by Chris Grosso
“What starts to happen at some point—which is horrifying—is that there’s more and more confrontation with death. The person nearly dies, has a near-death experience. At some point, it’s the last opportunity. They say, ‘If I do this again, I’m going to die. Or I can try to recover and maybe I’ll have a chance.’ Sometimes that can be the one slow, small step that they take to start to get their life back. But the incredibly hard part about that is that getting their life back now means getting everything back. You must learn to brush your teeth again. You must learn how to dress again. You must learn how to eat cereal, you must learn how to drive, you must learn what friendship means. How do you treat people? You must learn what love means. It’s probably one of the most horrifying and cruel things that can happen to human beings. It’s nightmarish. I know I don’t have to tell you any of this. But isn’t it a sort of suffocating feeling, this experience?”
I could see how this would leave an individual feeling completely imprisoned—a slave to their substance of choice. I wrote about this earlier, but there have been times when I’ve had a bottle in my hand or been looking at a line of coke on the table and have wept because I did not want to do it, but it was beyond my capacity at that point to stop myself. This is what a lot of people who’ve never been in an addict’s shoes don’t understand, and they write people like me off as weak-willed or morally deficient. Honestly, I understand why someone might say that. Maybe they lost a loved one to addiction or currently have a family member struggling, and they’re hurting and scared, so they project that fear onto those who also struggle with addiction as though it is a matter of wills and morals, which it’s not. This is an opportunity for me to try to cultivate compassion for people who look at addiction in that way. I know they’re scared and hurting, and my heart aches for them.
And therein lies so much of my gratitude for Ken, his work, and his personal impact on my life, especially in regard to working with my shadow, for staying ignorant of my shadow self has kept me stuck in a place of living life and treating others unskillfully. It’s often not me. It’s my repressed bullshit projecting itself onto the situation rather than the real me showing up and meeting each moment, each person, each situation, from a fresh and truly present perspective.
PRACTICE
Three, Two, One Shadow Process
Ken cautions that all obstacles can’t be overcome with mindfulness. “Because these traditions don’t know about what happens when you repress and project something, they don’t catch that kind of flip that can occur. You’re stuck with a reactive emotion that you have, which is a false emotion. The false, reactive emotion is fear. Meditation doesn’t help with shadows. Again, that’s the problem. Cleaning up and waking up are very different processes, but both are important.”
Ken turned me on to something called the Three, Two, One Shadow Process. “It’s a method to reverse the interior process that creates shadow material. It’s a way of noticing something in our environment or even in a dream, anything that upsets us or creates problems, by looking at it from the third-, second-, and first-person perspectives—kind of like a stripped-down loving-kindness meditation in that we take steps toward our challenges and break down the boundaries that separate them from us.”
I try to use this practice whenever I notice myself having a strong personal emotional experience or projecting one onto someone or something else (or both). This can be something in life or even something from a dream. (This can be used for positive emotional experiences as well.) For example, there was a time when I was presenting a talk at a conference and watching one of the other presenters and found myself having a deep, emotional repulsion toward their presentation, so I worked through it using the Three, Two, One Shadow Process:
• After the presentation, I went back to my room and sat contemplating why I was so affected by this talk. It’s not that the material was anything emotionally heavy, nor was it that the presenter did a bad job. This is where I started to recognize my own thoughts I’d been projecting onto the presenter during the talk. Things like “Yeah, right” or “You’re full of shit” or “You’re only in this for the money,” which unfortunately is often the case in the spiritual marketplace. The thing was, in my gut, I didn’t get that vibe from the person, so I was baffled as to why I was having such a visceral reaction toward him.
• I imagined myself having a dialogue with this person, expressing everything that was coming up for me, and that’s when it hit me. I was projecting my own feelings of inadequacy as a public speaker and presenter onto him. I’ve seen plenty of “good” public speakers, but often the message is so watered down or so lacking in integrity that I’m not affected at all. This person wasn’t doing any of that, so again, it just came down to the fact that he was good and delivered a strong message—I was just fucking jealous. I began to see how my old, deeply rooted feelings of self-loathing and my lack of self-confidence were very present in my unconscious, which is where the shadow material resides. I looked at the situation and the problem as separate from me, as him.
• As I finished saying all that I had to say to this person, the next step in the practice was to take on the role of the other person speaking back to you. Picture yourself as him, sitting in his chair and looking at you—which yeah, feels kind of weird at first, but this can be a very revelatory practice if you keep an open mind. I listened as this person expressed simple truths—you’re always your own worst critic; being jealous of others only harms you; use that negative energy to continue honing your craft; and statements of that nature.
• The final step was to recognize that jealousy and feelings of inadequacy are part of me, a shadow, which is why it was a problem in the first place. As I identified, the them progressed to you and then I. In doing this, I re-owned or re-associated the otherwise unconscious and repressed material. Huzzah! A shadow-work miracle!
18
THIS SHIT ACTUALLY WORKS
CONVERSATION WITH NOAH LEVINE
Hardcore Buddhist teacher, author, and punk rocker Noah Levine has been a friend in dharma and recovery for many years. I knew he’d be up for a no-holds-barred discussion about the myriad addictions that people struggle with in life. I wanted to dig into what happens when we have a good thing going and we sabotage it. It might be recovery, accomplishments at work, relationships, or even school. In other words, why can people be their own worst enemies?
For Noah, the key to self-sabotage is intolerance. “If we had to boil it down to an answer, I’d say intolerance for discomfort. Whether that’s the intolerance for pain, intolerance as in lack of compassion, intolerance for some painful experience, emotions, or losses, stressors, or intolerance for the mind’s craving and the body’s craving. Sometimes it’s intolerance for success. Sometimes people are sober or are healing and are breaking into a new level of happiness and freedom, and they find that hard to tolerate because their self-view and self-esteem don’t match up with the success they’re experiencing.”
He also linked it to being too much in our heads. “We’re so identified with the mind and taking things personally and believing our thoughts when they say, ‘You should suffer.’ The mind is so tricky in that way, especially in a relapse, because it will show up as Mara [the demon of temptation] and say, ‘If you have a drink [or whatever the relapse is], you will get free from this pain, and it will be a compassionate act to get high,’ or to overeat or whatever it is. The mind tricks people into thinking, ‘I’d be acting in a loving way toward myself if I got out of the pain that I’m in.’ ” That’s how he saw most relapses, but there was an exception.
“Sometimes it’s just that people have had enough and can’t take it anymore.” This can be more complicated. “The only time I’d meet a relapse with some kind of approval is if it came down to someone either killing themselves or getting high. I mean, truly planning to kill themselves or get high. Don’t kill yourself. You can do the work if you survive.” Still, much of the time, people need to sit with the imp
ermanence of the difficulty that’s happening in the now.
If people have tools to sit with the impermanence—things like meditation, prayer, twelve-step programs, or other support—why is it that instead of getting on their knees or their yoga mat or their therapist’s couch, they step over the help that’s right in front of them and return to self-destructive, uncompassionate actions?
Noah’s answer surprised me but made a lot of sense: “All spiritual practice on some level is counter-instinctual, because we’re not fleeing pain.” Whoa—think about that for a minute. “Especially Buddhism, because it’s asking us when we’re in pain, the natural thing to do is to hate it, that’s our survival instinct—hate the pain, avoid it, suppress it—and the practice is asking us to tolerate it, to turn toward it, to sit with it, to tend to it. Because of this, it makes perfect sense that people don’t practice, that real sitting with compassion is rare. It also makes sense that even those of us who have a lot of practice under our belt will come to a place where we don’t utilize the practice. That is a kind of relapse.”
Noah turned me on to the Buddha’s teaching called “The Simile of the Cloth,” or the Vatthupama Sutra:
Suppose a cloth were dirty and dull, and a dyer dipped it in some dye or another—blue, yellow, red, or pink. It would take the dye badly and be impure in color. Why is that? It is because the cloth wasn’t clean. So too, disciples, when the mind is defiled, an unhappy destination may be expected.
But suppose a cloth were clean and bright, and a dyer dipped it in some dye or another. It would take the dye well and be pure in color. Why? It is because the cloth was clean. So too when the mind is undefiled, a happy destination may be expected.1
The Buddha lists seventeen “defilements of the mind” that need purifying. As Noah put it, “Most of the list is greed-based stuff—craving for pleasure, jealousy, envy, hatred, resentment, ill will, self-centered stuff, arrogance. The last thing on that list that we need to clear away in our hearts and minds is negligence. When we neglect our practice, we’ll never get free. If we’re overlooking what needs to be done or procrastinating, we’re turning toward a sensual or material solution rather than an internal healing modality.
“Of course it’s hard for anyone to do deep, transformative practice. Even people who have been meditating for a while are going to find themselves in a place where they’d rather plug back into the Matrix than continue to face painful reality. Others will feel so overwhelmed by the pain that in the moment, compassion doesn’t seem to be accessible.” Noah connected this to the six different Buddhist realms—heavens, humanity, angry gods, hungry ghosts, animals, and particularly “the hell realm state of mind. Compassion in those places is generally inaccessible because the pain is overwhelming, but it’s important to remember they are impermanent.” The inspiring thing about the hell realms in Buddhist cosmologies—unlike theistic cosmology—is that hell is not eternal. We don’t have to stay stuck there. “You might find yourself in a hell realm when your child is in the middle of a lot of suffering, and it may feel so painful that you can’t access your practice in that moment, but it will be impermanent and it will pass, and you will come out having tolerated that very painful experience. Then you can return to the human realm where you can actually practice.”
While we’re heading into our hell realm of relapse, when we’re obsessing over a drink or lighting that cigarette, what’s going on with us physically, psychologically, and spiritually?
It’s not always what you might think. Noah pointed out that there is a spectrum, and sometimes people relapse because they feel good. “When they’re feeling the best they’ve ever felt physically, they’re feeling emotionally elated and invincible and they’re in a joy state.” Of course, other times “it’s because they are in physical pain or depressed.”
Then there are the times when someone looks like he’s doing okay but is on a self-destructive path. “People relapse when they’re disconnected from community, when they’re disconnected from having accountable relationships, whether they’re amid joy or sorrow, even if they are continuing to show up and be of service to others and be accountable to teachers and sponsors and mentors and all that kind of stuff. Especially in the twelve-step world, there’s an understanding that stopping participation precipitates the relapse. I agree with that, and Buddhism works so that sangha is important, having community is key. I’m not sure what’s going on physically, mentally, spiritually, when people disengage from the community—insecurity, resentments, judgments.”
That reminded me of something I’d learned from Gabor Maté, but Noah put his own spin on it: “I’m seeing treatment and addiction more and more as an attachment issue—an attachment disorder, if you want to use that kind of language. Relapse is about when we’re detaching or disconnected; recovery is about reattaching.”
I thought about how I went about reattaching and rebuilding my relationships after relapse. I had to repair some relationships and terminate others because I knew they were potentially toxic and could lead me back down roads I had no interest in traveling. What about our relationships with ourselves? How could we rebuild those?
As Yoda put it, “Patience you must have, my young padawan.” Noah stressed that any kind of healing is a process. “It takes time to rebuild an internal sense of trust and well-being. Meditation is a sense of internal intimacy that we’ve disconnected from because of the drugs and alcohol and behaviors, and meditation is coming back into ourselves. That doesn’t always feel good and safe. It takes a while to build that sense of internal connection with ourselves, and it’s going to take a while to do that with others.
“Forgiveness meditation practice—self-forgiveness, offering forgiveness, and making amends or asking for forgiveness from others—is a key part of rebuilding relationships. I’ve been a bit critical of the philosophy that says all you must do is make amends to others and you’re done. There is so much internal work. Making amends does not equal forgiveness. I had to do the meditation training in my heart and mind to dislodge resentment and to at least have the potential of feeling reconnected with some people.”
Then Noah spoke a truth that resonated with my experience of genuine healing. “When it comes to forgiveness, it’s not always about reconciliation or reconnecting. Sometimes it’s about good boundaries that say, ‘I’m going to forgive you, but we’re not going to reconnect, because it was an unhealthy relationship and I’m going to put a boundary around it.’ ”
This made me think about how I’ve been terrible with boundaries throughout my own life. As far back as high school, I would always put my friends’ needs before my own, taking on their pain and difficulties rather than my own. This, however, was also a means of avoidance, a way not to have to look at my own internal shit show. This continued into relationships with girlfriends and then into my work life—not being able to say no, not being able to respect myself and my needs enough to draw some lines—and it resulted in plenty of negative consequences, from toxic relationships to poor mental and emotional health from being stretched too thin with work obligations, and much more.
Boundaries or no, I believe forgiveness is crucial. My personal forgiveness practices revolve around loving-kindness meditation. (If you’ve forgotten what this is, go back to the Sharon Salzberg conversation. I’ll wait. I’ve got the patience of a statue over here. Okay, that’s not entirely true. On a good day I can come close, though, so at least there’s that.) While it’s not a specific forgiveness practice, I find cultivating an attitude of kindness and compassion is an integral part of softening my heart, which then allows forgiveness to flow more freely. But no matter how much I work with loving-kindness meditation, I will still often get stuck on offering forgiveness to myself. What kind of practices had Noah seen work in terms of forgiving ourselves, both for relapsing and in general?
“The key understanding is that it’s impossible to forgive, because we don’t have that kind of control over our mind. Saying ‘I forgive you’ and mea
ning ‘I’m never going to allow resentment to arise within my mind again’ is like saying ‘I will no longer have any fear ever again.’ We have nervous systems that react to danger with fear. I have a sensitive mind and heart that hate pain and are going to resent the ways I’ve caused pain to myself and the ways others have harmed me, but I’m also going to regret the ways I’ve harmed others. That’s how the mind works. Forgiveness is an ongoing process . . . an ongoing practice. Even genuine moments of forgiveness (like everything else) are impermanent. It’s not ‘I forgive you, and now I’m done forever.’ But rather, ‘I forgive you in this moment. I forgive you right now because I’m not feeling angry about the pain.’
“Another key understanding is that forgiveness doesn’t get rid of the pain. Sometimes there’s a sort of ‘I forgive you’ or ‘I forgive myself’ and now you’re not going to be in pain about what happened, but painful stuff happened in your life. When you consider things like abuse, betrayal, neglect, abandonment—there are always going to be unpleasant sensations around them, no matter how much compassion, no matter how much forgiveness is done. Those things are going to carry painful memories, and that’s the appropriate reaction and understanding. I have a practice I like called ‘The Three Directions of Forgiveness’ that I use to work with this. It’s a way of offering self-forgiveness, asking for forgiveness, and offering forgiveness, and training our minds.”