While I am not a Buddhist, I find great wisdom and potential liberation in the Tibetan Buddhist teachings on death. They offer a beautiful understanding of life’s end to those in the west who are still under the influence of a societal death taboo.
Sogyal Rinpoche, author of The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, has a particular skill in drawing out the universal messages of these teachings. He makes them understandable to the western mind without losing their authenticity, purity, and power. What follows is a summary of his teachings on death and impermanence.*
According to Sogyal Rinpoche, reflections on death and impermanence are the very cornerstone of all spiritual paths. Among Christian contemplatives, for example, is the expression ‘Memento mori’ – ‘remember that you will die.’ Buddhist teachings encourage awareness of the fact that we could die at any moment. This helps us to maintain awareness of the preciousness of life and encourages us to sort out our priorities.
From a Buddhist perspective, the root cause of all our suffering, is the fact that we do not take enough time to come to know ourselves. We are encouraged to discover our true nature, our enlightened, ‘Buddha’ mind through prayer and meditation.
Beyond our ordinary everyday mind is our true mind. It radiates the qualities of tremendous light or brilliance (wisdom) and great warmth (love and compassion). Sogyal Rinpoche uses the analogy of the sky to contrast this state of enlightenment to our everyday mind. Our daily thoughts, feelings, and actions are like temporary clouds that come and go in an endless sky. The sky, like the enlightened mind, is beyond birth and death.
Coming to know our true nature requires overcoming our ordinary mind and moving past our ego.
In our day-to-day lives, we become absorbed and distracted by our thoughts, feelings and activities. It is easy to allow our ignorance, negative emotions, and actions to obscure our true nature. This occurs much the same way that clouds block our awareness of the endless sky.
We all have the potential to connect beyond our ordinary minds to our deeper state of profound wisdom, love, and compassion.
It is this state of mind that is said to endure past death. If we do not come to glimpse our true nature in life, we will not be prepared to recognize it and enter into it at death.
This transformation of mind is essential preparation for death. Like cleaning the smudges off your eyeglass lenses, it also allows us to see more clearly in life. Our very perceptions transform and circumstances will appear differently. Whether or not we are able to see clearly, remember that even when our ordinary mind is cloudy, the sky-like nature of mind is still there. Weather is only on the surface. Deep in the sky-like nature of our minds it is pure.
In many western spiritual traditions, we use the expression ‘let go and let God.’ Similarly, the Buddhists teach that the essential path to personal transformation and freedom comes from learning to stop grasping after impermanence. Indeed, everything is in a constant state of change.
The message of impermanence is that one of the main causes of suffering is grasping and attachment. Since what we grasp for is impermanent, grasping is an act of futility.
We have to learn to let go. We don’t have to change. We simply change our minds and recognize that impermanence is the very nature and fabric of life itself.
We associate impermanence with losing and death, but when we really understand it – it is the most secure thing. When we lose the clouds, we gain the sky.
The most permanent thing is impermanence. When we realize that, we are made stronger spiritually.
Our fear of death, according to Sogyal Rinpoche, is the fear of life, of facing ourselves. Looking into death is actually facing ourselves because sooner or later we have to come to terms with ourselves. That is why we tend to think of death only when we are dying.
To look at yourself and your life at death is too little too late where personal transformation is concerned.
That is why Tibetan Buddhist teachings stress that we should always contemplate death and impermanence. It is a way of breaking through to our true nature.
Rainer Maria Rilke said that our deepest fears are like dragons guarding our deepest treasure. Our fear of the impermanence of life and all that we grasp after awakens in us an awareness that nothing of this world is real and nothing lasts.
Milarepa, a revered Tibetan poet and sage, said it this way – “All worldly pursuits have but the one unavoidable end, which is sorrow: acquisitions end in dispersion; buildings in destruction; meetings in separation; births, in death. Knowing this, one should, from the very first, renounce acquisition and heaping up, and building, and meeting; and faithful to the commands of an eminent guru, set about realizing the Truth (which has no birth or death).”
We discover that this understanding about impermanence is really our greatest friend. It drives us to ask:
“If everything dies and changes, then what is really true? Is there something behind the appearances? Is there something boundless and infinitely spacious in which the dance of change and impermanence takes place? Is there something, in fact, we can depend on that does survive what we call death?”
Allow these questions to occupy you urgently and reflect upon them. You will slowly find yourself making a profound shift in the way you view everything. With continued contemplation and practice in letting go, we come to uncover in ourselves something we cannot name or describe or conceptualize. It is something we come to realize lies behind all the changes and deaths of the world.
Our myopic focus upon our desires, what we are grasping for, and that which we are trying to avoid, begins to dissolve and fall away. As this happens, we catch repeated and glowing glimpses of the vast implications behind the truth of impermanence.
Sogyal Rinpoche describes this transformation saying:
“It is as if all our lives we have been flying in an airplane through dark clouds and turbulence when suddenly the plane soars above these into the clear boundless skies. Inspired and exhilarated by this new dimension of freedom, we come to uncover a depth of peace, joy and confidence in ourselves that fills us with wonder and gradually breeds in us a certainty that there is in us something that nothing destroys, that nothing alters, and that cannot die.”
He further describes, “as the new awareness becomes vivid and almost unbroken, there occurs a personal and utterly non-conceptual revelation of what we are, why we are here, and how we should act which amounts in the end to nothing less than a new life, new birth – almost a resurrection . . . You discover something in yourself that does not die.”
He also speaks of death using the analogy of being on a train platform waiting for a train. We know that we must take that train but don’t know when it is coming. We have great anxiety because our bags are not packed. We do not prepare for death or live thoughtfully because we think we will live forever. We know we will die someday. But, we prefer not to absorb that thought. Instead, we pretend that we have an unlimited lease on life.
We become lazy in how we live our lives. The particular kind of laziness in the west is an active one. We do everything and anything to avoid ourselves. We fill our lives with so many activities that there is not really a chance for the truth of ourselves to be revealed. There is no gap. Yet, we live with an abiding anxiety since we have not faced ourselves or our death. There is a deep anxiety and a deep fear because death represents our ultimate fear.
Learning to live in the immediacy of death helps us to sort out our priorities and to realize what is truly important in life.
We learn that there is really not much time to waste. Death helps us to look into our life in a deeper way.
We come to realize that only two things really matter when we die – how we have lived and the state of our mind.
When we take care of those most important things, then we can relax. Milarepa said my religion is not to be ashamed of myself when I die.”
An unenlightened mind sees death as defeat – a tragedy. These teachings show us it is really an extraordinary opportunity for transformation and personal liberation.
When we die, it is only the end of one cycle finishing. The delusions of this life will end if we allow it. However, those who hold tight to their illusions don’t allow for their liberation to take place. Those who allow it not only surrender to the death of their bodies but they allow their ordinary mind to die with all its delusions as well.
Milarepa described it this way: ‘In horror of death, I took to the mountains. Meditating again and again on the uncertainty of the hour of death, I captured the fortress of the deathless unending nature of mind. Now all fear of death is done and gone.”
Tibetan Buddhist teachings provide three pieces of advice for the moment of death. These also serve practitioners well in how to live their lives:
Let go of all graspings, attachments, and aversions.
Keep your heart and mind pure.
Unite your mind with the wisdom mind of the buddhas.
Those practicing these techniques in life who are really able to let go inside themselves, find they are able to cope better with outer stress. They are less bothered or worried by what transpires in their life. When we stabilize and integrate this view as part of our being through meditation and action, we can meet death fearlessly. By practicing getting into the high ground of our consciousness during life through meditation and contemplation, we prepare ourselves for the moment of death.
There is also advice given for those who are helping the dying. Essentially, we are called upon to simply be there maintaining a consciousness of unconditional loving — free of attachments. Love is not expressed by grasping after the life of the dying. This kind of attachment, Sogyal Rinpoche teaches, is actually what spoils love.
To truly realize love for one another, we have to let go.
When a loved one is dying, we can best serve them by giving them our permission and blessing to die and by surrounding them with our love and encouragement.
*This article is based on the teachings of Sogyal Rinpoche presented in The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying and the following four lectures: Transcending All Fear of Death; The Essence of The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying (parts one and two); and Reflecting on Death.
If you would like to know more about me and my work, please explore my website here.
Do you know someone who might benefit from reading this article?If so, please share it with them.
7 Tender and Magnificent Lessons That Death Can Teach Us
This is a picture of me with my mother, Grace Mundy, six months before her death in 2006. We shared a home during the final nine years of her life. Being her friend and caregiver through to her death was a walk through the valley of the shadow of death. But, it also taught me the following life and death lessons that I will always treasure.
1. It’s okay to be afraid. It is perfectly normal to have fear about your own death or that of a loved one. Every fiber of our being has been acculturated to survival and to fear of the unfamiliar. So, don’t deny your fear . Get specific with yourself about exactly what it is that you are afraid of. You can’t move past it until you own it. Realize that what you are afraid to experience is just one possibility of how the future will unfold. I was so surprised to discover that some of the things I feared most turned out to be doorways to tenderness and deeper love. Fear can either stop us in our tracks or be used as a steppingstone to learning and growing and strengthening ourselves. The choice is ours to make.
2. Let nothing be more important than loving each other. When all is said and done in our lives, our greatest treasures are sweet and heartfelt moments shared with others. So remember that as you journey through your life. Next time someone you care about is feeling blue, receives a terminal diagnosis, or is simply getting really old, make time to share your heart with them. Override the temptation to make excuses about not having the time or not knowing what to say or do. Let yourself be inconvenienced or uncomfortable. Just show up with your heart wide open.
When my mother was dying, there was one person she kept asking to see because there was unfinished business between them. Four times she asked — one when in intensive care with a 50/50 chance of making it through the night. Each time I called this person and shared my mother’s request. Each time, she showed up four days later with an entourage that minimized the opportunity for them to have one-on-one time together. The resolution never occurred between them. But, my mother told me she had made peace with the situation in her own heart before she died. Fear, discomfort, and ego positions prevent the flow of love between people. And sometimes time runs out.
3. Everyone who is dying needs an advocate who loves them. When someone is critically ill or simply frail, they need their own energy just to cope and to heal if that is an option. There may be all kinds of specialists being called in to consult on the case. All too often the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing. Someone needs to keep track and connect the dots.
In my mother’s case, for example, she kept getting infections commonly spread in hospitals. Each infection brought on yet another antibiotic with another set of side effects. Those would make her susceptible to yet another opportunistic infection and another antibiotic would be prescribed and so on. I used to spend seven to ten hours a day with her when she was hospitalized just to keep track of all the things they were doing to her. I was busy all the time. It wasn’t until after it was all over that I realized I should have kept a notebook handy.
4. Death is not a popular topic among doctors. The medical model for terminal disease and death is a work in progress. Many doctors, having taken an oath to preserve life, perceive a patient’s death or the need to surrender them to palliative care as a personal failure. Expect most doctors to do everything they can think of to keep your loved one going. And, don’t wait for them to broach the subjects of palliative care or death. Be assertive and initiate that conversation on your loved one’s behalf.
Between hospitalizations, my mother had many trips to the ER. It was there that one brave doctor finally took me aside and told me that there was really nothing further medically that could be done for her. He suggested that we consider hospice care. I burst into tears. He held me, and comforted me until I was over the shock of hearing what no one wants to hear. My mother was going down a slippery slope toward death. I will always be grateful to him for telling me the truth so we could adjust our expectations accordingly.
5. No matter how anyone else’s behavior looks to us, they are doing the best they can. I’ve adopted a favorite expression:
Each of us is a complex assortment of skills, abilities, fears, traits and preferences. Compassion comes forward when we realize that how we think another “should” behave is of no significance. Indeed, if we walked in their shoes, we would likely behave no differently than they do. Particularly in stressful times, compassion for one another goes a very long way.
6. When someone you love is dying, it is their dying not yours. Sometimes a loved one will become very bossy and pushy about their point of view. They may be convinced that their ideas of what should or should not be done are the “right” way. It is important to help them realize that their job is not to lead the way. It is to follow the lead of the one who is dying. Let them die their way, not yours. If they want to be alone, let them. If they don’t want to eat, let them. If they want to change their will, let them. If they want to talk about dying, let them. Your job is to support them not to direct them.
There is a kind of emotional dance I experienced with my mother. Each of us did our best to be true to ourself without hurting each other. We learned to pay attention inwardly and to be bold about honoring ourselves as well as each other. I learned to follow her lead. I paid attention to what was important to her and what she didn’t care about.
7. Don’t leave yourself with any regrets. My mother and I shared many profound conversations during her final years. We intentionally cleared the air between us on a regular basis. We had an agreement not to withhold our upsets with each other when they occurred. We also helped each other find forgiveness for loved ones who were unable to give us the support we wanted.
Keep the emotional air quality as fresh and clean as possible. If toxicity remains with someone, don’t forget to practice forgiveness for both of you. That will free you inside yourself to accept the situation as it is and to choose to love this person and yourself unconditionally.
Above all else, just remember:
If you would like to know more about me and my work, please explore my website here.
Tibetan Buddhist Teachings on Death and Impermanence
While I am not a Buddhist, I find great wisdom and potential liberation in the Tibetan Buddhist teachings on death. They offer a beautiful understanding of life’s end to those in the west who are still under the influence of a societal death taboo.
Sogyal Rinpoche, author of The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, has a particular skill in drawing out the universal messages of these teachings. He makes them understandable to the western mind without losing their authenticity, purity, and power. What follows is a summary of his teachings on death and impermanence.*
According to Sogyal Rinpoche, reflections on death and impermanence are the very cornerstone of all spiritual paths. Among Christian contemplatives, for example, is the expression ‘Memento mori’ – ‘remember that you will die.’ Buddhist teachings encourage awareness of the fact that we could die at any moment. This helps us to maintain awareness of the preciousness of life and encourages us to sort out our priorities.
From a Buddhist perspective, the root cause of all our suffering, is the fact that we do not take enough time to come to know ourselves. We are encouraged to discover our true nature, our enlightened, ‘Buddha’ mind through prayer and meditation.
Beyond our ordinary everyday mind is our true mind. It radiates the qualities of tremendous light or brilliance (wisdom) and great warmth (love and compassion). Sogyal Rinpoche uses the analogy of the sky to contrast this state of enlightenment to our everyday mind. Our daily thoughts, feelings, and actions are like temporary clouds that come and go in an endless sky. The sky, like the enlightened mind, is beyond birth and death.
In our day-to-day lives, we become absorbed and distracted by our thoughts, feelings and activities. It is easy to allow our ignorance, negative emotions, and actions to obscure our true nature. This occurs much the same way that clouds block our awareness of the endless sky.
It is this state of mind that is said to endure past death. If we do not come to glimpse our true nature in life, we will not be prepared to recognize it and enter into it at death.
This transformation of mind is essential preparation for death. Like cleaning the smudges off your eyeglass lenses, it also allows us to see more clearly in life. Our very perceptions transform and circumstances will appear differently. Whether or not we are able to see clearly, remember that even when our ordinary mind is cloudy, the sky-like nature of mind is still there. Weather is only on the surface. Deep in the sky-like nature of our minds it is pure.
In many western spiritual traditions, we use the expression ‘let go and let God.’ Similarly, the Buddhists teach that the essential path to personal transformation and freedom comes from learning to stop grasping after impermanence. Indeed, everything is in a constant state of change.
We have to learn to let go. We don’t have to change. We simply change our minds and recognize that impermanence is the very nature and fabric of life itself.
The most permanent thing is impermanence. When we realize that, we are made stronger spiritually.
Our fear of death, according to Sogyal Rinpoche, is the fear of life, of facing ourselves. Looking into death is actually facing ourselves because sooner or later we have to come to terms with ourselves. That is why we tend to think of death only when we are dying.
That is why Tibetan Buddhist teachings stress that we should always contemplate death and impermanence. It is a way of breaking through to our true nature.
Rainer Maria Rilke said that our deepest fears are like dragons guarding our deepest treasure. Our fear of the impermanence of life and all that we grasp after awakens in us an awareness that nothing of this world is real and nothing lasts.
Milarepa, a revered Tibetan poet and sage, said it this way – “All worldly pursuits have but the one unavoidable end, which is sorrow: acquisitions end in dispersion; buildings in destruction; meetings in separation; births, in death. Knowing this, one should, from the very first, renounce acquisition and heaping up, and building, and meeting; and faithful to the commands of an eminent guru, set about realizing the Truth (which has no birth or death).”
We discover that this understanding about impermanence is really our greatest friend. It drives us to ask:
Allow these questions to occupy you urgently and reflect upon them. You will slowly find yourself making a profound shift in the way you view everything. With continued contemplation and practice in letting go, we come to uncover in ourselves something we cannot name or describe or conceptualize. It is something we come to realize lies behind all the changes and deaths of the world.
Our myopic focus upon our desires, what we are grasping for, and that which we are trying to avoid, begins to dissolve and fall away. As this happens, we catch repeated and glowing glimpses of the vast implications behind the truth of impermanence.
Sogyal Rinpoche describes this transformation saying:
He further describes, “as the new awareness becomes vivid and almost unbroken, there occurs a personal and utterly non-conceptual revelation of what we are, why we are here, and how we should act which amounts in the end to nothing less than a new life, new birth – almost a resurrection . . . You discover something in yourself that does not die.”
He also speaks of death using the analogy of being on a train platform waiting for a train. We know that we must take that train but don’t know when it is coming. We have great anxiety because our bags are not packed. We do not prepare for death or live thoughtfully because we think we will live forever. We know we will die someday. But, we prefer not to absorb that thought. Instead, we pretend that we have an unlimited lease on life.
We become lazy in how we live our lives. The particular kind of laziness in the west is an active one. We do everything and anything to avoid ourselves. We fill our lives with so many activities that there is not really a chance for the truth of ourselves to be revealed. There is no gap. Yet, we live with an abiding anxiety since we have not faced ourselves or our death. There is a deep anxiety and a deep fear because death represents our ultimate fear.
We learn that there is really not much time to waste. Death helps us to look into our life in a deeper way.
When we take care of those most important things, then we can relax. Milarepa said my religion is not to be ashamed of myself when I die.”
An unenlightened mind sees death as defeat – a tragedy. These teachings show us it is really an extraordinary opportunity for transformation and personal liberation.
When we die, it is only the end of one cycle finishing. The delusions of this life will end if we allow it. However, those who hold tight to their illusions don’t allow for their liberation to take place. Those who allow it not only surrender to the death of their bodies but they allow their ordinary mind to die with all its delusions as well.
Milarepa described it this way: ‘In horror of death, I took to the mountains. Meditating again and again on the uncertainty of the hour of death, I captured the fortress of the deathless unending nature of mind. Now all fear of death is done and gone.”
Tibetan Buddhist teachings provide three pieces of advice for the moment of death. These also serve practitioners well in how to live their lives:
Those practicing these techniques in life who are really able to let go inside themselves, find they are able to cope better with outer stress. They are less bothered or worried by what transpires in their life. When we stabilize and integrate this view as part of our being through meditation and action, we can meet death fearlessly. By practicing getting into the high ground of our consciousness during life through meditation and contemplation, we prepare ourselves for the moment of death.
There is also advice given for those who are helping the dying. Essentially, we are called upon to simply be there maintaining a consciousness of unconditional loving — free of attachments. Love is not expressed by grasping after the life of the dying. This kind of attachment, Sogyal Rinpoche teaches, is actually what spoils love.
When a loved one is dying, we can best serve them by giving them our permission and blessing to die and by surrounding them with our love and encouragement.
*This article is based on the teachings of Sogyal Rinpoche presented in The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying and the following four lectures: Transcending All Fear of Death; The Essence of The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying (parts one and two); and Reflecting on Death.
If you would like to know more about me and my work, please explore my website here.
Never Forget These Two Numbers: 11 Million and 40 – They Rule Your Life
Every second, we are bombarded with information.
What Do We Perceive?
In his book, Strangers to Ourselves, Timothy Wilson quantifies the processing capabilities of the human brain.
The fact that most of our data processing is unconscious is a great kindness in human design!
How does anyone process so much information? It’s a wonder we don’t blow our own minds! How we sort and store this massive amount of information is one of the greatest wonders of the world.
Don’t be fooled. It is easy to falsely assume that a conscious perception is more impactful than an unconscious one. In fact, being unconscious does not make a perception any less potent in impacting our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. When something is unconscious, it means we have no awareness of it. And, if we have no awareness, we can’t do anything about it.
This is why it is so important to intentionally excavate your unconscious mind when you are out of balance in your life. Self-observation is a great place to start. Pay attention to your beliefs, fears, doubts, and concerns. Bring them to your awareness. See if you can challenge their accuracy to change your point of view.
Remember, we are not only perceptual beings. We process and interpret data as well. We are intentional beings who place our focus here instead of there. We choose this action instead of that one.
Consider the fact that the sheer magnitude of unconscious data creates the need for a system of filters to organize incoming information. These filters become autopilot decision-makers for how we respond unconsciously, and they determine the content we perceive consciously.
Furthermore, we may not even be aware of those 40 bits that we take in consciously if we are not focused upon them. For example, I might notice your smile but not the clothes you are wearing while both are among my 40 bits that second.
Where does all this data come from? We gather data from our environment. We also gather information about how people treat us and how that makes us feel. Impressions are made.
Our visual perceptions dominate all others. Our brains give preference to visual information. Researchers L.D. Rosenblum, Harold Stolovitch, and Erica Keeps refer to our senses as learning portals. They offer the following statistics regarding the percentage of data processed by each of our five senses:
Sight *: 83%
Hearing: 11%
Smell: 3.5 %
Touch: 1.5 %
Taste: 1.0 %
*(both through our eyes and unconscious visual perception)
How Do We Decide What is Normal?
Patterns of “normalcy” are initially taught by others. We learn to catalog some things as good and others as bad. For the first five years or so of our lives, we are like little sponges. We absorb it all before our frontal cortex sufficiently develops for us to begin to evaluate our own perceptions. Thus, we begin by seeing through the eyes of others. And, they may or may not be seeing clearing themselves and might not have our best interests in mind.
Our sense of reality is skewed by the autopilot filtration settings of our data processing, largely programmed by others – our parents, teachers, friends, affiliations, and culture.
What should we do?
Here’s an example. One day, well into my own process of self-exploration, I made a profound psychosomatic connection. I held my arms fully extended in front of me with my hands turned upward like stop signs. This was to demonstrate to someone how I had been living my life. I had come to believe that I needed to protect myself. So I lived as though keeping everyone at arm’s length so they wouldn’t be able to get close enough to hurt me. It was a fundamental survival strategy I was unconsciously enacting. As I looked at my arms, I understood why I had developed carpal tunnel syndrome in both wrists and bone spurs in my shoulders. Once seen, I began to deconstruct the scaffolding of this way of being. I consciously rolled my shoulders and dropped them at my side whenever I was scared or unsure of myself. This in turn caused me to experience the vulnerability of lifting my chest up and letting my heart lead me forward into the world. Through conscious and intentional repetition, I was able to override my old pattern. I stepped into a healthier and more trusting way of moving through the world.
This kind of remedial inner work is essential to personal freedom. We are all broken in some places within ourselves. But if we don’t take the time to find out where, we limp through life when we could be skipping. Most people don’t do this inner work. Those who do have access to a kind of freedom and inner peace that is absolutely delicious. So, remember those two numbers and let them motivate you to do your inner work. It’s a matter of mental and emotional hygiene and ecology.
Remember as you move through this world, it doesn’t matter so much what is going on outside of us. It matters what we do with that inside ourselves. That is ultimately what determines whether we exist at the effect of external circumstances, or we thrive from the inside out.
If you would like to know more about me and my work, please explore my website here.
What Are You Afraid Of?
Fear can get triggered in many ways. Some people are afraid of dogs or snakes or spiders, for example. Others fear experiencing such emotional states as humiliation, rejection, shame, loneliness, and failure. Still others fear such life occurrences as poverty, serious illness, or death.
Whether your fear is a momentary reaction or a sustained state of being, energetically, fear is a contraction. It is also a figment of the imagination.
It helps to understand what happens in our bodies when we become afraid and to know that we have the power to interrupt this response. Bruce Lipton is a cell biologist whose work contributes to bridging the gap between science and spirit. He explains that fear literally contracts our energy. It paralyzes us from thoughtfully and compassionately responding to the object of our fear. He explains:
When we are in a happy state, we are in a state of growth. When we get afraid, we get in a state of protection. And when we get in a state of protection, it completely changes the blood flow to the body, because when you are in a state of growth, you are nourishing the viscera, which is really the organs that take care of maintaining our health, etc.
But when we start to get afraid, we want to send the blood to the arms and legs because the arms and legs are what we are going to use for fight or flight to escape the issue or deal with the problem. So the hormones and stress cause the blood vessels in the gut to squeeze shut, which forces the extra blood to go to the periphery where we are going to nourish that fight or flight behavior.
Well, interesting enough, the same hormones affect blood vessels in the brain, because when we are in a state of happiness and growth, we are using our conscious reasoning and our thinking and our logical thought. But in a state of a reaction to a threat, conscious reasoning is not very helpful, because it is a very slow process.
So, basically what happens is in the presence of stress hormones, blood vessels in the forebrain, which is the center of conscious reasoning and logic, are squeezed shut just like the blood vessels in the gut, and this forces the blood to go to the hindbrain.
Well, the hindbrain is reflex and reactive behavior, so basically it says from the moment you get under stress you actually shut down the thinking processes of the conscious mind and open up the reactive, reactionary processes of the hindbrain. . .
Simply put: when we are under stress, we become less intelligent.
Clearly, some fear reactions are justifiable, such as coming face-to-face with a big bear. In other cases, we can learn to retrain our fear response. Fear does not necessarily have to incapacitate us.
Consider the following two fear reactions by contestants on a recent show of America’s Got Talent. Both were singing their hearts out seeking their big break. Each was faced with an alarming experience. Simon Cowell interrupted them and asked them to sing a different song. The 30-year-old young man was like a deer in the headlights. Simon offered him the opportunity to come back later in the day which he eventually did successfully. But in the moment, he just stood there speechless and unable to think what to do. In contrast, the eight-year-old girl who was similarly interrupted by Simon was also stunned initially. Simon offered her some water and she smiled and said, “Well, that just happened!” She composed herself and sang another song.
In the moment of our fear being triggered, we can unconsciously allow our physiological response described above to kick in and take over. Or, we can do what that little girl did. She overrode her autopilot response by acknowledging that something unpleasant happened and then affirmed that she was OK.
Here are 5 simple steps to retrain your reaction to things you fear:
For further insight into mastering the art of being you, read more here.
If you would like to know more about me and my work, please explore my website here.
Do You Know the 6 People in Your Marriage?
No matter what the topic, whenever you get into an argument, does it always seems to turn out the same way? That’s usually because you are shadowboxing with the wrong person.
Let me introduce you to the six people in your relationship.
#1: You, when things are going along fine between you .
#2: Your partner when things are going along fine between you.
#3: How you see your partner when he/she has pushed one of your emotional buttons.
#4: How your partner sees you when you have pushed one of his/her emotional buttons.
#5: How you see yourself when your partner has pushed one of your emotional buttons.
#6: How your partner sees him/herself when you have pushed one of his/her buttons.
What emotional buttons inside of you is your partner pushing?
You might have noticed this all boils down to how we react to when one of our emotional buttons gets pushed. Unfortunately, most of us are unaware of our internal emotional wiring and how and why we are getting triggered. We prefer to think the problem is always our partner’s fault. So, we end up trying to get our partner to change his/her behavior. Instead, consider looking within yourself. Seek to understand how and why you react as you do. What exactly is making you angry, defensive, or feeling misunderstood.
Stop blaming your partner and do your inner work.
Stop blaming each other and start decoding your inner dynamics. This will put you on the road to significantly improving the health and well-being of your relationship.
Let current button pushing show you where you need to heal leftover hurts from the past that are being activated. Getting hot-headed and blaming each other will eventually drive you apart seeking seemingly greener pastures. Instead, how about embracing the opportunity to transform your relationship into a safe emotional haven for you both.
Here’s an example of the six people in action.
The following example might help you to recognize the six people in your marriage or partnership in action. Remember, most arguments seem really stupid when you replay them.
Meet Robin (#1) and Jack (#2). They are in love, have been dating about a year and are becoming disillusioned by their habitual fights. To make it easier to follow, I’m just going to present explanations of Robin’s behavior and leave Jack’s perspective (#4 and #6) to your imagination. Robin is a graphic designer and marketing expert and this is her first serious relationship.
A recent argument went as follows. Everything was just fine between them. Then, Jack told Robin he was planning to develop a new website. His plan was to lay out his vision of what he wanted. Then he would have his friend Chip do the graphic design work that would bring his vision to his website. Robin became incensed. Why didn’t Jack even consult her for her graphic design expertise? She began spinning reasons in her head about all the things that are “wrong” with Jack, fueling her upset. She got more and more angryas she told herself how “right” she was (#5) and how “wrong” Jack was (#3).
She condescendingly corrected him saying it would be Chip who created the vision – not Jack. Jack felt insulted that Robin thought he was not creative and would have no creative input in the design of his own website. Finally, Jack, running late for work, headed for the door. Robin was left in disbelief that he could just walk out like that.
Here’s the decoded version of what was really happening in the above scene. All was fine between them until Robin (#1) got triggered by several things that she misinterpreted about what Jack way saying. She took offense that here she was a graphic designer and loving partner (#5) and it didn’t occur to Jack to ask for her input. This reinforced her belief/fear that Jack didn’t value or respect her professional competence (#3). That’s the person she was fighting with.
I asked Robin to focus on the feeling she had when Jack first pushed her button. Then I asked her to trace it backward in her life. Where else had she felt that way? She immediately recognized this feeling being associated with her relationship with her older sister. A specific image came to mind of playing with their Power Rangers. Her sister always took the pink one and never even noticed or cared that Robin would have liked the pink one too. This had become a pattern in her life.
So, standing there with Jack, her sensitivity to being left out of consideration by another was the trigger. The old, unresolved emotions with her sister wereskewing and fueling the intensity of her reaction to Jack. Angry, she asserted her authority (#3) by correcting Jack’s description of turning over his designs to a graphic designer to execute. Jack, with his own sensitivity to believing that Robin didn’t think of him as having any creativity (#4), got angry and disgusted with her. He also felt that, as usual, she was making an issue where none existed. He headed for the door because he wanted to get away from her and this craziness.
Robin, outraged at his choice to leave at that moment, feared that he was leaving her forever. That was another childhood fear that was being triggered. She told me how her father used to storm out in disgust with her mother. As a child, she was always afraid her father would never return and thouht it was all her mother’s fault. With Jack gone, she began turning her anger on herself and blaming herself for pushing him away, afraid he would never return. Got the picture? Each one was having an entirely different experience and conversation – doing battle with figments of their imagination in the theater of their minds.
Get rid of your old emotional baggage.
This is common behavior between “normal” people who have not cleaned up their old emotional baggage. And inevitably, past baggage gets triggered in present relationships. So, what do you do? If you can afford it, I suggest getting a marriage counselor or mentor with a good sense of humor. Learn what your respective triggers are and how to deactivate them. This will allow you to approach your differences in a constructive, exploratory, and non-blaming way.
Alternatively, try to do this decoding on your own. The place to begin is always to turn your attention inward instead of outward. Shift from the blame game to truly healing and transforming the quality of your communication. It is important to realize that we each need to become intimately aware of how we are wired based on past experiences. Otherwise, it all runs on autopilot and runs amuck as in the example above.
If your partner is not willing to do this together, don’t let that stop you from pursuing your own inner work. He or she simply might not be as convinced or ready as you are. Take the lead. Do your part to take ownership of your own baggage. Discover how past hurts are creating current sensitivities. Once you start behaving differently – as in doing a different dance step — your partner will follow along eventually. When six people are fighting, no one is being heard.
If you would like to know more about me and my work, please explore my website here.
What Gives Your Life Meaning?
What sustains you?
What puts a smile on your face and lights up your heart?
What keeps the embers of your soul on fire?
What really matters deeply to you?
It is so easy to get caught up in the ongoing activities and demands of our lives. We often forget or lose track of what is most meaningful to us.
There are two things that give my life profound meaning. The first is the process of my own spiritual awakening. The other is helping others to raise the level of consciousness from which they are living their lives. I welcome every opportunity to contribute to raising someone’s consciousness to look upward and inward rather than downward and outward.
These are the things that, if all else were stripped away, would continue to sustain my spirit and enrich me. What about you? What is the source of the deepest meaning of your life?
For over 40 years I have consciously, intentionally, and actively participated in my own spiritual enrichment. As a result, I have evolved an understanding of life’s purpose and a worldview that has changed the course of my life for the better. It guides and nourishes me each and every day.
Experientially knowing that we are all divine beings having human experiences casts a very different light on my daily trials and tribulations. There is an inner freedom I have found in this journey that I treasure. It is the knowledge that I am free to create, promote or allow whatever I choose to participate in within my own consciousness. Regardless of what others say or do to me or about me or with me, my mind is mine to do with as I choose. As Richard Lovelace (1618-1657) wrote:
My life offers me so many opportunities to be of service to others. Through my writing, mentoring, teaching, or simply by being a friend, my life is rich in opportunities to help others.
Being of service is a beautiful win/win experience for me. The more I give, the more blessings seem to flow through my life. For example, when caring for my mother at the end of her life I was gifted with the realization of how deeply I am capable of loving.
Every day, as I work with clients, we learn from each other. And, as they set themselves free from the beliefs, memories, and fears that have burdened them, my soul sings. To be a part of their process and to bear witness to their liberation makes me jump for joy inside.
Where have you found your place in this world?
What is nourishing your soul and tickling your fancy?
If you would like to know more about me and my work, please explore my website here.
Celebrating Oneness in Diversity
Do you and your partner frequently battle over who is “right” and who is “wrong?” If so, battles will be won, but a war will rage on.
Right/wrong thinking makes a relationship an ongoing power struggle. It is the territory of two ego personalities who are only considering two options: winning or losing. Only one can be right, and the other is therefore wrong. As long as we think in those terms, we will always be at war with each other.
When you replace either/or thinking with both/and thinking a whole new world of healthy relating opens up. It allows for the process of co-creation by equally respected partners. Whether deciding what to have for dinner or when and how to express shared intimacy, your decision-making style makes all the difference.
Think in terms of a continuum of possibilities. At one extreme the decision-making process will demonstrate one partner dominating and silencing the other. At the other extreme is a shared process of considering each person’s point of view, evaluating the alternatives together, and finding a solution that serves the highest good of all concerned. Guess which one is more healthy?
When one partner dominates, something dies in the other partner. When both participate, both partners thrive. This is true whether the two parties are schoolyard children, marriage partners, business associates, or countries.
Dominance expresses a lack of caring and consideration for the concerns and welfare of the other. It is a silencing of one by the other. Dominance breads hostility. It demonstrates a lack of mutual respect and an inevitable retaliation in one form or another by the underdog. Consider the waiter who secretly spits in your soup because you were condescending and rude. What drives a marriage partner to withhold sex claiming frequent headaches?
The fact that you are able to dominate and silence another person by throwing your weight around doesn’t make your point of view the “best” approach. It simply shows your lack of awareness and inability to participate in more fruitful, kind and caring relationships with others.
I often wonder how rich and healthy we could be if we nurtured the full participation of all rather than the advancement of the few.
Many people who carry unresolved and accumulated anger from their past let off steam by bullying others. Some, flashing the badge of their social position, title or wealth, pursue their own agenda at the expense of others. They tell themselves it is their right — they are entitled and others are not.
Consider the “mean” boss, the bully in the schoolyard, or one who abuses children. Think about how the “most powerful” countries in the world take advantage of the smaller and less developed nations. “Might” most certainly does not make “right” nor does it demonstrate the best of which we are capable.
How much personal growth, loving, caring and sharing is sacrificed when right/wrong thinking and dominance prevails?
How much creativity, productivity and camaraderie is lost to systems and leadership styles that stifle the contribution of employees?
What countries truly strive to maximize the health, happiness, and productivity of their citizenry? The irony is this is more true of “primitive” societies than of “advanced” societies.
The sad thing is that the worst offenders don’t even know what they are missing and are satisfied with the spoils of the greedy wars they wage. They are often unaware of the magnitude of abundance they could create by nourishing rather than starving others.
Look around and you will see many who are consciously working to break through the prevailing cultural pattern of creating personal hierarchies of power in human relationships. It is a slow process of choosing more kindness, more caring, more encouragement of hope and participation. It is fueled by a vision of celebrating our oneness while honoring our differences.
Many are seeking to find ways to tap the vast resources of participation, creativity, and productivity. Momentum is growing as individuals look for enlightened lovers and leaders and join causes that seek greater health and well-being.
People are learning to speak up rather than allowing themselves to be silenced or to give up. Some are creating relationships and organizations that are alive and evolving. They nurture all participants to be free, safe, and encouraged to fully participate. Collaborative thinking is being encouraged.
Pay attention to your affiliations and the quality of your relationships. Are you perpetuating the old or helping to bring in the new?
If you would like to know more about me and my work, please explore my website here.
6 Ways to Say ‘Yes’ to Your Life
“If I am not for myself, then who will be for me?
And if I am only for myself, then what am I?
And if not now, when?”
–Hillel
Learn to embrace the fullness of life. This calls us to bear personal responsibility and accountability for our own life. I was recently listening to “Radical Self-Acceptance” by Tara Brach. She began to talk about the simple act of saying “yes” to your own life. My immediate reaction was, “Like, duhhh! Who doesn’t know that?” Then I began to check in with myself to see when I was actually saying “yes” or “no” to my life. I was astounded by all the subtle and obvious ways that I was spewing negativity against myself.
This experience reminded me of a workshop I attended many years ago. Participants were each given a blank piece of paper representing their daily allotment of energy units. We were asked to walk around the room tearing off pieces of the paper representing how we spent our energy. For many of us, the paper was long gone before we got anywhere near the end of our list. Many of us were shocked by how much of our life force was expended in resistance and negativity towards what was present in our lives. I highly recommend that you try this process. It was a profound exercise for me and has stayed with me all these years.
Self-sabotage comes in many forms. We judge and reject ourselves. We compare ourselves to others and create fantasy fears and illusions. In what ways do you sabotage yourself? What strategies do you use to reclaim and redirect yourself in more uplifting ways? Here are some of my personal favorite ways to say “yes” to my life:
If you would like to know more about me and my work, please explore my website here.
When Loved Ones Aren’t Very Loving
Do you dread gathering with your family and friends for holidays, weddings, funerals and other events? Or have you been blessed with a truly loving and nurturing family? Dysfunctional childhood and family dynamics have a way resurfacing and making us feel crazy, trapped, and wanting to run for the hills.
If this sounds familiar, ask yourself these questions to explore the role you play in these dramas:
The term ‘loved ones’ implies special status – our inner circle. Yet, some of us are kinder to total strangers than to those with whom we share our lives.
In many families at least one giant elephant of discord sits in the room. There is a silent conspiracy that everyone participates in pretending not to see it or to do anything to get rid of it. Perhaps there is a drug-addicted child, or an alcoholic parent whose toxicity dominates the experience of being together. Or maybe it is a nasty, judgmental sister, a boring uncle, a nerd, or someone you hold a grudge against.
If this is a familiar experience for you, are you going along with the same old dysfunctional dynamic? Is there something you might do to contribute to healing the situation? It takes courage to go against the tide. Are you willing to name the elephant and to initiate efforts to deal constructively with the negativity? Consider the alternative of letting things continue to fester. Do you really want to forego the possibility of having a mutually respectful and enjoyable time together?
Consider the following example. I know one family with two sisters and a brother in the middle. They have put up with the older sister’s judgments and rejection of the younger sister for decades.
The elder sister feels that her disdain is justified by her judgments of her sister. The brother plays the peacemaker and maintains separate relationships with his sisters. He initites family gatherings in the hope that this will go away. He tries to be a good sport and acts as though he is unconscious of the feud. Meanwhile, the younger sister suffers through these gatherings. After making numerous attempts to talk to her sister about healing the discord between them, she has withdrawn from family gatherings.
Every family gathering is tainted.
Consider what is at stake. Why should everyone have to suffer because someone doesn’t like one of the family or group of friends? Why not challenge that person either privately or publicly? Let them know that you do not appreciate or support their behavior. Acknowledge to them that their negativity is toxic for everyone else involved? Why not go on record as being unwilling to support this kind of behavior in the future? Ask the person what they are making more important then loving one another.
Another constructive act is to let the apparent victim know that you care about their well-being and do not approve of the aggressor’s behavior.
As adults we are each responsible for what we create, promote, and allow in our lives. We are accountable for how our behavior affects others – no matter how justifiable we believe our attitudes and behaviors to be.
Is there something you might do differently next time to demonstrate that nothing is more important to you than being loving and kind to one another?
If you would like to know more about me and my work, please explore my website here.
How Well Do You Face the Trials and Tribulations of Your Life?
It really is what’s inside that counts. It isn’t so much what happens to you that determines the quality of your life. Rather, it is how well you deal with what happens.
We all have challenges to face. So why don’t we do a better job of educating our children how to work inside themselves to meet difficult experiences? Why are we being left to our own devices to figure out how to cope with life’s trials and tribulations? Why aren’t we taught some basic life wisdom and coping skills early on to better equip us for our life’s journey?
Here are five coping skills that have served me best in facing the more challenging parts of my life.
Have you ever found yourself complaining about your life, claiming that something always or never happens to you? These types of beliefs become self-fulfilling prophecies. Our beliefs are a filter through which we encounter our lives.
Something happens that you don’t like. You process that new experience through your existing beliefs, attitudes, and memories. That in turn generates the same old autopilot thoughts and feelings that you have always had in response to experiences like this. Then, your behavioral response is a fait accompli reflecting this point of view. It has become your way of experiencing your life. That’s how it works.
But how’s that working for you?
Consider the possibility that all of your life experiences carry wisdom that is just waiting politely for you to invite it into your consciousness. So, do that.
Probe deeper into your beliefs, attitudes, thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.
Look for alternative responses. When you are open to receive life’s lessons, they don’t have to keep presenting themselves to you again and again.
2. Trust that what happens is for your highest good. Have you ever lost your job or had a loved one die unexpectedly? Did you think your world had come to an end? Or were you able to see beyond your fear and grief to where the blessings might be?
When I shared a home with my mother for the last nine years of her life, I put much of my life on hold. This allowed us to have quality time together and for me to more fully serve as her caregiver. My loss of income and social isolation were more than made up for by the precious moments and deepened love we shared. I learned things about myself and about life that I can’t imagine having encountered on my previous life trajectory. Catching a curve ball in life can open up new doors that you didn’t have any way of knowing existed. Sometimes, they are the access point to some of life’s most precious treasures.
3. Focus first on embracing the undesirable truth. Look your life straight in the eye and accept that it is so. Whether receiving a terminal diagnosis, watching your marriage fall apart, or not getting accepted at your first choice college or the job accept it.
I’m not suggesting a passive kind of resignation here. Rather, choose a radical kind of intentional acceptance.
The alternative is to fall into familiar reactions of blaming and judging others, getting down on yourself, or simply being in shock or disbelief.
I remember when I hit black ice going 60 MPH and totaled my car. I went backwards down a hill and the rear end of my car was sliced in half by the tree that finally stopped it. My first thought was, “I’m alive.” It’s good to start with the fundamental facts and go from there with as little drama as possible. Just breathe into the present moment and let your consciousness assess reality.
When we start extrapolating with high drama mental and emotional scenarios, we are rocketing off into our imagination rather than being present to deal with reality.
You might just be amazed at your quick thinking, resilience, and fortitude. Once you accept the undesirable truth, you can get busy doing your best to deal with it.
4. Take care of yourself and do your best. Some of my biggest life challenges have come in the context of people who wished me ill, didn’t like me, or held different beliefs. What has gotten me into trouble in these situations is trying to change the other person’s point of view or behavior. When I really succeed in dealing with these situations it is because I focus on taking care of myself and loving myself. Trying to defend myself or my point of view in an effort to change the other person isn’t the point.
Let other people live their lives their way. Focus on doing your best to love, nurture, and protect your sweet self. Opinions are like noses — everyone has one.
5. Find good help when you need it. As a mentor, I don’t view my clients as sick or broken for needing my help. I see them as the smart ones who know the value of good resources. After all, how can you be expected to know something until you learn it? Life presents learning opportunities to us all the time. Sometimes we need a plumber or doctor or marriage counselor or Hospice care. If we are smart, we seek and embrace good help.
If you would like to know more about me and my work, please explore my website here.