish the ranch as a city.
There was considerable resistance from the community, however, and this is what led to the salmonella plan. Through what has been called the largest domestic act of bioterrorism in the U.S., they hoped to incapacitate enough voters to secure wins for their own candidates in the upcoming county election. But despite the sickened population, local voter turnout was high enough to keep Osho’s supporters (AKA “Rajneeshees”) from succeeding.
During this time, the guru was observing a long period of seclusion and had ceased contact with all but a small number of close attendants. However, his devotees bought him a collection of 93 Rolls Royces, and each day he would slowly drive one of these luxury cars down a long dirt road where they waited to catch a glimpse of him.
About a year later, Osho himself reported the salmonella attacks to the authorities. The attacks, it turns out, were just the most visible expression of a chaotic fanaticism that had developed in a portion of his followers. Osho claimed they acted without his knowledge or blessing; they said he sanctioned it.
It’s difficult to discern the truth from all the stories, partly because his form of teaching came with an apparent delight in shocking people. He enjoyed cursing, had an irreverent sense of humor, championed free love, and proposed such offensive measures as euthanizing disabled children. He was both scorned and revered. Many intelligent people regard him as one of the greatest contemporary spiritual teachers, and probably millions would credit him with making a positive impact on their lives.
When most people encounter such a button-pushing issue or figure, they feel compelled to take a side. We like things to be black and white. If we can frame something in terms of good and evil or right and wrong, it makes our lives easier. It feels good to have strong, unwavering convictions. But the truth doesn’t usually conform to such convenient categories. Almost everything falls somewhere along the gigantic spectrum between the extremes. And accepting this requires the work of deeper contemplation and possibly the discomfort of admitting that our position isn’t completely correct.
A recent study showed that people who know the least about a subject are the most likely to take a strongly polarized position on it – perhaps even a zealous, foaming-at-the-mouth position. The corollary to this finding is that the more we really understand a person or issue, the more neutral our position becomes, and the more accepting we tend to be of different viewpoints.
In the case of Osho, my opinion is that he was charismatic, brilliant, enlightened, and also manipulative, self-serving, offensive, and extremely eccentric. I also think, as is so often the case with powerful people, he attracted followers who believed they were living in accordance with his teachings and acting on his behalf without really understanding what he stood for. They were intoxicated by his mojo and used that feeling of power to justify their own convoluted drives. My intention isn’t really to pick on Osho and his disciples as much as it to point out the dynamics that occur on the inside and outside of such a phenomenon, which I’ll summarize here:
Tapping into power tends to amplify not just the presentable aspects of ourselves, but our shadow side, too. It partly explains why so many high-level teachers, artists, and executives end up sleeping with their students and employees, or succumbing to some other vice. Perhaps it’s why a guru might enjoy having 93 Rolls Royces. And it’s also why many traditions, such as yoga, emphasize purifying or balancing one’s mind, actions, and senses before attempting the practices that are likely to unleash a bunch of energy. (Did your yoga teacher introduce you to the yamas and niyamas that traditionally come before undertaking asanas or "poses"?)
Potent ideas tend to be degraded as they are transmitted through human minds. It’s like the children’s game operator. Moreover, we like latching onto such ideas – whether we find them enticing or horrible, or both – and running with them, even though the trajectory they carry us on may not be altogether healthy for us. And again, we favor positionality, even though (or maybe because) it implies conflict. That is, taking a fixed, polarized position necessarily engages us against the opposite position. In order to maintain such positionality, we’re best served by keeping ourselves ignorant.
In light of all these analyses of human behavior, I offer you this homework assignment for the week: Innocence. Be innocent, open, and humble. Feel the compulsion to take positions, and instead, be innocent, go deeper, and learn more.
Be well,
Dr. Peter Borten
P.S. For those who haven't encountered any of Osho's teachings, I’ll leave you with an excerpt from Undone Tao, a series of talks he gave on one of my favorite books, the Daoist classic, Dao De Jing:
"Enlightenment is not a search, it is a realization. It is not a goal, it is the very nature of life itself.
As life is, it is enlightened. It needs nothing to be added to it to improve it. Life is perfect. It is not moving from imperfection to perfection. It is moving from perfection to perfection.
You are here to attain something – that is functioning as a barrier. Drop that barrier. Just be here. Forget about any purpose. Life cannot have any purpose; life is the purpose. How can it have any other purpose? Otherwise you will be in an infinite regress: then that purpose will have another purpose, then that purpose will have another purpose… Life has no purpose and that’s why it’s so beautiful.
Hindus have called it leela, a play. It is not even a game. Now in the West, the word “game” has become very important. Hundreds of books have been published within two, three years with the word “game” in the title: The Master Game, The Ultimate Game, Games People Play, and so on. But there is a difference between game and play. Hindus have called life “play,” not “game,” because even a game has something as a purpose: a result to be attained, victory to be achieved, the opponent has to be conquered. When play becomes a game, then it becomes serious.
Grownups play games, children only play. Just the very activity is enough unto itself. It has an intrinsic end; there is no goal added to it. Life is a leela. It is a play. And the moment you are ready to play, you are enlightened.
…
Then you start a totally different way of life. You start being playful. You start being alive moment to moment with nowhere to go. Whatsoever life gives, you accept it with deep gratitude. Grace happens to you."
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When I was a teenager, I invested $400 in 20 years of anger and a big, hard, life-changing lesson. I had seen this guy around – a friend of a friend named Justin – carrying the exact model of guitar that I wanted, and there was a rumor that he was looking to sell it. I tracked him down in a parking lot by the beach where high schoolers hung out on summer nights.
He was among a group of kids smoking cigarettes on a Mexican blanket in the back of a van. I could surmise that the kids were smoking as I could clearly see the very similar vape I bought quite recently from the 180 Smoke vaporizers website, in their hands. As I approached one of them, he nodded at me in recognition, and I asked him about the guitar. He said he had paid $800 for the instrument but was willing to let it go for half of that because he needed money fast. So fast, in fact, that he wanted me to pay him for it on the spot even though he didn’t have the guitar with him. That way, he explained, he would know I was serious about it and he wouldn’t sell it to another guy that he had already promised it to. I went home and returned with my money, which I handed over, and he agreed to meet me at a coffee shop the next morning with the guitar.
Only, as you can probably guess, he didn’t show up.
I found out where he lived and went to his house. He answered the door flanked by a large, red-faced man several years older than us who looked twitchy, and had scabs on his knuckles. I asked for the guitar.
“What guitar?” Justin replied. “Are you talking about my cousin’s guitar?”
“Yeah,” the man asked, “are you talking about my guitar?” and he pointed to the guitar, which lay on a dirty couch behind them.
“Well it’s my guitar actually,” I stated, trying to sound tougher than I felt. “I paid Justin 400 bucks for it yesterday.”
“Why would you make up a story like that?” his cousin challenged, sneering to reveal a mouthful of broken teeth. “He can’t sell my guitar. Can you, Justin?”
“Nope,” said Justin. “I barely know this loser.”
“Did this little boy give you 400 bucks?” Cousin asked.
“Of course not. Cuz then I’d have 400 bucks. But I’m broke, see?” and he pulled out his wallet and opened it to show that it was empty.
“Well then,” said Cousin, turning back to me, “it looks like you just came here to try to cheat us and that’s not very nice.”
“You’re the ones who are cheating me!” I countered, but my instincts were telling me that no good would come out of pushing this.
“Is this little boy threatening us at our own house, Justin?” Cousin asked.
“It kinda sounds like it,” Justin replied. “It kinda sounds like he wants to fight.” The two of them edged toward me.
“I don’t want to fight,” I said, “I just want the guitar that I paid for.”
“If you don’t want trouble,” said Cousin, “then get off our porch and don’t show your face around here again.”
So I left.
At that age, in that time and place, I believed that getting an adult involved – even one with a badge – simply wasn’t an option. Not solving your own problems was looked down upon, and there was no real escape from retribution for squealing in a small town. No, the only way to manage such an issue was to beat someone up. My guy friends said things like, “You need to go back over there and pound the money out of him!” But I was a skinny pacifist and Justin and his cousin were the burly sons of lobstermen. I suggested that maybe a whole gang of us could visit Justin’s house, but my friends sheepishly declined, murmuring things like, “I don’t have any beef with him . . .”
I only encountered Justin once more in person. I ran into him at a restaurant a few months later, where he was sitting at a table with his friends (no Cousin, luckily). I walked over to him and said, “You still owe me 400 bucks.”
“Yeah?” he replied, “Get in line. I owe money to a lot of people.” And at this he shrugged and looked to his friends who all laughed and started yelling out how much he owed them.
I wish I could say that was the end of it, but I had hundreds – no, thousands – of encounters with him in my mind during and after this time. The incident generated many negative conclusions: that I was an idiot, that people are bad and untrustworthy, that I was weak, that Boston is full of thugs, that I wasn’t manly, that I couldn’t count on my friends, and so on. I had daydreams in which I would imagine myself destroying his life, or going back with a gun or a knife and getting my money, or stealing the guitar.
Sometimes I would forget about the whole thing for a month or six months or a year, but whenever I remembered it again I still felt upset.
It was many years before I entertained the idea of forgiveness. I didn’t like him and I didn’t want to give him anything he didn’t deserve, but I was beginning to get a sense of just how much my own resentment had poisoned me. So I tried it. I said to myself, “I forgive Justin for stealing my money,” and I felt a little relieved.
But shortly thereafter, I caught myself replaying the story and feeling angry. I hadn’t let it go. I was frustrated. I forgave him again. And then I caught myself again. And I repeated this cycle a few more times before a deeper understanding began to dawn on me.
First, I decided that it would be worth $400 to really let this go. So I reframed it – I decided I was letting him have the $400 willingly so that I could just be done with this. I hoped that if I could convince myself that I was choosing this, there would be nothing to resent.
Unfortunately, this strategy wasn’t enough to help me get over the whole thing, but there was value in being rational about the various costs and payoffs involved. I was getting nothing but pain for my $400 as long as I held onto my story. And, Briana once reminded me, if I had taken on those guys: “You would have been paying four hundred dollars to get your butt kicked.”
Second, I discovered that forgiveness is almost always a many-layered process and constitutes more work than we tend to expect. In my case, I had some anger about having gotten ripped off, but I was gradually getting to a place where $400 wasn’t that much money. The actual theft wasn’t the biggest thing. More bothersome was the sense that my instincts were wrong, that I was helpless, that I was a wimp, and especially that I should have done something differently.
I looked long and hard at all of this, and it took me on a deeper journey into my psyche that revealed that these thoughts all had deeper roots. There was a certain mistrust for the world that was important to recognize, but more importantly, a mistrust of myself, and lots of self-blame. I systematically unearthed everything I found and forgave it all.
Third, I realized that true forgiveness is not a single act, but a commitment. I’ve written about this idea in several articles and books, but never before told the story that led me to it. Until I had this revelation, I believed that a proper act of forgiveness should last forever and the resentment should never come back. Thus, I had also some self-blame around not having forgiven correctly, since it wasn’t sticking.
Then I learned that the “correct” way to forgive is to make an agreement with myself that I am going to forgive over and over, as many times as it takes. It’s also an agreement to be mindful enough to notice when I’ve picked up my resentment again, to stop indulging in it, and let it go once more.
So, in the end, perhaps $400 was a bargain for the insights I finally got.
What have you invested in (whether with dollars, energy, time, or some other commodity) that has thus far yielded only pain? Is it possible to reframe it such that you offer to willingly give what has already been given – in exchange for growth, insight, and freedom?
Where is forgiveness in order? Besides the most obvious object of forgiveness, what sub-resentments exist? (It’s worth getting a pen and paper for this, since it might be a long list.) Are you willing to make a lifelong commitment to forgive and thus be freed from a story that has kept you enslaved? It’s heroism, truly.
Be well,
Dr. Peter Borten
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Please let me know when book is available
Hi Catherine, its available to order now and will begin shipping on August 11th.
I’d love to order the book. What is the price of the book? As well as the price of the course?
Can you make a pdf version of this new book / tool?
I’m about 1/4 through the transformation and have to say, the results so far are incredible. Thank you for creating this guide that will help so many.