As I went to sleep in my friends cozy guest bed, I reflected on those dark times and how truly transformative the following technique taught by Thich Nhat Hanh has been in turning my life around. I also thought that since it’s worked so well for me, it may work well for you too.
It’s extremely simple and can be done anytime, anywhere and in virtually any circumstance.
The following is my translation and is not verbatim. As Hanh teaches, however, it’s not the words that matter but our commitment to, and intention behind the practice.
So with that being said, I’ve broken it down to seven simple steps for you.
1. Whenever you become aware of negative thoughts and emotions arising, rather than ignoring them, or setting them aside for later, identify, acknowledge, and honor them.
2. Become very clear on what the specific upset is by identifying the exact thoughts that are bothering you. Are they self-judging, bad memories, or anxiety about future events? Any thought that causes dis-ease in you, regardless of past, present or future is applicable.
3. Next, indentify the specific emotions that arise in you as a result of said thoughts. What do they feel like? Is there tightening in your chest? Is your stomach turning or is there a throbbing sensation in your head? Again, any emotion that causes dis-ease is applicable.
4. Once you’ve clearly identified the thought(s) and emotion(s), close your eyes and explore the imagery they subsequently create in your mind (once you’re familiar with the practice, you won’t always need to close your eyes—i.e., if you’re driving, or in public you can still do this.) Do the thoughts and emotions create colors, shapes, figures? Are they abstract or clear? The important thing is to let your thoughts and emotions create the imagery while you simply become aware of what they are.
5. Breathe. We’re at the half way mark and I’d like to offer you a sincere congratulations on completing the first half! Our natural tendency is to suppress these uncomfortable thoughts and emotions, often telling ourselves that we’ll deal with them later—but honestly, does later ever come? Unfortunately for most of us, it never does. So even just by taking the time to become conscious of, and identify these unpleasant thoughts and emotions is a huge step! Let’s not stop there however, because here’s where the really good stuff starts to happen.
6. This step is where everything begins to change! Once you have the mental images of what your thoughts and emotions look like (and even if there’s no image at all, this practice still works), picture yourself holding the image (or lack thereof) in the same way a mother holds a newborn baby. Picture the image of your painful thought and emotion wrapped in a warm blanket, being held with very loving care closely to your heart, your chest, as you extend it very sincere compassion from your heart center. (You can also use the imagery of wrapping the thought/emotion in a warm blanket and placing it in a baby carriage, and rocking the carriage back and forth.)
7. Next, mentally (or verbally) say to the image that you know it’s there and you promise to care for and hold it with compassion until it’s ready to go. Do your best to say these words from a very sincere place in your heart.
Through bringing our attention to the image of our painful thoughts and emotions, and tending to it with an open heart, we’re doing the most natural thing we can—expressing love. Instead of ostracizing our uncomfortable thoughts and emotions and their unpleasant effects, we show them pure, complete and inclusive love. It’s a love they’ve never known before, and a love many of us have never known before either.
The thoughts and emotions will often subside very quickly. Sometimes, however, they aren’t ready to go so fast, and that’s fine. When we initially told them we’d be with them as long as they needed us, we were sincere in that intention. So if/when the thoughts and emotions call us on it, we honor our words and hold them dearly in our heart for as long as it takes.
So that’s the practice. It truly is that simple and I’m forever grateful to Thich Nhat Hanh for the amazing results I’ve had with it in my life. This practice can be used on everyday minor things all the way to heavier memories of our most difficult life experiences. It’s all relevant, it’s all grist for the mill and it can all be healed.
Category: The Shadow Knows
Study suggests Occupy Wall Street movement undone by liberals’ need to feel unique
Man, I can’t tell you how critical the progressive activists I knew were over the Occupy movement. I saw its potential right away, but they were all too busy arguing over what they were doing wrong:
Study suggests Occupy Wall Street movement undone by liberals’ need to feel unique (via Raw Story )
Liberals tend to underestimate their similarity to other liberals, according to a recent study, while conservatives overestimate their similarities — and those differences may account for the relative political success of the tea party in comparison…
Junkies
Believe it or not, the Times did an thoughtful, humanizing look at the patients in a Pittsburgh abuse clinic. My part of the city is full of problems. Even though I live in one of the nicer neighborhoods, a guy up the street died of an overdose last month; I only know about it because my neighbor took in his cat.
Junkies are everywhere. You’d be surprised at how many of them live in the suburbs, running businesses, raising families — and doing heroin every day. People are in pain, and they medicate themselves. Some of us choose more acceptable poisons, I guess.
Bush to help convert Jews, speed end of days
From yesterday’s Guardian UK:
Some people think George W. Bush did as much as he could to bring about Armageddon with his earlier interventions in the Middle East. But not the man himself, apparently. He has signed up for a fundraising event for the Messianic Jewish Bible Institute, an organisation which aims to promote the second coming by converting Jews to Christianity, and will speak today at their fundraiser in Irving, Texas.
The idea is that Jews must be converted in order to trigger Jesus Christ’s return to the Holy Land for the Last Judgment. So it is written, somewhere. It’s deep stuff and Christian fundamentalists wouldn’t expect us heathens to understand.
Laugh if you will, but Christians have made great strides toward tolerance over the centuries. Sure, there were the pogroms and the Inquisition and they were not nice people during the Holocaust, but that’s ancient history. The new pope is cool and even the Christian primitives — the Baptists and such — are much better behaved, especially when the end is nigh.
Yes, support for Israel is conveniently in tune with the foreign policy goals of American right-wingers, but the fact that a great Christian thinker like Dubya is eager to convert Jews rather than slaughter them is progress, don’t you think?
Locked in the cabinet
I don’t know what fascinates me more about this long, long Politico piece: That the Obama White House seems to have placed politics over governing, much to their detriment, or that it was done by Politico. It does confirm my initial concerns about Obama’s lack of executive experience. As much of a bubble as the White House is, he made it even smaller by relying completely on his political advisers. This is a mistake often made by liberals; they somehow think good intentions should always override experience, judgment and institutional knowledge. Years ago, I came to the conclusion that the most effective politicians were experienced politicians. (They are frequently the most corrupt politicians, which presents different problems.) They know how to move the levers of power.
And good management is not easy. I always remember this one management seminar that put us through an interesting exercise: You have a staff of ten, and you’re moving into a new office. Who gets which cubicle? (Because everyone wants to sit by the window.) You can’t believe how complicated it got. But I learned an important lesson about balancing competing interests — and in committing to your management decisions. This idea that Obama learned management skills in the chaotic environment of a campaign, which is more like an extended high-stakes poker game fueled by booze and coke, was one of the dumbest fucking arguments I ever heard.
The most serious maelstrom to engulf the Cabinet in years came in October, when it became clear that neither Kathleen Sebelius nor her counterparts in the West Wing had adequately prepared for the staggering technical challenges of launching Obamacare. The health and human services secretary was well-liked—she was especially friendly with Jarrett—but many of Obama’s aides still pined for Tom Daschle, the wily former Senate Democrat whom Obama had originally tapped for the HHS job. Daschle, who withdrew from consideration in 2009 over a tax issue, was canny enough to know the way power flowed in Obama’s circle: As a condition for taking the job, he requested a West Wing office so he could keep close tabs on the executive staff. For years, Daschle privately expressed his concerns that Sebelius, who didn’t have the stature to make the same demands, simply wouldn’t have the power to implement the health care program.
Yet, in the end, it may not have been her lack of power that caused all the headaches, but a breakdown in communication and coordination between the White House and Sebelius’s staff. It started with a slow-walk of critical Obamacare rulemaking, a key part of Plouffe’s do-no-harm election-year strategy of minimizing controversial regulatory action. “The number-one culprit was [that] they deferred rulemaking until after the election,” says Mike Leavitt, the Bush-era HHS chief whose face Bob Gates couldn’t quite place. “When they did that, it threw the entire process off. … They were issuing rules in September for implementation in October.” The secretary herself admitted that Obama had been blindsided by the near-meltdown of the program’s web portal, and several administration officials involved in its creation told me they had been alarmed by pre-launch signs of trouble, even offering to tap outside computer experts to help the agency. Sebelius, they say, demurred. That Obama’s staff didn’t press the issue on the president’s signature policy initiative illustrates a paradox central to understanding his governing style: The president who forcefully pushed through the largest expansion of the federal government in generations has been significantly less zealous in overseeing its operation.
Continue reading “Locked in the cabinet”
Caribou Barbie’s at it again
http://youtu.be/ZIhj0axRsBA
Uh huh. Yes, Sarah. Sharing in the costs and benefits of a federal government is exactly like slavery.
Paying taxes is just like being chained naked in a boat, taken to a foreign country where you’re sold at public auction, having your wife used as a sex toy by your master, and your children taken away to be sold.
It’s not coincidental that she used this phrase. (That’s why she assured the crowd it “wasn’t racist.”) Notice the “free stuff” theme that plays into their anger that unworthy brown people are getting a free ride. (Obamacare! Obama phones!) The white, angry, middle-aged men who make up her base are obsessed with the notion of their own oppression. It fuels their rage.
It’s the cry of a whiny toddler who doesn’t want to share.
He took my stuff!
Fundamentalist child abuse
While I hold these parents responsible, I also believe that these parents are doing what they believe to be the “right” thing — bounded by their crazy, abusive, whackjob beliefs.
But at what point do we bring charges against the “Christian” people who make money advocating this kind of horror?
Worst band breakup ever
Raising successful children
See? All that time the other mothers were criticizing me, I really was a good mother! Whew!
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This may seem counterintuitive, but praising children’s talents and abilities seems to rattle their confidence. Tackling more difficult puzzles carries the risk of losing one’s status as “smart” and deprives kids of the thrill of choosing to work simply for its own sake, regardless of outcomes. Dr. Dweck’s work aligns nicely with that of Dr. Baumrind, who also found that reasonably supporting a child’s autonomy and limiting interference results in better academic and emotional outcomes.
Their research confirms what I’ve seen in more than 25 years of clinical work, treating children in Marin County, an affluent suburb of San Francisco. The happiest, most successful children have parents who do not do for them what they are capable of doing, or almost capable of doing; and their parents do not do things for them that satisfy their own needs rather than the needs of the child.
The central task of growing up is to develop a sense of self that is autonomous, confident and generally in accord with reality. If you treat your walking toddler as if she can’t walk, you diminish her confidence and distort reality. Ditto nightly “reviews” of homework, repetitive phone calls to “just check if you’re O.K.” and “editing” (read: writing) your child’s college application essay.
Once your child is capable of doing something, congratulate yourself on a job well done and move on. Continued, unnecessary intervention makes your child feel bad about himself (if he’s young) or angry at you (if he’s a teenager).
But isn’t it a parent’s job to help with those things that are just beyond your child’s reach? Why is it overparenting to do for your child what he or she is almost capable of?
Continue reading “Raising successful children”
Florida fundie accused of molesting girl, 8
Volunteer youth minister at Florida church accused of molesting girl during Sunday school (via Raw Story )
A volunteer youth minister and choir in Florida was accused of sexually abusing a 9-year-old girl during Sunday school. William Richardson, 47, was charged with capital sexual battery after the girl, now 11, told a staff member at her school that the…