A few days ago, old friends converged on Miami for a special wedding. During a week of festivities culminating in an epic dance party, I noted that I didn’t allow my own history to cloud any of it. To be totally present for my dear friend who came back here to celebrate new love, chosen family, and enduring friendships felt like a gift.
This group of friends hadn’t been together in years. Relocation overseas and across the country had scattered us all. But I hadn’t been around much since before geography intervened. A conflict within the group and the effort to repair it had fallen flat. Individual friendships had survived, as true friendships always do.
So much has changed for me personally and I was curious to find out how I would feel to be with everyone again—one friend, in particular. After the big blow up, sides were taken. Except I didn’t choose a side. Not knowing the full extent of the rift, I tried to make peace. It didn’t work. From that point forward, the one friend excluded me and my family from events she hosted. As the centrifugal force of the group, her actions had a huge impact. When I asked, she insisted that she held nothing against me and I was always welcome. It was pretty clear that I was not.
I didn’t appreciate the irony back then, but I had expected the other friends to take my side. Because the official position was that we were fine, there was no option but to be super confrontational with her and that just wasn’t anyone’s personality. Except mine. When they all continued to revel on without me, my mind became a dark garden of painful thoughts. I didn’t matter, took over like chickweed. It hurt for a long time.
Given that I now understand my thinking better,* I was curious to check in with myself around that one friend. Would I be triggered and go back to that self-pitying place? For a second, I fantasized a heartfelt apology. I almost laughed at myself.
Before everyone came back to town, my friend Karin sent me Episode #1 of The Michael Singer Podcast: Ceasing to Be Caught in the Waters of Mind. He authored The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself which teaches how to focus less on the world around you and more on changing your inner space to achieve peace. Sounds like a bunch of hippie weirdo talk, but this New York Times Bestseller has changed a lot of lives for the better, so if you haven’t gotten into it yet, open your ears and listen up. We could all use some peace.
In the podcast, Singer explains that the mind and all its thoughts are not who you are. YOU are your awareness that floats on the surface of the mind. As long as you remain the observer of your thoughts, you can always be at peace. If you aren’t sure what that means yet, exploring some mind calming methods like yoga, meditation or breath work is a good place to begin.
If this is your first exposure to this stuff, here’s the background: our brains are programmed to scan the world for problems, it’s how our species has survived. As we are no longer in survival mode, it serves our higher consciousness to cultivate a calm mind. It is the only way to reach our full human potential. You have to work at this though, it doesn’t happen automatically.
If we don’t realize we have the ability to calm the mind from inside ourselves, we are constantly working to control our environment to keep the mind from being disturbed. We believe that if we can just collect a few key items (the money, the house, the car, the partner, the perfect kids) our mind will settle down. Your mind is always busy trying to figure out what you need so that you are okay. Only it never stops trying to figure out what else you need outside yourself, which is so not the answer, ever.
Most of us don’t do any work on our minds, we try to fix the world around us. We get stuck in a constant effort to manipulate our circumstances so that the mind will become calm. We have no concept that there is any way to relax the mind other than controlling the world. Since this is impossible, our mind is always trying to make our world okay. It’s crazy-making.
So how do we fix our minds? First, we get comfortable watching the mind react to the nature of things as they are. Say for example, that it’s raining. The mind says, “sh!t, I just had my car washed.” There is nothing you can do about the weather, so there is no reason to hold onto the thought. You observe the thought come in, you have the negative feeling and then you allow it to float away. If you don’t resist, it will pass. If you surrender, it will leave you and your mind will return to a peaceful state. Or you could rant about it all day, your choice.
I experienced this very thing at the wedding. After the ceremony, performed by a particularly plucky pastor, the wedding photographers gathered groups for pictures. “Let’s get a shot of all the friends,” she said. I stood at a distance and observed a thought coming in. They don’t want me in the photo. A stab of hurt accompanied the thought and I let it pass through me. I knew my mind was just looking for problems, as it always does.
“Okay friends, love on Abby,” the photographer said. I walked over to the group, grabbed the shoulder of the woman next to me and smiled, sending love to my dear friend on her extraordinary day.
Later that night, the band was so good I left chocolate truffles uneaten at the table and joined everyone on the dance floor where we stayed for hours, just like the old days. At one point, I spotted the friend with whom I had shared the difficult history. We danced out whatever was left of our past.
If you try to resist pain, it stays stuck inside. You cause more disturbance by resistance. That which we resist persists. Deciding what is and isn’t supposed to be and whether or not you have a right to be angry just prolongs suffering.
Make peace, find your center when things go wrong. Your secondary reaction to a disturbing thing is what makes the problem worse. Don’t fight the nature of things. Relax and release. Rest quietly. Lean behind the reaction. Don’t try. Notice it, let it go.
There is no special skill here. You don’t need a technique to NOT do something. All you have to do is stop being so interested in everything your mind has to say. When you learn how to let go of little things, it leads to letting go of bigger and bigger things.
Our natural state is joy, love, and peace. And it has nothing to do with anyone else.
When you observe your mind, let go of painful thoughts and release the emotions, you can rest in the knowledge that you will always be okay, no matter what.
Love,
Elizabeth
WRITING PROMPT: what in your past have you held onto for a long time? What will it take to let it go?
*In a piece a few weeks back, I demonstrate how to examine painful thoughts and provide tools on how to detach from them: https://elizabethheise.com/the-daily-divorce-habit/
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