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[post_content] =>
I saw a woman being interviewed about her opinion of Trump and Obama. She felt quite strongly that one was the devil and the other a saint. The interviewer asked why and she gave some simple reasons. Then the interviewer proposed, “What if I showed you evidence that would disprove your reasons?”
She responded, “Nothing you can say will change my mind. I don’t need any evidence to know what’s true.” Have you ever felt this way about a person or issue?
It’s very enticing to think in black and white terms. We like the unambiguousness of it. It’s comfortable and easy to be able to say with conviction, “This man is good, that man is bad,” or “Chemical pesticides are wrong, natural ones are right,” or “Pain is bad, pleasure is good.”
When we choose a fixed stance, it seems our work is over. There’s no need to sort through the facts. There’s no need to navigate the discomfort of possibly being wrong, or the discomfort of allowing for multiple points of view. There’s no need to stretch. The only work left to do is convince others who don’t share our point of view that they’re wrong.
Every fixed point of view bolsters the ego. Each time we marry our identity to a position, we form a more rigid sense of who we are (and aren’t). Even though there’s a certain kind of peace in choosing a fixed stance, there’s also an innate conflict. We feel compelled to block out or reject any experience or information that doesn’t fit with our position. This fragments us, restricts our freedom, and prevents an authentic, unmanipulated experience of life.
I’m as attracted to polarized positions as the next guy, but I’ve seen too many times that they’re not good for me – or my relationships. Besides the various forms of personal suffering that black-and-white thinking causes, it’s a major impediment to creating community, solving big problems, and fixing the social divisions that make our country so disunited.
For those interested in recovering from this habit, a willingness to be wrong is a good start – yet, it’s often a difficult concession for us because there’s some truth to our position. It’s usually less painful – and closer to the truth – to recognize that we’re not wrong, we’re just not entirely right. That is, we’re focused on a thin sliver of reality and mistake that to be the whole.
It’s like the old parable about the blind men feeling the different parts of an elephant and describing what kind of animal it is. One feels the elephant’s trunk and says, “This animal is like a thick snake.” Another, who is touching the elephant’s ear, disagrees: “No, it’s more like a fan.” One touches its leg and says an elephant must be like the trunk of a tree. Another touches the tail and says elephants are like a piece of rope.
When we practice openness and humility, we discover a greater need for the word and. Is the truth this way or that way? The answer is almost always YES. This way and that way. Both.
This practice asks us to stretch in order to make room for a reality that’s broader than we thought – and stretching can be uncomfortable – but it also brings peace through the recognition that we don’t know everything, we can’t know everything, and therefore we can let ourselves off the hook of needing to know everything.
I’d like to explore polarized positions on two subjects that are near and dear to my heart – managing the wayward mind and managing pain.
When it comes to managing the mind, the most common polarized positions I encounter are: (1) We should exert discipline over the mind, learn to control it, more intentionally choose the contents of our thoughts, perhaps even stop its meanderings entirely. (2) The mind is an incessant stream of chattering that doesn’t need to be controlled or judged; freedom comes from witnessing it impartially, noticing how it works, learning not to automatically give our attention to its content (thoughts), and ultimately transcending it.
Which is right? In my opinion this is a perfect time for the word and. It doesn’t need to be one or the other. Both are valid and true. It is possible to stop thinking. We can make the mind more peaceful, we can think more optimistic thoughts. AND without attempting to modify the way we think, we can learn to witness the mind, to be unmoved by violent or fearful thoughts, and to let awareness itself begin to displace the ego as the driver of this life.
When it comes to managing pain, two opposing positions I encounter are: (1) Get rid of it. Pain sucks and rarely has a useful purpose. (2) Pain is an opportunity – to expand, to be empowered, to know ourselves, to heal old wounds, etc. If we get rid of it without exploring it, we may miss an important chance to grow and heal.
Which is right? What should we do? AND to the rescue! When I began constructing my online course, Live Pain Free, I started by making a long list of all the strategies I could think of for eliminating pain. Then I thought of the people I’ve known who weren’t able to get rid of their pain – because, for instance, it was due to an inoperable tumor pressing on a nerve – but were able to achieve freedom despite the constant presence of pain. I thought of patients who have used their pain as an impetus for unraveling trauma and years of unhealthy patterning. And I also thought of patients in pain who were angry, depressed, or fearful, who became lighthearted and joyful as soon as we stopped the pain. In the end, I chose to dedicate a significant portion of the course to viewpoint #2 above – that is, helping people to heal and feel free regardless of whether or not pain is present.
The same goes for managing painful thoughts and emotions. When Briana and I were writing Freedom, a workbook to help people move through these thoughts and feelings more smoothly, we asked ourselves do we want people to simply release them and get on with their day or do we want to help them understand the deeper roots of these thoughts and feelings so they can know themselves and heal more deeply? I’ve heard cognitive behavioral therapists make a strong case for the former, saying, “You simply need to learn to modify your thoughts – and your relationship to them – as they come up. We don’t need to talk about your childhood.” A Freudian psychoanalyst would probably say the opposite.
For us, the answer again was both. Sometimes – especially if we’re currently scheduled to be doing something other than self-maintenance – there isn’t time or space to do the deeper processing, and we just need a quick and efficient way to release infringing thoughts and emotions. But it’s also worth making the time to delve into the bigger, more fundamental work, because if we can heal our deepest wounds we’re likely to have a great reduction in disturbing thoughts and the need to manage them.
In what ways do you tend to think in black-and-white terms?
Where has your thinking been polarized?
How has your identity been shaped by your positions?
How do you feel when you have a fixed position about something or someone? Can you perceive both the appealing feeling of “rightness” (or even self-righteousness) and the edgy feeling that comes from an inability to allow for opposing viewpoints?
What comes up when you consider opening yourself to opposing points of view? Can you feel the stretch of it? Can you also feel the relief that would come from relinquishing the need to have the answers or to be right?
Wishing you peace, perspective, and lots of ANDs,
Peter
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[post_content] => In this video, Briana explains why self-love is so vitally important, and shares some easy practices you can use fall more deeply in love with yourself and protect your heart from your own inner critic.
[post_title] => Conversations with Briana: Self-Love
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Once upon a time, I was finishing an intake with a new patient and I semi-jokingly asked her, “Is there anything else I should know before I stick needles in you?”
“Yes,” she replied, “I don’t have a second chakra. An intuitive healer told me so.” I was living in Portland and I remember thinking this exchange would have been perfect for a scene in Portlandia.
But she seemed genuinely concerned about it. Imagine where your mind might go if someone you trusted told you, “Everyone has a set of vital energy centers. They’re thought to be instrumental to your health, happiness, expression, and spiritual growth. And you’re missing one of them.”
I was reminded of this conversation when a friend told me of a similar experience last week. She had taken her daughter to get a massage, and at the end of the treatment the therapist stated that he had picked up important information about the girl which he felt compelled to share. According to his intuition, her daughter had some significant internal and developmental health issues. However, he didn’t quite know what they were or what could be done about them.
I’ve been on the receiving end of similar comments myself. I once visited a Chinese massage therapist to see if he could help my tension headaches. After working on my back and neck, he felt my pulse and gave me a grave look as he spoke the only five English words of our session: “Your lungs are very weak.”
Another time, I bumped into a woman at a party who looked familiar. It turned out she was a cashier at a little organic co-op where I often picked up a morning snack. She said, “Hey, you’re that afraid guy!”
“Excuse me?” I said, feeling very confused.
“A bunch of us watch you come into the store and you barely say anything,” she explained. “We talk about how you’re too terrified to speak. We’re like, ‘Here’s the fear guy’ when you come in. What are you so afraid of?” She looked well-meaning but smug. The idea that I didn’t make more small talk because I was full of fear felt completely off the mark to me.
I recall not hiding my displeasure well and I said something like, “I’m flattered that you’re all so concerned, but I think you’ve misread me.” However, I couldn’t help thinking, Am I unknowingly giving off some kind of fearful vibe? – just as I also fretted, Is there something wrong with my lungs? My friend had a similar reaction. Despite having always thought of her kid as healthy and robust, she’s now wondering if she should get her specialized medical testing. And the woman I mentioned at the beginning was worried about the problems that might result from lacking a second chakra.
I think it’s great for people to develop and utilize their intuition, but I also think it’s important to practice what Buddhists call right speech or sammā-vācā. The scriptures of Hinduism, Buddhism, and other religions include instructions on when and how to speak in a way that contributes positively. These instructions can be pretty well summed up by three succinct questions that were taught by Rev. James Haldane Stewart (1778-1854) to be asked of oneself before speaking: Is it true? It is kind? Is it necessary?1
If the practitioners and cashier mentioned above had sincerely asked themselves the first question before sharing, they may have concluded that they didn’t really know for certain that their hunches were true. And then, no one would have heard anything about a missing chakra or weak lungs.2 However, they might have responded, “Well, it feels true to me,” which brings us to the next questions.
Is it kind? There’s a bit of personal discretion in determining what’s kind. When the intuitive healer decided to tell the woman she had no second chakra, perhaps he thought, “This is kind because it will enable her to get the help she needs,” or, “This is kind because she can understand herself better with this information.” However, without providing any solution or direction, it wasn’t kind – and that goes for all the other cases above, too.
Finally, is it necessary? Does the other person need to know what we might say? One could argue that all sorts of harmful communications are necessary, but if we’re really honest with ourselves about this criterion, most are not.
Of the three questions, this one could be unnecessarily restrictive if we were to apply it robotically. Of course, it’s not necessary to deliver a compliment or to express one’s awe at the beauty of the snow, so this leads us to a fourth useful question (of unknown origin, but often attributed to Indian holy man Shirdi Sai Baba): Does it improve upon the silence? Again, it’s a matter of personal opinion, but if we were to consider before opening our mouth, “Is this likely to degrade or enhance the atmosphere?” it’s not too difficult to predict.
For people who are reasonably self-aware, there’s a single question that gets to the root of all four of the above. Before you say something that’s likely to have an impact on another: what is your purpose?
Is your purpose to help? To cause pain? To impress? To prove something? To provoke conflict? To connect? To love? I would guess that part of the purpose – if not the sole purpose – behind all the questionable communications discussed above was to appear magical or unusually insightful in order to gain power, respect, or approval.
I’ve focused on these cases because of how often I’ve encountered people who seem to believe that having a feeling about someone means their interpretation is true and must be shared. But of course, these aren’t the only kinds of communications that are made for less-than-noble purposes.
In looking at my own poor communications, I’ve realized that my most common offense is to crack jokes that aren’t funny or appropriate. My purpose has been mainly to generate warmth between me and the other person (usually my wife) or to bring lightness to the atmosphere. When I’ve failed at this purpose, it’s often been because I was actually serving a secret, ulterior purpose: to make myself feel comfortable. When I’m committed to a purpose of fostering warmth and lightness, it goes differently. There may still be jokes – eventually – but I have to begin with a willingness to be totally present for the other person – even if it’s uncomfortable.
I encourage you to try this over the coming week:
- Bring more attention to the things you say to others. Just notice your words and the energy behind them.
- Try to perceive the impact your words have. These first two steps can teach you SO much.
- See if you can pause before you speak – even if just for one second. In this space there’s a moment to align yourself – a moment to make sure the words match your true intention. You could ask yourself, “Is it true? Is it kind? Is it necessary?” or the simpler “What is my purpose?” But even if you forget to do this, try to still practice step 2 – perceive the impact of your words. If it’s not a favorable impact, you can still ask yourself if your words were true, kind, and necessary, and you can retrospectively figure out what purpose you were serving by speaking as you did.
If you’re on the receiving end of a communication that feels unproductive (or worse), you can try asking, “What’s your purpose?” Not everyone can receive that question and give you a heartfelt response, but it can serve as an opening to a more authentic exchange (which should also include being responsible for your own feelings and interpretations).
As I tried to express earlier in this article, sometimes we can allow others’ perceptions of us to affect us even if they have no qualifications and even if we don’t really care what they think. A simple statement like, “Are you feeling run down?” or “You seem to be carrying around a lot of anger,” can get your mind spinning and cause you to feel something’s wrong.
Remind yourself that people project their feelings on each other all the time and people are simply wrong a lot. If someone is intuitive enough to pick up something really important, hopefully they’re also intuitive enough to recognize how it would affect you to tell you this information.
Finally, when someone tells you something about yourself, it’s useful to run it through your own intuition. Does it feel true to you? If you have trouble accessing your intuition, I recommend you join my wife’s group, Love Rising. She helps people develop this faculty.
In this age of “fake news,” social media, and presidential communications being made via Twitter, it’s more vital than ever that we practice discernment with what’s coming in and we become clear about our intentions before we speak.
Be well,
Dr. Peter Borten
_____________
- These three questions have also been (probably erroneously) attributed to Rumi, Buddha, Socrates, Shirdi Sai Baba, and others – though this attribution is apparently because these teachers all had similar things to say about right speech. I haven’t been able to find proof that anyone but Stewart asked these questions in these exact words.
2. The question Is it true? can be asked on different levels. In an absolute sense, it could be argued that it’s impossible to know anything objective for certain (see The Work of Byron Katie, John Locke, etc.). This would cause one to always answer “no” to the question of truth, and to hence refrain from ever speaking again. I believe Stewart meant it in an everyday way – i.e., would most reasonable and kind people agree that it’s true? – and I think that’s sufficient for most cases.
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I saw a woman being interviewed about her opinion of Trump and Obama. She felt quite strongly that one was the devil and the other a saint. The interviewer asked why and she gave some simple reasons. Then the interviewer proposed, “What if I showed you evidence that would disprove your reasons?”
She responded, “Nothing you can say will change my mind. I don’t need any evidence to know what’s true.” Have you ever felt this way about a person or issue?
It’s very enticing to think in black and white terms. We like the unambiguousness of it. It’s comfortable and easy to be able to say with conviction, “This man is good, that man is bad,” or “Chemical pesticides are wrong, natural ones are right,” or “Pain is bad, pleasure is good.”
When we choose a fixed stance, it seems our work is over. There’s no need to sort through the facts. There’s no need to navigate the discomfort of possibly being wrong, or the discomfort of allowing for multiple points of view. There’s no need to stretch. The only work left to do is convince others who don’t share our point of view that they’re wrong.
Every fixed point of view bolsters the ego. Each time we marry our identity to a position, we form a more rigid sense of who we are (and aren’t). Even though there’s a certain kind of peace in choosing a fixed stance, there’s also an innate conflict. We feel compelled to block out or reject any experience or information that doesn’t fit with our position. This fragments us, restricts our freedom, and prevents an authentic, unmanipulated experience of life.
I’m as attracted to polarized positions as the next guy, but I’ve seen too many times that they’re not good for me – or my relationships. Besides the various forms of personal suffering that black-and-white thinking causes, it’s a major impediment to creating community, solving big problems, and fixing the social divisions that make our country so disunited.
For those interested in recovering from this habit, a willingness to be wrong is a good start – yet, it’s often a difficult concession for us because there’s some truth to our position. It’s usually less painful – and closer to the truth – to recognize that we’re not wrong, we’re just not entirely right. That is, we’re focused on a thin sliver of reality and mistake that to be the whole.
It’s like the old parable about the blind men feeling the different parts of an elephant and describing what kind of animal it is. One feels the elephant’s trunk and says, “This animal is like a thick snake.” Another, who is touching the elephant’s ear, disagrees: “No, it’s more like a fan.” One touches its leg and says an elephant must be like the trunk of a tree. Another touches the tail and says elephants are like a piece of rope.
When we practice openness and humility, we discover a greater need for the word and. Is the truth this way or that way? The answer is almost always YES. This way and that way. Both.
This practice asks us to stretch in order to make room for a reality that’s broader than we thought – and stretching can be uncomfortable – but it also brings peace through the recognition that we don’t know everything, we can’t know everything, and therefore we can let ourselves off the hook of needing to know everything.
I’d like to explore polarized positions on two subjects that are near and dear to my heart – managing the wayward mind and managing pain.
When it comes to managing the mind, the most common polarized positions I encounter are: (1) We should exert discipline over the mind, learn to control it, more intentionally choose the contents of our thoughts, perhaps even stop its meanderings entirely. (2) The mind is an incessant stream of chattering that doesn’t need to be controlled or judged; freedom comes from witnessing it impartially, noticing how it works, learning not to automatically give our attention to its content (thoughts), and ultimately transcending it.
Which is right? In my opinion this is a perfect time for the word and. It doesn’t need to be one or the other. Both are valid and true. It is possible to stop thinking. We can make the mind more peaceful, we can think more optimistic thoughts. AND without attempting to modify the way we think, we can learn to witness the mind, to be unmoved by violent or fearful thoughts, and to let awareness itself begin to displace the ego as the driver of this life.
When it comes to managing pain, two opposing positions I encounter are: (1) Get rid of it. Pain sucks and rarely has a useful purpose. (2) Pain is an opportunity – to expand, to be empowered, to know ourselves, to heal old wounds, etc. If we get rid of it without exploring it, we may miss an important chance to grow and heal.
Which is right? What should we do? AND to the rescue! When I began constructing my online course, Live Pain Free, I started by making a long list of all the strategies I could think of for eliminating pain. Then I thought of the people I’ve known who weren’t able to get rid of their pain – because, for instance, it was due to an inoperable tumor pressing on a nerve – but were able to achieve freedom despite the constant presence of pain. I thought of patients who have used their pain as an impetus for unraveling trauma and years of unhealthy patterning. And I also thought of patients in pain who were angry, depressed, or fearful, who became lighthearted and joyful as soon as we stopped the pain. In the end, I chose to dedicate a significant portion of the course to viewpoint #2 above – that is, helping people to heal and feel free regardless of whether or not pain is present.
The same goes for managing painful thoughts and emotions. When Briana and I were writing Freedom, a workbook to help people move through these thoughts and feelings more smoothly, we asked ourselves do we want people to simply release them and get on with their day or do we want to help them understand the deeper roots of these thoughts and feelings so they can know themselves and heal more deeply? I’ve heard cognitive behavioral therapists make a strong case for the former, saying, “You simply need to learn to modify your thoughts – and your relationship to them – as they come up. We don’t need to talk about your childhood.” A Freudian psychoanalyst would probably say the opposite.
For us, the answer again was both. Sometimes – especially if we’re currently scheduled to be doing something other than self-maintenance – there isn’t time or space to do the deeper processing, and we just need a quick and efficient way to release infringing thoughts and emotions. But it’s also worth making the time to delve into the bigger, more fundamental work, because if we can heal our deepest wounds we’re likely to have a great reduction in disturbing thoughts and the need to manage them.
In what ways do you tend to think in black-and-white terms?
Where has your thinking been polarized?
How has your identity been shaped by your positions?
How do you feel when you have a fixed position about something or someone? Can you perceive both the appealing feeling of “rightness” (or even self-righteousness) and the edgy feeling that comes from an inability to allow for opposing viewpoints?
What comes up when you consider opening yourself to opposing points of view? Can you feel the stretch of it? Can you also feel the relief that would come from relinquishing the need to have the answers or to be right?
Wishing you peace, perspective, and lots of ANDs,
Peter
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)
[comment_count] => 0
[current_comment] => -1
[found_posts] => 61
[max_num_pages] => 2
[max_num_comment_pages] => 0
[is_single] =>
[is_preview] =>
[is_page] =>
[is_archive] => 1
[is_date] =>
[is_year] =>
[is_month] =>
[is_day] =>
[is_time] =>
[is_author] =>
[is_category] => 1
[is_tag] =>
[is_tax] =>
[is_search] =>
[is_feed] =>
[is_comment_feed] =>
[is_trackback] =>
[is_home] =>
[is_privacy_policy] =>
[is_404] =>
[is_embed] =>
[is_paged] =>
[is_admin] =>
[is_attachment] =>
[is_singular] =>
[is_robots] =>
[is_favicon] =>
[is_posts_page] =>
[is_post_type_archive] =>
[query_vars_hash:WP_Query:private] => 6cc49ef4bc106a045d4174c852b8d81b
[query_vars_changed:WP_Query:private] =>
[thumbnails_cached] =>
[stopwords:WP_Query:private] =>
[compat_fields:WP_Query:private] => Array
(
[0] => query_vars_hash
[1] => query_vars_changed
)
[compat_methods:WP_Query:private] => Array
(
[0] => init_query_flags
[1] => parse_tax_query
)
)
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