True Refuge: Finding Peace and Freedom in Your Own Awakened Heart (18 page)

Now bring to mind the face of anyone who helps you to feel loved and safe. It might be your grandmother or a beloved teacher, your dog or your dearest friend. It might be a spiritual figure like the Buddha, Kwan-yin (the bodhisattva of compassion), or Jesus. Whoever appears, sense that they perceive your vulnerability and your longing for safe refuge. Look into their eyes and see them sending you a message of love—”I am here with you … I care about you.” Feel their physical presence and let their energy surround you and hold you in an embrace of safety. Give yourself some moments to take in the love and ease that is offered. What is it like to feel this care surrounding and holding you?

Now, softly place your hand over your heart or on your cheek and receive the touch as a message of their care and protection.

If you are facing a particularly painful situation in your life, try to contact the underlying fear and feel how that fear is living in your body. Touch your throat, your chest, your belly. As you do, imagine that the love of the being you have called on is flowing through your hand into your most vulnerable and fearful places. You might hear the sound of this being's voice speaking words of kindness and reassurance. Take as long as you'd like, letting in love and opening directly to the sensations and feelings that arise. How does it affect you to receive love? Notice any changes in your breathing, in your shoulders and belly, in your heart and mind. Is there some sign that the message of love and belonging has been received deep within your body and spirit? If you are patient and gentle with yourself, you will learn to connect with a sense of inner refuge when you most need it.

Because we have been wounded in relationship, it can be challenging to trust and let in love. Take your time and explore this practice with as much self-compassion as possible:

Guided Meditation: Tonglen: A Healing Presence with Fear

The following meditation is a version of the traditional Tibetan compassion practice known as tonglen.
You will benefit from practicing tonglen in those moments when you become aware of the grip of fear. However, if you are feeling traumatized or overwhelmed, it is safer to start with the lovingkindness meditation or to explore this reflection with the support of a therapist or healer.

Find a comfortable place to sit, one where you feel as physically safe and protected as possible. Closing your eyes, gently scan through your body, relaxing your brow and jaw, dropping your shoulders, and softening your hands.

Bring your attention to the natural rhythm and sensations of breathing. As the breath flows in, allow your cells to receive this life energy. With each in-breath, relax open in total receptivity, like a balloon gently expanding with air. Be aware of the experience of no resistance, of softening all tension and directly contacting the sensations of the breath.

With the out-breath, experience the actuality of letting go, of releasing what is within into the space that surrounds you. Imagine that your entire body and mind could flow outward with the breath and mingle with the vastness of space.

Continue meditating on the rhythm of receiving—being touched with the in-breath—and letting go—sensing openness with the out-breath.

When you feel ready, bring to mind a situation that evokes fear. Ask yourself: “What is the worst part of this situation? What am I really afraid of?” Your inquiry will probably trigger a story at first. But if you stay alert to what's happening in your body, the story can become a gateway to accessing your feelings more fully. Paying particular attention to your throat, chest, and stomach area, discover how fear expresses itself in you. You might kindly invite the fear: “Be as much as you really are.”

What does the fear actually feel like? Where in your body do you feel it most strongly? Do the sensations change or move from place to place? Do they have a shape? A color? How do you experience fear in your mind? Does it feel contracted? Is it racing or confused?

Now, as you breathe in, let the breath directly touch the place where you most feel pain and vulnerability. Bring your full attention to the sensations of fear. Then, as you breathe out, sense the openness of space that holds your experience. Also sense the space that exists inside the sensations of fear and release your fear into this continuous inner and outer space. Imagine it floating and untwisting itself in this openness.

You can deepen your healing presence with fear by gently placing a hand over your heart. Let the touch be tender, a gesture of keeping company with the fear. With each in-breath, affirm your willingness to connect with the waves of fear, however unpleasant and disturbing they are. Breathing out, surrender your fear into open awareness and offer yourself a loving prayer: “May I be free of this suffering,” “May I feel safe and at ease,” “May I feel held in lovingkindness,” “I'm sorry and I love you,” or any prayer that brings you relief and ease. Sense that the warmth of your touch is helping to communicate the kindness of prayer.

After several minutes, bring to mind other beings who experience fear—people you know and the vast numbers you don't know. Remind yourself that while stories may differ, our human experience of fear is the same. Begin to breathe in on behalf of all those who share this suffering, allowing yourself to receive the intensity and fullness of their pain in your heart. As you breathe out, release this enormity of suffering into boundless space, offering all who suffer openness, peace, care, or whatever you long for most. As your heart opens to the truth of our shared suffering, you become that open healing space. As you offer your care and prayer, your awareness becomes suffused with compassion. Continuing to breathe in suffering and breathe out care, sense that your vast, tender heart can hold the fears of this world.

Adjusting your meditation to your state of mind:
If you feel closed off or numb, focus on the in-breath, and on contacting the physical sensations of fear. On the other hand, if the fear feels like “too much,” emphasize breathing out—letting go into openness and safety, focusing on the phrases of lovingkindness and/or on the sensations of your hand over your heart. It can also help to open your eyes or to listen to the sounds around you. With time, you will discover a balance between getting in touch with fear and remembering openness and love.

The role of the breath:
While the breath can be a powerful support in this practice, the key is receiving or being touched by experience, and then letting go into the larger field of love and awareness. If focusing on the breath distracts or impedes you, feel free to simply focus on these qualities of presence.

The role of touch:
Self-touch can help you to contact your experience and awaken care. Experiment by varying the placement of your hand and the pressure and duration of the touch to find what best serves your meditation.

Throughout the day
: Fear often catches us in situations where we are unable to take a “time out” for meditation, but we can do a brief version of this practice that will help contact and heal our feelings as they arise. This way, the energy does not get buried and begin to fester.

Using your breath (should you so choose), breathe in and allow yourself to touch the sensations of fear; breathe out and let go into the space around you, sending the fear openness and lovingkindness. If you sense it helps, place your hand gently on your heart. Notice what happens when you widen your attention to remember and breathe for others who are also struggling with fear.

If the fear is really strong:
As soon as you become aware of thoughts and feelings of fear, pause for a moment and take a few full breaths. With each out-breath, see if it is possible to relax areas of obvious tension, softening through your face, letting your shoulders drop back and down, and releasing tension in your arms and hands.

Now silently offer these words to yourself:

These reminders in working with fear are very similar to phrases author and teacher Kristin Neff recommends in working with all forms of suffering. After you've repeated them several times, reenter your activity with the intention to regard yourself with care. This simple practice can guide you home to a clear, heartful presence and help you face your day with more confidence.

The Buddha once asked a student, “If a person is struck by an arrow is it painful?” The student replied, “It is.” The Buddha then asked, “If the person is struck by a second arrow, is that even more painful?” The student replied again, “It is.” The Buddha then explained, “In life, we cannot always control the first arrow. However, the second arrow is our reaction to the first. And with this second arrow comes the possibility of choice.”

The first arrow is our human conditioning to cling to comfort and pleasure and to react with anger or fear to unpleasant experience. It's humbling to discover that willpower is often no match for these primal energies. We believe we should be able to control our “negative” emotions, then they just storm in and possess our psyches. We think we should be able to stop our obsessive thoughts or compulsive behaviors, but the anxious rehearsing, the cravings for food or attention, hound us throughout the day.

The second, more painful, arrow is our reaction to these “failures.” Sometimes our self-aversion is subtle; we're not aware of how it undermines us. Yet often it is not—we hate ourselves for the way we get insecure and flustered, for being fatigued and unproductive, for our addiction to alcohol or other substances. Rather than attending to the difficult (and sometimes trauma-based) emotions underlying the first arrow, we shoot ourselves with the second arrow of self-blame.

Awakening self-compassion is often the greatest challenge people face on the spiritual path. Students come to me with complex problems—addictions, family estrangements, crippling performance anxiety, a child in trouble. Yet when we begin to investigate, they discover that the deepest pain is in how they are feeling about themselves—how they are condemning themselves for their cravings, their anger, their inadequacy at work or in relationships.

When we're addicted to the message of the second arrow—”I'm basically not okay”—we become harsh and unforgiving toward ourselves. We're attempting to vanquish our weaknesses and change ourselves for the better, yet the effect is to reconfirm our conviction that we are intrinsically flawed. That core sense of badness then primes the next round of aggression, defensiveness, or paralysis that sustains our suffering. Attacking ourselves is a painful false refuge.

The good news is that we do have some choice about the second arrow. We can stop attacking ourselves for how we are feeling, thinking, and acting. We can learn to recognize when we are at war with ourselves, and decide to pause and deepen our attention. We can allow ourselves to enter the gateway of love.

Addicted to Self-Blame

Sam hated himself for his anger. At the office he headed, he was known for being a demanding, impatient, perfectionist boss. He had zero tolerance for excuses and wanted his directives executed quickly and efficiently. When this didn't happen he would hurl accusations of incompetence or apathy. It wasn't much different at home. When his daughter came home late from a concert, he went into a tantrum, yelling and cursing until she ran off to her room and locked the door. When his wife, Jennie, made a mistake in the catering order for their annual holiday party, he blew up at her in front of the delivery crew.

Sometimes, especially with his wife and his daughter, he'd later feel ashamed and disgusted with himself for losing control. He'd try to apologize and find a way to make it up to them. But feeling bad about himself just seemed to set Sam up for the next outburst. When provoked, he'd reflexively snap into feeling “wronged” and then into a self-righteous rage. Somebody was getting in the way of what needed to happen; somebody was screwing things up. He was intentionally being undermined, disrespected.

Sam knew he needed a way to calm down. When he heard from a colleague that a mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) program had reduced his anxiety and insomnia, Sam arranged for a similar program at his company. Mindfulness meditation introduced Sam to a new part of himself. He was struck by the contrast between moments when he was sitting mindfully, aware of his breath, of sounds and sensations, and the times (most of his life) when he was racing around, caught up in busyness and reactive anger. As he later told me, “It was like I was two entirely different people!”

Sam started coming regularly to my weekly class, hopeful that the talks and guided meditations would help him stay more relaxed. After he learned about the practice of taking a mindful pause, Sam tried to stop at certain junctures of the workday—when he first sat down at his desk in the morning, each time he hung up the phone, just before entering a meeting—to reconnect with his breath and his senses. One night he told me that when he could remember to pause, it was “like magic … a chance to get centered.” But when his temper flared, he said, “I'm a madman, and anything to do with meditation belongs to another galaxy.”

Still Sam persisted, and after six months of classes, he signed up for a weeklong retreat. When we met midweek for a private interview, he walked briskly into the room, sat down, and got right to the point: “Mindfulness gets me in touch with hating myself, Tara. With disgust. Here I am, a guy who has so much—stimulating work, financial ease, a fantastic family—and I go around acting like a goddamn jerk.” He crossed his arms, and sat back hard against the chair. “I'm hurting people with my anger … people I love.” After a silence he continued. “There is only one thing that matters. I have to get rid of this violent beast inside me … I hate the person I've become.”

Sam could not have stated our human dilemma more plainly. Beyond all the many targets of our self-judgment lies the same core feeling: aversion toward a defective self.

Many of us cling to our condemning thoughts as a way of controlling and hopefully improving ourselves. Whenever I teach about acceptance and forgiveness, the same questions come up: “What if I am destroying my life with my binge eating … isn't that wrong?” “What if I'm really hurting someone … isn't that bad?” “Why should I let myself off the hook?” In other words, is self-forgiveness just a way of condoning our shadow, of turning our eyes away from the parts of our being that most need to be uprooted and eliminated? Is it resignation? If we forgive ourselves, do we lose our only chance at change?

I responded to Sam with a different question: “Does hating the beast make it less angry?” Shaking his head, he conceded the point with a smile. As we continued to talk, I assured Sam that when I talk about self-forgiveness, I don't mean we should excuse our hurtful behavior or give ourselves permission to act out. Instead, the aim is to release the self-hatred that closes our heart and contracts our mind.

The first step to freeing ourselves is to pause when we are stuck in self-blame, and deepen our attention. Sam's task over the next few days would be to investigate the moments when he turned on himself.

“It's not your fault … really.”

Two days later Sam shared what he had discovered. “All the second arrows seemed like pinpricks until I thought of Jennie.” He took a few full breaths, preparing himself to tell me more. “Two weeks ago she had a mammogram that came out suspicious. The biopsy was on a Tuesday, results were supposed to be in on Friday. But Friday evening when I got home from work, the first thing I saw was a package I'd wanted her to mail still sitting in the hall. I felt a surge of anger and started yelling … totally forgetting about the test results.” He stopped, tears welling up. “The look on her face … I'll never forget. She crumpled.” Sam began sobbing. “Tara,” he said, his voice choking, “they caught it early, I think she'll be okay. But her heart? How could I have done that!”

Sam told me that when he thought about Jennie during one of the sittings, he'd had to leave the meditation hall immediately. “I went back to my room and let loose. I was crying and saying ‘I can't help it,' over and over, as if I was trying to get her to understand and forgive me. And then suddenly I was hearing my father's voice, pleading with my mother to forgive him after he'd lost his temper. He'd shattered five wine glasses—slammed them one after the other into the kitchen cabinets. I was standing in the doorway—about eleven years old—he didn't even know I was there. So many times, he lost it … with me, with my younger brother, with my mother, yelling on the phone at whoever was on the other end. You never knew what was coming.” Sam took a breath and shook his head. “I got it, Tara. I hated him when I was growing up. I remember being in college, freshman year, writing him a letter condemning him for not getting it together. But he really couldn't control himself. It was like he was on some drug, totally at the mercy of his fury. And he despised himself too.” Sam stopped speaking and looked down at the floor. Then he said softly, “When I realized that, I knew that I really can't help it either … I think I
should
be different but it just happens. I can't help it.”

I was quiet for some moments, honoring his realization. “Sam … what you saw—about your dad, and yourself—is true. The out-of-control anger is not your fault.” Then I paused, and repeated myself.
“It's not your fault … really.”
Tears welled up in Sam's eyes and I continued. “Please know … You can learn to be responsible—able to respond differently—but that's possible only if you realize that you are not to blame.”

I've said this to a lot of people, including myself, and it helps. That is because some wisdom deep inside us knows it's true. We'd be better if we could. We don't want to be caught in painful emotions and we don't want to cause suffering in others.

The Buddha taught that the first arrow—the things about ourselves that bring up shame and self-loathing—is often beyond our control. Our deficits are shaped and sustained by innumerable forces. Many of us are born with genetic tendencies toward anxiety, aggression, or depression; we are brought up in cultures that are plagued by addiction and violence, by deception and greed. Our environment is full of pollutants that affect our nervous system in innumerable and unknowable ways. Our families of origin are often beset by financial difficulties, by conflict and misunderstanding, by trauma carried through past generations. And, crucially, how we treat ourselves and others is molded by how our own caretakers attended to us. Some interplay of these forces generates the first arrow of painful emotions and compulsive behaviors.

If we become mindful of how our experience arises from a complex array of causes, we are at the threshold of an important insight:
The compelling emotions that shape our self-sense are actually impersonal
. Just as recurring blizzards or droughts don't target a particular farm, our inner emotional weather is not owned by or controlled by this particular body and mind. Rather, it arises from causes beyond our individual existence.

I sometimes introduce this idea of impersonality by pointing toward a bronze statue of the Buddha in the meditation hall where I teach. Years ago, a coteacher and I decided to find the perfect Buddha for our community. After looking at many statues, we selected this one for its grace and simplicity. The Buddha was placed on an altar at the front of the hall, and I remember how glad I was when students came up after class to take a closer look. But then I noticed that a small knot of them were gesturing and leaning their heads to the left. I joined them, and one of them pointed out that our new Buddha was leaning. Sure enough, this was an imperfectly cast, off-balance Buddha! Fortunately our community has embraced the leaning Buddha as its own, and the statue has become a reminder that we all are shaped by forces beyond our control. We are imperfect and we can't help it.

Even a taste of this truth, a whisper of “it's not my fault,” loosens the identification with self-blame, and allows us to have more compassion for our actual experience. If we can stop condemning our imperfection, we can reconnect with the healing warmth of our Buddha-hearts. And this opens the door to change.

Releasing the Second Arrow

Sam got it that he needed to stop blaming and hating himself, but he didn't know where to start, or even if it was possible. “The feeling of being bad is sometimes so strong … I just don't know if I can forgive myself for what I put my wife through, my daughter …”

“We usually can't forgive ourselves right away,” I replied. “It's a process with its own timing. What's important right now is your
intention
to relate to yourself with compassion, with kindness.”

Sam and I agreed to end our meeting with a simple guided meditation. “Go back to that situation with your wife, when you first walked in the door,” I suggested, “and try to remind yourself of what provoked the anger.” He nodded. “Now just let the anger be here … mindfully recognizing it, and allowing it. Feel where it is in your body, and invite it to be as full as it is.” I waited a few moments, and when I saw Sam's breath get shallow and his face flush, I asked, “From the anger's perspective, what is so upsetting?”

Sam shot back, “It's upset that Jennie didn't do what I asked her to do.”

“And what's the worst part of that?” I asked. Now he answered more slowly. “Well … behind the anger there's the feeling that I'm not important to her and … respected.” He paused, then said, “That I'm not cared about. Something like … She demeaned me. If she respected me and cared about me, she'd want to help me out.” He paused again, and then said “There's also a feeling of embarrassment or shame, like something must be wrong with me if she doesn't want to do things for me.”