A Path To WholenessA Buddhist psychiatrist who has been meditating
for decades elegantly describes how psychotherapy and meditation can help
us manage our most powerful emotions--and make us feel more alive and
whole in the process.
"Stop trying to understand what you are feeling and just feel," my
first meditation instructor told me. This instruction seemed insanely
simple: the ability to just feel should come as naturally as the ability
to breathe. Yet, in twenty-five years as a psychotherapist and practicing
Buddhist, I have found that most of us have not learned how to be with
our feelings without rushing to analyze them, change them, or escape
them.
If we really want to live a full life, both the ancient tradition
of Buddhism and the modern one of psychotherapy tell us that we must
recover the capacity to feel. Avoiding emotions will only wall us off
from our true selves--in fact, there can be no wholeness without an
integration of feelings. Both traditions have discovered that the way to
plumb the full depths of our emotional being is by letting ourselves go,
by surrendering to who we really are. And both traditions understand that
we need a state of reverie in order to know our emotions. Whether that
reverie comes through meditation or the quiet holding space of therapy,
it is always necessary.
Buddhism has always made the self's ability to relax its boundaries
the centerpiece of its teachings. It recognizes that the central issues
of our lives, from falling in love to facing death, require an ability to
surrender that often eludes us. Psychotherapy, through its analysis of
childhood, has tended to turn us in a reflective direction' searching for
the causes of unhappiness in an attempt to break free from the traumas of
the past. Too often, though, it degenerates into finding someone to blame
for our suffering. But within psychotherapy lies the potential for an
approach that is compatible with Buddhist understanding, one in which the
therapist, like the Zen master, can aid in making space in the
mind.
Many of us come to therapy feeling that we are having trouble I
letting ourselves go: we are blocked creatively or emotionally, we have
trouble falling asleep or enjoying sex, or we suffer from feelings 5 of
isolation or alienation. Often, we are afraid of falling apart, but the
problem is actually that we have not learned how to give up control of
ourselves. People come to me most often because they are unhappy with how
they feel, not because they are not separate or individuated enough. The
traditional view of therapy as building up the ego simply does not do
justice to what people's needs actually are.
In my work as a therapist, I have adapted Buddhist teachings to
meet the needs of my patients, many of whom have neither the time nor the
inclination to pursue formal meditation practice. I have found that
therapy, through a reciprocal exchange of feelings, can also enable us to
let go of the defenses that block us. While the method may differ from
formal meditation, the intent is the same: to recover a capacity for
feelings that we are all afraid of.
Cross-Legged on a Cushion
Meditation seeks to create an inner holding environment for the raw
material of emotional experience through non-judgmental awareness. In
this way, meditation acts like a stealth bomber, sneaking through all the
defenses and illuminating the central fortress of the heart. When I was
first instructed in what is known as "mindfulness meditation," I was
taught to simply note whatever I was feeling, pleasant, unpleasant, or
neutral. My observing mind functioned almost as another person, watching
the flow of sensation with relative ease. This created a very different
relationship with my internal world from the one I was used to. My
chronic tendency was to shrink from the unpleasant and reach for the
pleasant. Mindfulness meditation encouraged a dispassionate acceptance of
both.
Since feeling states are experienced primarily in the body, the
ability to maintain a continuous state of physical awareness gives an
enormous boost to the capacity to bear feelings. This is fortunate,
because one of the most common occurrences in beginning meditation
involves the re-experiencing of terrifying feelings. Even in meditation,
these feelings can still seem intolerable, but the entire thrust of
meditation practice is designed to increase their tolerability.
Because mindfulness of feelings involves the careful attention to
the flow of pleasant and unpleasant sensations in the body, there is none
of the usual picking and choosing that otherwise colors our
experience.
Cross-Legged on the Couch
Opening your attention to your body, feelings, and mind does not
have to be restricted to the meditation cushion. It's a process you can
attempt with all aspects of your life, and certainly one you can pursue
with a therapist. One teacher of mine told me that to achieve a
dispassionate state, he would pretend he was dying and that I there was
nothing to be done. "Rather than judging something," he told me, "take no
position. Stop leaning into circumstances I and rest in your own
awareness." Buddhism teaches us again and again that uncovering and
experiencing difficult feelings does not make them go away, but does
enable us to practice tolerance and understanding with the entirety of
our being.
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state of reverie,
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twenty five years
