True Refuge: Finding Peace and Freedom in Your Own Awakened Heart (12 page)

Then, when we practice “being here”—noticing the changing sensations in our body, the sounds around us, how feelings come and go—we become increasingly aware of the difference between the virtual reality of thoughts and the truth of what is happening in the moment. If we practice this way of waking up from thoughts during less stressful times, we will be more alert and better equipped to respond mindfully when dealing with strong obsessions. The more familiar we get with the sense that “this is just a thought,” the less power thoughts have.

Some thoughts are harder to wake up from than others. If we become mindful of a wispy thought cloud, it usually dissolves, and it is easy to come back to the hub of the wheel. In contrast, when we are overtaken by storm clouds—the compulsive thinking that is driven by intense fear or craving—the trance is more compelling. We are in an emotional tornado—a “wired together” constellation of thoughts and feelings. As soon as we recognize our storm cloud of thoughts, we are no longer inside it. But unless we also acknowledge that cloud's strong emotional charge, its energy will catapult us back into obsession. We will quickly become reidentified with our thoughts, and they will again drive our emotions and behavior. It was this looping dynamic that my therapist was inviting me to notice: “When you are thinking about your struggle with eating, what are you feeling in your body?”

When we wake up from charged thoughts, remembering an anchor like the breath can initially help us to come back. But to fully be here, we need to mindfully include the sensations that live beneath the thoughts.

Any thought or mental perception is expressed in a corresponding physical feeling; conversely, our feelings also give rise to thoughts. This means that unless we bring both elements of this self-reinforcing loop into conscious awareness, we will continue to be hooked into the identity of an endangered or wanting self. If we are unaware of our thought process, we will buy into the content of our thoughts, which will in turn keep generating feelings of craving or fear. In the same way, if we are unaware of the anxiety in our bodies, we will identify with the felt sense of endangerment or craving, which will generate a new cycle of obsessive thinking. Then an emotion that lasts for a minute and a half can become a weather system that settles in for the long haul.

The Buddha taught that to be free—not identified with or possessed by thoughts or feelings—we need to investigate every part of our experience with an intimate, mindful attention. This kindly investigation, developed in the
I
of RAIN, is an essential tool for working with obsession. When I started therapy in college, my attention was anything but accepting: I was strongly critical of my obsessing and at the same time resistant to contacting the unpleasant feelings underneath. In the years since, I've seen this same reaction in many students and clients. It's a natural part of our conditioning, and it's workable. The key is being honest with ourselves about what's happening and choosing presence as much as possible.

Bringing RAIN to Obsessive Thinking

Jim was a law student who had been attending my Wednesday night meditation class for a year and a half. He made an appointment to see me privately, telling me that he had a compelling obsession that he wanted to address. When he arrived at my office he walked quickly to one of the chairs, seated himself, and jumped in. “I don't know if you work with this kind of thing,” he said, “but I'm having sexual problems and I really need some help.” He stopped abruptly, and blinked nervously.

I could feel his courage in pushing himself to be so direct, and I wanted to set him at ease. “How about telling me more,” I said, nodding a bit to encourage him. “If I'm not the best person to help out, we can figure out a good next step.”

Jim gave me a grim smile. “Okay, then,” he said, “here's what's going on. I'm in a new relationship, one that has some real potential. She … Beth … has so much that I'm looking for. She's smart, fun, kind. And very attractive.” Jim paused, as if acknowledging to himself the realness of her appeal. When he continued, his voice was a defeated monotone: “The problem is, I'm afraid I'm going to blow it with her.” Jim's fear was of performing poorly during sex. He said the problem had ruined several prior relationships: He'd obsess longingly about having sex, and he'd obsess anxiously about premature ejaculation. Then, when he started to make love, he'd either climax quickly, or he'd shut down and lose his erection. Ashamed, over a period of weeks or months he'd become increasingly distant from his partner until she reacted with hurt or anger. Then he'd call it quits.

“I don't want to do this to Beth, or to me,” he stated bitterly. “I
hate
how I obsess about sex—wanting it, fearing what will happen—
it's my mind that's ruining my sex life
 … and it's also screwing with my ability to study.” Sitting back he shook his head in disgust. “We've slept together a couple of times, and the same old thing is happening … What to do?” he asked, not really expecting an answer.

I suggested that while we could talk some more, we could also use RAIN to explore what was going on. Jim had heard about RAIN in class but had not yet tried it on his own. “Let's go for it,” Jim said. “I've talked this to death in my own head already.”

When we practiced RAIN together, Jim noted the fear and shame underlying his thoughts, but he quickly shifted from connecting with the feelings to analyzing what was happening. “I'm fixated on the past,” he said scathingly, “and can't get it that now is now!” Drawing his attention to his harsh attitude toward both the feelings and the obsessing, I suggested that as he continued this investigation on his own, he might intentionally offer some message of acceptance or care to whatever felt painful or unwanted.

This turned out to be a real sticking point for Jim. At our next meeting several weeks later, he confessed that whenever he'd tried to work with RAIN on his own, he could acknowledge his feelings, but he definitely couldn't allow or accept them. Instead, within moments of recognizing his shame and fear, he'd flip right back again into the stories of past embarrassment and the anticipation of future humiliation. Then he'd judge himself. “No matter what was going on, I was doing something wrong,” he told me.

Finally, after more than a week of this, Jim realized he had lost confidence that RAIN could help him. The crisis came late one evening. Craving relief, he cast about for anything that might distract him and subdue his mental fixation. He focused on his breath, he tried substituting other thoughts, he put on his favorite music, and then finally picked up a novel. When he realized he wasn't taking in the words on the page, Jim threw the book aside in desperation. “I knew I was running away,” he told me, “and that it was making things worse.”

Then he finally surrendered to what was happening inside him. “There was a mix of bad porn and dumb soaps dominating my mental screen … with nobody controlling the remote,” he recalled. “It was obvious that ‘I' couldn't do anything. So something in me stopped fighting and softened.” As the charged thoughts kept playing through his mind, Jim mindfully noted them as “obsessing.” Soon he recognized the familiar undercurrents of fear and shame. But this time, he spoke to them with a gentle inner whisper: “It's okay, it's okay.” To his surprise, the fear and shame gave way to a deep loneliness. Again he offered the message “It's okay,” and he felt his eyes well up with tears. When his mind lurched back into sexual fantasy, and then into judgment, he noted that, and remembered to whisper “It's okay.” He was accepting both the fantasy and his aversion to it. Gradually, as he continued to make room for what was arising, Jim realized he was utterly sad. But it was okay. He felt real and, as he put it, “fully present in my skin.”

Jim had found his way to the accepting presence that is key to RAIN. I encouraged him to continue to pause whenever he realized he was feeling stuck and reactive, to give himself time to come back and be here, and then inquire with interest into whatever was going on inside him. “Try to be patient,” I told him. “It can take a while to decondition our emotional looping … but you can trust it's happening!”

In the weeks that followed, Jim discovered that whenever he could stop the war and offer an unconditional presence to his experience, the circling of obsessive thoughts and unpleasant feelings began to dissipate. The more he mindfully named and accepted his scenarios of future failure, the more he could see them as thoughts, not reality. He didn't have to believe their story line. And by opening without resistance to the fear in his body, he reconnected with a mindful presence that included the fear, but was not possessed by it. Jim was more at home with himself, but when I asked him about his relationship with Beth, he shifted uncomfortably in his seat and looked down at the floor. “We've got a ways to go,” he said, “but I'm working on it.”

Our next session was a month later. Jim told me that the week before, he and Beth had been on the verge of breaking up. On several occasions during the past weeks the sex had been what he called passable. “It worked,” he said flatly. But there were other times when he had avoided being intimate because he felt the old insecurities lurking in the background. Beth too had pulled away a few times after they had begun hugging or kissing. One night after dinner she tried to break the tense silence, asking him if they could talk about what was going on between them. Jim felt himself shut down completely. He gave her a tired look and attributed everything to the pressures of law school. When he left early, saying he needed to study, she didn't even walk him to the door.

When he was back at home, Jim did some honest soul searching. He asked himself what really wanted his attention, and the response in his body was immediate. An ache of sadness filled his chest and strangled his throat. “It was a lifelong loneliness … and it felt unbearable,” he said. “When I asked that place of loneliness and sadness what it wanted from me, the response was ‘acceptance,' but that was not all.” Jim waited, listening inwardly as he relived his experience. “It wanted me to be as real with Beth as I was being with myself.” He looked at me with a self-effacing smile and shook his head. “I was scared shitless!” His mind raced forward to the moment when he would confess his shame about falling short sexually. He could see her being polite and kind, but having to mask the pity and disgust she was feeling. “Impossible. Forget it,” he told himself. “I might as well break it off now.” But when he imagined losing Beth, something cracked open. “Tara,” he said, looking at me with tears in his eyes, “I had to take the chance.”

He called her on the spot and asked if he could come back over that night. “She agreed … it was almost like she was expecting the call.” Initially Beth sat on the other end of the couch, frosty and quiet. But as soon as Jim started talking, she realized that he wasn't there to break up with her. “Beth shocked me, because she just started crying. That's when I realized how much our relationship mattered to her.” From that point on, he said, their conversation was nothing like what he had imagined. The more he told her about his embarrassment and fear, the more he realized that his feelings were in the safest, most caring hands possible. “Beth was hurt that I hadn't trusted her enough to tell her,” Jim told me. “She had thought I was losing interest … we were both afraid of rejection.” Jim was quiet for a few moments as if weighing what he wanted to say next. “That night was the first time I could really say I made love with someone.”

The adage “what we resist, persists” is a deep truth. If we try to fight obsession and the raw emotions that underlie it, we end up reinforcing them. For some people this might lead to acting out in rage or taking drugs. In Jim's case, it meant being unable to maintain a sexually intimate relationship. Even without acting out, resisting our obsessive thoughts or feelings traps us in the suffering of a small, deficient, separate self.

As Jim was discovering, the best medicine for obsession is taking refuge in the truth of the present moment. We learn to recognize what's going on, and accept the fact that it's happening. When we become mindful of a thought as a thought, our sense of identity is not unconsciously fused with its content and felt sense. Thoughts and feelings can come and go without disconnecting us from our natural openness, intelligence, and warmth. For Jim, this homecoming freed him to be intimate with another person. He could contact and accept his own inner life without believing limiting stories about himself. And he could see past the veil of stories about Beth that had been keeping him separate from her.

She became an authentic, vulnerable human, and that allowed true loving to flower.

Real but Not True

Tibetan Buddhist teacher Pema Chödrön writes,

The next time you awaken from a long train of thoughts, take a moment to ground yourself in presence—in your immediate experience of sensations, feelings, sounds—and then compare being here to where you've been. Waking up from thought is much like waking up from a dream. While we're in it, the dream experience is real; we react to its story line with real emotions, pleasure, and pain. But the dream is not true. Its pictures and sound bites represent only fragments of the living world. Similarly, thoughts are real (they are happening, they create a felt experience) but they are not true. When we are caught in the virtual reality of thinking, we inhabit a sliver of experience that is dissociated from the vividness and vastness and aliveness of the here and now.

I first heard the phrase “real but not true” from Tibetan Buddhist teacher Tsokney Rinpoche, and I've found it to be a great tool for breaking through the trance. In the midst of obsessing about our own failings, about what will go wrong, how others perceive us, what's wrong with others—some inner wisdom reminds us: “real but not true.” Mindfulness can then reconnect us with the vibrating sensations in our hands, this inflowing breath, the pressure or ache in our heart, and we open to the larger awareness that holds all our thoughts and feelings. Whenever we choose presence, our sense of being expands. Fear-thoughts will naturally appear, but they no longer have the stickiness and power to possess us and shrink our world. They are real but not true. Realizing this frees us to inhabit our wholeness and vitality, and to appreciate the wildflowers and singing birds.