The importance of accepting ALL thoughts

I have written before about how mindfulness practices have been so helpful during the past seven months since I suffered an aortic dissection on November 3. The 9 days in ICU, waiting for the delicate surgery in January, and the limitations on my activities since then, including chronic fatigue, all presented significant challenges--and opportunities.

So I thought I was doing fine when I went to Dartmouth on June 2 for a follow-up CT scan. While the surgeon had told us that a further surgery was possible, it was still so shocking to learn that an aneurysm was forming between two of the stents he had inserted in January. I was going to need a further surgery. It would be similar to the January surgery in that it would be laparoscopic and this time only one stent would be inserted. However, it would still be a delicate surgery, with risks.

On the ride home from Lebanon, I was reeling. As I brought mindfulness to my thoughts and emotions, I came to a deeper understanding of what mindfulness really is: it means to be aware of and accepting of ALL our thoughts, even the ones we don't like. During that ride, I realized that since November, I had really pushed aside internal voices like: Why me?, I hate this, this is not fair, I'm tired of this, I don't know if I can go on. I had dismissed those thoughts as not useful and instead focused on being positive and moving forward. On that day those thoughts would not be silenced.

So I tried something different, which initially did not feel like mindfulness at all. I opened what felt like Pandora's box and let these voices out of their cages. Rather than fight them and suppress them, I let them wash over me. At this point, my mindfulness practice was to take a step back and simply be a witness to that swirling energy of thoughts and emotions. The voices said they wanted a break, that they were tired of me trying to be strong all the time. They wanted junk food. They wanted to just watch TV and chill. They did not want to exercise and to meditate. After two days of eating a fair amount of candy and watching almost every sports event on TV, I woke up feeling good--ready to meditate, exercise, eat better. That lasted only a few hours and then back in the dump. A couple days later it felt like these parts of me had felt fully heard and were part of the family again, instead of being ostracized or banished.

When I reflected on this time, I realized that paying attention to these voices does not mean wallowing in self-pity. Rather it has made me more open to the natural feelings of grief, sadness, anger, and despair that are normal when facing a life-threatening illness. This illness has meant major changes in my life--not being able to do exercise vigorously, limitations on lifting objects, and fairly extreme fatigue. It also means that I am at greater risk of another dissection which could happen at any time without warning and kill me. It's like walking around with a bomb inside me that could go off at any time.

Mindfulness practice gives me choices in how I respond. When such thoughts and emotions do arise, I am now meeting all of them with a kind, caring attention, instead of fighting or hating them--most of the time! When I do this, I can see the whole picture, part of which I had been missing for months.

One of the common misconceptions about mindfulness is that it means stopping the thoughts that might be viewed as non-productive. A common instruction during mindfulness practice is "when you realize your mind has wandered, gently bring your attention back to the breath." Doing this simple practice can have a wonderful effect of calming one's mind which is wonderful.

However, when it is at the cost of pushing away or suppressing thoughts and/or feelings that are undesirable, there is a price we pay. Ultimately, mindfulness practice involves not just paying attention, but welcoming all those parts within us--with curiosity, compassion and acceptance. While there are many ways to practice mindfulness, ultimately the goal is to see what is happening more clearly. I have a renewed appreciation for how subtle and challenging this process can be.

Choice, control, and slowing down

Between low energy from the aortic dissection and surgery and writer's block, I haven't written here for a while and a few people have emailed to see if I'm OK. I realize that when someone asks me if I'm OK or how I'm doing, one word just doesn't begin to answer it. In one respect I'm doing OK given the dramatic changes in my life that are the new normal: monitoring my salt intake (reading all the labels), taking my blood pressure and medications every day, and making sure to keep my heart rate under 100.

I realize that part of my chronic tiredness is the normal "I'm ready for winter to be over" and "I'm ready for covid to be over." I also realize that part of my tiredness is tinged with some depression at having to let go of so much. There's also some fear about going back into the world, e.g., to the local Co-op, to the local coffee shop. Last Saturday we were invited to a small outdoor gathering for a friend's birthday. The chairs were several feet apart and we were masked. It was such a joyful feeling seeing people face to face.  The next day I felt a bit down, and I realized that I wanted more. I'm guessing this is what many others are feeling too.  

Slowing down
While there is fatigue and a bit of depression, I am also finding it fascinating to actually be moving much more slowly through the world. This may sound weird to some, but for the first time in my life, I am flossing my teeth slowly. I can feel the floss as it moves up and down on both sides of the tooth. I am paying attention. When going fast, I'm already thinking of what's next. I am also catching myself more often typing as fast as I can, fingers flying across the keys, and I can feel the tightness in my shoulders and the back of my neck! I can also feel a more relaxed body when I type more slowly. By walking so slowly on the Ashuelot River I have seen things that I have never noticed in the 30 years I have walked on that path before.

I have written before (12/31/19) about our three intelligences: body, mind, and heart.  I can tangibly feel the difference in my body when I go slower and when I am speedy, and I feel good that these three systems are more aligned and integrated. Yesterday I totally blew it while working on our family's taxes. I recognized it while it was happening, but my desire to finish before dinner was much greater than my desire to go slowly. When I was doing the taxes as fast as I could, I was aware of my irritability when I couldn't find the information that I needed. Especially with something like an onerous task like taxes, I can now feel more tangibly the after effects for the rest of the day--slipping back into an old habit of focusing on what's not working/what's not right--with the world, the country, my state, my family. And by taking a few minutes to just breathe, I can often feel that negative energy dissipate, at least somewhat.

Choice and control
The last blog entry was on choice and this is one of the great benefits of slowing down. When things happen that I don’t like, I can feel my reactivity in my body, my mind, and my heart and then be more aware of the choices I have in how I respond.  My natural tendency is to try to control what I don't like--in myself, in others, and in the world. From having lived in Nepal, I have seen that there are other ways of being with what one doesn't like than simply trying to change it or "fix it." This has been a major gift of mindfulness. For example, some people are talking loudly at 10 pm at night on the street or a neighbor, bordering on OCD, is once again mowing the lawn and trimming the bushes, or a colleague has a voice that grates on me. I, and most Americans, could go on and on about pet peeves. When I visited my dad, the number of times I heard "you know what really galls me is. . ." was in the double digits every day.

I've found the thoughts of two meditation teachers to be very helpful in this quest to be with what I don’t like in ways that keep my heart open, my body less tense, and my mind clearer.

From Winnie Nazarko: "One thing we’re developing clarity about. . .is what we have control and influence over and what we don’t. How do we figure that out? By again and again and again and again, on levels gross and subtle, attempting to exercise control over what’s arising in the body-mind…and usually failing. Eventually the mind starts to realize, “Wait. This is actually suffering when the mind goes like that. Can I let go of that? Can I sit back and be more receptive and allowing?” In order to do that, the mind has to give up trying to implement its ideas of how things should be. But it’s not easy." 

From Pema Chodron: “The circle of compassion widens at its own speed and widens spontaneously. All we can really control is that we choose to show up, we choose to practice, we choose to do the best we know how to do, we practice with the skill that we possess right now. We cannot control the results. We suffer so much less when we realize and accept that simple truth." 

And so I, and we, continue to practice and live the best we can, sometimes happy with the changes we have seen in ourselves and sometimes frustrated. And we continue to practice!

Why meditate?

"I like this, I want this, I must have this, I need this, I worry that I won’t get it…"
"I don’t like this, I hate this, this shouldn’t be happening..."

So much of our internal dialogue is about what we like and want and what we don't like and don't want. We call these thoughts ruminating, worrying, fantasizing, etc.

Pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral
One of the more powerful concepts that I learned from Buddhist psychology is Buddha's statement that we are constantly, mostly unconsciously, labeling the information coming to our senses as pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. We tend to be drawn to the pleasant, turn away from the unpleasant, and ignore the neutral. Interestingly, neuroscientist have said basically the same thing in their language: our brain assigns a valence (+, -, or 0) to every input. This is true not only of humans, but all living beings. It's hard-wired and essential to survival.

Freud coined the phrase 'pleasure principle': we seek pleasure and avoid pain. When Jon Kabat-Zinn brought mindfulness to mainstream America, one of his catchphrases was that we live much of our lives on auto pilot. Buddha's point was that when we these assessments stay at the subconscious level, we are driven by them, and we suffer from this.

Primary and secondary pain
A common paraphrase of Buddha's response to this is that in life, pain is unavoidable but suffering is optional. Translating his teachings to modern language, he distinguished between primary and secondary pain. Primary pain, physical or emotional, is the initial information coming to our brain. Secondary pain is what we add, for example, "I don't like it," "I wish it would go away," or "why me?" In an 8 week course on meeting pain with mindfulness, I told participants that the secondary pain could be brought to zero, and all of the participants found some or immense reduction in the secondary pain.

Basic mindfulness
The beginning instructions for mindfulness meditation are to pick an object, for example the breath or body, and to cultivate an interested and non-judgmental awareness to what we are paying attention to. When we realize the mind has wandered, we gently return our attention to the meditation object. This alone has brought relief to many people. But it's really the beginning.

The next part is that we learn to pay attention not only to the object of our meditation, but more importantly we also bring awareness to the quality of our relationship to what is happening. The quality is: like, don't like, or neutral.

An example
I'll give a simple example from last night’s meditation. I was sitting in a chair, focusing on my breath, and I suddenly realized that the pads on my right foot were slightly swollen and my little toe ached. I didn’t like it. It was distracting. I brought curiosity to the sensations, but I still didn't like it. So I moved my attention elsewhere. A couple minutes later I checked out my feet again. Still a bit uncomfortable—the sensations hadn’t changed. However, my attitude had—it was now more neutral than disliking. More: it’s like this now. Period.

My teachers emphasize that we meditate so that we practice, in a controlled environment, with simpler stimuli (breath, body, etc.). When we do this, so often, the simple awareness that we are caught in liking or disliking causes that secondary pain to dissolve. When we are caught up in wanting the pleasant or hating the unpleasant, it's like pouring gasoline on a small campfire. When we bring mindful awareness to liking and disliking, it's like pouring water on the fire.

Why meditate?
One teacher's response to the question "why should I meditate every day" was "so you'll remember." That is, so you'll remember when you've been hooked into ruminating, fuming, worrying, etc. Hundreds of times a day. Little things like: someone pulls in front of us on the highway, or we hit three stop lights in a row, or the grocery store doesn't have what we want. Big things, like worrying about the upcoming election, or not having money to pay all our bills, or relationship problems.

I think I'm a slow learner or perhaps my childhood was more traumatic than I realize, but I know that I am remembering more often during the day when I'm getting triggered by something. And I have a variety of tools to respond to that recognition of being hooked. The simplest is to simply take a few slow breaths. I have other simple practices: S.T.O.P, 3-step Breathing Space, and R.A.I.N. on the Resources part of my website. I have more sophisticated practices that are written below the basic practices.

I also believe that meditation is not the only way that helps us to remember when we're triggered. These include making quiet time in the morning to read, to simply sit and look out the window, taking walks, practices like Tai Chi, Yoga, Qigong, among others.

Changes in this blog
I occasionally look at the numbers about activity on my website from the company I used to create the website and the blog. The numbers show that the activity has been steadily decreasing since March. It could be partially due to the pandemic. It could be partially due to my sending out the Quote, Poem, and Story each week since April. It could be that I'm often saying the same thing over and over. I have found this to be true with some of my favorite meditation authors. I've also realized that very few bloggers, who write a substantive post, do so every week.

At the same time, I enjoy the writing. It motivates me "to practice what I preach." I also find that it deepens my practice, giving me more clarity and insight. So I've decided to take a couple weeks off and then beginning in September to write a post on the first and third Tuesday of each month. If you have any feedback to offer, know that I am open to it at any time.

With appreciation,

Tom