The Healing Power of Stress

What Springs to Mind

2010-03-29T18:30:00.004-04:00

Spring has returned. The Earth is like a child that knows poems.
Rainer Maria Rilke

I marked the return of spring and warmer weather in an unusual manner recently. I decided to feel sorry for myself. Until just the other day, the world outside the window where I receive chemotherapy was rather cold and gray. That felt about right. Then, suddenly, the sun crashed through the window like a brick with a note tied to it that read, "What the hell are you doing in there? Get outside! It's spring!"

Thus began my first chemo-related pity party. While it's true that misery loves company, pity is not afraid to go it alone. Hand it a bucket of worries and you're ready for an all-nighter. To my credit, I did not let this go on into the wee hours. Still, there it was in all of its non-glory pushing me closer to the edge of "I can't do this anymore." While this was happening, however, there was a part of me that was able to observe where this was leading me and ask, ever so quietly, "Do you really want to head down this path?" "Yes," cried the chunk of brain that was still in control of most of my senses, "you do want to go down this path. Look at it outside, this is fishing weather; you could be on the boat hauling in a trophy-size bass!"

I decided to break this inner dialogue by mentioning it to my nurse, who had already shared with me that she had gone through her own cancer treatment. Quietly and with clear understanding, she said, "You're gonna feel that way, just take it one day at time." I didn't share with her that I was way past "one day" and was knee-deep in one minute at time. However, her words clearly came from that deep place inside her that had squared off with the same demons I was wrestling with now, and that helped pull me out of my thoughts. My mindless wandering interrupted; I was able to return to the practice of mindful breathing.

In this state, I reminded myself that one need not corral the runaway mind and, in fact, attempting to corner and trap it only makes it more dangerous. Through meditation and other present moment experiences, one learns to simply let thoughts be as they are. No longer fed by endless attention, thoughts move on into their own silent void. As the Tao Te Ching says, "No fight, no blame."

I would be stretching things a bit to suggest that the next warm, sunny day I'm in the chemo recliner or on the radiation table, I will be one with the universe. I will, however, use my mindfulness techniques to keep from going into my mind and into the empty caverns of "poor me." This way, I can save the pity party for a true spring ritual; having a monster bass jump off my line before I get him in the boat.

Firewalker

2010-02-20T10:38:00.007-05:00

In the depth of winter,
I finally learned that there was within me
an invincible summer.
Albert Camus

“You’re going to walk through the fire, and you’re going to be ok.” These are words that I will never forget. They were spoken by a coworker who had learned that my CT scan had confirmed that there was a mass nestled under my sternum that was clearly not supposed to be there. Then she pointed to a scar on her right cheek and said, “I got this for my 39th birthday, cancer of the mouth.” She hugged me with the kind of the hug that says, “You’re one of us now.”

I was humbled by her openness and compassion but I was also confused, in my denial. What fire? There was no fire, simply some blob of something that would turn out to be a mere smudge from the radiologist’s finger. Or, perhaps there would just be a low burning ember, like “Well, Mr. Verano, it’s not supposed to be there but it’s not going to hurt anything to leave it alone.”

Not only were my coworker’s words prophetic, as I was, in fact, about to join the club of people diagnosed with cancer, they also pointed to a profound truth. This truth is that life after a major medical diagnosis is never the same and the challenges ahead are initiation rites of the highest order. Only one who had crossed that blazing bed of charcoal briquettes can possibly look someone in the eye and, without a hint of uncertainty, say “I’ll see you on the other side.”

There are many ways that illnesses get interpreted. From the lofty heights of “God’s will” to the street level “shit happens,“ not only are we given a health crisis we are faced with giving it meaning. A central message passed down through ages is that while our joys make life sweeter, it is our sufferings that define who we are. Despite appearing hardwired for good times, it seems profoundly true that it is our pain, not our pleasure, that make us grow. This is surely why the great teachers from both the East and West spent so much time talking about facing our suffering. It’s not that they were kill-joys looking to rain on everybody’s parade, they were pointing directly at the fertile ground that lies within our very souls. Ground that so often looks like a deep pit, a road to nowhere or even a path of pure fire.

This is why so few take the trip willingly. A push of some sort is usually required to break the “I like things just the way they are“ mentality. When it comes to this nudge toward a new path, cancer is like the big bully who waits at the public pool for some poor unsuspecting soul who is trying to get up the nerve to enter one toe at a time when all the sudden, SPLASH! Now it’s sink or swim time.

The first few days after my surgery I often found myself repeating my coworker’s words over and over like a mantra. Especially the “you’re going to be ok,” part. It had an immediately calming effect, the source of which was much deeper than mere positive thinking. When I would say these words, it was as if I was in contact with the very spirit in her that had already sorted out all the fears, questions, uncertainties and disjointed thoughts that were rattling around in my head. Bless her for having done all of that work for me ahead of time.

Time That Wasn't Lost

2010-02-06T16:53:00.006-05:00

So many wings flew around
The mountains of sorrow
And so many wheels beat
The highway of our destiny,
We had nothing left to lose.
And our weeping ended.
Pablo Neruda

Too often, when illness strikes or we encounter some unexpected form of suffering, it is as if life is put on hold. We even talk about having lost time while sick or recovering from a traumatic life event. The notion is that our lives move in certain trajectories and that ill health is a deviation from that course.

This sense of time wasted, of a life that has jumped the track and is now stuck on the sidelines, adds an extra burden to our psyches. We watch as healthy and vibrant people move care free with seemingly orchestrated ease. If we really want to push our grief deeper, we envy them and their nonchalant approach to their days. Secretly, in the deepest recesses of our hearts, lingers the unanswerable “Why me, why now, why this?”

But what if these moments do not represent a pause in life? What if they are not detours but a direct path? Less traveled surely, but no less valuable than the well mapped out roads more desired? Is it possible that we were meant to live our illnesses with the same curiosity and willingness normally reserved for “the good life?” Perhaps the ancient teachings of the Buddha, Lao Tzu and Jesus, that called us to find peace amidst suffering, were practical, not metaphorical.

My experience since being diagnosed with a rare form of thymic cancer and undergoing thoracic surgery to remove the tumor, coupled with four years of studying mindfulness techniques, has convinced me that the great masters were correct. They saw no distinction between up and down, yes or no, health or illness. They saw only manifestations of a singular loving source that calls to us to wake up and live life in the present moment. Their message is as simple as it is profound; the peace we seek is no further away than our next breath and the path we seek is no further away than our next step.

In the end, there is no such thing as lost time. Illness does not take us out of the game; it pushes us deeply into the heart of the matter. Whether or not we experience gain or loss depends on whether our pain brings openings or shuts us off from being able to live life fully. Personally, I found that the door of awareness rests on loose hinges. At times, it swings easily into the realm of depression and “what ifs.” However, with the same ease, it opens on the vast experience of life in the now.

Sharing my experience helps me make sense of what I have been through, not by reliving it, but by living through it with others. If this experience has taught me anything it is that none of us goes it alone. I whole-heartedly believe that the path to my recovery is paved by the thoughts, prayers and healing energy of others. My hope is that by sharing this episode in my life I might repay some of the overwhelming kindness shown to me. My health felt like a very personal thing, my illness is a social event that has reframed my notion of wellness.

Santa Pause

2009-11-12T17:46:00.004-05:00

Empty yourself of everything.
Let the mind rest at peace
Tao Te Ching

Stress is as much a part of holiday tradition as greeting cards, presents, and awkward moments at family gatherings. The conventional wisdom is that while this should be a time of peace on earth and good will towards men, it’s equally the time for discord and ill will.

How is it that a festive time turns into a carnival of tension and worry? Why is it that high blood pressure and tension headaches show up as much as eggnog and fruitcake? Does this have something to say about the holiday season, or is it a commentary on the way we see stress?

The holidays do not bring us stress; we bring stress to the holidays. If you look closely at the “gift” of inner tension, you will find that it was neatly packed, wrapped, and hand-delivered by none other than our self. This is very good news. It opens up the possibility that we can ask for, and if we have not been too naughty, receive, the present of inner peace this season.

Before going on, I want to share with you a Stressmas carol that I wrote to sum up how many of us feel as we move headlong into the not-so-silent nights ahead:
(Sung to the tune of Jingle Bells)

Jangled nerves, jangled nerves
Jangled all the day
Oh how sad it is to spend
Our holiday time this way

Dashing through the malls
With a cart that’s gone astray
Back to the bank we go
Crying all the way
Bells on registers ring
Making spirits sigh
Oh, what bills the mailman brings!
Why is my interest rate so high?

Jangled nerves, jangled nerves
Jangled all the day
Oh how sad it is to spend
Our holiday time this way

A day or two ago
I felt my chest grow tight
And very soon I found myself
Pacing through the night
I tried to get some sleep
But the fears they would not go
I knew I’d fallen deep
And never felt so low

Oh! Jangled nerves, jangled nerves
Jangled all the day
Oh how sad it is to spend
Our holiday time this way

Traditional stress reduction plans usually have four basic components. We are told that we should eat right, exercise, get plenty of sleep, and enjoy the company of others. If you are like me, you are looking at this list and feeling even more stressed out than before. The reason, of course, is that this list represents things that, for most of the year, feel barely within our control. The likelihood that they are going to become our standard mode of operation during the time frame between November and January is about the same as the likelihood that Santa will finally give us the high definition plasma TV we have been longing for rather than the lawn tool that will occupy our every weekend.

Don’t be dismayed merry gentlemen and women, there is another way to approach this time of the year. Contrary to many stress management techniques, the way out of this trap is not by struggling to get a hold of the stress Grinch that lurks in the shadows waiting to steal our holiday magic. It is by letting go of our habitual tendency to resist the world as it is. When we hold on desperately to the visions that dance in our head, we become frustrated when the world refuses to dance along. However, when we let go of the need for the holiday season, or any season for that matter, to conform to our preconceived notions, we discover a true miracle; life isn’t so bad when we actually live it rather than think our way around it.

This does not mean that we simply lie down and allow the yuletide sleigh to run us over. Moving into a state of “let go” does not mean we become victims of the wintry winds of fate. To the contrary, when we stop struggling against life we discover new options and energies. When we drop the notion that holiday stress is “out there” and see it as a routine mind creation, only decked out with bright lights and tinsel, we can actually do something to bring true joy to the season.

The next time you find that your holiday stress mug runneth over, try emptying it by asking yourself “what am I resisting at this very moment?” Look deeply into was is and see if you can hear the voice in your head saying, “this should not be.” Hit the pause button on this running commentary and you will find that all is calm; all is quiet.

In order to help you through the coming holidaze, I offer another revised Stressmas carol guaranteed to soften the heart of the most hardened Scrooge:
(Sung to the tune of Let It Snow)

Oh, the world outside if frightful
And everyone seems so spiteful
But since it’s no way to grow
I let it go, let it go, let it go
The stress it is not stopping
And my heart it feels like popping
But before I hit an all time low
I let it go, let it go, let it go

And when I finally see the light
Nothing seems quite so bad
When I let go of the fight
I discover the peace that I had

Now the fears are slowly dying
And my heart’s no longer crying
All I ever needed to know
Was let it go, let it go, let it go

Dharma Dawg

2009-11-01T14:21:00.004-05:00

The true guru will never humiliate you, nor will he estrange you from yourself. He knows you need nothing, not even him, and is never tired of reminding you.
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Faithful readers of this blog know that in times of inner turmoil I turn to my online guru the venerable Swami Rama Ding Dong. After discovering him on the Gurus R Us webpage, I have routinely sought his sage advice. It seems that I am no longer alone in my admiration for the Swami. Demand is so high that he no longer offers private audiences. So it was that I found myself being redirected to the Cyber Ashram site to join in a chat room where other like-minded seekers took turns asking questions of the wise master. Here is the transcript of my last session. (To keep track of me you need to know that I go by the screen name Dharma Dawg.)

Host: Thanks for joining Swami Rama Ding Dong in the Cyber Ashram. Please keep your questions brief and do not expect long answers. The Swami’s arthritis has him in a bad way.
Taoboy: Swami Rama Ding Dong, I find that I am more confused than when we last chatted. How do I know that the path I have taken is the right one? It so often feels wrong.
Swami: What, not even a “Hey how are you?” Is this always going to be about you and your endless search?
Taoboy: I’m sorry, you’re right. How are you?
Swami: I am not a self, so your question has no meaning.
Zenhead: Swami, how should we meditate?
Swami: You might as well ask “How should I circulate my blood?” or “How do I digest my food?”
Zenhead: Oh, ok. How should I circulate my blood and digest my food?
Swami: You’re new to this stuff aren’t you? The meditative state is your true state. There is nothing you need to do to reach the true state but drop the false.
BlisslessinSeattle: Swami, why do we suffer?
Swami: I think it has a lot to do with cable TV. I mean how many more reality shows do we need? (lol) Seriously, you suffer because you take yourself to be the body, which is subject to the law of opposites. Good, bad, healthy, unhealthy, rich, poor, Republican and Democrat. Give up this idea and be one.
ReincarNate: Swami, I’ve been practicing crystal based, past life, non-self anti-behavioral therapy. I have discovered that in a previous incarnation I insulted the Buddha by suggesting he shed a few pounds. Since then, my lives have been full of misery. How do I break free from this karmic trap?
Swami: I’m gonna need you to step away from the incense and take a deep breath of reality, new age boy. Find out who you are in this life and the question of past lives will be dropped.
DharmaDawg: Why am I such a worrier?
Swami: Worry is not your nature, peace is your nature. It’s because you take yourself to be your thoughts that you believe yourself to be a worrier.
DharmaDawg: Ok, I get the whole, “I’m not my thoughts” thing, but thoughts still happen and many of them are troubling. How can simply telling myself that these thoughts are not me make them stop?
Swami: Why do you want them to stop?
DharmaDawg: Because they are worrisome.
Swami: Are they?
DharmaDawg: Was that rhetorical?
Swami: Was it?
DharmaDawg: Cut it out.
Swami: Sorry, just trying to lighten the moment. Go into this idea of worry. Who is it that worries? Isn’t it still the worrier that worries? What would you expect from a worrying mind?
DharmaDawg: Ok, worry is an idea and worrying about worry is just another idea, but how do you make it stop?
Swami: Forget making it stop, just stop clinging, that is all. Your very effort to control it gives it power.
Buddhababe: Swami, could you upload a picture of yourself so that we might meditate on your image?
Swami: I don’t normally do this, as I am beyond the needs of the ego, but you seem like a good crowd. Here it is …

Buddhababe: I knew it.
Taoboy: You are my God!
ReincarNate: I loved you in O Brother Where Art Thou.
Zenhead: Any plans for Oceans 14?
DharmaDawg: You’re a sick bastard, Swami Rama Ding Dong.

I Knew That

2009-10-22T18:23:00.004-04:00

Most of us learn facts, gather information or knowledge, but the mind never learns how to be quiet, how to be free from all the turmoil in life, from the soil in which problems take root.

Krishnamurti

Imagine the following exchange between a parent and child.

Parent: Once upon a time, there was a magic fairy. . .
Child: (Interrupting) No way, there are no such things as magic fairies.
Parent: (Undaunted) This magic fairy lived in a magic palace. . .
Child: (Indignantly) There are no such things as magic palaces!
Parent: (Slightly annoyed) One day the magic fairy met a goblin in the dark woods . . .
Child: (Almost hysterically) Goblins are not real, there is no way a magic fairy could meet a goblin because neither exist!
Parent (Laying the book down and brushing back a lock of hair from the child’s eyes.) Goblins do exist honey, and they eat little children who don’t believe in them. Sweet dreams.

Now imagine the following exchange, only on a more adult level.

Master: You need only enter the present moment to find the peace you seek. . .
Student: (Interrupting) No way I can stay in the present moment, the present moment sucks that’s why it needs to change.
Master: (Still in a state of peace) The present moment is changeless, it is the forms that come and go in the field of now that change.
Student: (Sarcastically) Please, everything changes and usually it changes for the worse. You want me to suffer all my life?
Master: (With loving-kindness) Your suffering results from the false beliefs you have about yourself. You are the now; you are that in which all happens.
Student: (Near narcissistic rage) I’ll tell you what happens, shit happens and that’s all she wrote.
Master: (In a state of total surrender) Tell me, what is the sound of my one hand slapping you on the back of the head?

From the moment in childhood when the thinking mind takes over, we have a very hard time hearing stories that do not conform to our preconceived notions of how things are. The closing of the mind occurs through the gradual build up of information, until we find ourselves surrounded by knowledge. It is this very knowing that keeps us from discovering new wonders.

This is why the essential ingredient in many ancient teachings is moving beyond our minds. It is not about becoming mindless, but becoming fully mindful; turning the light of our awareness on the world, minus the idea that we already know what is going on. In this open state, we become receptive to the world as it is and are no longer troubled by the world as we think it should be.

The liberation that comes from uttering the phrase “I don’t know” is profound. It helps to clear the slate and allows us to experience the depth of life. As Meister Eckhart put it so perfectly, “Only the hand that erases can write the true thing.” This helps to shake off the “been there, done that” syndrome that so many of us suffer from. The truth is that when we live in our heads we are never really “there” and whatever was “done” had to pass through the mind filter. When we enter into mindfulness, we begin to experience the true magic of a universe beyond our wildest imaginings.

The Law of Subtraction

2009-10-04T18:41:00.004-04:00

In pursuit of knowledge,every day something is added.In the practice of the Tao,every day something is dropped.Less and less do you need to force things,until finally you arrive at non-action.When nothing is done,nothing is left undone.
Tao Te Ching
　
Google search “the law of attraction” and you will get 4,450,000 results. For those of you not privy to “The Secret,” the law of attraction states that if we really want something and truly believe it’s possible, we get it. New Agers will often talk about our ability to become manifesting machines and fill our lives with all sorts of goodies. Often, this “law” comes with a slice of spirituality on the side, suggesting that the universe wants us to have whatever we desire.

Before going on, I have a confession. I have dabbled with this law in the form of affirmations, and I have to admit it does seem to work. I will spare you the details, but on at least three occasions, my intentions did materialize. However, what I received did little to make my life any better, and, in one case, made things much worse. This was proof to me of two profound truths; the universe is a very giving place and there is no guarantee that what it gives will make you happy. Thus, the fine print of this law should read, “Caution, at some point, you will be faced with the downside of whatever gifts you are given.” So it is that the new car comes with the worries about someone crashing into it, the great job comes with the maniacal boss, the beautiful home comes with the ballooning mortgage, the new relationship…well you get the point.

It is easy to see how the idea that we can use mind power to fulfill our wildest dreams would be a huge success in a culture whose credo is not “less is more” but “more is never enough.” It should also be no surprise that many of the websites that promote this magical power, that is available to all of us, are willing to give away this secret only if you are willing to part with some of your hard-earned cash. This helps to manifest their desire to be rich!

How quickly we forget that trying to find true happiness through anything the mind desires is exactly what Jesus, Lao Tzu, the Buddha and many others pointed to as the cause of so much of our suffering. The depth of their great teachings has pointed to a singular truth; we are full and complete already and in need of nothing other than to awaken to our true nature. This, they assure us, can only be found in the mindful state of the present moment, not in the mind-created state of what the future will bring.

The great masters taught what I call the law of subtraction. This law teaches that when we drop all attachments to things, let go of everything we think we know about ourselves, we discover the kingdom of heaven within. This law points to the profound peace that comes from no longer being at odds with the present moment and no longer seeking fulfillment in the future. This is the exact opposite of the law of attraction, which begins with the premise, “life would be better if only I had this or that.”

The beauty of the law of subtraction is that it follows the natural course of life. Nature knows exactly how to lighten our load so that we won’t be the fattened camel trying to jam itself through the needle’s eye. If instead of trying to fight this process by hanging on for dear life, we could be in a state of let-go, we would discover the bliss of what the Buddha referred to as “sunyata,” meaning emptiness.

It’s unlikely that the law of subtraction will ever catch on with the same frenzy that the law of attraction sparked. It’s hard to sell books, videos and “Un-Manifest This” t-shirts while teaching the wisdom of moving beyond desires. But just in case, I have created a new line of products for those who had everything and then let it go. Yes, you too can, for a small price, own your own copy of my blank DVD Nothingness, It’s Really Something. Act now and I’ll throw in a blank copy of my new cd, Silence Like You Never Heard It Before.

Confessions of a Thoughtaholic: Part II

2009-09-17T18:25:00.005-04:00

You think because you don’t understand.
When understanding arises, thinking disappears.
Osho

When we last left the humble narrator he had just experienced the jarring disruption of a life lived on autopilot. Thinking, which was once filled with such great promise, had become a rabid dog about to bite the hand that had fed it for so many years.

Anxiety, for those who have never felt its cold hand beyond the casual “My God what am I going to do about my job, child, 401k?” is a unique experience. It’s like waking up from a dream in which you are being chased by an evil force and your legs won’t move, to find that you are being chased by an evil force and your legs won’t move.

When it comes to the mind, anxiety is essentially worrying about your worries. This vicious cycle revs up the stress response so that one’s body begins to course with adrenaline and cortisol as the body prepares to fight an imagined foe. The mind, having created this menacing phantom, then begins to figure out ways to destroy it. If it were not for the sleeplessness nights, inability to eat, annoying obsessions and near-panic reactions to mundane life events, this mind-charade would be laughable. Sadly, in the throes of any addiction, a sense of humor is one of the first things to go.

Fortunately, I had access to wonderfully caring people who did there best to point out to me that I needed to kick this thinking habit. This, they assured me, would restore me to the moderately compulsive person they knew and loved. With their help I was able to ride out the thought storm and, as the deluge slowed to a trickle, discover the profound truth of the Tao Te Ching; “Stop thinking and end your problems.”

Looking back on the rocky road of recovery, I can now say that the journey did me a world of good. As the famous quote says, “What is hard to endure is sweet to remember.” The sweetness of confronting thought addiction is that one never again takes thoughts so seriously. Once you discover how easily the passing parade of mental noise can turn into a cacophony, (not unlike the shrieks heard on the weeding out stages of American Idol) it is easier to sit back and chuckle. With Simon-like confidence one can even rate one’s own performance:
“Not only are those the silliest thoughts you have ever come up with, they are without any hint of coherence. To say that they are the ramblings of a mad man is to insult raving lunatics everywhere.”

Since no recovery story worth its salt is without a Step Program and a slogan, I humbly offer the following: (I apologize to the 12-Step Program, in my experience most people can’t focus on more than three things at a time and addicts seldom make it past Step 1.)

The 3 Steps
Step 1: Forget your ego
Step 2: Forget Step 1
Step 3: Go back to Step 1

The Slogan

Thinking; it only seems like a good idea.

Confessions of a Thoughtaholic: Part 1

2009-09-10T18:33:00.005-04:00

Restless the mind is. . .
Truly I think
The wind is no wilder.
Bhagavad Gita

My name is Mike and I’m a recovering thoughtaholic. I can’t say that I’m completely clean because I have still have thoughts now and then. I can say that they no longer run my life. My story is like that of many thinking addicts. I only hope it will help some other desperate soul out there in search of his or her next brain fix.

I began my addiction very early in life. It seemed very innocent at the time. I don’t remember the exact thoughts I had but I know they had something to do with a teddy bear, a blankie and some kind of cage I was living in at the time. I often used thoughts to soothe my young jangled nerves. This seemed a necessity once the “tall ones” took away my pacifier.

I as grew older, I found the hidden powers of thinking. It seemed to me that when I thought about scary stuff, I got scared and when I thought about happy stuff, I felt happy. I would often use thinking to create magical worlds where I could zoom into space, drive racecars, hunt for buried treasures and battle evil monsters all without leaving the safety of my bedroom.

Unbelievably, I was soon sent away to learn to think even more. Part of my brain seemed to know better and fought against this indoctrination. To my frustrated parents, this seemed like a classic case of separation anxiety; to me it was being cast out of Eden, crayons, paste and scissors in tow.

As I got the hang of formal education, my thinking addiction was well under way. I soon moved on from the soft stuff, “See Jane Run,” to the hard stuff, “If x=10 and y=x-5 what is 5x + 10y?” These were good times. There was nothing that my mind could not do. Jacked up on thoughts, I could solve the deepest of life’s mysteries. I was about to take a big bite out of the apple of knowledge.

Such is the exuberance and ignorance of youth, however, and I soon discovered that my thinking did not always bring good feelings. Sometimes, I would find my thoughts simply revolving around each other with no apparent purpose. Other times, my thoughts would lead to negative consequences that seemed to be delivered by an uncaring world. As I moved into early adulthood, my thinking habit was a daily happening and there were times when I would find myself, alone in bed, tossing and turning from the thoughts that wanted me to pull an all-nighter.

They say that recovery starts once you hit bottom. For me that bottom was in the form of an anxiety episode that took place well into my adult years. At the time, I believed I had tamed the thought beast and had kicked the habit. Sure, I was still thinking on a daily basis and trying to cover up the negative effects of thinking by more thinking. Of course, I was still hiding my thinking on occasions and, in the classic addict move, I was seeking out other thinkers, but I was still in control. That delusion painfully dissolved when the evil thoughts moved in and pushed out anything good and pure.

To be continued . . .

Say "Yes" to Yes

2009-09-02T16:55:00.007-04:00

Remember this: no is ego fulfilling: yes is the method to discover the self.
Osho

This week’s personal stress strategy and technique was inspired by a recent trip my wife and I took to see the most adorable grandbaby in the world. For the uninitiated, Elizabeth Grace lives in Atlanta and is about to turn two years old. Among the many tasks facing Elizabeth at this age is the building of her ego. So it is that her current favorite word is “no.” This can be quite adorable in one so young, as the following exchange demonstrates:

Grandpa: Elizabeth, do you want to get your jammies on for bed?
Elizabeth: No. (Continues chasing the dog.)
Grandpa: Then do you want grandpa to read you a bedtime story?
Elizabeth: No. (Stops to pick up her doll baby.)
Grandpa: Do you want grandma to tuck you in?
Elizabeth: No. (Resumes chasing the dog.)
Grandpa: Do you want a big piece of chocolate cake before you go to bed?
Elizabeth: No. (Stops everything and realizing what she just said, begins to cry.)

This nay-saying mechanism is not so cute when it gets trapped in an almost 50 year old body, as demonstrated by the following exchange on the trip home:

Grandma: You want to stop for some coffee before we get going?
Grandpa: No. (Continues playing with the radio.)
Grandma: Then how about we stop to get something to eat, at least?
Grandpa: No. (Check GPS to make sure that he took the right exit.)
Grandma: How about . . ?
Grandpa: No. (Turns off radio in disgust that no one plays good Jazz anymore.)
Grandma: Tell me, does a diaper come with that attitude?
Grandpa: (In ignorant bliss) Did we pack any of that chocolate cake?

As Osho points out, “no” is food for the ego. Negation and resistance are the steroids that juice up our egos and keep them feeling in control. This is an essential developmental stage when we are young and there is no way around it. That’s why God created grandparents; to remind parents that “this, too, shall pass.”

The problem later in life is that “no” closes us off to the free flowing creative energy of the universe. The following technique is helpful in bringing us back into contact with this energy; spend a day saying “yes.” For twenty-four hours approach every situation with a "yes" attitude. Pay close attention to the feeling inside as you do this. Notice the pull toward the “no” and all of the reasons your mind will come up with to justify its reaction. Then notice the deep feeling of ease that comes with the “yes.” See how much easier it is to move through you day with acceptance rather than rejection.

A few quick caveats before you choose your day of yes. You might want to avoid used car salesmen, QVC and telemarketers. In addition, if you have kids you might want to tell them what you are up to and warn them that the yes only applies to the next 24 hours and that all decisions are rescinded with the following sunrise. No need to give away the farm with this one.

Personal Stress Strategies and Techniques: Defy Thyself

2009-08-19T07:18:00.009-04:00

It is a true miracle when a man finally sees himself as his only opposition.
Vernon Howard

One of the common diagnoses given to adolescents these days is Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD). According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders—the bible for therapists—ODD is described as “An ongoing pattern of disobedient, hostile, and defiant behavior toward authority figures.” These kids have elevated defiance into an art form. If do not have to parent these children, there is something almost endearing about their refusal to follow society’s norms.

Think back to your teenage years. Do you remember how fantastic it felt to rebel against authority now and then? Fast forward to your current life situation and ask yourself when was the last time you broke out of habitual patterns of behaving and thinking. Realize that much of your stress is tied up in “the same old routine.” This is neatly summed up by the AA phrase, “Do what you’ve always done and you’ll get what you always got.” Don’t be too hard on yourself about this complacency. The refusal to try something new is the result of years of conditioning and pure exhaustion.

To break free, I suggest that you try a little ODD yourself. Consciously choose to buck the trends and set your own course, as in, “No I will not have fries with that, give me a side of another burger!” See how much fun it can be when you run contrary to popular opinion and “do your own thing” again. Make this as small or large as you feel comfortable with. The point that you're making is not that you can buck society’s conventions, but that you can disrupt your own. What you are rebelling against is the mind conditioning that forces you to see the world in the same way over and over again. To defy (literally "to renounce faith in") your thoughts this way is to break out of the prison of the false self and experience, again, the freedom that is your true self.

Where Did I Go?

2009-08-07T19:08:00.004-04:00

Today I want to introduce you to the first of many Personal Stress Strategies and Techniques (PSST). These exercises will help you to realize the healing power of stress in your everyday life. Some will be practical methods that you can use whenever the mood strikes. Others will be more meditative in nature. A few will take the form of Zen koans, taking you beyond the mind completely.

We will start with the ancient trick of learning to make yourself disappear. Don’t worry, you will be back in time to catch Dancing with the Stars.

To begin, get a sheet of paper and find a quiet spot. In the absence of a quiet spot, pick one where the noises are familiar enough that you can ignore them without your blood pressure tacking into the near-stroke range. On the paper write down 4 or 5 things that are currently stressing you out. Be brutally honest about this. If you are still seeing red over the idea of a national health care plan, put that down. If the thought of Paula Abdul not returning to American Idol is keeping you up at night, on the list it goes. Once you have your list, turn the paper over.

On the top of this page write the words “I am.” Under this statement, list everything you can think of that describes who you are. Start with the obvious, age, gender, star sign, work role, etc. But don’t stop there. Really dig down into the depths and write all the things that make up the you you think yourself to be.

When the list is complete do the following:

1. Cross out anything that describes your physical make up, i.e. tall, short, svelte, and the like. Your body changes constantly so that cannot be who you really are.

2. Cross out anything that describes you in relation to others, i.e. brother, mother, father, Secret Santa. This requires the presence of another so it cannot be who you really are.

3. Cross out anything that is a subjective description of yourself, i.e. loving, caring, heart the size of the moon. These are nice, but be honest, you made them up so they cannot be who you really are.

4. Cross out anything that describes something of which you have no direct experience, i.e. one with the universe, the center of all existence. Nice try, but unless you live on that plane of reality you are just hoping.

5. Finally, cross out anything else that may be on your list since it simply means that you were excessively obsessive about this exercise and put down something that I could not imagine.

Now, look at your list and all of the cross outs and ask yourself this important question, “Who just completed this exercise?” Then, with your mind still stunned, turn the page over to your list of stressors and ask yourself this question, “Who is it that is stressed about all of these things?”

The (R)Age of Reason

2009-07-05T16:12:00.004-04:00

If we don’t understand how
our minds work,
we will begin to rely

on our mental constructions
and we will be at the mercy of reason.
Anthony De Mello

If stress has a flag-bearer, then that title has to go to the mother of all emotions, anger. We live in a culture where anger is all the rage. From politicians to talk show hosts, little league coaches to more talk show hosts, it seems everyone has a river of anger flowing in their veins. Anger and stress are not just two sides of the same coin they are the same side of the same coin and that coin has long since tarnished.

If we are honest with ourselves, we have to admit that while we may long for emotions such as happiness, love and peace, anger is our go-to emotion. Anger seems to flow so effortlessly and, if the truth were told, feels so good at times. While there are many theories behind our attraction to, and use of, anger, we can boil most of them down to the following: the ego hates not having its needs met. Look at any situation that brings an angry response and see if you can’t sense the presence of the egoic mind which is ticking off all of the rational reasons why such and such should not be happening.

This is why the anger habit is so hard to break; it makes sense to the mind. The mind compares what is happening against what it wants to happen and then sends signals to the body that something is wrong. This can actually be beneficial when our personal rights are being trampled on. Many great changes in our lives have anger-energy as their fuel. The problem arises when the threat only exists in the mind. In a dramatic case of the dog chasing its tail, our minds create scenarios that get the blood boiling and then they try to find ways to calm the raging beast. This not-so-merry-go-round is what many of us mistake for “just another day” until vertigo leaves us feeling exhausted physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

When we move into a more mindful state, we see that it is our “reasonable” minds that are behind the rage response. When we begin to accept things as they are, the world no longer seems like it is here just to frustrate us. Yes, we still get angry, but we know that the anger is the body alerting us to the fact that we have slipped out of present moment awareness. We know that we are not our anger and that when we are no longer interested in it, the energy moves on.

The Buddha said that hanging on to anger is like holding a hot coal with the intention of throwing it at someone. In the end, only we are burned by it. Think of this image the next time you feel your mind getting ready to put together the list of “things to be angry about today.” I’m certain that you will realize that the wise response is to drop the coal.

Know Pain, Know Gain

2009-05-08T18:48:00.004-04:00

We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey.
Kenji Miyazawa

Physical pain is the body’s way of telling us that something is amiss. It brings our attention into the present moment and says, “Hey, look over here, your eyebrows are on fire.” Without pain, we would most likely not make it out of childhood. The young mind believes it is invincible and would throw its skin suit into all sorts of life-threatening predicaments, if it could. Thus, the burning sensation tells the young child that stoves are for pots and pans, not hands and fingers. This allows the child to move on to new dangers, such as seeing if umbrellas make good parachutes. (Kids, don’t try this at home!)

Stress can act in much the same way. The sensation we feel when stressed tells us that we need to examine something that we are doing. One form of this feedback loop is the splitting headache at the end of the workday. A more dire warning is something along the lines of, “If you’re not going to do something about this, then how about I stop your heart from beating for a few seconds?”

If stress acts as a signal flare, alerting us to the need for an emotional rescue, why do we so often miss this not so subtle warning and continue as if all is well? When did we lose touch with ourselves to the point that many of us never stop to consider what our stress is telling us until someone in a white coat asks if we’ve met our deductible yet?

When we live in our heads, we often forget about our bodies or simply see them as means of transport for the all-important brain case that is the head. Disconnected from the whole of ourselves, we rely on rational process to sort through our experiences and solve the challenges that come our way. With all of the mind-noise, we can barely hear what our stress is saying. When a message does get through, if it sounds familiar, it is filed away in the, “Yeah, yeah, I know,” bin. This is why many of us sincerely feel surprised when the stress train runs us over.

Mindfulness helps to reconnect us to the wisdom in the body. This does not remove stress, instead, it helps stress move through the otherwise blocked channels. This allows the natural learning and healing process to unfold. Stepping out of the mind-fog, we step into present moment awareness. It is this very awareness we knew so well as children. The time when we did not need to be shown more than once that umbrellas do not have the necessary lift coefficient to prevent crash landings. (Kids, trust me on this one.)

Zen and the Art of Mushroom Hunting

2009-04-25T16:07:00.003-04:00

This is the Zen approach: There is nothing to do. One has just to be. Have a rest and be ordinary and be natural.
Osho

Where I live in southeastern Virginia, April is important for two major reasons. The first reason is that it is the last month of nice weather before the dreaded mayflies show up and spoil every outing with their incessant biting. What makes them especially annoying is that they always target the head and face and are impervious to bug sprays. The second reason is that April heralds the arrival of the king of all fungi, the morel mushroom.

For the uninitiated, the morel is to mushrooms what filet mignon is to meat, what sea bass is to fish and what Chunky Monkey is to ice cream. With a taste that defies explanation, these gifts from the ground cannot be cultivated. Therefore, one must search the woods in hopes of stumbling across this delicacy.

What does all of this mushroom madness have to do with Zen? Good question, Grasshopper. I will try to explain.

The essence of Zen is often summed up with the expression “Chop wood, carry water.” This points to the fact that Zen practice is about simplicity itself. When we are deeply connected to what we are doing in the present moment we experience the power of awareness. This attention to life as it is, brings with it great peace. To obtain this peace we do not need to reach for higher planes or altered states. We simply do one thing at a time without the mind inserting notions of past or future.

When one looks for morels, one has to be singularly focused on the task. Concern about being bum-rushed by a mountain lion, rabid fox or herd of deer only distracts from the task of trying to distinguish a brownish spike in the ground from all of the other brownish things lying around. Walking intentionally, with senses sharpened, is meditation of the highest form. That is if one can keep the “I found more ‘shrooms than you,” ego at bay.

When one finally stumbles upon the once buried treasure, there is a profound sense of satisfaction. This feeling arises not from the mind but from the core of one’s being: that part that has realized a harmonious oneness with all creation. Not to mention the sense of how good these bad boys are going to taste sautéed in a little butter and served piping-hot over toast.

Much like all things Zen, there are levels of advancement along the road of mushroom hunting. Early devotees, like myself, are often too anxious to produce results and therefore easily overlook the telltale sign that one is in morel territory. It is during these times that the wise master steps in and directs the student back to the present moment. “You just walked right past this one,” he will say holding up the mother of all mushrooms. And if he has the Zen sense of humor that my father-in-law, and mushroom guru, has, he will add, “If a morel grows in the forest and you are not there to pick it, what are you going to have to eat while I’m having a morel-stuffed omelet?

Mr. Fix-It

2009-04-14T19:04:00.004-04:00

Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
The Book of Common Prayer

Recently I ran headlong into what the Buddha called anicca, the impermanence of all things. This confrontation occurred during the time-honored tradition known as spring cleaning. Honey-do-list in hand, it hit me, “Didn’t I just do all of this? How can there be so much that needs painting, cleaning, and repairing?” This brought on the first of the Buddha’s four noble truths; life is dukkha, or suffering.

My personal dukkha, in this case, comes from absence of the gene that makes men good at fix-it jobs. I am to home repair what the Buddha apparently was to dieting; not only not good at it, but lacking almost any interest in it. As I sat staring into a brilliant blue sky, the sun just reaching over the trees, I realized that our attachment to forms that will eventually crumble into dust is the source of great pain and suffering. Also, I knew that my efforts to stop things from crumbling often caused me increased pain, as in the hammer hitting the thumb rather than the nail, the weed whacked stone flying into the eye, or the ripping of flesh as the knuckles move but the wrench does not. Most importantly, I knew that Nirvana was just down the river in the form of bass waiting to be caught.

Why bother cutting grass that is only going to grow back, turn brown, die and be taken over by weeds that will dominate all summer? Why clean the deck only to have moss and mold make their way back to reclaim what they believe is rightfully theirs? And for heaven’s sake, why clean leaves out of a gutter when the leaves are capable of decomposing all on their own, creating the black gold known as compost?

My plan was to use my new-found knowledge of the ancient masters to convince my better half that a day not spent on the water fishing was a day wasted. I would win her over to the notion that there is great restorative power in leisure. Here is how my argument went:

Me: You know, the Buddha says that our attachment to things that will eventually dissolve leads to needless suffering. I’m thinking the chores can wait another weekend. I hear the bass are running wild in the creek.
My better half: (Drinks her Yogi tea and does not respond.)
Me: (Somewhat more desperately) The Tao Te Ching says “Retire when work is done, this is the way of heaven.” Who are we to argue with Lao Tzu?
My better half: (Continues to sip her tea in silence).
Me: (Going for the big guns) You know, Jesus said “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal.” You also know he was very fond of fishermen.
My better half: (Putting down her tea) When you can turn water into wine, you get a pass on the chores list. Practice mindfulness as you power-wash the deck.

Solemnly, I turned my attention back to the list. I marveled at how the paper contained within it all the elements of the universe. I considered the interdependent relationships that had brought about its existence. Within that piece of paper were the sun, the wind, and the rain. All of them seemed to be mocking me now through the silent scribble of ink that was mapping out my weekend. I wondered how long would it take for this paper to dissolve into the eternal cycle of life and death? And more importantly, would that get me out of chore number five which was to clean out the gutters?

Altered States

2009-04-05T17:36:00.005-04:00

Meditation is something in-built. You just have to create a space for it to function, just give it a chance.
Osho

My wife and I recently found ourselves in an altered state. The state was North Carolina, where we spent an extended weekend on the Outer Banks.
This got us into a deep conversation about the concept of altered states and what constitutes true consciousness. This is what therapists do when they are on vacation together.

We have both come across teachings that suggest that what we consider our normal consciousness is actually a dream state. A lively debate ensued about whether or not meditation was an avenue toward altered or true states of consciousness. Here is how I remember the conversation:

Mike: An altered state is actually a meditative state. When you meditate, you contact your true inner self or state. It’s the non-meditative state the deludes you into believing that it is real, thus the paradoxical paradigm shift between being and nonbeing. (I recall that I was quite articulate on this point.)
Kathy: I have no comeback for your wisdom. You speak the truth my dear husband. (I may not remember her response verbatim.)

I am now being told by my wife, who happened upon the last paragraph, that I misrepresented our exchange. Her version is as follows:

Kathy: I’m talking about the connection between the altered states we experience during meditation and the altered states we discover while on vacation, outside of our usual habitual patterns, while out of state. Get it? I think you should write a blog about it.
Mike: You write a blog about it (pouting). I am way too filled with foolish man-pride to admit that you had a good idea and send it out as my blog. I may as well just tie an apron around myself right now. (Returns to reading the book How to Communicate with Your Spouse Without Really Trying.)

I’m not going to quibble over whose version is correct. Here is a hint, there is no such book as How to Communicate with Your Spouse Without Really Trying. Instead, I want to move on the central point that whatever we do to step out of our egoic selves brings us into contact with our true nature. Meditation, a walk on the beach, listening to a rainstorm and anything we experience in the present moment brings us to a state of consciousness that is a deviation from the normal state of habitual thought. There is nothing mystical about altered states of consciousness because they represent our deep connection to the universe. Nothing could be more natural.

The “other-worldly” quality comes from egoic mind stepping back in to evaluate what just happened while its back was turned. With its return, the connection to the present moment is broken and we are lost again in time.

Vacation, from the Latin word vacatio literally means “freedom.” In the practical sense, it is freedom from one’s duty or profession. In the meditative sense, it is freedom from mind-dominated experience. The bad news is that you can’t buy it, pack it, or make it happen. The great news is that you have it with you at all times; it’s your home state and its motto is the same as that of North Carolina, which is “To be, rather than to seem.”

Kathy: You made that last bit up, didn’t you?
Mike: No, it really is the motto. I just googled it.”
Kathy: That’s too perfect. It’s the essence of mindfulness; seeing things as they really are, rather than how they appear to the mind. That’s how you should end the blog.
Mike: That’s just what I was going to do.
Kathy: You were not.
Mike: I was too.
Kathy: Can’t you just admit that I had a good point and leave it at that?
Mike: (Thinks for a long time) Let’s go look at our beach pictures again.

Canned Stress

2009-03-30T19:41:00.005-04:00

Although, contrary to public opinion, we must not—and indeed cannot—avoid stress, we can meet it efficiently and enjoy it by learning more about its mechanism and adjusting our philosophy of life accordingly.

Hans Selye

A recent quest has taken me into the heart of our country’s strange addiction to stress. You see, I am one of the few remaining souls who still craves decaffeinated cola drinks. For the past several days, I have been in and out of convenience stores, supermarkets and even the cafeteria in the hospital I work in trying to get my hands on a caffeine-free Pepsi or Coke. I would have even settled for an RC. I was that desperate. What I found, instead, was that not only are caffeine-free drinks hard to come by; store shelves are stocked with what I call “canned stress.” These super-charged, stay-up-all-night, “who wants to run around the block” elixirs point to our love/hate relationship with stress.

First, a wee-bit of science. Caffeine has the following effects on our systems:
1. Stimulates your heart, respiratory system, and central nervous system.
2. Causes messages to be passed along your nervous system more quickly.
3. Stimulates blood circulation.
4. Raises blood pressure.
5. Causes your adrenal glands to release their hormones into your bloodstream.
6. Causes blood sugar, or blood glucose, to be released from storage through the effects of the adrenal hormones.

Now here is what stress does to our bodies:
1. Nervous system responds by releasing a flood of stress hormones, including adrenaline and cortisol.
2. Heart pounds faster.
3. Muscles tighten.
4. Blood pressure rises.
5. Breath quickens.
6. Senses become sharper.

The difference between the two responses is how the mind labels what is going on. When the response comes because your boss just reminded you that it is time for your annual review, we call it “stress.” When it comes out of a nicely packed container with the promise of mental clarity and perhaps even sexual prowess, we call it “being juiced.”

Surely, there is a lesson here for us. If the basic difference between the good time of sitting around a table at Starbucks discussing the president’s economic bailout while jacked up on mocha lattes, and the not-so-good time of your stock broker explaining your personal bailout of declaring bankruptcy, is in the mind, there is hope. Perhaps we can take a cue from mass marketing and just repackage our notion of stress to make it more appealing.

I suggest that we stop calling stress the “silent killer” and give it a title worthy of our nation’s obsession with inner energy. We could even hip-hop it up in the same way the Republican Party has brought “street cred” to itself. Something along the lines of “killa stress,” seems fitting.

I would like to kick off a national campaign to turn stress from a villain into a “gangsta,” set to the following rap:

Yo, yo you with the heart beat thumpin’
And the blood all pumpin’
Ain’t you sumpin
With your brains all racin’
And your hormones chasin’
Ain’t nothing you be facin’
But stress
Killa stress…

Oh, well, it didn’t seem to work for the Republicans either. Perhaps we can just learn to accept the fact that the aliveness we feel when stressed is part of the tension of living. Sure, in huge doses, over a prolonged period of time, it can eat away at the fabric of your being, but so can Dr. Pepper. Maybe by simply choosing to rename the moments in our lives when we feel supercharged inside we can defuse the stress time bomb. Of course, that would be nothing more than a mental trick, a slight of mind, as it were. But so is telling ourselves that we are nothing more than ego-filled skins suits that need to fear life rather than celebrate it.

Why not turn the mind back on itself and go deeply into the stress of life, only without the distress? Heck, I’m so convinced I’m going go get a super-sized can of high energy Jolt and drink a toast to stress. Then I’m going to run around the block, take the dog for a walk, and maybe take up kick boxing . . .

Opposites Attach

2009-03-22T09:54:00.004-04:00

Therefore having and not having arise together. Difficult and easy complement each other. Long and short contrast with each other; High and low rest upon each other; Voice and sound harmonize each other; Front and back follow one another. --Tao Te Ching

To find healing in situations that, at first glance, seem to only inflict suffering, we have to move beyond the Western notion of “either/or.” The Newtonian model of the universe teaches that everything has been put together like a machine and the parts are good or bad, working or not working, and desirable or undesirable. Once the mind bites this apple of the knowledge of good and evil, all hell breaks loose.

Most of us understand that the world comes at us in waves of opposites. We know that there are “good times” that are often followed by “bad times.” We know that coins have two sides, and we get the concept that once you climb up a mountain you have to come down again. Stress shows up because the mind thinks it can, and needs to, gain mastery over the world by eliminating one of the opposites. We see the polarities of the world and think, “I like this end of the stick, but I’m not really happy with the other end.” Thus, we spend untold energies trying to rid ourselves of some thing in order to get this other thing.

This act of separating the world is so entrenched in our collective history, and so deep within our personal psyches, that most people genuinely do not know there’s another way of looking at things. Educated and indoctrinated into the cult of “this or that,” many people cannot even imagine a whole unified world, let alone a complete sense of self.

So much of stress is the result of trying to pry apart things that actually compliment each other. It is the mind that sees contrast and competition and it sends the ego—the false self created to meet the challenges of the material world—out to do its dirty work. The reality is that there is no split, except in our heads. We are all, to greater or lesser degrees, schizophrenic—torn between reality and fantasy.

To discover the healing power of stress we simply have to heal the split within; no longer tear ourselves to pieces in an attempt to find the good bits among the ruins. We are only in our “right minds” when we’re whole. When we stop carving up our lives into what seems like easily digestible pieces, we will begin to feel holy—free of wound or injury—again. Once we realize that opposites are not truly in opposition to each other, that they actually support each other, we will no longer feel the deep sense of dread when we find ourselves at one pole or the other. When we say “yes” to the natural order of things, life stops saying “no” to us. By simply blessing the ups and the downs, we turn struggle into surrender and resistance into acceptance.

Nice to Meet Me

2009-03-15T15:43:00.006-04:00

The inside information is that your self, as “just little me” who “came into this world” and lives temporarily in a bag of skin, is a hoax and a fake.
Alan Watts

I have been living with me all my life and, I must confess, I have not always been good company. Sure there have been some good times; the summer of ‘77 immediately comes to mind, as does my wedding night, but there has been more than the occasional rough spot. The time I talked myself into wearing a lime green leisure suit to ninth grade “class night” still stings. All of this leaves me wondering just who is this me I have had as a companion ever since I was able to call something “mine!” (As in, “That lime green leisure suit burning on that garbage heap over there? That’s mine.”)

If the Buddha was right, and the self that we create and come to think of as me is in fact only an illusion, it’s one hell of trick. It’s right up there with sawing a woman in half, levitation and bipartisanship in Washington D.C. Me sure seems real when in the throes of ecstasy, as in when my team wins the Super Bowl. And equally real during times of deep heartbreak, as when my team loses the Super Bowl. Four times in a row. Not that I’m bitter.

During an extended episode of anxiety I was so lost in the sense of me that, in an ironic twist, the world around me took on a very unreal quality. Nothing could penetrate the panic shield my mind had created. So it was that days of warm sun, caring family and curious pets were all deflected away, like bullets bouncing off of the chest of Superman, only this Superman was afraid to sleep, eat and . . . well you don’t need to know all of the gory details. The deeper I fell into the endless pit of “self" the more it seemed that my mind was the only hope of getting out. As my faithful readers now know, this was the opposite of what would save me. So it was that every thought sent in as a rescuer turned into a victim and would call back, “its much worse down here than we imagined.”

It seemed that I had come to the breaking point and that if there was going to be any peace I was going to have to get over myself. This initially seemed like a daunting challenge. Bookstores are overflowing with titles pointing the way out of dysfunctional relationships with others. But where does one find the tome “I’m Just Not That Into Me”? Fortunately, for the soon-to-no-longer-be me, a means of having a civil divorce from one’s self had already been mapped out. Not only were there pointers showing the way, there were detailed descriptions of what to expect, what to avoid and most importantly where all the rest stops were along the way.

It was exceedingly comforting, and remains so to this day, to find that the who’s-not-who list of those who have overcome the self includes Jesus, the Buddha, Lao Tzu, Ramana Marharshi, Nisagardatta Maharaj and Krishnamurti, to name a few. Their collective fingers have pointed the way to a life without the burdensome me. With their help, I stopped the frantic search for my sanity. With great relief, I put away the science of mind in favor of the silence of the mind. Whether it is called mindfulness, meditation or spiritual seeking, this Zen-quest leads one out of the wilderness of the ego and into the wide open space of non-self. It is surely this wide open space that the poet Rumi referred to when he wrote:

Out beyond ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing,
there is a field. I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.

It is in this very field where me and Self meet and live mindfully ever-after.

A New Look

2009-03-09T19:12:00.005-04:00

We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. -- Einstein

If I were a gambling man I would bet that the idea of “healing stress” sounds strange to you. I would also guess that a part of you really wants to believe in the healing power of stress, but another part really wants to brush it aside and replace it with the “cold, hard truth”—life can hurt at times. You may find yourself in a stressful situation again and say, “See, there is no healing in this. It sucks and that’s that!” Or, you may find yourself heading back to the bookstore to finally buy that copy of Ten Reasons Why There is Nothing You Can Do to Feel Better.

I want to assure you that things can be different. I want you to know that when you look at stress mindfully, rather than thoughtfully, you will cut off the fuel that your body needs to create a full-blown panic attack.

The power of mindfulness is not in forming new thoughts, but the transformative power of simply looking. Jesus did not say, “Go gather up some lilies and figure out how they manage to live such a carefree life.” He simply said, “Consider the lilies.” One could almost imagine him saying, “Quit worrying and go meditate on the lilies. They hold the secret to living.” With mindfulness, the focus of your attention reflects back your true nature.

From the great ancient teachers right on up to modern-day physicists, the message is that you are a watcher, a witness entangled with the very essence of what you are watching. When you think of yourself as separate from that which you see, you suffer. Stress is simply a reminder that you have lost the whole and are focusing on its parts. When you practice nonjudgmental acceptance of this fact you will have a new look at life.

You have an alchemical power within you, and if the sages and mystics are correct, to unleash it you only need to recognize that it is there. That seems like a no-brainer to me. So give your mind a rest and go into your stress totally and see if you can find the seed of a new understanding. Get out of your head and take heart, which is where you were meant to be all along. Every stressful event you’ve ever encountered had its place, and all the ones you will meet have a role to play in the unfolding mystery that is life. Forget about trying to find the source of your stress; find your source and stress will take care of itself.

News Flash

2009-03-01T14:57:00.003-05:00

The less people know, the more stubbornly they know it.
Osho

“Stress could save your life.” This was the cover story of the February 23rd edition of Newsweek. My initial reaction was, “My God, they stole my idea!” My second thought was “I’ll sue and be rich.” My third thought was “I’m going to get a bigger boat.” After I came down from this litigious high I went to the internet and read the article. What I found was a relief and a disappointment: they had not stolen my idea but, therefore, I was not going to get a bigger boat.

The general message of the article was that despite dire warnings that stress can kill you, or at the very least shrink your brain cells, it can also be beneficial. The author pointed to the fact that stress often helps create the energy necessary to take on new challenges, overcome obstacles and motivate us to do better at jobs we care about. The article even quotes my favorite stress researcher, Hans Selye, and references his concept of “eustress,” which is a term for good stress.

The author even went on to dip his toes into the Zen waters. He mentioned that research has shown that meditation can help the brain recover from the negative impacts of prolonged stress. But then the wheels fell off his “let’s look at stress in a new way” bus.

The author quickly dismissed the benefits of both mindfulness and meditation by stating “not all of us want to or can become monks; not all of us can spare even eight weeks for a course at the Center for Mindfulness.” He further turns out the lights on the healing power of stress by stating that the core issue of stress is control: that when we feel that we have no control over our lives, we feel stressed. The antidote is neatly prescribed as “We're going to have to figure out what parts of our future we can control, and we'll need to engage with them thoughtfully.”

At this point I slumped in my chair, no longer worried about the gleaming fiberglass fishing boat that would never be, and thought “this is the same old idea.” The notion that we need to look to the future for stress relief is how we got into this mess in the first place. “Stress isn’t about not being in control,” I shouted at my computer screen, “it is refusing to let go of control that keeps us stressed.” The screen simply stared back at me as if to say “what are you yelling at?” In a more relaxed state, I added, “this article is one small step forward from the present moment and a giant leap backwards from mindfulness. I sighed, and I’m sure I heard the computer screen giggle.

So, in the style of Stephen Colbert, a tip of the hat to Newsweek for putting the idea that stress may need a second look on their front cover. However, a wag of the finger for suggesting that the only way out is the way we came in—through thinking.

One final note, if you read the article online (see hyperlink) make sure that you check out the comments from readers. Many of those who responded were apoplectic about being asked to consider that stress is anything other than a plague upon mankind.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/184154

The Zen of Aging

2009-02-22T11:55:00.006-05:00

If your mind isn't clouded by unnecessary things, this is the best season of your life.

Wu-men

Two of the essential questions we ask as we age are “what is my life’s purpose?” and “what has it all been for?” For some, this questioning of life's course and meaning may lead to benign regrets, such as that one never learned how to cook with a wok, or may lead to a soul crushing critique of every choice one has ever made. This self analysis may lead to feelings reflected in the biblical sentiment “I have seen all the works which have been done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and striving after wind.”

The destructive stress that often accompanies aging is intertwined with humankind's drive to explain ourselves to ourselves. Never satisfied with the simple things, we seek to break everything down into understandable bits, including the self. It is no wonder that as the clock begins to wind down on our time here we may begin to suffer from depression and anxiety. How can one avoid being filled with dread if the not-so-subtle message of the age is “don’t be dysfunctional, find out what your function is.” In a culture that puts such emphasis on producing something, there are no points awarded for simply being present.

The true essence of Zen and many other great teachings is that when we stop looking for answers we will stop creating problems. The need to unlock the mystery of one’s purpose only creates confusion in the mind. Whose criteria will we judge by? What if we discover our purpose is at odds with our religion, politics, culture or what the current best seller says it should be? Furthermore, do we really believe that once we make up our minds that our minds will leave us alone? More likely it will be there as the constant critic reminding us whenever we stray from the path.

Now imagine growing older and already knowing that we have fulfilled our purpose simply by showing up and participating in life! How much more relaxed would it feel if we believed in our hearts that everything already fits into its perfect place? What if we could experience a healing power by dropping all the false trappings of self and trusting more in the natural processes that have been in place since the beginning? What if we could understand the inherent wisdom in the Buddhist statement “no self, no problem”?

Once we overcome the thought addiction that has us responding to all of the messages society has placed in our heads about growing older, we can use a more mindful approach to experience our purpose. This approach uses one’s own heart as a guide to what we know to be true, that which brings us inner peace. We can find comfort in the following words from the Tao Te Ching:

The Master's power is like this.

He lets all things come and go effortlessly, without desire.

He never expects results; thus he is never disappointed.

He is never disappointed; thus his spirit never grows old.

No matter how old we are, we can take a moment to consider what is driving our lives these days. What expectations do we have for ourselves? By what standards do we measure ourselves? Once we feel the stress inside when considering the distance between where we are and where we think we should be, we can take a deep breath and tell ourselves that there was nowhere to go in the first place. When we loosen our grip on the steering wheel of life we will find that life is a much better driver than we could ever be.

Lose It Before You Use It

2009-02-07T10:14:00.009-05:00

I put my heart and soul into my work,
and have lost my mind in the process.
Vincent Van Gogh

What do most people mean when they talk about losing their minds? Surely it's not a statement of going beyond thought and connecting with the world as it is. No, the phrase "losing one’s mind" usually reflects the deep-seated fear that our sanity will begin to unravel like a ball of string and things will stop making sense. This fear leaves many of us holding tight to the reins of our thoughts believing that our sanity hinges on our ability to corral them to keep them from running wild.

The irony is that it is the very effort of holding on that creates the tension that we experience as "losing it." During the most stressful times we aren't losing our mind, we are in fact inseparable from it. We have identified ourselves with it and all of its musings, and have become addicted to it. The true insanity of this addiction is that we actually believe that we are our thoughts.

Even if we wanted to lose our minds we would find ourselves in a game of hide and seek where the seeker always knows our favorite hiding spots. The fact that we can question our own sanity is the way out of this game. The ability to look upon our thoughts puts distance between our real selves and the selves our minds have put together (often without our expressed permission). An old saying in psychology is that people who are really crazy do not sit around wondering if they are crazy. The rest of us who spend our time worrying that the nervous breakdown is just around the corner are simply experiencing the human condition of suffering. Feel better now?

Recovering addicts will often talk about their active addiction as if it had happened to someone else. Guess what? It did. This is the beauty of recovery of any kind; recovering the awareness that the external self is always changing. At a very basic and cellular level we are not the same person we were even a few days ago. Meanwhile, the true self, the canvas on which the material self is painted, is ever the same. We are never without this self. No matter what our minds tell us.

The next time you find yourself listening to your thoughts, and they sound like the ravings of a mad person, simply tell yourself “never mind.” For despite its efforts, the mind cannot take over the inner peace that is inside you, that is you, the peace that “surpasses all understanding.” This peace is our true inner nature and cannot be found by the mind because, as Ramana Marharshi pointed out, "the mind obscures the natural state." To find this peace simply drop the addiction to thinking. You won’t go crazy, but you will be out of your head.

A Near-Life Experience

2009-01-31T17:45:00.004-05:00

It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.
Marcus Aurelius

I have read many stories of people who, after brushes with death, report that they emerge with a new consciousness, an awakened state in which everything seems to fit into place and make perfect sense. Their stories are filled with such hope, such intense understanding of life, that I could only think, “I gotta get me some of that.”

Like most people, I have never faced the great white light of a near-death experience. I have, however, seen the faint glimmer of a near-life experience. This is a nagging sense that one is almost there, just a step away from personal fulfillment and only a few short steps from the Promised Land. However, it is never close enough and one’s days are spent lamenting a life almost lived to the fullest, dreams almost made real and the desire to be the most sought after, well-liked person in the known solar system left unfulfilled.

Where is our enlightenment? When does the awakening take place for those of us who spend more time in the “ditch often occupied” than the on “the road less traveled?” Sure if you spent an evening hovering over your body while the EKG machine flat lined, and then were able to return to tell your loved ones that you heard every word they said about how you should have exercised more, you might have a new outlook on existence. But what if the only out of body experience you ever had was followed up by a smashing hangover and your only contact with nirvana was a concert you went to years ago that left you thinking, “what are they so angry about?”

Prior to Buddhism, there were two primary roads that one could travel down in search of higher planes of existence. One was hedonism and the other asceticism. With the first you flood the senses with all the earthly delights you can stand in hopes of reaching ecstasy. With the other you inflicted suffering on yourself in hopes that you could break down your human trappings and discover the divine truth hidden underneath. Both paths came with pitfalls, but my choice would have been the unending pleasure-fest.

The Buddha’s great insight was that neither road was necessary and both actually had at their core the problem of desire, even if that desire was to renounce all earthly treasures, in the case of asceticism, in order to get a payoff from the Supreme Being. The Buddha pointed out that somewhere between these two extremes was a middle path that was the natural course that life takes. Simply living in accord with life and not fighting it brings one back to the natural state of enlightenment. The image often used is that of a river taking the path of least resistance back home to the sea.

In the end it is not gorging on life or coming close to death that wakes us out of our misery, it is living life mindfully, being totally in the here and now and not allowing our thoughts and desires to run the show. To reach this state of deep peace within ourselves does not require an out of body experience, but you will have to get out of your mind. This will feel like death to the ego so don’t be surprised if you hear its shrill voice calling, “stay away from the light, don’t go towards the light!”

Waiting to Inhale: The Healing Power of Breath

2009-01-21T21:26:00.006-05:00

I took a deep breath and listened to the old bray
of my heart: I am, I am, I am.
Sylvia Plath

Chances are that unless you have a head cold, and a box of tissues have been your constant companion, you are giving very little thought to your breathing. The body, in its infinite wisdom, has relegated breathing to the autonomic nervous system so that we can eat, sleep and do Sudoku puzzles all without having to think about taking our next breath. The wisdom of the body extends even deeper, as the breath is also something that we can bring under our conscious control. This attention to breath is central to meditative healing practices both ancient and modern.

How can something so simple and so ordinary have the power to transform our lives? This question arises because the mind, in an attempt to maintain control, is convinced that transformation is a very difficult process that takes years or even a lifetime to complete. The answer, however, is evident if we think about the physiological impact of breathing. Stripped down to basic science, breathing is a constant miracle. With each inhalation an invisible substance is drawn from the external world, undergoes a chemical transition, and becomes the very stuff of our existence. With each exhalation comes the expulsion of a potentially harmful invisible substance, making room for the introduction of more life-giving nutrients. From your first gasp to your last whisper, your breath is always with you, making all other processes possible.

To tune in to the healing force of breath, find a quiet spot to sit where you won’t be interrupted. Now, just pay attention to your breathing. Don’t try to change it in any way, just observe. When the inevitable stray thought arises, simply notice it and then turn your attention back to the breath. Next, watch the body as the breath enters. Feel the chest moving in and out in response to your breaths. Pay attention to the intervals of the in and out breath, and especially to that quiet moment between breaths.

Once you have a feel for your normal breathing you can begin to tinker with it a bit. On your next breath, make a point of drawing it down deep into the lungs. You should see and feel your stomach expanding out as you fill your lungs. On the exhalation, watch as the stomach sinks in and see if you can push it back towards the spine to really empty the tank. Finally, go back to normal breathing and just observe.

You will probably notice that your mind was blank during the time that you were aware of your breath. It seems that the mind cannot think and observe the breath at the same time. This is great news for those of us “thought junkies” since in the absence of the racing mind we make contact with our deeper selves. This is one of the reasons that breathing is so connected to all things spiritual.

That we can have access to this free creative energy whenever we want should be headline news. The fact that it isn’t is a symptom of our culture that looks for big ticket items and misses the more subtle nature of existence. Plus, you can’t package breath and sell it as the latest cure-all for everything from insomnia to impotence for the low price of $9.99. Although, given the state of our marketing-crazy world, don’t be surprised to find “Canned Breath” showing up in your local New Age shop right next to the box of Instant Karma cookies. Before it comes to that, take a breather, you deserve it and there's no charge.

Quantum Stress

2009-01-14T18:40:00.005-05:00

Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real.
Neils Bohr—Quantum Physicist

Ever since the day that an apple fell on Newton’s head we have been living with a model of the universe that has separated mind and body, things from no things. In the world of Newtonian physics the relationship between an apple and one’s head is predetermined and governed by laws that can predict the behavior of both the falling orb and the head that is about to receive it.

In the wacky world of quantum physics things get a little more blurry. Not only is there no true separation between one’s head and an apple, both are involved in a complex dance of interdependence. This connection is so deep that without an observing consciousness inside the head the apple doesn’t even exist. Even weirder is that there are no things in the quantum universe, simply energy that is pure potentiality waiting for a conscious presence to bring it into being. What does all this head-spinning, Alice in Wonderland physics got to do with our stress? Everything, and in true quantum paradox, nothing.

In Newton’s universe, the mind struggles to stay one step ahead of the world lest it do something to threaten the existence of the material form that is the body. When something comes along that challenges the status quo a series of physiological changes take place in the brain in an attempt to bring things back into balance. Classically, the brain triggers a fear response and prepares the body to either run or stand and fight.

In the quantum world, everything arises from within consciousness in what quantum geeks call the collapse of the possibility wave. What that means in terms of our stress is that there is no evil force hiding around every corner waiting to jump out and rain on our picnic, parade, wedding day, or beach vacation. When the line between the observer and the observed is erased the notion of a suffering self in the grips of an uncaring world dissolves. Thus, we give rise to both internal and external reality and in the end there is nothing to fight and nowhere to flee to.

Much our so called stress results from still clinging to the Newtonian model and believing that simply because the mind sees separation in things that these boundaries actually exist. Of course it is threatening to imagine that we are isolated beings that happened upon a rock that is hurtling through space all the while trying to fling off the annoying pests it finds running about its surface. In the Newtonian nightmare, the sky is falling and it’s not only raining apples there are all kinds of nasty things to dodge.

In the peaceful kingdom that is reality, however, we did not arrive upon an alien world, we arose out of it as a wondrous byproduct of intelligent universe. To paraphrase the Desiderata, not only are we children of this universe who have a right to be here, the universe is here because we are here. So the next time you feel a panic attack coming on, brought about by a mind at odds with reality, take a deep breath and make the quantum leap over the imaginary fence that separates mind and matter. Not only is the grass greener, it never needs mowing.

Mindful Aging: A Word to the Wise

2009-01-03T13:30:00.011-05:00

Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and whatever abysses nature leads, or you will learn nothing. Thomas H. Huxley

The phrase “with age comes wisdom” would suggest that while mother nature is busy taking things away from us as we grow older, she is at least willing to offer up compensation. However, the fact that many people go from being young and foolish to old and foolish means that wisdom is not something that is given freely, like grey hairs and wrinkles, but requires some action on our part.

Wisdom, as most people think about it, is simply the accumulation of life experiences. To have lived a long life is to have gathered a lot of information about life. This information, the theory goes, gives us a leg up on those who have not been around as long. So simply having an earlier birth date can elevate one to the status of “wise one.”

The origin of the word wise, however, does not mean to know but to see, or “to see the path.” This implies that wisdom is not just experience but experience plus learning. Touching a hot stove is an experience; not touching it again is a wise thing to do. Extend this example across a lifetime and you can see why we often continue to get burned by the same things over and over again; we just never learn. This is one of the core differences between mindful and mindless aging. When we are mindful we learn from every happening in our life because we have been fully present and aware, we see clearly. We know that the hot stove will burn us every time we touch it and do not play the game that maybe we can outsmart the stove or forget that hot stoves hurt.

Another aspect of mindful aging that contributes to wisdom involves breaking out of habitual thinking patterns and seeing the world with new eyes. Through mindfulness, we can turn the saying “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks” on its head by teaching old tricks to new dogs. Becoming a witness to life reconnects us with something very ancient that paradoxically lets us experience life anew.

If you have forgotten how to do this simply observe young children at play. Watch as their total absorption in the moment reveals new worlds to them. Mindfulness returns us to this state and puts the growth back into growing old. It imparts its wisdom through the gentle path of allowing things to be as they are. A word to the wise, this path still comes with wrinkles and grey hair.

Stress-Less Aging: The Art of Growing Old Mindfully

2008-12-28T16:04:00.007-05:00

Inside every old person there is a young person wondering what happened.
Osho

When we are young getting older is all the rage. The infant strains to crawl, the toddler perfects walking, the child plays “dress up," the teenager fights for independence, the young adult reaches for a career. At some point in life, however, the constant struggle to grow succumbs to gravity. Then it happens, getting older no longer seems like a good idea.

Mark Twain’s famous comment that “age is an issue of mind over matter; if you don't mind, it doesn't matter” is central to the question “when does aging become a problem?” In the absence of a rite of passage like the time-honored tradition of getting knock-down drunk when one turns 21, we have no obvious bench mark for “old.” Black balloons at the 40th birthday party are a sarcastic reminder that one is over the hill, rather than a signpost to a new phase of life.

Taking Mark Twain’s lead, maybe old is in the mind. Maybe there are two processes going on at the same time: Aging, the gradual and inevitable wearing down of the physical form, and getting old, what one thinks about that process.

The great mystic, Osho, drew a finer distinction between aging and maturing. Aging, he pointed out, is something that the body does and it happens regardless of personal characteristics or what we think about it. Maturity is a function of one’s level of consciousness and is not guaranteed by nature. In his terms, maturity is a level of development that goes beyond growing old and not only gives meaning to this process, but actually transcends it.

This maturity is what I call aging mindfully. It not a case of the mind not caring about getting older, it is moving beyond the mind altogether. Mindfulness does not end the aging process, it brings about a new relationship with the flow of energy that we call getting old. Through mindfulness we free ourselves from our judgments and learn to participate fully in the process of growing up.

Aging mindfully is a journey and should not be embarked on without some basic planning. Yes, it would be super cool to throw caution to the wind and set sail for lands unknown minus the GPS, using whatever serendipitous jewels fell one’s way to chart the course. But it’s one thing to be daring and quite another to be dangerous. So let’s set some basic ground rules for the trip.

1. Have a mental health check up first. Before heading into the uncharted territory that is your psyche, it might not be a bad idea to make sure that you have the skills necessary to find your way back should you choose. This does not necessarily mean going to a therapist’s office to obtain a permission slip for traveling beyond your mind. But it may mean spending some time checking in with the old neuroses to make sure that none of them are going to spoil the trip by constantly asking to go to the bathroom, or whatever it is your particular neurotic tendencies do.
2. Bring along a totem or two. Many people never take a trip without some reminder of home or good luck charm. These can be quite soothing when in strange surroundings. Get some worry beads, a statue of the Buddha, a rosary, a dream catcher or whatever reminds you of the world beyond your senses.
3. Realize that this is not an educational trip. Think back to your childhood and all of the places your parents dragged you to because “you’ll learn something.” What stuck with you the most was probably how much you hated educational trips. The journey through mindful aging is for the fun of it. Stop being so serious.
4. Know that everything you need for the trip you already have. If you are one of those people who needs a U-Haul to simply have a weekend getaway, now is the time to learn to pack light.
5. Forget about time. Too many trips are spoiled by the NASA-like countdown to the end of one’s “free time.” You have an eternity to get this right and, in the end, there is no wrong way to go about it. There is, however, a long way but even that was meant for you.

All Stressed Out and Nowhere to Go

2008-12-20T17:20:00.012-05:00

The world is ruled by letting things take their course. It cannot be ruled by interfering.
Tao Te Ching

The stress of going nowhere? It’s true, not only do we stress when things are not going right, we stress when we think they are not going at all.

Many of the stressors in life seem to be related to the feeling of being trapped in a situation in which there seems no means of escape without Houdini-like skills. For many of us this will bring up images of work. Others may picture a relationship that they can’t work out, or an emotional pattern that seems entrenched. Whatever the apparent cause, the fuel for the stress is the perception of stuckness.

In a drastic attempt to jump start life, we may resort to emotional CPR maneuvers. These often backfire and only feed the stress monster. The move to a new job, relationship or living arrangement only brings on further worries and the only movement experienced is that of vertigo as life begins to spin out of control.

If we can withstand our own inactivity and resist the urge to do something during our stuck moments, we may discover the art of wu-wei (pronounced woo way). While often thought of as non-action, wu-wei is best described as non-forcing, or going with the flow. Even if this flow has slowed to a trickle. Wu-wei teaches us to resist the urge to force ourselves against the natural tides of life and instead ride the waves. This process was summed up to Pooh, in The Tao of Pooh, as “putting square pegs into square holes and round pegs into round holes.” A quick look at our stress shows how often we are at odds with this basic wisdom.

In the end, we are a raging rivers of activity—from the constant whirring of the mind machine, to the eternal dance performed by every cell in the body. Stressing out over being stuck is to be taken in by an illusion created by time and measuring our selves against this artificial benchmark. So the next time you find life grinding in neutral gear, ask yourself, “Where did I think I was going in the first place?” “Where do I need to be so badly?” Resist the urge to down that super-charged, triple caffeinated, stay-up-all-night, energy drink and take a nap. Don’t worry, the world isn’t going anywhere without you.

Just Desserts: The Stress of Good Times

2008-12-13T20:23:00.009-05:00

If people can dance a little more, sing a little more, be a little crazier, their energy will be flowing more and their problems will, by and by, disappear.
Osho

A quick glance at the standard stress tests that identify levels of inner tension reveals something interesting that people may not think twice about. Nestled amongst the obvious stress-producing events such as “loss of job,” “death of a loved one” and “major illness” are such things as “marital reconciliation,” “vacation,” and, I swear I’m not making this up, “outstanding personal achievement.” The conventional wisdom seems to be that not only do the things you try to avoid bring you stress but so do the very things that you work so hard to obtain.

If you examine the stressors associated with positive events in your life you will find mental demons lurking in the shadows. Take the example of getting married, which ranks only behind marital separation and death of a spouse on most stress scales. Is it possible that this union of two souls publicly vowing to love each other for all time could be the cause of so much tension? Stop smiling for a minute and consider the following: It is not the wedding itself that is the problem, it is the ever-worrying mind that spoils the show. Doubts about whether or not you have chosen the right life-partner aside, the stress of most weddings comes when the mind says “The flowers won’t arrive on time,” Uncle Jeb is going to get drunk, do his table dance and fall and break his other hip” or “What if the band plays only 80’s music?”

Look behind any of the positive stressors in your life and see if you do not catch a glimpse of the mind goblin that is secretly gnawing away at your enjoyment. Good stress is a result of the mind being an equal opportunity destroyer. With the mind, when it rains it pours and even when it’s sunny there is a chance that the harmful rays of the sun will leak through the depleting ozone layer and turn your tan into a third degree burn. Oh, the antics of the mind.

The notion that good times should come with a warning label is best summed up by the phrase “you can’t have your cake and eat it too.” As a Food Channel junkie I can tell you with authority that whenever someone makes a cake, somebody eats it. As further proof, while I am writing this blog I am eating a hostess cupcake sandwiched between two slices of devil’s food cake. I have even gone as far as countering with my own sentiment, “If you're not going to eat the cake, don’t bother to bake it.” The author Richard Bach was more eloquent when he addressed this issue by saying “the best way to pay for a lovely moment is to enjoy it.”

As the poet Hafiz pointed out, we were meant to “dance in this sweet world,” to experience the depth of its joy. So forget about the fact that desserts spelled backward is stressed, put down that stress questionnaire and take a big bite out of life. Feel free to wash it down with extra slice of chocolate cake; we now know that chocolate is good for you.

e-Guru

2008-12-07T12:47:00.018-05:00

Only the hand that erases can write the true thing.
Meister Eckhart

Many of people who profess that mindfulness is your natural state and that you need not take a step to discover it, go on to talk about their routine trips to India to visit their guru, their private meetings with the Dalai Lama and their experiences washing dishes in a secluded Buddhist monastery. Their travels can leave the average Joe or Jane wondering if higher levels of consciousness are available with their frequent flyer miles.

It is my understanding that one can experience the peace of mindfulness while mowing the grass, attending a PTA meeting or watching Dancing with the Stars. If this bliss is so within our grasp, why travel to such distant places to try to obtain it? Isn't it just as available to the person who rather than meeting with their spiritual guide, met with their stock broker who informed them that their 401k just dropped about 399k?

It was with these questions that I turned to the website Gurus R Us and found my own guru, the Venerable Swami Rama Ding Dong. Now I would find the truth behind the accessibility of mindfulness.

Me: Swami, I text you with a confused mind. Why do so many people seem to travel great distances in order to learn to be in the here-and-now?
Swami Rama Ding Dong: It is wise to ask this question. But you might have also asked why does the sun travel across the sky, why do the geese fly south or why does the river run?
Me: I’m not sure that helps.
Swami Rama Ding Dong: Yeah, I know. I just wanted to try the “let’s confuse him with more questions” technique in hopes that you would log off.
Me: Your honesty is refreshing. But I would still like to know if it is a mixed message to say that the kingdom of heaven is within and then send people out in search of roads to lead to that kingdom?
Swami Rama Ding Dong: Who sent you to search?
Me: You are still answering my questions with questions.
Swami Rama Ding Dong: Sorry, it’s a hard habit to break. Try this, remember the scene in The Wizard of Oz where Glinda tells Dorothy that all she had to do to get back to Kansas was to click her heals together because she had the way back all along?
Me: Yes, I remember. I always secretly hoped that Dorothy would read the riot act to Glinda as to why she had to suffer through flying monkeys, talking trees and all of that other acid trip stuff.
Swami Rama Ding Dong: Me too, but Glinda was asked why she hadn’t told Dorothy in the first place. Do you remember what the answer was?
Me: No, but give me a second and I will Google up the script…here it is:

Glinda
Because she wouldn't have believed me. She had to learn it for herself.
Tin Man
What have you learned, Dorothy?
Dorothy
Well, I - I think that it - that it wasn't enough just to want to see Uncle Henry and Auntie Em. And that it's that - if I ever go looking for my heart's desire again, I won't look any further than my own backyard, because if it isn't there, I never really lost it to begin with. Is that right?
Glinda
That's all it is!
Scarecrow
But that's so easy! I should have thought of it for you.
Tin Man
I should have felt it in my heart.
Glinda
No. She had to find it out for herself. Now those magic slippers will take you home in two seconds!

Swami Rama Ding Dong: Get it?
Me: So, the search is essential in order to find that which was never lost? Seems a little misleading.
Swami Rama Ding Dong: Terribly misleading, to be exact. But such is our fate.
Me: I’m not sure this is any comfort.
Swami Rama Ding Dong: Good, it is your discomfort that keeps you searching.
Me: But what about the finding part. When do I get to that point?
Swami Rama Ding Dong: To find that which was not lost?
Me: It feels like we are going around in circles.
Swami Rama Ding Dong: Exactly the point! Welcome home!
Me: This reminds me of the quote from Meister Eckhart who said “God is at home; it is we who have gone for a walk.”
Swami Rama Ding Dong: A wizard in his own right. I would love to chat more but the rules are that I can’t give away the whole show in one session. Keep in touch, lol.

So it was with a more precise confusion that I left my online guru to meditate on the following:
1. All travels lead to the same place, the eternal you.
2. If you think you need a spiritual guide along the way, then you do.
3. All methods you pick up along the way will have to be dropped in order to experience freedom from mind.
4. The essential search is for nothing, no thing, and to make it you have to become a nobody, no body.
5. Chatting with an online guru is much cheaper than airline tickets to India.

The Meditative Life

2008-11-30T16:46:00.014-05:00

Dig within. Within is the wellspring of Good: and it is always ready to bubble up, if you just dig.

Marcus Aurelius

Often shrouded in New Age mystique, meditation is offered up as a solution to everything from overcoming your deepest fears to finding ways of leaving the body in order to check out what your neighbors have in their refrigerator. Far from being other-worldly, mediation is directly tied to the universe that is you. It is not so much an act as it is a state of consciousness. This state arises when the incessant need to think about your life subsides and you experience yourself in the present moment, minus the story line.

Despite being around for centuries and documented evidence of the benefits for mind and body, many people avoid mediation like it was broccoli. I attribute this to poor marketing. Meditation would probably be an easier pill to swallow if it were wrapped up with all of the flair of an advertising campaign for the latest wonder drug. Who wouldn’t try it if it were presented as follows?

Low on energy? Feel like everyone else is getting ahead of you? Can’t think straight? Sex life on the skids? Want to feel young again and lessen your chances for heart problems and increase your chances for eternal life? Try new Medi-tate. That’s right, Medi-tate was designed by the greatest minds the world has ever known and was once only available to sages, prophets and soon-to-be deities. Medi-tate is easy to use and you can take it anywhere. You can use Medi-tate in the comfort of your home, in the office, in the subway, in your car, at the big game or while on the big date. So don’t agitate, Medi-tate. Possible side effects include the belief that you are one with the universe, feelings of bliss or euphoria and a decrease in obsessive behaviors.

Now there’s a product that would fly off the shelves.

In all seriousness, many people avoid meditation because of the concept of having to “practice” meditation. Bombarded by the constant intrusion of thoughts, it is easy to feel that one is not doing it right and in the absence of instant enlightenment, the payoff seems questionable. Thus a mental workout mentality takes over and meditation lingers unused like a dusty treadmill that seemed like a good idea when you bought it.

The good news is that you don’t necessarily have to make up your mind to meditate; whenever you leave the mind you are in a meditative state. Sure, you can sit in lotus position and gently watch as thoughts cross your mind likes clouds before the sun. But you can also tune into your breathing during the big board meeting rather than obsessing on your need to update your resume. You can pay careful attention to your steps as you take the dog for a walk rather than trying to understand why he seems to be enjoying life much more than you. Or you can turn your attention to the experience of the steering wheel in your hand as you drive rather than trying to text message a friend about the driver who just cut you off. Remember, there is no rule that you have to be sitting still in order to be in a meditative state.

The key to meditation is to drop the worry about where it will take you and simply enjoy the journey. Meditation is like dancing in that one does not dance in order to hit a particular spot on the floor but to simply experience the delight of movement. When you reach the point where your mind is still, simply be there. Realize that if you go in with your mind, it is the mind that wants an explanation. The deeper you already knows the value of silence and has been waiting for you to be quiet long enough so that you can remember. When your mind is at rest the question of “now what?” will never even occur. If, however, you still find the need to explain why you sneak off for these private moments to your friends and family you can impress them with the words of the great enlightened teacher Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj who said, “The primary purpose of meditation is to become conscious of, and familiar with, our inner life.”

As you begin to experience the world from the inside out, you will begin to feel the power of Medi-tate as it dissolves the damaging forces of stress. Rather than feeling run over by a world out of control, you will feel yourself being driven by a more compassionate force.

Give Medi-tate a try, if it does not work right away take two deep breaths, count to 100 and relax every muscle in your body until you’re a just a limp bag of flesh. Now, doesn’t that feel better?

Your Karmic Footprint

2008-11-24T17:12:00.005-05:00

This is the profound, simple truth:
You are the master of your life and death.
What you do is what you are.
Hua Hu Ching

If I asked you what your carbon footprint is, you probably would be able to respond with something "green" that suggests a basic knowledge of how your daily living impacts the environment. Are you aware that there is another form of energy emission that also needs your attention?

Your karmic footprint refers to how you use the vital life energy that is at the core of all existence. In order to understand this life energy you have to look at the concept of karma as it was put forth thousands of years ago, before it was misinterpreted as a system of divine retribution. Far from being God’s version of "paybacks are a bitch," karma means "action." Simply stated, karma is not something that happens to you but something that you do. It is the unfolding of your life, roses and thorns included. This unfolding is not an ego event, confined to the small space of the self, but is part of the greater movement that Buddhists refer to as "interdependent origination" that points to the interconnectedness of all things. In the web that is the universe, your actions are impacted by all other actions. Additionally, everything you do sends ripples out in every direction.

When you motor through life on autopilot you do not take note of the reverberations of your actions and often stand in wonder as to why things never seem to go your way. Driven by the mind, you are likely to stumble into situations that feel like they have been scripted by someone else or are the result of the cruel hand of God. This may leave you feeling like the cartoon character, Calvin, who once told his tiger friend, Hobbes, "the world is either mean or it’s arbitrary and either way I got the heebie-jeebies."

One way to balance your karmic energy is to accept things as they are. This frees up the energy generally used to complain about the unfairness of life, allowing you to appreciate that life is not arbitrary or mean, it simply is and you provide the rest.

In the end, to know your karmic footprint is to understand the truth that Jesus pointed to when he said "you are the light of the world." Whether that light burns with the efficiency of a compact fluorescent light bulb or an itty bitty book light is up to you. Here are some helpful tips to keep your karmic energy from polluting your world.

1. Conserve: Look for the areas in your life where your energy output leaves you feeling drained. If you give it all to work, for example, chances are you are not going to have much left for family fun night.
2. Recycle: Reconnect with experiences in your life that charge your emotional battery. Take walks in nature, visit art museums, listen to your favorite music, eat more chocolate or whatever it is that makes your heart sing.
3. Unplug when not in use: The Tao Te Ching teaches "stillness and tranquility set things in order in the universe." Give yourself permission to do nothing more often.
4. Go hybrid: Don’t be afraid to mix your fuel sources. Sages from the East and West have left behind profound teachings that will get your metaphysical motor running with new-found enthusiasm.
5. Be organic: Realize that you did not come into this world, you came out of it. You are not a fluke of existence but its purpose.

I hope this helps you find the greener pastures of tranquility. It has helped my search and I know that passing it on is good karma.

Themptiness

2008-11-16T15:20:00.011-05:00

Mindfulness is like the sun. It only has to shine its light to do its work.
Thich Nhat Hanh

What is this elusive process called mindfulness? People often talk about it with a hushed reverence normally reserved for things other-worldly. The best description I have come across is that mindfulness is "bare awareness." This refers to observing the world, both inner and outer, without the interference of the constant chattering mind. Another great description is that it is "to stop thinking without falling asleep." Far from being the sole property of monks, sages and prophets, mindfulness is actually our natural state. Watch a very young child at play and you will observe mindfulness. Get absorbed in the moment, whether listening to a beautiful piece of music, watching a sunset, seeing your team win the Superbowl (or so I am told, my team has never given me this opportunity) and you have experienced mindfulness.

Breaking through our thought addiction is the essence of mindfulness. The practice of letting thoughts pass like clouds across the sun is instrumental in seeing the world as it is rather than the way we think it should be. This non-attachment to thought brings about what I call "themptiness." This is the vast space created within us when we realize we are not our thoughts. Themptiness is the space that holds all the planets, stars and galaxies. It is the same space that makes a glass useful and turns four walls into a room. Themptiness is the interval between sounds that makes music possible and the silent gap between the in and out breath that makes life possible. It is not "nothing" but it is a "no thing" and within it all things are contained. To be thempty is to fully experience the present moment. In the here and now, you are the observer. You are awareness itself and no longer a part of the passing parade of ideas in your head. You are above thought like a Macy's Day balloon, minus the tethers.

While there are many vehicles that can lead you to mindfulness, such as meditation, yoga, and mantras to name a few, the mind often tries to grab the wheel of these vehicles as it hates taking a back seat. When this happens your practice becomes just another head trip without a map. Here is a quick exercise you can use to keep your egoic mind in the back seat where it belongs:

Find somewhere quiet to sit and observe your breath. Next begin counting with each breath. Breath in and count one, breathe out and count two. Keep counting in this manner until you get to 10. Anytime a thought enters your head, start over at the number one. Do not judge the thought and do not get mad at yourself, just start over. Keep doing this for about five minutes. Remember, the goal is not to get to 10, it is to gently go back to the start anytime a thought arrives. Happy travels!

The Joy of Stress

2008-11-08T10:46:00.005-05:00

Our tragedy is not that we suffer, but what we miss when we suffer. Rejoice, then, when a negative feeling has been aroused in you, because if you follow it up, it will lead you closer to liberation.
Anthony De Mello

Can you remember the first time that stress entered your life as a force to be reckoned with? How far back in your history do you have to go to find the time when stress did not seem to be your constant companion? Do you find a smile creeping across your lips as you think back to the carefree days of your childhood?

During those early days, stress was something that erupted like a volcano whenever you loaded up your diaper and there was no one around to change it, or your prized blankie was reduced to its final thread. The outpouring was great, it was loud, and then it was over. You moved on. More to the point, you did not hang on to the stress. It would be back, surely, but your concern at the moment was the little teddy bear that made a funny squeaky sound when you pressed his tummy—ah, childhood.

When we grow up we have a very different relationship with stress. It is very heady in nature and deadly serious. We brood over our stress. We seek to understand it, manage it and avoid it. All of this attention, rather than solving anything, prevents stress from moving on as in those early days. We have grown out of our crib cages only to be surrounded by prison walls of experience, and we have built them high and built them strong. As children, it was our ignorance that kept us free, as adults it is our “wisdom” that locks the prison door.

Stress is the mental friction that results when the world as it is rubs up against the world that we think should be. In and of itself, it is simply energy and can be very beneficial; think of rubbing your hands together on a cold winter’s day. However, left unchecked and surrounded by the right fuel there is the potential to create a more destructive force; think of rubbing two sticks together over a pile of gasoline soaked rags. No matter what we tell ourselves, the difference between the two is not a matter of fate or fortune. The fault, as Shakespeare pointed out, “lies not in our stars but in ourselves.” Once we fully appreciate this point we can see that the solution also lies in ourselves. Once we become again as little children and take the world for what it is and not what we wish it to be, we will find that stress moves on and so can we, minus the whole dirty diaper thing.

The joy of stress comes from experiencing ourselves as we were before the thought monster ate us whole. It comes from allowing tension to be in our life without resistance. Without the fight or blame we become the perfectly tuned guitar string for which tension is essential and necessary. Once we face the fact that our attempts to avoid stress are simply games of hide and seek with the self, we will be able to return to a time when all we had to do to put an end to searching was call “olly olly oxen free.”

Unquiet Slumbers: The Stress of Sleep

2008-10-25T15:02:00.007-04:00

Sleep is the golden chain that ties health and our bodies together.
Thomas Dekker

The inability to have restorative sleep is the result of taking stress to bed with you. With a few exceptions, such as sleep apnea or a large animal on your chest, most sleep disturbances are simply daytime disturbances that want to stay up all night and party. During my personal struggles with anxiety, bedtime was something to dread. The desire and need for sleep stood there like the twisted opening of a Halloween fun house just daring me to step inside. Nightly, I lived with the basic truth that if you want to destroy sleep, start thinking about it. Obsession breeds exasperation, and exasperation is not a good bed partner. Exasperation hogs the covers and has very cold feet.

The subtle trick that the mind plays on itself during the dark hours is to convince itself that it can now solve the problems that eluded it during the day. The brain begins to lay out ideas like Reese’s Pieces in front of E.T. The promise is "just one more and then you can rest easy, you will have figured this out." The "this" can be anything from restructuring your stock portfolio to planning the layout of your garden. The mind’s efforts would be comical if a sense of humor wasn’t one of the first things to go when you are really tired. Attempts to stop the dripping faucet of thought usually end up the way most amateur plumping projects do; a bigger mess to deal with than when you started.

It is a huge irony that most of us sleepwalk through our waking hours only to feel so completely wired during the period where we actually give ourselves permission to be unconscious. This twist of the natural order is behind the no-sleep cycle. The key to a good night’s sleep is tied directly to the quality of your waking hours. While many of us roll out of bed, very few take the next step of conscious awareness. The great teacher Anthony de Mello was famous for chiding his listeners to "wake up!" His message was that many of us slumber through our daily lives and then wonder why we find ourselves in such dire straits. If we can introduce even a modicum of mindfulness to the daylight hours—really participate in the act of living, moment by moment—our night hours can only respond positively. If one has been truly present in the events of the day, there is no need for the mind to try to balance things out at night.

Waking up to your life is not a mental process, it is a spiritual one. This means allowing your entire being to experience the wonder of the world around you. Resist the urge to figure out everything; you are way too tired for that. A mindful day does not stir up the mind to such a frantic pace that it continues to whir throughout the night. When you put the body to rest at the end of a mindful day, the brain rests easy after being allowed to carry on its usual functions without the constant ego interruption . When you stop getting into bed with every unresolved issue, every nagging concern and every constant reminder that there was something you could or should have done, you will finally rest in peace.

The next time you find your mind tossing and turning under the blankets of unquiet slumbers, turn your attention to your breathing. When you focus on this natural process, the raging river of thoughts slows down to a trickle. If the mind shows up with the critique of "that breathing sounds a little irregular to me, I’m sure it’s a sign of a lung disease that needs to be checked out on Web MD" it simply means that your attention has drifted away. Bring it back to your breath and the next thing you know you will be throwing your pillow at the alarm clock as it tries to motivate you to start your day. Or, in my case, you will find a dog on your chest who is eagerly awaiting your conscious presence to come and fill her food bowl.

Forget Me Not: The Stress of Memory

2008-10-18T13:56:00.005-04:00

The true art of memory is the art of attention.
Samuel Johnson

Neitzsche wrote "many a man fails as an original thinker simply because his memory is too good." The American writer Elbert Hubbard said "a retentive memory may be a good thing, but the ability to forget is the true token of greatness." Then there is yours truly who only this morning said "Honey, I can’t remember where I left my keys."

When it comes to destructive stress, memory often serves as both the gasoline and the match. It does not take long for the glowing embers of "what used to be" to flare to a three-alarm inferno of "my best days are behind me." As a therapist, I have watched in amazement as clients struggled to put out these fires while diligently refueling them at the same time. As a recovering anxiety junkie, I have become quite familiar with this rekindling process and have spent many sleepless nights trying to roast marshmallows over the coals of endless worries.

Memory and stress are intertwined because the mind is a huge filing cabinet that stores away every experience we have. Not only does it download the sights, sounds and smells of all that happens in our lives, it also records the emotional reactions we have while events are taking place. All of this is extremely useful in managing our daily lives. Because of this vast storehouse of information we are able to move through life without having to relearn everything from scratch. This is very helpful when it comes to remembering your spouse’s name, remembering your spouse’s birthday, remembering the anniversary of when you and your spouse got married, remembering to pick up that item at the store that your spouse told you to pick up on your way home, and so on.

Memories become a problem when they show up uninvited and then get unruly when asked to leave. Even something as benign as reliving the "glory days" becomes problematic when it takes the place of living in the present moment. Often, psychotherapy will actually reinforce this avoidance of the now by suggesting that we can only understand where we are if we know where we came from. While it may be true that the past is the key to the future, this key only works on the door of the present moment.

"Die to the past everyday, you don’t need it" exhorts Eckhart Tolle. "What?"say the rest of us, "who would I be without the past? I had some good times back then, why would I want to let that go?" The mindful response is that it is the story of yourself that is causing you so much pain, so much stress. Our minds have become so habituated that we barely ever catch a glimpse of what is really going on around us. The world comes at us in all of its glory and we are so busy comparing it to previous experiences that we miss the awe and are left feeling awful.

The art of memory is to use it when needed and not be used by it when not needed. An occasional junket to the past to retrieve a mind tidbit or two is not the problem. It is when we book the holiday cruise to "any time other than now" that we risk getting trapped on Fantasy Island, which ends up feeling like Gilligan’s Island only without the cool coconut shell telephones.

Take some time over the next few days and actively remember to forget something from your past. Or, you can try forgetting to remember something from your past. Either way, you end up at the very place you began when you headed out on the mind trip that is life. Oh, and if you are concerned that you won’t remember the way back, don’t worry, when it comes to your true journey all roads lead to home.

Twisted and Unbent: The Spirit of Yoga

2008-10-10T18:40:00.009-04:00

Peace can be reached through meditation on the knowledge which dreams give. Peace can also be reached through concentration upon that which is dearest to the heart.

Patanjali

So there I was, a twisted pretzel of flesh and bone, when the yoga instructor’s reassuring voice reminded me that if I did not breathe soon I risked an aneurysm. "What an irony that would be," I thought to myself, "blowing out brain cells while trying to calm my mind." The fact that I was having this thought was my first clue that I was resisting the very lesson that I had come to learn, which was to use this ancient practice to slow down the racing thoughts in my head. Most everything else I had tried had failed, and even imbibing in a glass of fermented grape juice had lost its magic. Why not try yoga? Sure I hadn’t really stretched a muscle since high school, (pulled a muscle, most certainly) but I was ready to risk days of a sore body if it meant even a brief respite from my restless mind.

Despite my naivety and my frozen shoulder, and mostly because I have access to a wonderfully talented instructor, I ventured forth. I found that the effort did have the benefit of taking my mind off of itself. This relief was incredible and made me eager to return to the yoga mat despite pains in body parts that previously had gone about their business unnoticed. Eager to catch another break from the incessant thought train that had been circling for several weeks, I went headlong into a more advanced yoga class (like a boy who conquers subtraction asking to be taught calculus). I saw this as the ultimate opportunity to force my mind and body to get along again and give me back my sanity, ability to sleep, desire to eat and perhaps even catch a glimpse of the elusive nirvana I had read so much about. If you are thinking "I bet that didn’t work," you are correct. Instead of staying quietly on the sidelines, my mind took on the role of frenetic coach and was determined to win this yoga match. "Come on, powder puff, raise that leg higher," it screamed. "You’re going to let these women show you how it’s done, nancy-boy?" it chided. "I got your nirvana right here," it mocked.

When the session was over, I was drenched. Body and mind, far from being joined, were no longer speaking to each other. It felt good in a "thank God I survived that" kind of way but it was not what I had expected. Or was it? In the silent exhaustion that followed I began to realize that my expectations were the problem. I was thinking about something that I should have simply been experiencing. My brain had stepped in and turned the yoga session into a contest.

Yoga literally means "to join." The union it refers to, I later discovered, is not mind and body. It is essentially joining with the universal or eternal self. This meeting takes place not in the mind but through what the great yoga master, Patanjali, called "the cessation of mind." When the mind is busy working to make the body stretch, bend and breathe with complete focus, it is not able to run down the laundry list of "things I should have done better, things I should never have done at all and things I will do when I finally find the time." Minus this constant chatter, one is able to make contact with one’s true essence, the divine light hidden behind the shroud of thought.

Patanjali suggested that yoga creates doors and windows within us that allows this divine light to enter. It is not an exercise as much as it is an exaltation; an invitation to a deeper knowing. That it often gets packaged as a new age form of the game Twister, is a function of the Western mind-set that needs to know the rules behind every activity. "Right hand red, left foot green," makes sense to the mind. The goal of trying to stretch oneself to the tipping point fuels the competitive spirit of the ego. The goal of yoga is not to see how far you can extend yourself before you fall, but to get you back on the straight and narrow path you fell from when your egoic mind decided to play hide and seek with itself.

If you get the chance, take a yoga class. Pull on those somewhat tight fitting shorts and throw caution to the wind. The benefits of increased flexibility, balance and muscle tone would be enough for your efforts but you also get increased awareness, balance of mind and spirit and, if you stick with it, the chance to become a metaphysical Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Rebel With A Cause

2008-10-04T14:18:00.009-04:00

A rebel is one who trusts nature, not man-made structures, who trusts that if nature is left alone, everything will be beautiful.
Osho

When you step back and consider the mass mentality of our nation, it is easy to see that living mindfully, allowing ourselves to experience the world without the constant interference of thought, is a deviation from the norm. The intellectual life is what most people consider to be normal. This means using our brains to solve problems created by our brains, or, even worse, problems created by the brains of others. It is the pinnacle of nonconformity to drop the habitual thought patterns that dominate our lives and experience peace and connection with the universe in the present moment.

The great irony is that we actually live mindlessly when we allow ourselves to get lost in thought. When we switch to autopilot we allow conditioned brain movements to take the place of true intelligence. Many great teachers saw this as a form of self-hypnosis or even insanity and did their best to point it out. The response they received was often less than enthusiastic. More often than not, the tag of heretic was pinned on them and their words were twisted to conform to something more palatable to the ego. This is the fate of many rebels. This is also the reason that many enlightened souls keep the whole experience to themselves. Perhaps this explains the Tao Te Ching’s contention that "those who speak do not know, and those who know do not speak."

If you are going to experience the healing power of stress, you are going to have to take the leap and be willing to live outside the bounds that society has placed around you and rail against the constraints of your own mental habits. Here are some tips that will be of assistance once you decide to be a rebel with a cause.

1. Expect scorn and doubt. While this may take the form of friends and family telling you that you are nuts to think that you can have a healthy relationship with stress, it will most likely be your own mind that tells you this. Many risk-takers had to overcome personal demons long before the external ones showed up. No matter what you hear, you are not going crazy. You may, however, be going out of your head, and that’s a good thing.

2. Know that you will still feel bad at times and that you may actually feel worse when you begin to break old thinking habits. Any recovering drug addict can tell you that the early phases of recovery are not always filled with peace and well-being. There will be a withdrawal phase as you begin to shift your conscious attention away from thought. You may find that feelings long masked by mind mechanics begin to show up with alarming frequency. The simple process of meditation may bring up a fountain of tears, with perhaps no easily identifiable source. Know that this inner storm will pass.

3. Avoid compulsive advice givers. You will most likely find that everyone around you has their own take on what is best for you. Know that while deviants are sometimes revered, they are more often reviled by those around them. Thus the pressure to conform to the sentiment, "If you ain’t miserable you ain’t one of us." Take the advice of others with grains of salt, perhaps laced around the rim of a margarita glass, if you feel inclined.

4. Forget the lightening bolts and look for the fireflies. You are taking on a process that has millions of years of momentum on its side so don’t expect that the skies will open up and the universe will reveal all of its secrets to you immediately. You will, however, begin to experience little miracles all around you; from no longer being disturbed by the least little thing, to being moved to deep appreciation by the least little thing.

5. Stay the course. Understand that this is not a one-shot deal. You are in this for the long haul and the old pattern of thinking will attempt to steer you off course. Know that you have within you the ultimate GPS for this journey and, despite your feelings to the opposite, you have always been on the road that was meant just for you.

Gurwho?: Avoiding the Self-Help Trap

2008-09-27T15:48:00.013-04:00

Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you.
Carl Jung

"The unlived life is not worth examining" is an adage that has stuck with me since I first heard it in an introductory counseling class. Over the years I have come to realize that thinking about life should never take the place of actually living life. I say this with the humility of a recovering self-help book junkie.

The allure of self-help literature is great. The Western mechanistic model we have grown up with tells us that we are works in progress and that we need only study the right owner’s manual to have a happy and meaningful life. Once we discover the secret to the purpose driven life we can begin to attract all manner of material goods, live in bodies that never age with minds that never fail, and find that one special person with whom we can spend the rest of eternity. At least that is what I read in the book, Have It All: The Last Book You Will Ever Need to Read.

Ironically, the self-improvement movement may create more stress than it relieves, as it often leaves its followers feeling inadequate and just a few karmic cycles short of being enlightened. The underlying message seems to be "you will never be happy as you are now, so you had better start making some serious changes before time runs out." The destructive power of stress is directly related to our belief that the ego is the sum of our existence and that we only have a limited amount of time to whip it into shape. If that doesn’t get the cortisol pumping, I don’t know what will.

I want to suggest a gentler path through the often rocky terrain of self-acceptance. I propose that the self that most self-help literature is trying to fix is none other than the egoic self. This self, as the Buddha and many others have pointed out, is actually a mirage that doesn't exist outside of our heads. Alan Watts puts it very plainly when he said "the reason you can’t change you is that you don’t exist." The ego, as a mind-made entity, will always need work. We can always add something to this self; teach it a new skill, rid it of a bad habit or help it become the next American Idol. Our true self is complete and perfect already. It stands patiently in the shadow of the ego waiting for it to finish taking bows so that it might reveal what the show was all about in the first place.

When his followers asked how they could go on without him, the Buddha responded "be a lamp unto yourselves." The great mystic, Kabir, used to look out at his followers and exclaim, "To whom shall I preach?" because he saw the divine spark of God rather than sin in all their eyes. Jesus said "you are the light of the world." What happened? Who turned the lights out? The good news is that we don’t need to stumble through our lives in search of an itty-bitty book light for illumination. We simply need to pull up the shade of thought that filters out the light. After that, it is just a matter of stepping out into life. Oh, and bring a book, it can get boring at times. May I humbly recommend The Healing Power of Stress? It is the latest offering in my brand new category of "Non-Self Help."

I am Stress (And So Can You!)

2008-09-20T11:59:00.015-04:00

In order to maintain an untenable position, you have to be actively ignorant... One motto on the show is, "Keep your facts, I'm going with the truth."
Stephen Colbert

America is under attack, people, and I don’t mean from terrorists, reality TV shows or bears. I’m talking about stress. We have become one nation under stress and it’s time to take the bull by the horns. Or, at the very least, recognize the fact that there is a bull loose in the china shop called the psyche and it’s about to knock over what you have spent your life stacking neatly on the shelves.

It’s time to look stress straight in the eye and, in the words of the president, "not blink." "What about the dangers?" you ask. "Stress kills and I have grown found of continuing my existence, so of course I want to run away from stress" you say, even before I can respond to the first question. Take a breath and let it out. Feel better? Don’t answer, it was rhetorical. Stress doesn’t kill, your reaction to stress kills you. More to the point, it is the constant flood of cortisol and other stress hormones that gradually begin to shrink the brain, eat away at a healthy heart and close off the otherwise open pathways for blood flow. Feel better?

The way out of this stress trap is not the fight or flight method. Save those reactions for the constant barrage of news stories about the stock market. The way out is to go through, to feel that stress is not separate and outside of yourself. To overcome stress one needs to come to terms with one’s stressiness™, a term I have trademarked. Know that you and stress are intimately connected. Without you there is no stress.

What I am proposing is no less than a stress revolution. It is time to throw off the chains of the Western mechanistic model of stress that sees stress as an invading force from the outside, and adopt the silky ropes of an Eastern model that sees stress as an organic process. We are going to have to admit that we grow stress inside of ourselves, some of us with the care of a master gardener, and then watch as the fruits of our labor spread across the landscape we call our lives. It’s time to wake up and realize tension is the stuff that life is made of. From the battleground that is your cellular system to the farthest reaches of the solar system where stars collide like an episode of Entertainment Tonight, the push and pull, rise and fall and yin and yang of existence are complimentary movements not contradictory ones.

You have stress in the same way that you have a temperature. It is only when this temperature moves away from its set point that we call it a fever. When body temperature rises too high, we suffer. So, too, with stress. So let’s drop the silly notion that we can be stress free. Let’s stop looking for "the secret" that will remove all tension from our lives. You can become a manifesting machine and use the law of attraction to bring all of the new cars, boats, and houses you want into your life, you will still have stress (in most cases even more as you try to figure out how to pay for all of these things). Let’s take an oath to move head-on into our stress and come to know it as ourselves. I know that when I am stressed, I am stress, and so can you. Join me, Nation, on this great adventure in search of the ultimate truth.

Are We Having Fun Yet?

2008-09-13T10:47:00.005-04:00

The bow cannot always stand bent,
nor can human frailty subsist without
some lawful recreation.
Miguel De Cervantes

Recreation, literally to "restore or to make anew," at times loses much of its fun status and seems to create only more stress in the lives of those engaging in it. You know how this goes; the card game turns ugly when you accuse your neighbor of dealing from the bottom of the deck, bowling night becomes brawling night after you catch the opposing team’s top player juicing up in-between frames, and the fishing trip goes south after you snap your pole in half trying to reel in that trophy-size log. What has become of us? Have we allowed stress so deeply into our lives that even the things that are meant to bring us joy and relaxation make us feel tense and frustrated? If you find yourself increasingly opting out of "games night" in order to scrub the bathroom floors or clip the cat’s claws, then I suggest that the answer is yes, you have allowed stress to take over the game board, and as everyone knows, stress does not play fair.

According to Webster’s dictionary, the word fun means "hoax or to be duped." Think about this for a minute; fun is supposed to be a situation in which we allow ourselves to be taken advantage of in some way—it is a trick we play on ourselves. The archetypal image of this is the game of hide and seek, where getting lost is as much of a thrill as trying to find those who have hidden themselves. The problem arises, and destructive stress sneaks in, when we forget the agreement that we made to be duped and start taking ourselves too seriously. This is when winning becomes more important than just being part of the game and the competitive ego sees even Candyland as a place to exert its control over the world.

If you want to get into contact with the healing power of stress, you are going to have to learn to play again. I hope that the last line sounds strange to you. I hope that you have a visceral reaction to the thought that having fun is something to be learned, it means there is still hope. It is only because of years and years of mental conditioning, often in the guise of formal education, that you have lost the ability to be silly. Ironically, it is because the world sometimes makes us feel so foolish that we wear our "game face" to let the world know that we mean business.

It is a sure sign of the stressed times we live in that we can no longer simply run through the fields unless there are clearly defined lanes, rules to keep cheaters at bay, and ribbons when it is over. Think about your last vacation (from the latin word vacatio, meaning freedom). How free did you feel? Were you taking in your surroundings in mindful peace, or busily trying to pack as much into twenty-four hours as humanly possible? When it was over did you return to work feeling rested and relaxed, or was your fading tan the only proof that you had been out of office? Stop doing this to yourself. Stop resisting your natural tendency to have fun and to be fun. It might literally be killing you.
Whenever you get the chance, watch children at play. Resist the urge to referee and simply observe how children go about their nonbusiness. Remember that this was you once, and is still you, at your deepest level. Restore your sense of awe for the world and your part in it. Stress cannot live in you when you are filled with wonder.

Here is a personal stress strategy you can use to put some fun back into your life. The next time you head out into the world, whether it is a trip to the supermarket, your in-laws or a dinner party, take along your party hat. Try your best to view whatever it is you are doing as an actual game. Remember that all games have rules, and that the outcome is up for grabs. This is where the fun comes in; the not knowing how it will turn out. Make it a point to fully engage in the hoax-like quality of the game that you are playing and realize that everyone you encounter, even the person who steals your prime parking spot at the Quickie Mart, is also playing the game. Marvel at how well some play and how others seem to lack a sense of enthusiasm. Notice those who try to bend or even break the rules of the game in their favour. Know that this is part of the game too. Be weary of your mind showing up as the supervising adult trying to tell you that play time is over and you have to get serious again. The mind is afraid of play because it knows that when you really get into it you lose yourself, and that it the death knell for the ego. Play these games as often as you like as see if you don’t re-create your stress.

Now or Never

2008-09-09T18:06:00.008-04:00

Come out of the circle of time
And into the circle of love
Rumi

If you look back on the truly joyous moments of your life you will find that most happened in the absence of an awareness of time. People describe ecstatic experiences as "I was totally lost in the moment," "time stood still," or "it seemed to last forever." It is no mere coincidence that joy exists in a timeless state; it is the release from time that allows joy to be. You cannot experience true happiness while you are torn between past and future, between this moment and the next.

The reason that it so hard to give up our dependence on time is that we have placed all of our bets on time. We put in so much time so that we may later use our time more wisely and live out our remaining time in peace. Throughout our lives we constantly feel the pressure of the past at our backs while the future seems to be heading toward us with ever increasing speed. There we sit, a tiny grape in the vice of what was and what will be, knowing that the big squish is coming and there is nothing we can do but hope that we will have a better life as grape juice, or even better, wine.

To break free of time’s grip does not require Herculean strength. To the contrary, it requires the simple act of letting go. When you drop the mind conditioning that has you rocketing back and forth between the past and future, you will find the stillness of absolute presence. By accepting the present as it is you will discover the wisdom in the Taoist saying "if you want to have a stress- free life, wish for things to be the way they are rather than the way you want them to be." The circle of time is the not-so-merry-go-round that we often ride day after day. If this has left you feeling a little nauseous, feel free to jump off. The only thing that you will miss is the sense of vertigo that comes from a life spinning out of control.

If the time vice has you tightly clamped at the moment you are probably thinking "where I am going to find the time to practice this present moment stuff?" I am going to ask that you put down that day planner and slowly back away from the belief that there are not enough hours in the day. Understand, deeply, that there is no such thing as work time, free time, down time or the right time. Begin to appreciate that life is just one big happening that you have sliced into what you thought were more manageable pieces. Stop worrying about past events, they are nothing more than antique stores of the mind. Put an end to obsessing about how your future will turn out. Settle into the present moment.

Here are a few tips for breaking free from your role as time traveler:

1.Hang out with animals, they are Zen masters of present moment awareness.
2.Focus on your breathing. You can only breathe in the now. Enjoy a breath of the present moment.
3. Take breaks from time. See what happens when you respond to your body’s
rhythms rather than the unnatural ticking and clicking of the multiple time pieces that surround you.
4. See if you can stop retelling "poor me" stories, they simply give your ego a new place to hang its old hat.
5. Release your need to control your future. Your ego has about as much influence over the future as your child has over your car as he sits next to you with the little plastic steering wheel in his hands.
6. Read any of Thich Nhat Hanh’s wonderful books, or The Healing Power of Stress by that savvy author, Mike Verano.

Two's a Crowd: The Stress of the Other

2008-08-30T14:12:00.000-04:00

The only thing worse than

the egoic me is the egoic us.
Eckhart Tolle

I’m going to go out on a very sturdy limb and suggest that if you were to follow the trail of your stress to its source, more often than not there will be another human being at the end of that trail. Sartre’s famous comment that "hell is other people," might as well be our generation’s theme song. We rub shoulders daily with our fellow citizens and that rubbing often leads to sparks and maybe even a three-alarm fire.

I know from my work with teenagers in residential treatment centers that this experience begins very early in life. Many kids, no matter how awful their upbringing, no matter how traumatic their early years, will do relatively okay when left to themselves. Throw them in with a peer group and you will immediately see the divisions arising, gangs forming, and the inevitable "us against them" mentality taking form. Watch the news on any given day, and the state of the world will show you that these youngsters are simply imitating what their elders have taught them—life needs enemies. The stress that this social dysfunction creates is felt around the world.

Why are we so bad at something that is supposedly wired into our DNA? Why do we spend our lives trolling the waters for that one other person to make us feel complete and then work so hard to cast off all of the other fish that have accidentally landed in our nets? How much more enjoyable would life be if our brothers and sisters were no longer seen as proof that God should have created either Adam or Eve, but not both? While it would be stretching it to suggest that I can help you love your enemies as yourself, I would like to suggest that with the healing power of stress comes the ability to better navigate the social waters you find yourself in. I want to assure you that once you begin to see that stress is within you, your interactions with others will take on new flavor. The hell of the other is none other than the hell that you have made. To move out of this hell takes only a minimal amount of awareness on your part.

This awareness begins by realizing that our social interactions are filled with stress because we are each a mini stress factory, and when we gather together we fuel each other’s fires. Want to keep this fire from burning out your relationships? Remove the fuel inside of you that gives it life. Take away the mind-kindling that catches whatever spark it can and turns the casual passing comment into a personal attack on your integrity.

Finally, we are going to have to come terms with the advice of sages past and present that all good relationships start with the one we have with ourselves. Narcissism and ego mania aside, most people need to work at learning to get along with themselves. Years of self-loathing, self-deception and even down-right abuse leave many people feeling like they should have walked out on themselves a long time ago.

Since no discourse on relationships would be complete without some unsolicited advice, I want to give you a list of tips to help you fall back in love with yourself.

1. Leave your mind out of it. Over-analyze anything and it dies.
2. Give yourself space. Stop trying to fill yourself up with things (this includes thoughts) and give yourself time to be really alone. Put down the books, turn off the television, log off the internet and take the blue tooth out of your ear and simply be still.
3. Surprise yourself. Nothing kills relationships like boredom and predictability. Do something different. Set a goal to do something that scares you at least once a week. Feel free to check with a close friend just in case your "what scares me list" includes things that could get you arrested or a prime spot on Youtube.
4. Forgive yourself. Practice telling yourself that it is ok that you never became the top executive of a fortune 500 company. If you are a top executive of a fortune 500 company, forgive yourself for having to crush so many people in order to get there.
5. Don’t go to bed mad. Anger is the jack hammer that grinds relationships into specs of human dust. Stop beating yourself up, that’s abuse without the benefit of the make-up flowers or candy.
6. . Let go of your need to have the admiration and adoration of every person who happens to stumble onto the stage that is your life and you will find that your exasperation and desperation goes with it. Change the theme song in your mind and watch to see if others don’t start whistling a different tune. Then just sit back and enjoy the music.

Role Playing

2008-08-24T17:46:00.000-04:00

The only problem with not castrating
a gigantic ego is that it will surely become amorous and father a hundred screaming ideas and kids who will then all quickly grow up and skillfully proceed to run up every imaginable debt and complication of which your brain can conceive.—Hafiz

In order to fully appreciate the healing power of stress you are going to have to come to terms with the fantastic trick you have played on yourself by creating the illusion that is the ego. When you entered the world in your skin suit you became a member of an actor’s guild of epic proportions. If we peek behind the curtain to see that big bad ego wizard, we find that he is afraid you will find out that it is all just smoke and mirrors.

Alan Watts stated that ego is nothing more than "futility married to an illusion." He suggests that the feeling created by this illusion is that of chronic tension in the body as we contract ourselves against the world around us. It gives us a sense of being in control. This tension is our stress Seeing through this illusion is the key to unlocking the healing power of stress.

Often when people discover that the self they have invested so much in is nothing but a mental phantom, they turn to self-loathing in order to try and shake themselves free from their pain. This is merely the ego taking on the role of victim, and only increases stress as you try to run away from yourself. The wiser course is to make friends with it and use the advice of Arjuna Gargh, to look at it as the "crazy uncle" who often gives you really bad advice. This makes perfect sense if you think about it. Has anyone talked you into anything even close to the insane things you have convinced yourself you should do? Be honest; you know that it was you who told you that eating nothing but cheeseburgers would help you lose weight. You know you were behind the decision to seek inner peace by having the word "om" tatooed on your forehead. And surely you remember the time that you convinced yourself that no one would notice the comb-over.

If you find that you have grown weary of yourself and your efforts to "act right," you might want to take a look at the roles you are playing in life and take a break from those that are causing you the most pain. Don’t worry about losing yourself should you drop the robe of the ego, it is because of the ego that you feel disguised in the first place. Once you step out of character you immediately step into the truth; you are nothing less than a divine essence pretending to be human. Oh, and by the way, I read the reviews and you were "marvelous, darling, simply marvelous!"

What, me worry?

2008-08-15T19:15:00.000-04:00

Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow, it only saps today of its joy.
- -Leo Buscaglia

If stress has a flag-bearer, then that title has to go to the mind phenomenon that is worry. Interestingly, the word itself means "to strangle or constrict." This is a great image to keep in mind when you think about worry, as it is the mind that has you in a strangle-hold, constricting any positive flow of energy. Worry has its roots deep within the habitual thought patterns of the brain. It seems that the mind, in an attempt to prove its worth, creates problems and then sets out to solve those problems. This is relatively harmless when struggling over a crossword puzzle or trying to complete your taxes, but when it comes to life problems, such as what to do about one’s past or future, then it moves into the category best verbalized by parents at one time or another, "You’re going to worry me to death."

The ego needs worry to sustain itself—it has formed a conspiratorial relationship with the mind. This relationship has a "you scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours" quality, that leaves many of us scratching our heads. Put your worries to the simple test of "Why is this so important to me?" and you will realize how seductive worry is. Try to stop worrying and you will realize how deep its tentacles penetrate—how truly insidious this form of stress can be.

One of the age-old psychological methods for taming the worry beast is to go ahead and have a worry-fest. Set some time aside and worry like there is no tomorrow—you can even worry that there won’t be a tomorrow. Use this time to give in to all of your deepest fears—"my dream of being the next American Idol is never going to be realized, the mole is really skin cancer, the headache is a brain tumor, and my children will grow up to be game show hosts," Doing this, "forced," worrying will have multiple benefits. When you feel a worry cropping up in the middle of the day you can tell yourself to save it for "worry time" and go on about your business.

A mindful approach to worry would be to feel it in your body without the mental commentary—picture CNN with the sound off and the "breaking news" crawl at the bottom of the screen no longer running. Take your attention to the places in your body that worry seems to be lighting up. Whether it is butterflies in the stomach, tension in your neck, or a nervous twitch of the eyelids, go there and observe your body. In the absence of an inner dialogue, you will be amazed at how many of your worries simply dissolve like an Alka-Seltzer in a CEO’s glass of water. When you tune into the music in your body, rather than the voice in your head, you will find that many of the sad songs you have been singing have a new ring to them.

It was Marshall McLuhan who said that the age of anxiety was a result of "trying to do today's jobs with yesterday's tools." This is true for your stress. You have been trying to solve the problem with the same mind that created it. Worrying about your worries only drives the anxiety to deeper levels of your consciousness. In essence, you have been using a hammer when you really need a pair of pliers, a screwdriver where you need to use a saw.

If you stay mindful when worry shows up, you will see it for what it is—a mind cloud that has temporarily obscured the shining of your light. If you are feeling particularly playful, you can even become the weather forecaster who maps out the passing front and seems delighted every time conditions seem favorable for the "perfect storm"--
"Today’s forecast calls for early optimism followed by a heart-warming trend. However, if you look just to the west of this band of bliss you can see doubt building up, and right behind that there seems to be some very high pressure in the form of a deadline. We will probably see some tears by this afternoon followed by some rumblings as dinner approaches."

Overthinkers Anonymous

2008-08-08T21:08:00.000-04:00

To eliminate the vexation of the mind, it doesn’t help to do something; this only reinforces the mind’s mechanics. -- Lao Tzu

The professionals who work with alcoholics have created several screening tools to determine if one’s drinking has become a problem. Many of these are self tests and are very useful if you are honest. I have modified one of these questionnaires to look at thought addiction.

Are You a Thoughtaholic?

Please answer "yes" or "no" to the following:

1. Are you thinking more than you used to?
2. Has a spouse, partner, or relative, friend or coworker ever complained about your thinking?
3. Do you ever feel ashamed or guilty about your thinking?
4. Have you ever tried to stop thinking only to find that you could not?
5. Have you ever gotten into a verbal or physical altercation because of your thinking?
6. Do you start thinking as soon as you wake up?
7. Do you find yourself thinking before you go to sleep?
8. Have you ever asked anyone for help with your thinking?
9. Has your thinking ever caused problems between you and a spouse, partner, relative, friend or coworker?
10. Do you often think when you’re by yourself?
11. Do you seek out the company of other thinkers?
12. Do you continue thinking despite negative consequences due to your thinking?
13. Do you sometimes think in order to feel better?
14. Has anyone ever told you that they are worried about your thinking?
15. Have you ever lost a relationship or job because of your thinking?

Count up the number of "yes" responses and score accordingly:

0 = You are lying, take the test again and be honest.
1-2 = High degree of self-awareness with the ability to keep your thoughts from harming you or someone else.
3-5 = Problem thinker. Your thoughts are starting to get the best of you and have caused you a moderate degree of pain.
6-9 = Abusive thinker. Your thoughts are causing high levels of pain to you and those around you.
10 or more = Thinking dependence. You got it bad; your thoughts are running the show and you are just a bag of flesh being pushed around by the whims of the gray matter between your ears. You are also in the company of about 98% of humanity.

The Silent Treatment

2008-08-03T10:02:00.000-04:00

By a quiet mind I mean a mental consciousness within which sees thoughts arrive to it and move about but does not itself feel that it is thinking or identifying itself with the thoughts or call them its own.--Sri Aurobindo

The mental noise that is stress, the whirring of the mind machine, grinds away all day and through many people’s nights as well. If you look closely, you can see how this grinding is slowly working you through the pepper mill of existence until you are left with a mere dusting of what once was a whole human being. The tragic irony has been that in an attempt to take care of our stress we send in more noise. We think about our stressful thoughts, we worry about our worries and we even complain about our complaints. Taoist teachers refer to this as putting a new head on top of the one you already have, and contrary to poplar myth, two heads are not better than one.

If you want to see progress in shifting from your old relationship with stress to a new and improved one, then practice cutting off the lifeblood of noise that stress needs to live on. Am I telling you to simply "Shut up and get over it?" Would that help you? If so, then yes, I am telling you to shut up. The getting over it part will actually take care of itself if you can get to the state that the Buddhists refer to a "noble silence." Noble silence is simply being quiet and aware at the same time. This is contrary to what most of us do when we say that we are relaxing. Hanging suspended from a rope cot, while cool summer breezes blow across the lawn is not relaxing if the whole time your mind is ruminating on all the things you should be doing, if you brain is desperately trying to figure out how to you are going to be able to retire before the age of 80 so that you can start relaxing like this in exotic places.

To experience noble silence is to give attention to the space between the noises in your head. What I am calling the silent treatment is to enter into this meditative state minus the incense, new age music and long bearded guru—not that these things are bad. When you tune into the silent moments of your life, you will discover that stress has no home there. More to the point, stress is transformed into its basic structure of a vibrational energy that, despite your effort to get it moving out of your life, is still lodged deep in your psyche. By withdrawing your inner dialogue, you immediately impact this energy charge. Without its noise juice, stress loses its story. This is the power of the silent treatment—the ability to end the narrative of a life that always has you on the losing end.

"No fight, no blame," says the Tao Te Ching, No thoughts, no stress, say I. Eventually, when you reconnect the mouth/brain cable, you will find the urge, desire and even need to say something. More than likely, however, it will not have the same urgent quality to it and you may find that on second thought—really no thought—you don’t say anything after all. This deep wisdom was beautifully summed up in the story of The Little Prince, when he tells his friend that just before he leaves him he will not say anything because "words are often the source of misunderstandings." I could go on about the silent treatment, but I think I have said enough.

The Healing Power of Stress at Work: Part 2

2008-07-26T16:16:00.000-04:00

"The character of your existence is determined by the energies to which you connect yourself." Hua Hu Ching

If you really want to turn your work stress around you are going to have to evaluate your values and see how often they are on a direct collision course with your actions. If time with your family is your primary value, what are you doing spending weekends at the office? If your physical health is your primary value, why are you working eighteen hours days and catching quickie naps while you drive home? The stress therapist, Roger Mellot, once said that people leave jobs that are no longer serving them when the value of their sanity overtakes their need for a paycheck. The good news is that you do not have to choose between wealth and health; you can have both as long as you are clear about your needs and stay aware of the ways you go about meeting them. Once you shift from serving your ego to serving your inner self you will find that many of the work related stressors simply have no more meaning for you.

Unless you are willing to confront the habitual thoughts that are in conflict with what you truly value, you will most likely never experience the healing power of stress. It would be insane to think that you can subject yourself to ritualistic doses of bad stress forty hours a week and still feel like your life is anything other than drudgery, covered up by an occasional weekend’s worth of "down time." If, instead, you choose to take your work stress head on, I assure you that the rest of your life will benefit from the ripple effect. When you start to see your work environment for the playground that it really is, you might find yourself earning a true living, and happy hours will now take place at home rather than at the local watering hole. Commit to being truly self-employed—working in your own best interest—and watch as your self-worth begins to rise in ways that your stock portfolio never will.

The Healing Power of Stress at Work--Part 1

2008-07-18T19:45:00.000-04:00

"One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important. "

Bertrand Russell

It is ironic that what we call "earning a living" leaves so many of us feeling dead tired when it is over. I am willing to bet that no matter where you go to earn a day’s pay, you most likely report to a stress factory that pumps out some of the finest product around. I am also willing to bet that you have, at one time or another, thought that if you did not have to work, there would be no stress in your life. So synonymous are work and stress that I propose we just go ahead and say we are going to stress, rather than to work, and at least avoid the idealistic hope that it should be anything else.

Sarcasm aside, we can see that work is both the laboratory where we give life to our stress and the playground on which we let it run amok. Recent studies have suggested that as many as 80 percent of adults identify their jobs as their leading cause of stress—the other 20 percent, apparently, are unemployed and currently stressing over when they will be able to return to work. Being miserable at work is so embedded within our collective psyches that even people who profess to love their jobs will find things about it to stress over. The unstated pledge in many workplaces seems to be "If you want to be one of us, you are have to hate being here." Thus my phrase, Misery loves companies.

If we are ever going to break free from the destructive powers of stress while still having a roof over our heads, food on the table, and a thousand high definition channels on our super-plasma television sets, we are going to have to come to terms with work- related stress. I’m sure you have had the experience of having a perfectly planned day spoiled by the sudden awareness that it was not the weekend and your boss was eagerly anticipating your arrival. The fact that most heart attacks occur on Monday mornings is a depressing commentary on the power we have handed over to our careers.

I want to use the healing power of stress to provide an even more direct path through the job jungle and see if we can machete our way through the trials and tribulations of our careers. I hope to help you see the workplace as a training ground for your new outlook on stress and begin to take some of the work out of working. As some of you make this journey, you may have to face the reality that your jobs no longer serve your sanity and that your insurance is no longer covering the fallout. Others will discover that work has simply become the center ring in the circus of stress that seems to set up tents wherever you land. In either case, you are going to have to break the cycle of thinking that you can have a negative outlook and a positive outcome. We will do well to remember Eckhart Tolle’s advice that "When you fight life, it fights you back."

A good place to start your adventure is to pay close attention to others as you interact with them while they do their jobs. Try this with the cashier ringing you out at the grocery store, the bank teller handing you your money, the waitress taking your lunch order, the telemarketer trying to get you to buy and subscription to "Get a Life" magazine, the nurse taking your blood pressure and the taxi cab driver taking you home after realizing that you were the last one standing at the bar when they call "last round."

If you do this, minus the critical mind that will want to critique the performance of your fellow human beings, you will begin to experience suffering in its raw form. Allow your mind to extend itself and imagine what it is that lies behind what you once simply labeled "a bad attitude," "poor service," or "the devil incarnate." See if you can, if only for an instant, allow this wall to drop and feel the humanness in someone who, like you, most likely only wanted to come to work today and not leave with a splitting migraine. Don’t be surprised if this is a little overwhelming at first. Many of us have created such a separation between ourselves and the others that we bump into in the game of life that we see them as mere obstacles to our need for the good life. We are no longer our brother’s keeper but ones who keep our brothers and sisters at a safe distance so as to try and keep the crap from their lives splashing our happy suits.

Once you have encountered the workforce in this way, turn this light of awareness of yourself while you are busy doing whatever it is you do to keep the poverty monster off your back. Rather than berate yourself for missing the deadline, just watch the movement within yourself. While doing this, avoid the "poor me" syndrome that has you as the most overworked, underpaid and underappreciated employee in the known universe. Simply watch where in your body the tension lands and how your body responds to it. When the phone rings, avoid the reflex response of thinking that it can only be someone on the other end who has made it their personal mission in life to push you over the edge. Instead, really listen to yourself as you talk and feel the words as they slip across your lips. Apply this same routine to every interaction and activity at work. The point here is not to concentrate on yourself at work but to simply experience yourself while you go about your day. Don’t label you actions or interactions, instead, be what Buddhists refer to as the "silent witness."

What you will most likely find is that many of your responses are simply old habits playing over and over again. We are all good at witnessing these in our coworkers. The world of substance abuse recovery calls this "taking someone else’s inventory." I am suggesting that the very process of taking this inventory produces unnecessary stress in you. I am suggesting that one of the reasons that the work place becomes so dangerous is that many of us walk around carrying what we think are maps of all of the emotional land mines around us, while at the same time carefully burying our own around every corner and in every break room. This is why so many people actually report not feeling safe at their jobs.

Psychotic coworkers aside, you are your own worst enemy at your job. Yes, it might very well be true that your boss possesses all of the savvy of a sponge and that you have to rub shoulders with more shady characters than you would find in a Star Wars bar scene. However, you will still be faced with the fact your work stress still says more about you than those around you. To be fair, it actually says more about the human condition than it says about you, but I did not think that would get your attention in the same way. As the ego’s playground, the workplace will always be filled with tension. Mind games are the product produced at every job site no matter what the official company mission statement says and the fine print of every work contract should read, "The only thing worse than being left alone with your thoughts is being surrounded by the thoughts of others." So it should come as no surprise to you that at the end of a day’s worth of "my ego is bigger than yours" your head hurts, your chest feels tight, and the only thing you really have a grip on is the stirring wheel as your race home, with NASCAR-like precision, so you can tell your significant other about your plans to open up a fruit stand.

A Stress Revolution

2008-07-12T15:36:00.000-04:00

Brain cells create ideas.
Stress kills brain cells.
Stress is not a good idea.

--Frederick Saunders

The healing power of stress? I have to admit that, even to my ears, these words do not seem to fit together. It seems an oxymoron, with the emphasis on the moronic, to suggest that stress can be anything other than something to avoid at all costs. As a therapist, I have been taught that stress is a destroyer. I have watched as it has consumed the lives of my clients, friends, family members, and, in an act of sublime irony, even this humble writer. I have tried again and again to use my therapeutic wisdom to outsmart it, to manage it, and even to try and remove it completely from life’s equation, and still it returned, sometimes with more force. I know that you do not need proof, but consider these often-cited facts about stress:

-- About a million people each day in the U.S. are absent from work due to stress-related disorders.
-- Up to 90% of all visits to primary care physicians are for stress-related complaints.
-- Up to 80% of industrial accidents are due to stress.
-- Over 50% of lost workdays are stress-related.
-- 14% of all workers say stress caused them to quit or change jobs in the previous two years.
-- 43% of all adults suffer adverse health effects due to stress.
-- Stress has been linked to all the leading causes of death, including heart disease, cancer, lung ailments, accidents, cirrhosis, and suicide.

With this amount of bad press, we have to wonder who let this stress monster loose, and whether there is any way to get it back in its cage? Even more to the point, is there some way that we can learn to live with stress successfully and use its power to heal ourselves?

The answer to the first question, "Who let this monster loose?" is easy, but you are not going to like it. So let’s go to the second question about whether or not there is anything we can do about it. The answer to this question is a resounding "Yes!" If you are still wondering about the first question and stressing over what the answer is going to be, then you already know the answer, and should just relax and read on.

This is not about stress management. I am not going to talk about the physiological aspects of stress, nor will I tell you that you need to eat better, sleep more, and stop all of the fun things in your life that you have picked up as stress-busters. Why? You already know those things, and my telling you is only going to make you feel worse for not doing them. My goal is much simpler, yet also much more difficult. I am going to help you look at stress in a new way. The only requirement for this stress program to work is for you to have an open mind. If you have long since locked your mind and thrown away the key, take heart: this book will help you as well. As you move forward, you will most likely discover that your mind and stress are intimately entangled, and having a closed mind is one of the reasons that you still feel so much of the negative power of stress.

I have worked in the stress field for more than twenty years and lived with my own stress for more than forty-five, give or take—mostly give. As a licensed therapist, I have met with thousands of people in various stages of the stress continuum. If you are unfamiliar with the stress continuum, it looks like this:

Pre-birth..............Birth.............. After Death
No stress..............Stress............. No Stress

My clients have come to me in many guises, but the underlying theme to all of our sessions has been the same: "Life is stressing me out, and you are my last hope for any semblance of sanity." The irony, of course, is that going to therapy, for most people, is in itself a very stressful event. This irony did not seem lost on many of my clients, who almost invariably left therapy before making any notable changes.

It wasn’t until my own levels of stress became all-consuming that I began to seriously consider finding a new way to take on this monster. What I discovered was often in direct contrast with what I had been taught as a therapist, and seemed to run contrary to logic. I knew that I was either on the brink of a mental breakdown or a discovery that would forever alter the way I worked with my clients and, what is more, the way I saw myself in my relation to stress. Make no mistake about it: you, too, have a relationship with stress. In the same way that the alcoholic has a relationship with alcohol, you have created a pattern of living that includes stress as a primary character in the drama that is your life. My guess is that this relationship is, at best, dysfunctional, and, at worst, abusive. This, my friend, is great news—the relationship part, not the abuse. In the old models of stress, you were a victim—the world was out to get you and danger was around every corner. In the model I offer you, you are the director, writer, and actor of the story you call "Me", and you are long overdue for a rewrite.

Lastly, I am not going to preach stress-free living. While I think it is possible for those who inhabit higher planes to be free of stress, you and I are flying coach and the stewardess just spilled our drinks in our laps. So we are not going to remove stress, but we are going to move it. We are going to take it out of its current role as the spoiler of all that is good and place it neatly in a corner of the room, where it may occasionally raise a fuss to get attention—much like a puppy. Like any good pet owner, we will toss it an occasional bone, but the days of its peeing on the couch, pooping on the floor, and humping the cat are over. In the end,when asked by friends and family alike, "So, are you stress free now?" you will be able to answer proudly, "No, but I am free to stress."

In order to help create the opening to allow this new view of stress to take hold, I will be introducing Personal Stress Strategies and Techniques, or "PSST," thus creating the catchphrase, "Got Stress? Get PSST!" These thought-stoppers will be used to empty your brain tank so that new concepts can get in and take root. Each is designed to be used immediately, some are even reusable, and you may feel free to carry them with you wherever you go.

If you are like me and almost ninety-eight percent of the human population, you are probably feeling fairly skeptical about all of this. You might be thinking. "I have tried this all before. Every time I try to make changes to myself, it never lasts. Please, just leave me alone and stop all of the self-improvement mumbo-jumbo!" If this is your current state of mind, congratulations. You are right where you need to be. While it might sound tongue-in-cheek, I assure you that it is not. I really believe that in order for this to work, and for any real change to happen in one’s life, there has to be some doubt. This is the beginning of the healing process—seeing one’s stress as a pointer to something that needs attention. No good journey begins by already knowing how the trip will turn out. Where is the fun in that? In order to have a new relationship with stress, we are not only going to head down new roads, but we are also going to take roads very-well-traveled in a new way.

We will not be taking this journey without guidance. In addition to my experiences with thousands of clients, I am going to share with you the insights that I have gained through my own relationship with stress. While I may occasionally quote the likes of Sigmund Freud, William James, Carl Jung, or even Dr. Phil, I have found that much in Western psychological therapy falls very short of providing one with a way to live in harmony with life. This view, I am discovering, is becoming more and more fashionable in the profession, as the mechanistic/materialistic view of the mind has not always brought forth the ripest of fruits. More often than not, traditional psychological approaches put you at odds with life and needlessly sustain conflict and tension. Therefore, the pointers we will follow have less to do with the science of the mind and much more to do with the silence of the mind. Borrowing from the traditions of Buddhism, Hinduism, Christian mysticism, and ancient and modern sages, we will bring to life the meaning behind the words of the Tao Te Ching: "To a mind that is still, the whole universe surrenders." We will find that once we look behind the veil of stress, we will discover that, in the immortal words of the sage Pogo, "We have met the enemy and he is us."

Before starting any journey, it is always a good thing to take a quick inventory to prepare both physically and mentally. Let’s be honest: some of us have piled on so much stress that we barely cling to existence. Sometimes, the mere thought of trying to dive into unknown waters brings about great anxiety. While I want to assure you that you will survive this dive, it would be foolish to think that you will not experience a degree of fear and even panic. If this is the case for you, and it has been years since the last time you truly opened your heart and soul to anyone, you might consider talking to a trusted person before heading on. You can choose a minister, priest, therapist, doctor, hairdresser, or anyone else whom you feel safe around. Once you feel you have purged the stress tanks, and there is no psychological boogie man waiting to rob you of you last vestige of sanity, then "onward we go."