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[post_content] => One
of the greatest sources of pain I’ve witnessed during the pandemic is the perception of restricted freedom. There have been some measurable restrictions on our freedoms, like the freedom to gather in large groups, the freedom to enter stores without a mask on, or the freedom to have an open business. There have been some virtual restrictions too, like the freedom to do everyday activities – touching your face, hugging people, shopping, etc. – without the worry of contracting a serious disease.
We have control over some aspects of the hardships of pandemic life but not others; I’d like to address what we can control. In my opinion, the majority of this pain comes from illusions of constraint. And one of the main ways we perpetuate such illusions is through judgment.
There are micro-judgments and macro-judgments. They’re not really different, but the macro judgments tend to be bigger, more conscious stances you’ve taken on people, events, issues, etc. If someone were to ask what you think about Donald Trump or Star Trek or cilantro, your judgments would probably be evident. Micro-judgments are harder to see and generally harder to change since they’re part of the fundamental nature of the mind, they’re happening constantly, and they’re often subconscious. The mind labels and judges as good or bad nearly everything we experience.
“This habit of categorizing and judging our experience locks us into automatic reactions that we are not even aware of and that often have no objective basis at all,” writes Jon Kabat-Zinn in Full Catastrophe Living. “These judgments tend to dominate our minds, making it difficult for us ever to find any peace within ourselves or to develop any discernment as to what may actually be going on, inwardly or outwardly.”
We’re rarely aware of how much we judge and how this impacts us. For each thing we judge as bad there tends to be some form of closing, aversion, or resistance. We might experience this as a subtle (or not so subtle) bodily feeling of tension. The judgmental thought might give rise to other contractive thoughts such as: No. I don’t like it. I’m not that way. That’s not fair. Life / the world shouldn’t be this way. This is wrong / bad. I can’t tolerate this. To the extent that these judgments fill our consciousness (and go unchallenged) we experience that much less freedom.
Even the things we judge as good can spur a similar kind of constraint as subconscious thoughts arise like: I want it always to be like this. I don’t want this to end. Why can’t it always be this way? What’s wrong with me that I’m not enjoying this as much as I think I should? Thus, even encounters with things we like can have a contractive effect on us when judgment takes hold and we give ourselves over to it.
When it comes to our experience of freedom, imagined restrictions might as well be metal shackles.
The good news is that our judgments can be challenged, transcended, or compassionately witnessed without letting them influence us. The bad news is that this takes work and most of us are in the lazy habit of letting our mind run the show.
My mentor Matt Garrigan used to say, “You are not your mind. You have a mind.” Like so many spiritual truths, it’s basically worthless as an intellectual concept to chew on. It only works when you start living it, and then it’s life changing.
You might begin with an openness to the possibility that what your mind has to say is neither true nor important. But most minds will argue strongly against not being the center of your attention, so it’s often best to lead with awareness itself rather than thoughts about thoughts. You just sit, breathe naturally, and watch your thoughts – many of them judgments – come and go. If you don’t attach to them, don’t engage with them, don’t try to stop them, don’t judge them, and don’t resist them, you eventually begin to experience that you are not your mind. And this is freedom.
It’s often called cultivating the witness state. I like to call it practicing innocence.
The basis for making judgments is the assumption that we know. If we’re going to judge every facet of life, we must believe we’re qualified to do so, and this feeds our sense of self-importance and inflates the ego, making it all the more judgy.
Innocence is relinquishing our position as judge, admitting we may not have the qualifications, and being open to a reality that we haven’t predefined for ourselves.
Innocence doesn’t imply naivety, and non-judgment isn’t a lack of discernment. In fact, it’s only when we drop all our prejudices that we’re able to see the truth. If anything, it’s naïve to always think we already know. It’s arrogant to believe we can hear the truth if we only listen to our own inner commentary. And it’s foolhardy to put more stock in our mind – a device we created – than in pure experience.
When we’re scared or stressed it’s more difficult to practice innocence, and we can get even more judgy than usual. Right now there’s a lot of judgment about whether people are wearing masks or not, about social distancing, about how everyone is dealing with racism, about the great uncertainty of the future. I invite all of us to notice these judgments, to take a deep breath, and to let them go for now. Can you feel the slight increase in "breathing room" that happens? Imagine how much freer you’d be if you released judgments all the time and the habit of automatically believing them began to disappear.
What’s your experience with judgment and innocence? What happens when you let your inner judge direct you? What happens when you just notice these judgments and your reactions to them? Who are you when you expand into that Awareness that witnesses and contains the mind? Share with our community in the comments section below.
Be well,
Peter
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When my wife was a teenager, her stepmother one day advised her that if she didn’t have anything nice to say to someone, she could instead try saying, thank you. Not long thereafter, my wife directed some teenage angst at her stepmom, who got red in the face and responded, “Thank you!” before exiting the room.
At Thanksgiving, I’m reminded of the many flavors of gratitude and the interesting power of the words thank you. These words come up with kind of an unusual frequency in our household, and it’s not because we don’t have anything nice to say to each other.
A major contributor to the rise of thank yous in our home is the fact that my wife and I have been trying for the past few years to teach them to our four year old daughter. She’s at an age when saying thank you is not yet natural. It’s a behavior to be memorized and executed habitually so that your parents don’t get fussy. On Halloween I had to keep reminding her, “There are just two things you need to remember to say – ‘trick or treat’ and ‘thank you.’”
I catch myself sometimes flashing a sheepish look at generous adults as I prompt her with, “What do you say, Sailor?” Later I might tell her, “I don’t want to have to keep reminding you to say thank you.” But that’s not really the way I want to teach her the specialness of these words. I don’t want her to say thank you out of guilt. I don’t want her to say it just because it’s polite. I don’t want her to learn that a steady stream of thank yous is the way to avoid any disruption to the process of gift unwrapping or trick-or-treating.
I want her to say it because she feels it.
When thank you issues from your heart because you feel gratitude, the last thing on your mind is what effect it might have on the other person. It seems a misuse of these words to hope to get something – even better rapport – in return for saying them. On the other hand, it seems silly to reserve them just for special occasions, unless you recognize that your day is full of them.
Sometimes a more calculated use of thank you can still feel earnest, such as when you encounter difficulties. Maybe it doesn’t arise spontaneously when things don’t go the way you want them to. Perhaps thank you is the last sentiment on your mind when, for instance, you find out you’re going to miss a day of your vacation because of a booking error. Instead, maybe you’re thinking, this sucks.
But, the smooth flow of life proceeds by some fairly binary rules. There’s acceptance and resistance, yes and no. Whether we think, this sucks, or, this isn’t what I wanted, or, this isn’t fair, or simply, no, we resist the reality of things, we generate struggle, friction, and conflict. I’m not saying we shouldn’t allow ourselves to think and feel these things (because, of course, that would be saying no on another level). But, this attitude is the equivalent of paddling against the current. What if we just get back into the flow and utilize the trajectory of life, but gently steer toward a happy outcome?
When, on the other hand, we think, yes, or, I’m game, or, let’s see where this leads me, or, I’m open, or… thank you, something very different happens. Not just in our internal experience; the world actually responds differently to us. If you look an obstacle in the face and say, thank you, you deflate its power to bully you. You state your anticipation of an outcome you’ll be grateful for. This Thanksgiving, why not try saying thank you not just for the good stuff, but for the challenges, too.
Thank you – for everything,
Peter and Briana Borten and everyone at The Dragontree
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Over the past several weeks, we’ve been looking at the factors that make for a longer, richer, more alive life.: (1) Loving life and living for the present (2) Working, stretching, and relaxing all parts of yourself (3) Dancing with consciousness (4) Reducing media consumption (5) Paying attention to your breathing (6) Eating less (7) Prioritizing community and service (8) Exchanging love and touch. You can read more about all these topics on our blog (there’s a lot more to them than the list you just read!). Today I’ll add a couple more items to the list.
#9: Optimize Your Sleep.
There are people who live long lives but don’t sleep well or much, but they tend to be outliers. Virtually everyone lives better, if not also longer, with good sleep. One of the leading causes of death has always been accidents and we’re a lot more likely to have them when we’re tired or mentally cloudy. Furthermore, when we’re well rested, we’re more likely to operate from the “evolved human” part of the brain (the prefrontal cortex) – thinking rationally and broadly. When we’re tired, we often default to the primitive “animal brain” and make decisions based on survival, pleasure-seeking, and pain-avoidance.
There’s really no substitute for adequate, replenishing sleep. If you want to learn something, you need sleep to imprint what you’re learning in a lasting way. If you want to get stronger, you need sleep to turn all that exercise and protein into muscle tissue. If you want emotional intelligence, patience, and mature communication, you need sleep in order to be non-reactive. If you want optimal performance in anything – music, chess, gymnastics, or foosball – you need sleep to recharge your nervous system. If you want to kick an infection, you need sleep to give your body a chance to do its work without demanding other things from it.
#10: Laugh More.
When I recommend laughter, I mean two things. First, just laugh more – because it’s fun and it’s good for your body and mind. Listen to stand-up comedy, share jokes, exchange tickles, join a laughing club, choose funny media over bitter. Do whatever it takes for you to have more belly laughs in your life.
Second, take a light-hearted attitude toward life. And death. In my opinion, there’s nothing that can’t be laughed at. I don’t mean derisive, mean-spirited laughter. I mean the laughter that comes from the recognition that life is funny, that there is humor in everything – including the seriousness in which so many of us hold everything. And I also mean delighted laughter – the laughter that arises from simply paying attention to how much beauty, magic, and profundity there is.
Which leads us to…
#11: Keep Your Heart Open.
It’s a natural but unfortunate impulse to close our hearts when life is unpleasant – like raising our arms to shield ourselves against an incoming attack. What I mean by “closing our heart” is a subtle contraction around the center of the chest that occurs on multiple levels simultaneously – physical, emotional, and energetic.
We do this as an instinctive act of self-preservation, but it becomes a habit of not feeling. Living with a closed heart is like narrowing the spectrum of reality we allow ourselves to experience. For what it’s worth, though, I don’t believe the heart only has two states – open or closed – it’s a range.
I recommend consciously living through your heart. Feel through your heart. Breathe through your heart. Listen through your heart. Keep it open even when you’re in pain, even when you’re afraid, even when you’re angry. You can do this just by intending it. Put your attention there, soften, and let it open like a flower.
Be well,
Peter
[post_title] => Three Ways to Invite More Life into Your Life
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of the greatest sources of pain I’ve witnessed during the pandemic is the perception of restricted freedom. There have been some measurable restrictions on our freedoms, like the freedom to gather in large groups, the freedom to enter stores without a mask on, or the freedom to have an open business. There have been some virtual restrictions too, like the freedom to do everyday activities – touching your face, hugging people, shopping, etc. – without the worry of contracting a serious disease.
We have control over some aspects of the hardships of pandemic life but not others; I’d like to address what we can control. In my opinion, the majority of this pain comes from illusions of constraint. And one of the main ways we perpetuate such illusions is through judgment.
There are micro-judgments and macro-judgments. They’re not really different, but the macro judgments tend to be bigger, more conscious stances you’ve taken on people, events, issues, etc. If someone were to ask what you think about Donald Trump or Star Trek or cilantro, your judgments would probably be evident. Micro-judgments are harder to see and generally harder to change since they’re part of the fundamental nature of the mind, they’re happening constantly, and they’re often subconscious. The mind labels and judges as good or bad nearly everything we experience.
“This habit of categorizing and judging our experience locks us into automatic reactions that we are not even aware of and that often have no objective basis at all,” writes Jon Kabat-Zinn in Full Catastrophe Living. “These judgments tend to dominate our minds, making it difficult for us ever to find any peace within ourselves or to develop any discernment as to what may actually be going on, inwardly or outwardly.”
We’re rarely aware of how much we judge and how this impacts us. For each thing we judge as bad there tends to be some form of closing, aversion, or resistance. We might experience this as a subtle (or not so subtle) bodily feeling of tension. The judgmental thought might give rise to other contractive thoughts such as: No. I don’t like it. I’m not that way. That’s not fair. Life / the world shouldn’t be this way. This is wrong / bad. I can’t tolerate this. To the extent that these judgments fill our consciousness (and go unchallenged) we experience that much less freedom.
Even the things we judge as good can spur a similar kind of constraint as subconscious thoughts arise like: I want it always to be like this. I don’t want this to end. Why can’t it always be this way? What’s wrong with me that I’m not enjoying this as much as I think I should? Thus, even encounters with things we like can have a contractive effect on us when judgment takes hold and we give ourselves over to it.
When it comes to our experience of freedom, imagined restrictions might as well be metal shackles.
The good news is that our judgments can be challenged, transcended, or compassionately witnessed without letting them influence us. The bad news is that this takes work and most of us are in the lazy habit of letting our mind run the show.
My mentor Matt Garrigan used to say, “You are not your mind. You have a mind.” Like so many spiritual truths, it’s basically worthless as an intellectual concept to chew on. It only works when you start living it, and then it’s life changing.
You might begin with an openness to the possibility that what your mind has to say is neither true nor important. But most minds will argue strongly against not being the center of your attention, so it’s often best to lead with awareness itself rather than thoughts about thoughts. You just sit, breathe naturally, and watch your thoughts – many of them judgments – come and go. If you don’t attach to them, don’t engage with them, don’t try to stop them, don’t judge them, and don’t resist them, you eventually begin to experience that you are not your mind. And this is freedom.
It’s often called cultivating the witness state. I like to call it practicing innocence.
The basis for making judgments is the assumption that we know. If we’re going to judge every facet of life, we must believe we’re qualified to do so, and this feeds our sense of self-importance and inflates the ego, making it all the more judgy.
Innocence is relinquishing our position as judge, admitting we may not have the qualifications, and being open to a reality that we haven’t predefined for ourselves.
Innocence doesn’t imply naivety, and non-judgment isn’t a lack of discernment. In fact, it’s only when we drop all our prejudices that we’re able to see the truth. If anything, it’s naïve to always think we already know. It’s arrogant to believe we can hear the truth if we only listen to our own inner commentary. And it’s foolhardy to put more stock in our mind – a device we created – than in pure experience.
When we’re scared or stressed it’s more difficult to practice innocence, and we can get even more judgy than usual. Right now there’s a lot of judgment about whether people are wearing masks or not, about social distancing, about how everyone is dealing with racism, about the great uncertainty of the future. I invite all of us to notice these judgments, to take a deep breath, and to let them go for now. Can you feel the slight increase in "breathing room" that happens? Imagine how much freer you’d be if you released judgments all the time and the habit of automatically believing them began to disappear.
What’s your experience with judgment and innocence? What happens when you let your inner judge direct you? What happens when you just notice these judgments and your reactions to them? Who are you when you expand into that Awareness that witnesses and contains the mind? Share with our community in the comments section below.
Be well,
Peter
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