Last month, I went on a silent meditation retreat. Going on retreat is a gift I give myself twice a year; it deepens my meditation practice and helps me access parts of myself that stay hidden in the activity and distraction of daily life.

Often, these inner explorations take me into difficult, uncomfortable territory and I spend my retreats sitting with anxiety, fear, loneliness and heartache. On retreat, this stuff becomes front and center, and there’s nowhere to go but inward. Old wounds come to the surface, and I re-experience them as if they’re happening all over again. It’s a painful experience, of course, but reconnecting with the pain and meeting it with acceptance and kindness is the balm these wounds need to heal. And in this process of healing, I connect with a deep, resonant joy and sweetness that can only be found by meeting myself with an open heart.

The first time I went on retreat, I wondered how it would be to not speak or make eye contact. I discovered that it’s a wonderful relief to set aside the choreography of daily social interaction. And while it’s true that on retreat I’m alone in my silence, I’m actually not alone because I’m sitting with other retreatants, people who are going through their own realms of suffering and joy. We have the guidance and wisdom of an experienced teacher, who not only gives daily talks and instruction, but is available to help when we feel stuck in our practice. In the safety of retreat community, I find fortitude and courage to face what’s within. And while it may not always be an enjoyable experience, it’s always worth the effort.

For an extensive list of retreat centers and other meditation resources, please visit the Insight Meditation Society’s resource page at www.dharma.org/ims/mr_links.html.

Thinking about the ways we talk to ourselves, I realize that there’s a potential trap with positive self-talk and affirmations. When we try to use these techniques to make our pain go away, we actually perpetuate it. But when we speak to ourselves from our hearts, with unconditional acceptance of our pain, then we can invite healing into the wounded places within our psyches.

The intention of self-talk and affirmations is to respond in a helpful, healing way to difficult emotional experiences such as fear or shame. Shame is an especially painful emotion; it’s a feeling of being flawed, broken, or not good enough. The world isn’t bad; it’s me who’s bad. We learn this stance as children in order to survive intolerable situations and trauma. (”If’ it’s my fault, there’s a possibility I can fix it.”)

Often, we use affirmations to make emotional pain go away, as if we are taking a sledgehammer to it. Attempting to destroy it, we debate with it, deny it, or try to prove it wrong. For example, responding to shaming messages by repeating a phrase such as “I am a good person” negates the messages our wounds are sending us. It’s as if we are responding to a child who’s been hurt by saying, “No, you’re not hurt, you’re fine. Stop crying.” By denying these shaming messages, we try to make them go away, but we’re actually shoving them deep down inside, below the level of awareness. We tell ourselves the pain and shame is gone, but it’s not. You can’t talk these things away.

In contrast, self-talk that arises from the heart has a different quality. This form of self-talk accepts our shame and wounds and brings them close to us, fully into our awareness, speaking to them from the kindest, most loving parts of ourselves. Like a parent comforting a child, we say to this pain, “I see that you’re hurting and I know that you’re scared. But you’re safe now, and I’m here for you. You did the best you could, and I love you, no matter what you do.” When we talk to ourselves this way, we aren’t demanding that the pain stop or go away. Instead, we offer it unconditional acceptance and love. This is a healing stance that integrates the psyche rather than breaking it into pieces.

On a silent meditation retreat a couple of years ago, my mind decided to sing the same song over and over to me for fifteen hours. It wasn’t even a whole song; it was the chorus of Joni Mitchell’s song, A Case of You (”I could drink a case of you…. and I would still be on my feet….”) I became so agitated by this that I couldn’t sit still, and in desperation decided to take a walk in the woods. As I set off for my walk, I was practically running down the road, and I suddenly realized that I was literally trying to run away from myself. And with this realization, my heart broke open and I understood that my mind wasn’t singing this song to annoy me, it was singing because it was terrified. So I said to my mind, “I see that you’re singing because you’re scared, and it’s okay that you’re scared. You just keep singing as long as you need to and I’ll be here for you.” At that point, the singing stopped. Completely. And I was filled with compassion for myself, and for all who feel afraid of the dark places within.

Thinking some more about this idea that the only thing we know for certain is what we’re experiencing in this moment, I think about what it means, then, to know another person.

There are people in my life I’ve known for a very long time, people who have characteristics that are consistent and that I’ve come to depend on. I know, for example, that the people in my household will most likely respond to me in a certain way when I walk through the door at the end of the day. This thought gives me great comfort and happiness, and I look forward to this homecoming ritual.

But if I cling too tightly to this ritual, it leaves little room for my loved ones to have a bad day or be somehow unavailable to me when I walk through the door. If they change the ritual, it can feel personal, as if they’re doing it to me.

Our fear of the people in our lives changing can lead us to stifle and suffocate them. We can get caught up in thoughts such as “If he goes back to school and broadens his horizons, will he still find me interesting?” or “If she goes into therapy, will she leave me to go find herself and hook up with somebody who’s more spiritual?”, or “I need you to laugh at my jokes so I can feel okay about myself”.

Therapist and author John Welwood (www.johnwelwood.com) writes eloquently about the paradox between meeting our own needs and being open to change in ourselves and in the other:

The Buddha likened meditative awareness to tuning a musical instrument—the strings must be neither too tight nor too loose. If we hold on too tight or let go too much, we lose our balance. This kind of balancing act is crucial in relationships. While it is important to respect our own needs (the earth principle), we must also be able to let go of being too identified with them (the heaven principle). While we must be able to meet another with engagement and commitment (form), we must also be able to let go of the relationship, drop all our agendas and ideas about it, and give the connection room to ebb and flow as it may (emptiness). And though we must loosen our boundaries to unite with another person, if we simply merge with the other, we may lose ourselves in the relationship—which usually spells disaster. Relationship is full of these contradictions.

—Toward a Psychology of Awakening, pp. 242-243

When we meditate, we work on the relationship we have with ourselves and with our true nature. We cultivate the ability to stay present with whatever presents itself to us, no matter how upsetting or disturbing it may be. Meditation gives us a way to welcome these aspects of ourselves with compassion and wisdom and acceptance. We learn to hold both sides of the relationship paradox within ourselves - our need to feel we know ourselves and can count on our sense of who we are to nagivate in this world as well as our need to be open to discovering the unknown within ourselves, to seeing and experiencing what our heart is calling us to do. It’s a difficult dance, one we spend the remainder of our lives learning.

And as we learn this dance, it affects our relationships with the people in our lives. We can enjoy and appreciate all they have to offer us, and even come to depend on them in various ways. But we can learn to release the vice-grip we have on our sense of who they are, and instead hold it lightly, which opens us to fresher, newer ways of seeing and knowing them.

The only thing I can ever know for certain is what I’m experiencing in this very moment. (Notice that I said “what I’m experiencing”, not “what’s happening”.) What I experienced in the previous moment is memory, and memory is faulty. What I’ll experience in the next moment hasn’t happened yet, so while I can predict - sometimes with accuracy - what will happen, I can’t really know for sure until the moment arrives.

This awareness has some interesting implications. To really understand this truth, to get in our bones, can be terrifying. If we don’t know what’s going to happen next, and we can’t be sure we remember exactly what happened in the past, it can feel like we don’t have much to hold on to. It can bring us smack in the face with our fears and doubts and uncertainties.

But this awareness can also be liberating; it can free us of our need for things to be a certain way. Rather than resting our reassurance on predictions of the future or detailed analyses of our past, we can have faith in our ability to respond to whatever arises from moment to moment. We can allow ourselves to see more clearly the multiple possibilities available in each moment.

It isn’t that we shouldn’t plan or anticipate; this is in our nature and it’s useful to do so. Rather, it’s about holding these plans and anticipations lightly, reminding ourselves that we may make plans, but we really do not know what’s going to happen until it happens.

When I think about this, I think about skiing. When a skiier starts off down the slope, she has some idea of what it will be like, based on past experience and her awareness of the conditions. But she can’t know for certain what will happen on this run until it happens. She relies on her skills, training, and past experience, but she has to stay aware of what’s happening in the moment so that she can respond to it.

Distraction has gotten a bad reputation among people who want to live more fully in the present moment. By definition, a distraction is anything that takes us away from the moment; it’s seemingly the antithesis of mindfulness.

But distractions are useful and necessary for those times when what’s happening in the moment is too overwhelming. Psychologist John Briere (www.johnbriere.com) tells us that distraction and other avoidance strategies are part of our natural, inborn system for processing traumatic memories. We have to be able to step away from painful memories and overwhelming emotional experiences in order to keep them workable, and distraction works very well in this regard.

The problem with distraction isn’t distraction per se. Rather, it’s the way we go about it. Our need for distraction can be so strong that often we do it automatically and unconsciously. Think about the last time you found yourself distracted. Chances are, you were spaced out and unaware of what you were doing; perhaps you suddenly found yourself in the mall handing your credit card to a cashier, or in front of the TV watching something you’ve seen a dozen times before, or diving into a big bowl of ice cream, or doing something else that you knew you’d later regret.

So what to do? Is there a way to mindfully engage in distraction? I believe there is, that we can train ourselves to engage in distraction deliberately and with intention. The next time you catch yourself engaging in distraction, just notice what you’re doing. See it as a sign that you’re feeling anxious or overwhelmed, and name this to yourself. Allow yourself to go ahead and eat the ice cream or watch the rerun, but be honest with yourself about what you’re doing, staying as aware as possible while you do it. As much as you can, be kind and understanding, rather than judging yourself. Over time, you can begin to be more conscious of your need for distraction and you can choose to engage in it consciously, rather than on auto-pilot.

Obviously, there are things some of us use to distract ourselves that can be harmful, such as abuse of alcohol and drugs. Becoming conscious of the times we need to be distracted and the things we choose to distract ourselves with puts us in a position where we can make better, healthier choices about the ways we take a break from painful experience.

I recently heard that one of the many effects of meditation practice is that, over time, you become increasingly aware of the shifting nature of experience from moment to moment, seeing for example how feelings of happiness and calm can pass away and feelings of agitation can arise in their wake. I’ve been noticing this constant, subtle shift in experience a lot lately. The other morning, I was delighted to discover that I was feeling calm and at peace for no apparent reason. I was just feeling happy. “How nice”, my mind said, “this is going to be a good day”. I knew I was setting myself up with a thought like that; I know better than to think that a mood state will last forever, or even all day. But my mind, like all minds, tries to hold on to the pleasant and push away the unpleasant, and this thought was a natural reaction to feeling happy. That morning, the unpleasant arrived soon enough: an hour or two later, I found myself feeling impatient and cranky. My mind immediately went to work, looking for a cause of this “bad” mood, quickly inventorying everything I’d consumed that day - “did I drink too much coffee?”; evaluating the places I’d been - “this is because I had to wait in a long line at the post office!”; berating myself for not just staying home, sitting in front of the fire curled up with a good book. “Next time”, my mind said, “I’ll do things differently. Next time, I’ll make this good mood last much longer”. Hah!

Our moment-to-moment experience is constantly shifting. Practicing meditation helps us see more clearly what’s going on in the mind, and we begin to catch these shifts as they happen rather than only noticing them when we experience a dramatic change in mood. Along with this awareness, we begin to see all the wacky things the mind does to hold on to what feels nice and reject what feels not so nice. I notice that when my mood feels pleasant, I project these feelings into the future, planning an entire day around my lovely state of mind. And then as the pleasant feelings subtly begin to subside, feelings of regret and frustration arise, and I have thoughts like, “oh, not this again!”, quickly followed by a reassuring voice telling me that I’ll feel happy again soon.

The more I watch this flow of experience unfold, the more aware I am of how quickly and how often these shifts occur. As much as my mind would love to have “a good day”, I’ve yet to experience a day that didn’t have some unpleasant experience passing through my mind. I guess what this all boils down to is this: there are no “good” days or “bad” days; they’re all just days, filled with experience, some of which is pleasant, and some of which is unpleasant. We can fight this stream of experience and make ourselves miserable in the process, or we can swim with the current and discover that it really is much easier to go with the flow.

Welcome to my weblog! My intention in creating this blog was to have a space where I could think out loud about issues and ideas that come up for me as I go about my daily life. Reflecting on my experience helps me understand more about what it is to be human, and I share these thoughts to you in the hope they spark an idea or give you a different perspective on yourself and your experience being in the world.