Zen: The Art of Nothing

As a therapist, I think the largest part of my work involves telling people that it is OK to be going through what they are going through. Our society has become so afraid, so unaccepting of negativity today that it is breaking people down.

I think one of the most extreme cases I heard recently was when a girl who had just lost her boyfriend, told me that 3 days after his death her parents told her to ‘get over it’.

We just can’t take negative emotions anymore – in ourselves or others – and want to snap out of it as quickly as possible. To make matters worse, we have all this propaganda from ‘positive thinkers’ that you choose to be miserable and that you can choose to feel better. If only.

Step 1: Reverse the Approach

Most people that come to me are grappling, trying to stop feeling so miserable and negative. The harder they try, the harder it gets. Now picture this – if you’re walking down a street and see a few stray dogs, what would be the smartest thing to do? Run? A smart person knows that running isn’t the solution. In fact, the faster you run, the more dogs will chase after you. It’s the same for negativity.

Stop trying to feel better. Let the pain come. Contrary to what you think, you will not remain depressed for the rest of your life or cry for days. That happens when you resist your pain. For once, let the pain come. Don’t resist it.

Step 2: Face It

Depression, anxiety, fear, and other ‘negative’ emotions are most commonly just a sign of a healthy mind. Of course when a person loses a job they’re going to feel afraid and unsettled. Of course when they lose someone they love they are going to feel lost and in pain. It is a sign that you are feeling. It’s natural!

What makes it permanent is our refusal to acknowledge and feel it – must like the refusal to acknowledge and handle the trash in our house, it will soon start to stink and create disease. Which is exactly what it does.

Feel, don’t Think

When we face our emotions, it is important to stay true to our feelings – not our thoughts. A thought is a programmed response to an unpleasant feeling. So whenever the mind starts going crazy, instead of trying to control the mind, ask yourself one question – ‘what am I really feeling right now?’ And feel that more deeply.

If the feelings are too intense to handle, do this.

Step 3: Be Honest

This process often works like magic. And those who have seen its effect have a strong tendency to fall into the trap of pretending to feel so that the feeling goes away. If you find yourself thinking ‘Oh I’ve been feeling my emotions for the last 2 days and I still feel miserable’, you aren’t focused on the emotion at all, you’re focused on feeling better, which is exactly the opposite of what you need to do.

Sometimes a feeling that is associated with our core identity can remain for months before it goes away for good. Sometimes the pain comes emotionally and sometimes it is physical. In either case, what you are doing is surrendering to your present moment with your full awareness. Do this honestly.

The last few years have been interesting. Whether this is due to the 2012 effect, the alignment of planets, the effect of media and electronics or none of it, many people observe that life has gotten faster, harder and emotions seem more out of control. The individual as well as collective mind seems to be undergoing an upheaval.

What’s going on?
From my perspective, it looks like a mass cleansing. It appears as if years of bottled up and suppressed emotions are being brought to the surface. While this is a nice thing in the long term, in the short term it can create a lot of disturbance.

What can we do?
As a soul, we take physical form to experiment and experience. But when we forget this fact, the incidents in life go from being an ‘interesting experience’ to a burden and a curse. As long as we resist the present moment, no matter how illogical and fearsome it may be, we create more hindrance than what is already present.

We start by telling ourselves that it is natural to go through whatever we are going through. Just like the more one struggles in water, the faster one drowns, the more one resists in life, the faster they reach a nervous breakdown.

But what if I can’t?
Most of us know about the acceptance already, don’t we? So what do we do when we’re stuck with a head overflowing with emotions?

Start with this:

If the emotions are particularly intense, then breathe quickly and forcefully for about 10 seconds, before settling into a gentle but deep breathing for 3 minutes.

Feel the emotions
When the emotions are at a manageable level, allow them to surface, and feel whatever else comes up. It helps to spend some time sitting in front of a blank wall as it allows the projections to become easier.

It is a natural response for many of us to try avoiding what we are feeling, by watching TV, surfing the internet or using some other form of activity. While this might help temporarily, it only suppresses the emotions for some time, before they come up and bother you again. If we can sit and allow ourselves to surrender to these feelings, then they will eventually pass, leaving our system clean.

Note that feeling and expressing aren’t the same thing. When you are truly immersed in feeling, you don’t have any energy left to express. It is only when you are trying to avoid the feeling, that the energy you are trying to suppress comes out as an explosive emotional outburst.

Accept it
Feelings come and go. But our conditioning causes us to judge our feelings, due to which we try suppressing them. For instance, if a mother is very angry with her child, she feels like a bad mother and tries to suppress it. This causes her frustration and even more self-directed anger, which eventually comes out on the child. Often this just becomes a pattern, as the anger she takes out on the child causes more guilt and anger.

Acceptance creates a huge space for problem solving. When in resistance, we are stuck with a thought that the only way to be happy is to make this problem go away. Acceptance opens things up and allows us to say ‘Ok, so this is where I am now. How do I make the best of this situation?’ So instead of agonizing over what you cannot do, you are focused on what you can.

My young, gifted magician friend once made the mistake of levitating in front of a bunch of kids, and life was never the same again. All the children in the apartment now believed that he could fly, and he was plagued by these kids everytime they spotted him, whether he was returning from college or out for a run. It was quite frustrating to be surrounded by a bunch of kids, pulling and twisting his arms, trying to bully him into levitating once again for them. He didn’t want to hurt them, while they had no qualms about hurting him.

I ran into him once, while he was in the midst of another of these torturous moments. He looked at me, hoping I would help somehow, but all I did was tell him to relax. “Stop resisting, let them do whatever they want”. “What!?” “Yup”. And so he let go, and within just 2 or 3 seconds, the boys ran off as if nothing had happened. It was… magic. And he was shocked at how unbelievably easy it was.

This is exactly how it is with problems. I’ve always said that problems are like quicksand, and the more you resist, the deeper you sink, but nothing could have presented this idea more lucidly than this incident. Problems exist, problems are inevitable, but what is unnecessary is the hoopla that surrounds it.

A client mentioned to me yesterday that he believed being spiritual was about feeling peace, and that meditation was about not having any thoughts. Yes, being spiritual is about having no problems in life at all – because there ARE no problems. Spiritual is an outlook – every difficulty is a challenge that enables your growth, keeps you alive. It is about being at peace with your challenges, not making a problem out of every difficulty. And meditation is about being in peace with, and being aware of your thoughts.

Again, the basic step to proceed any further would be observation and deep listening to oneself – for one cannot change an aspect of oneself unless it is first identified. Please read this article on Deep Listening, if you haven’t already done so.

Here are the common behaviors I’ve observed in myself and others, that may tend to compound an already existing problem.

Why Me?
Often the first reaction to problems that test our capabilities, is ‘why is this happening to me?’. Most of us have been brought up on a staple dose of fairy tales which taught us that good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people. Not only is this untrue, but it is a belief system that brings us considerable pain in the long run. Things just happen. The mind tries to make sense of it, tries to rationalize it and fit it into a pattern so that it can ‘protect’ itself the next time, but this is just the obsession of a confused mind, nothing else.

Chasing the solution
Once we have acknowledged a problem, there is a strong tendency to ‘fix it’. So keen are we, that we run from pillar to post, seeking a solution, often not staying long enough anywhere to really be helped. Very often we then get addicted to the chase itself, forgetting altogether that the whole purpose was to solve the problem.

It is important to accept the problem first and relax in it. If we are trying to escape the present, the future isn’t really going to get any better.

If you find yourself lost in the chase for a solution, give yourself a small time frame in which you promise yourself not to chase anything. During this time, give your complete attention to understanding the problem from all aspects, and accept the situation as it is.

How do you accept the situation? Meditate – observe your thoughts, and don’t be alarmed at your own thoughts. Accept them as the natural thoughts of any person in your position. Consider the worst case scenarios, and be mentally prepared to face them. You are strong enough, and you’ll sail through this too.

Believing its going to last forever
Nothing new here, most of us know already the phrase ‘this too shall pass’, but it becomes very hard to imagine that these bad times will clear the way for good times in the future, when you’re in the heat of the moment. It is ok if the understanding is superficial, but it still helps to be able to remind oneself of the nasty as well as the good times in the past which passed away. Nothing lasts forever.

Allowing others to convince you that you can’t handle it
Sympathy is a killer. While it feels great to have someone patronizing come and sympathize with the mess you are in, they are indirectly telling you they have no faith in your abilities to tackle the situation. And like it or not, you’re going to start believing this too. Surround yourself with people who have faith that this is not a big deal for you – not the kind that expect you to tackle the problems in the particular way, or those who feel sorry for you. If you crave the company of such people, that’s also alright, but just be aware of it and observe how you feel when you are around them.

Lastly, if the problem brings up strong emotions, then it could even be a projection of our own mind. Dealing with intense emotions, followed by creating a healing space for oneself can be quite helpful.

All roads lead to Rome. Anyone looking for God, eventually realises that there is nothing to search for, and that everything is inside.

Healing, too. One may take help from others, but eventually only one person can heal you – you.

My previous article on Healing Space was just a starter – I was exploring something new, I’m still learning. And as I learn, I realise – the most profound healing space one can provide is for oneself. As for others, a deep silence is the best thing you can offer them to assist their healing; the rest happens automatically.

So what is this healing space? In my current understanding, it is merely a complete acceptance of one’s current state. We are so conditioned by our past lives, parents and the society that we have to live by stereotypes. Among the people I meet, I see this at its worst – people trying to live upto the stereotypes of what they believe are spiritual people.

When we live with stereotypes in mind, we have a set of qualities and behaviours we expect from ourselves and people of a certain category. For example, ‘I am an honest person’, ‘I am intelligent’, ‘Spiritual people are not interested in material things’, ‘Rich people live in big houses and buy expensive things’. We classify ourselves too, and when we violate those stereotypes, there can be one of two reactions – either panic, or denial. Both are not very conducive to healing, and both lead to another problem – difficulty in loving oneself. So as you can imagine, it leads to a downward spiral, as a lack of love toward oneself further leads to panic and denial, and make more mistakes.

Let go of stereotypes. Its all ok. It is ok to be a ‘bad’ person. No matter what you do, you are still lovable. We’re taught from childhood consciously and subconsciously that actions make a person worthy of being loved. This belief prevents us from loving our dear ones as well as ourselves completely – because we perceive actions and intentions as good or bad, and judge a person from our very limited perspective. As Mahatma Gandhi used to say, ‘hate the sin, not the sinner’.

So how do we begin healing ourselves? Obviously observeration is a pre-requisite. The simplest thing is to observe ourselves when we make judgments about others. Negative judgments are always nothing but a reflection of something inside us. When we feel negatively about a person, we can try putting ourselves in their position, and ask ourselves if we would still love ourselves if we were that person. It is a good idea to write down our feelings at this point, and take it deeper from there, asking again and again what is the feeling beneath the feeling we have just identified.

The next step would be to watch out for any sudden reaction. The moment we find ourselves resisting something, arguing too hard, or trying not to think of something, we know we’ve hit pay dirt. No matter how uneasy it makes us feel, it is wonderful if we can take a deep look at what we are trying to avoid. We start with acceptance of the action or feeling, that it is perfectly ok to have done something or felt a particular way. Then we explore that emotion deeper, and start toying with it. What are we really feeling? What is the feeling beneath this feeling? Does this feeling invoke any memories? Meditate on it. Irrespective of how far we get, our work is to merely observe. There is no good or bad and we do not make judgments about what comes up.

Obviously, one gets much better with practice, and once we’re good at helping ourselves, helping others do the same becomes markedly easier.

I attended a wonderful workshop with the author of ‘Relationship as a Spiritual Pathway’ with Jacqueline M Longstaff this week, and I’d like to share some of the wisdom I gained over there. I am not done reading the book yet, so there may be more later. She spoke of a lot of things, but as the title suggests, I’m going to be writing about one aspect of the workshop – the healing space.

The workshop was about how to use relationships as a ladder for spiritual growth. When two people come together in a relationship they might open up, letting their vulnerabilities show and creating potential for deep healing. After the initial ‘honeymoon’ phase is over, cleansing begins, and both people can help each other heal and become more complete beings. Commitment in such a relationship is very important since once the healing begins, a lot of things come up and if the partner was to walk away at this point it would leave the other quite devastated.

While Jacqueline spoke of the healing space with respect to a relationship, I’d like to discuss it from an individual point of view, as most people I interact with haven’t yet found a partner who can help them heal and become whole. A healing relationship doesn’t have to imply one only with a partner, therapist or guru. Before we seek all these, we need a healing relationship with ourselves.

Working from the heart was one of the first things we were taught in the workshop and I found this to be tremendously healing. She would just play some heart music and ask us to meditate on the heart, breathing from the heart (to elaborate, imagine a nose IN your heart, breathing, and then do away with the nose). Click here to listen to what she played. Infact, I suggest that you stop right now, listen to this song as you breathe from the heart and then continue reading.

When in a relationship, before discussing anything important, it is essential to spend some time breathing from the heart, and then speaking from the heart to the other person. This completely changes the energies of the discussion and makes both people more receptive to each other. When we open up to each other, suppressed emotions come up, and may result in the person experiencing cleansing symptoms, such as anger, depression, erratic behaviour, etc. We have to learn to accept each other’s emotional patterns, but never make the mistake of thinking of them as real. Remind yourself that these are merely passing phases in a healing journey.

Now look at the same concept from the point of view of being alone. In these rapidly changing times, most people on earth are experiencing intense healing and growth, and are lost in the search of someone else to provide us that healing space, that love and energy that we need to heal and get back up. To allow someone else to heal, we need to respect their needs, love them deeply and be willing to hold them through the difficult time. To allow ourselves to heal, we need to respect our own needs, love ourselves deeply, and be willing to accept every bit of the misery we put ourselves through, on this healing journey.

This is difficult when you’re feeling weak and broken yes, but only when you are not centered in the heart. If we only spend some time everyday breathing from the heart and letting ourselves just be, we would find this journey getting easier by leaps and bounds. Contrary to normal circumstances where most people are busy exhausting themselves by resisting their emotions and situations, this gives us space to heal and allows us to nurture ourselves. It also creates a deep acceptance of our own situation and reduces dependency on loved ones for emotional support.

It is natural if you feel your understanding is incomplete when you read this the first time. I suggest practicing breathing in the heart and observing your thoughts and feelings for a week to integrate the idea of a healing space into your life.

I found music very useful in this journey and here are a few more tracks that you could play when you’re breathing in through your heart.
Ek Omkar – Snatam Kaur
Long Time Sun – Snatam Kaur
The Flame of Transmutation and Freedom – Erik Berglund