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The Stress Test Response
Well, I have become quite skeptical of this ‘exorcism’ approach to mental health. You may need to talk about some things you haven’t talked about. Other things you may not need to talk about. I’ll leave that up to you. But it seems to me that the ‘underlying issue’ if indeed there is one, is anxiety – commonly called stress. The word ‘stress’ makes it sound like something outside of you is causing it, while the word ‘anxiety’ sounds a bit more like something you’ve created for yourself. Again, I don’t plan to address the ‘why’ or the source of the worry. Enough ink has been spent on that topic, I believe. I’d rather talk about what we can do about it. There are drugs, of course. From alcohol to Valium, and from marijuana to heroin these all come with a wide variety of side effects, challenges, and dangers, but I won’t be discussing these either. Suffice it to say that you pay a price for dealing with anxiety this way. The price depends on the substance, and on how well you follow doctor’s orders. For at least the last 2,500 years, however, there has been an alternative method for dealing with stress. There are many ways to put this method into practice, so I will call the overall category Mindfulness. Another way to say it is, “Mindfulness Awareness Practice.” This practice is the process of becoming more aware of what is going on in the present moment. Why should we become more aware of what is going on in the present moment? The simplest reason is that it is much more difficult to worry about what has already happened in the past, or to fret about what may happen, but has not yet happened in the future, if we succeed in placing our attention firmly on the present. In the present, we may very well find, there is actually not so much to worry about most of the time. No, no! I saw you slipping away. That was worry about the future, not the present! We also find that it is not so easy to stay in the present. We want to drift ahead, drift back, or prefer-ably, in the year 2007, we want to be distracted with something altogether different. A movie, a book, an I-Pod, a computer, a newspaper, a radio program… anything but reality. We don’t want to face reality. We seem to be afraid of ourselves. Afraid of the moment. Afraid of what is happen-ing right here, and right now. So there are some practices we can engage in, to increase our ability to take advantage of the present moment. After all, if we don’t pay attention to what’s happening now, we miss huge chunks of our own lives! The first method is called Meditation. But we’ll talk about it in more detail in the next segment. For now, just try to stop occasion-ally. Just stop wherever you are, what ever you’re doing. Look around. Look at everything. Notice the sounds you hear when you are quiet and still. Notice the smells. Just be there for a minute or two. Then, when you start back up, try to hold on to a little bit of that curiosity, that noticing. Notice more while you go. A little later, stop again. Notice your breathing. Notice how pleasant it is, right here in the present, with nothing to worry about! Another Step There is a difference between thinking and doing. Our culture errs on the side of thinking and knowledge. We want to figure things out, so that we know what to do. We have benefited a great deal from our ability to think, and to figure things out. All of the technological advances, peaceful ways of governing, laws, rules, and a certain kind of understanding of the natural world we live in are all benefits of our ability to think. As a result we tend to act on our thoughts fairly quickly. Playing a video game, driving a car, thinking about being hungry. We have the thought, and we act on it. I believe there are evolutionary reasons why we are so good at acting quickly on our thoughts. The ones who took their time to decide if they were seeing a lion or a bush? Those are the ones that didn’t make it. We are the ones whose feet were moving even as our head got the faintest notion of the possibility of lion. So we naturally come by our tendency to act on our thoughts. But automatically acting on our thoughts, even believing our own thoughts can cause us a lot of misery. Do we react negatively when someone criticizes us? Do we treat someone differently because of how we think about them? When we have a thought such as “I am lonely”,“I am sad”, or “I am angry” do we hold onto that thought and let it guide our actions? We have a long history that teaches us to honor all of these thoughts, and act on every single one of them. The reality is, however, that thoughts come and go. Feelings come and go. You’ve seen a young child try to “hang on” to the feeling of being upset, long after the true feeling has passed? It becomes a sort of habit. A habit to hang on to things we have felt… long after the reality of the feeling has gone. Hanging on to thoughts and feelings can cause misery, regardless of whether they are good thoughts, or bad thoughts. We have a happy time, and then later we think of it often, and wish we could have that time again. Meanwhile, we are not paying any attention to what is really happening in the present. We miss out on our lives by ‘hanging on’ to thoughts and feelings that are no longer true. What can we do? We have noticed that when we try to hang on to good thoughts, or hang on to bad thoughts, we miss what is happening right now. We notice that whenever we try to control our thoughts, we may be setting ourselves up for a bad time. What about that wonderful Christmas, that one time? Do we try to make those thoughts and feelings come back, on cue, every December 12th? How well does that work? What sort of misery do we create for ourselves by trying to dictate which thoughts we have, and when we have them? What can we do? There is a practice that was begun about 2,500 years ago, that has nothing to do with religion. It is a practice that was developed as an answer to the question I have described up to this point. It is an answer to what we can do to avoid the misery that we create by trying to control our thoughts. The practice can be called mindfulness. It is a practice of focusing our attention on the present moment, and letting go of everything else. Sitting quietly in a stable position, not reclining, but sitting straight up in a solid dining room type of chair, we place our hands on our knees. We are solid. We are ready to begin. We focus on the air that is coming in and going out of our bodies. We enjoy the feeling of the breathing; coming in, going out. We smile just a little bit, in gratitude for the solidity of this moment. Breathing. Smiling. Noticing the breath, all the way in, and all the way out. We try counting our breathing. Breathing in, one. Breathing out, one. Breathing in, two. Breathing out, two. Continuous focus on the air coming in and out as we count. We count all the way up to ten, then go back down to 9, then 8, and so on. Somewhere in there we notice that we forgot to count. Or that we have counted to 15, instead of stopping at 10. We went on “autopilot” the same way as when we are driving, and our car takes us to our driveway, when we intended to stop at the grocery store. Some governmental bodies are considering making a law against crossing a street while wearing an IPod, because so many people are dying from not paying attention. “When did I make those turns?” “What color was that traffic light I just passed?” “When did I stop paying attention?” But the point is not to feel bad because we failed to pay attention. The point is that in the midst of this process, we have stepped aside a little bit from our own thoughts. We are seeing that thoughts are just thoughts, and that they come and they go. What is really happening is a person, sitting solidly in a chair, enjoying their breathing, smiling at the thoughts as they come and go. They are just thoughts, after all. Me? I have everything I need, in the here and now, enjoying my breathing. Right now, just for this moment, everything is ok. Isn’t it? Sitting, Walking More and more scientific studies are being done that are showing the benefits of mindfulness meditation. Improved health, delayed onset of Alzheimer’s. Reduced anxiety. Improved healing of psoriasis (four times faster than those not meditating). So it is an effect technique that people have been using for a long time. But it is a bit difficult for us to understand, because it is very difficult from normal things we do to get better. Exercise: work hard and get a benefit. Academics: study hard and learn. Medicine: take a pill or have an operation and things will be better. Will they? We live in a world of causes and results. Linear. One thing causes one other thing. And we can understand it that way. “Sit up straight” because it’s good for you. But now we know that slightly reclining is better for the back. We have lately been hearing a lot about things that were supposedly good for us, that are actually bad for us, and vice versa. It is confusing. We thought we knew how the world worked. It is because there is more than one cause for each event. Everything is a cause of everything else. I look at this piece of paper, and if I look deeply, I know that rain, earth, air, and many other elements went into the tree that the paper is made from. The paper is made up entirely of non-paper elements. So the world is more complex, richer and deeper than the scientists thought at first. This is how sitting still for 10 minutes to 45 minutes each day can be good for us, even if we don’t notice right away that we feel better. This is not magic. It is simply stopping and taking time to recalibrate our minds and our bodies to what is really happening, not the story in our head. Human beings are capable of paying more attention to the memories or dreams in our minds than we pay to what is really happening. Coming back to what is real turns out to be very good for us, if we practice it on a regular basis. We might notice right away how pleasant it is to let go of being busy for a time. Sitting and noticing that we don’t have to act on the thoughts that say “Get up and do something! Now!” (Do you have those thoughts?) Noticing how nice it is to smile quietly and enjoy our breathing. Noticing that everything is just fine right now. We get a break from striving, fixing, polishing, reading, writing, watching, watching, watching, the TV, driving the car, talking, talking, talking on the telephone. Try, for a minute, right now. Just stop, and enjoy breathing in and out three times. I will wait. You may close your eyes. Very nice practice. You can enjoy this any time. Here is another. After sitting still for about 15-20 minutes, some of us start to hurt. So what we can do is walking meditation. Before we were paying attention to just our breathing, and of course, watching our thoughts come, and when we notice, letting go of the thoughts and coming back to our breathing. Now, we are going to slowly walk, and coordinate the walking with our breathing. Inside, you can walk in a circle. Each step is one breath, either in or out. So you will see this is very slow. Some prefer this to sitting, as there is more to focus on. It doesn’t matter how you walk, but try to take a step for each breath. Outside, it works better to take three steps per breath, as it is very hard to go so slow outside. Remember, we are not going anywhere, we are just walking. When are we ever really going anywhere? We are always just here. And it is very nice to be here. Sitting and breathing, letting go of thoughts and stories and feelings that our brain keeps making for us. Just enjoying being present. Walking slowly, in circles or back and forth, not trying to get anywhere, but just enjoying breathing, and walking. Until you spend a few weeks doing this every day, you might have to believe me when I tell you that there is a peacefulness, a connection with nature and other people that comes over us when we do this. There is a feeling – a very natural feeling, that we are a small piece of the puzzle. We are like one of the birds in a flock, or one of the ants busily doing something very important. We are a beautiful part of a beautiful world, but we are not the center of it. Our troubles are not as important as we thought. Perhaps our successes are not quite so important either. But everything is ok, right here and right now. Breathing in, I enjoy breathing in. Breathing out, I smile, because I belong to a big, beautiful, breathing and smiling world. I can practice this way for as much of my life as I want. I can walk mindfully always, if I want. I can eat mindfully, noticing the taste and texture of the food, not just letting it slide by. I can appreciate as many of my breaths as I want to. I can show up for my life, or I can try to avoid it. Accepting reality, I can make good decisions based on what I value. Being calm, I can move forward, doing things that are important to me, and perhaps important to others. Letting go of automatic thinking, I can decide to do things on purpose. And for a short while each day, I may just decide to do nothing – appreciating my breathing, and my chance for a place, for a while, on this planet. Guidance on Talking and Listening Listen carefully to my words; let this be the consolation you give me. (Job 21:2) “Aware of the suffering caused by unmindful speech and the inability to listen to others, I am committed to cultivating loving speech and deep listening in order to bring joy and happiness to others and relieve others of their suffering. Knowing that words can create happiness or suffering, I am determined to speak truthfully, with words that inspire self-confidence, joy, and hope. I will not spread news that I do not know to be certain and will not criticize or condemn things of which I am not sure. I will refrain from uttering words that can cause division or discord, or that can cause the family or the community to break. I am determined to make all efforts to reconcile and resolve all conflicts, however small.” These are words from Thich Nhat Hanh’s book For a Future To Be Possible. (Berkeley: Parallax Press, 1998.) It is possible to make other people very happy, simply by paying attention, and listening to what they say. But in order to listen, we first must make a space between our talking, and other activities. Truly listening and speaking with loving kindness is difficult because often we are watching TV, playing a video game, reading, or busily doing something. In order to listen and speak lovingly, we must first learn to stop. Stopping is the first part of meditation. After 'stopping' ourselves by concentrating on our breath, or a verse, or a guided meditation, sometimes the thoughts we become aware of can be of importance. Once we are stopped, we are ready to observe our thoughts, the world around us, and especially, the speech and actions of others. When we listen we listen mindfully, paying attention to nothing else. When we speak we tell just the truth. Not a lie, and not a dramatization, such as exaggerating our hurts and wounded feelings in a self-centered way. We speak consistently, not telling different people different versions of our story. And we do not use abusive or ugly language that can cause pain, or unnecessary alarm. Only by mindfully listening and speaking with our hearts full of love can we be truly connected to each other, and relieve each other's suffering. Some use the words quoted above as an affirmation, to be re-read from time to time, reminding us of some valuable spiritual principles. A Prayer Process for Opening Our Hearts There is a prayer process that we can use to open our hearts, to help ourselves become more open to listening to the words and feelings of others. Here is the process. We first quiet ourselves, sitting quietly and becoming aware of our breathing. Then we focus on the idea of sending out love to someone who we love a great deal. Just breathing, and sending love out to someone we really care about. Then we subtly shift our prayer, sending out the same love, but sending it to someone who we maybe don’t know as well; someone we don’t have strong positive feelings for, but no bad feelings either. Finally, we practice sending again the same love feelings, but sending them to someone who we dislike, or even hate. We want to practice giving out love, even to this one who we don’t like so well. Then we can remember this practice when we come across someone we think we don’t like during our daily life. Having experienced pouring out love even to one we thought we hated, we know how to feel love for everyone, and to open our hearts and our ears, even when it seems impossible. This connection in love, with one whom we hated, is a way to experience God’s love. In Matthew 5:43-48 (NRSV), Jesus said, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same! Be perfect, therefore as your heavenly Father is perfect.” |
