Already Free

by Bruce Tift

  In fact, as a couple moves in this direction, a lot of forward and backward movement can be expected. Personally, I see the backward movement not as a problem but as a type of unconscious reassurance. The couple is reassuring themselves that they don’t have to step into too much vulnerability yet. They can always go back and have a fight and feel pissed off at each other if things are starting to feel too open. As a couple learns that feeling separate is just as valid and necessary as feeling close, they no longer need “problems” as a way of getting relief from inaccurate closeness. Healthy separateness paradoxically opens the way to a greater capacity to practice being kind to one’s partner.

  THE INTERPERSONAL: PRACTICING KINDNESS IN RELATIONSHIP

  As a couple moves in the direction of dissolving complaints and blame, both people begin taking such good care of themselves that it becomes possible to keep their hearts open, even when things are difficult. At this point, our experience starts to enter the stage of the interpersonal. Here it’s possible to practice kindness. Kindness is a practice, because often we’re not going to feel like being kind. So we discipline ourselves to apply unconditional kindness in our behavior—and, even more difficultly, in our thinking—toward everything we experience, without exception. This means that we are willing to treat our partners kindly, regardless of how we feel toward them. We don’t do this out of some moral obligation or because we think we “should” be kind. Such efforts usually don’t last very long, nor do they go very deep. Instead, we are kind for practical reasons. We have experiential knowledge that it is to our benefit to treat others kindly, in the same way that it’s to our benefit to treat ourselves kindly.

  This kindness practice requires us to have cultivated the capacity to discriminate between feelings and behavior, to relax our fascination with complaint, and to find out for ourselves, “Is it true that when I treat my partner kindly it works out better than when I blame him for my difficult feelings?” That last piece sounds a little silly, of course. Doesn’t it just seem logical that if we treat our partners kindly, they’re more likely to treat us kindly in return? There’s no guarantee, but it’s more likely. If I am choosing to be in this relationship, why wouldn’t I want us to treat each other well and kindly? Yet I’ve found in my work that few of us have much experience with choosing to practice unconditional kindness.

  This choice is a major shift, as it takes us from the personal into the interpersonal stage. Here we begin to experience being in relationship as choice. We’ve pretty much dissolved our fantasy of being trapped in the relationship—whether by the kids, or by a mortgage, or because we don’t want to hurt our partner’s feelings, or because we’re afraid of being alone. It has become obvious that we’re not trapped in any relationship. We always have the option to leave. We might have to deal with very difficult consequences if we do, but we’re not trapped. It’s not until this stage of our work that we actually start to live with the experience of choosing our relationship, that every day we are once again choosing to be in this relationship. Just as our partner is once again choosing to be with us. Because we’re clear that this is a choice, our partner doesn’t owe us anything. At this point, it’s just common sense to treat our partner well, because we will likely have a better experience of being in the relationship if we do.

  In this stage, we may become curious about the practice of being generous to our partners and patient with their various limitations. At first it may make sense to call our generosity to our partner’s attention, to get credit for it. That’s actually part of being effectively selfish. But at a certain point, we stop keeping score and wanting acknowledgment or credit. We just experiment with being kind, generous, and patient with our partners in so many ways that are possible every day—without any fantasy of recognition. Again, we don’t do this because it’s the moral thing to do; we do it because it’s actually to our benefit. It gives rise to a better state of mind. I work with some couples who are entering this stage, but not many who are at this stage in a stable way. When a couple is experiencing this degree of kindness, they usually don’t want to continue spending their valuable time and money in therapy when they could be spending them in much more interesting ways. As we continue our practices at this stage and cultivate more and more experiential confidence in embodied, openhearted immediacy, we feel increasingly at home with the sense of continuing change. We not only do not rely on formulas for our sense of self and for our relationship, but any such formulas actually feel painful. Because each moment is experienced as fresh, our experience of our partner is fresh. Habitual patterns may not disappear, but they arise as fresh experience. An organic momentum seems to develop, and as we find more and more moments of spontaneous interest and appreciation, we begin to enter the stage of the nonpersonal.

  THE NONPERSONAL: LIVING WITHOUT A SENSE OF PROBLEM

  At this point we’ve pretty much dropped any project of self-improvement or greater intimacy, because we’re no longer living with a sense that there is any deficit or problem. Nothing is missing, because we are fully participating in whatever is present. Our experience is mostly arising in the environment of open awareness—freedom. We keep spontaneously and organically returning to that as our home base, and we discover that it’s inherently satisfying to be alive and interesting to be in an intimate relationship. It’s actually interesting to be provoked. It gives us some interesting things to work with, to look at. We find that we feel hurt about something or sad, or that irritation and judgment arise. We see these feelings arising out of our conditioned history and our current circumstances. But because their insubstantial nature is clear, we have a choice about how to relate: Do we act in this way or that way? Do we investigate our deeper vulnerability? Do we just watch our reactivity come and go? We’ve pretty much dissolved the fantasy of being a problematic person and therefore needing a problematic relationship. It doesn’t mean that our relationship is always passionate and fun and without difficulties, of course. We still have our human lives to live. We still have bills to pay; we might have health problems. Our partner might still trigger disturbing feelings. It’s just that none of this is a problem anymore—it’s simply what it is.

  At this point, we might look back and feel very appreciative of our codependency, our struggles with personal responsibility, and our difficulty in being kind. We see that all of that was exactly what we needed to work on to free ourselves of our fascination with chronic self-absorption and identity drama. So we don’t have the sense that we’ve wasted any time. My partner has helped me force out into the open exactly what I have had to work on. I haven’t always enjoyed it, maybe, but it’s been incredibly generous of her to help me. I probably wouldn’t have brought these issues out into the open all on my own. We start to see that there’s a certain sense of path in relationship and that there’s a reason to do certain practices to help us move in a direction we might want to move in.

  It’s all an experiment, of course, and there are no guarantees. But it seems to me that, in our culture, an intimate relationship is often the most powerful vehicle that most of us have for waking up. Our culture doesn’t have many viable spiritual disciplines. Luckily, intimacy is going to give us exactly what we need to work on in order to relax our refusal to be fully present—to relax into expansive awareness and openheartedness. I’m very grateful for my own relationship and for the opportunity to work with couples. I haven’t found many other paths that are more powerful for helping us have a good state of mind, regardless of circumstance—which is the subject of the next and final chapter.

  8

  A GOOD STATE OF MIND, REGARDLESS OF CIRCUMSTANCE

  WHY AM I WRITING THIS BOOK? Why are you reading it? It seems that we all want to experience our lives in the most satisfying way possible. But the whole thing is so complicated. There are so many theories about how to be happy but none that have proven to be “the correct one.” It seems to be true that having good health, money, a good relationship, a safe environment, and so on a
re part of having a good life. But at the same time, we sense that we can’t really count on these circumstances to be permanent. And we find that even having these things doesn’t prevent our emotional suffering or provide a sense of deeper meaning. Is it possible to learn to cultivate a good state of mind that is not dependent on any of these realities? This is what we will explore in this last chapter.

  WHERE WE BEGIN: GROUND

  All of us want to have as much positive experience as possible and to avoid as much negative experience as possible. This is very human—probably biological. It’s also an incredibly powerful motivating energy for all of us. We all tend to understand and approve of others’ efforts to create a positive experience for themselves and those around them. We don’t understand, and often even try to prevent, actions that will result in a negative experience for ourselves or for others. When we are experiencing life as adequately positive, we take it as evidence that we are successful—perhaps that we are a “good person.” When we are experiencing negativity, on the other hand, we take it as evidence that we have failed in some way—that we are, in some sense, problematic.

  There is an almost infinite variety of ways in which we try to have a positive experience of our life. Almost all philosophical and religious traditions have their own assertions about how to have the most satisfying life possible. For thousands of years, there have been ongoing debates about how to balance immediate benefit with long-term benefit; about whether physical, emotional, intellectual, or spiritual experiences will prove most satisfying.

  In this book, we have been exploring two basic strategies for having the most positive experience of our lives. The first approach is to try to generate as many positive conditions as we can: stay healthy, be attractive to others and have a good relationship, eat tasty food, have enough money, protect our children, travel, try to have upbeat emotions and ways to understand life, work on self-improvement, and so on. These are all very intelligent efforts, and, when successful, these positive conditions will usually result in positive experiences. This approach, of course, is the basic position taken by our culture. Psychotherapy, as an expression of our culture, tends to be aligned with this effort. It helps us challenge negative experience and strengthen a positive sense of ourselves and of life.

  The second strategy we’ve explored for having a more positive life experience is to cultivate an open attitude toward all conditions, without exception, whether those conditions are positive or negative. From this point of view, all conscious experiencing happens through our state of mind. Our experiences of our bodies, our emotions, our relationships, our social and physical world—all are mediated by our state of mind. We can be healthy and depressed or dying and joyful. We can have money but never feel there’s enough or have few resources and feel deep appreciation. From this point of view, our state of mind is a more powerful influence on our quality of experiencing than the specific content of the experience.

  From this view, and for completely practical reasons, it makes sense to learn how to cultivate a good state of mind at all times—to focus more on how we relate to any and all conditions, rather than on what those conditions might be. It may appear paradoxical that being open to negative experience is an effective way to have a positive experience of life, but this is the Buddhist, or fruitional, position. The view explored in this book is that although improving our sense of self and our life circumstances is valuable, this ongoing effort to have more that’s positive and less that’s negative will never result in the experience of freedom. And experiencing one’s life as an expression of freedom is seen as the most positive and satisfying way to participate in this precious human adventure.

  Perhaps we finally go on that vacation we’ve been looking forward to. If a good life is one of positive experiences, the success of this vacation carries a heavy burden. Transportation problems, a bad meal, or disappointing weather are not only difficulties in themselves; they also carry a deeper emotional meaning. This vacation was to be our reward—our compensation for a stressful job or a chance to have more affection with our partner. Even if we’re lucky and everything goes well, things will probably get complicated when we’re back in our daily life. Then the contrast of our vacation with our everyday job or our day-to-day relationship might leave us feeling like there’s some problem with our life.

  From a more fruitional view, however, we have an ongoing discipline of engaging as fully as possible in every moment, whether we like it or not. We may find that saying “yes” to all experience gives rise to a generalized sense that all experience is worth participating in. We become clear that, at any moment, what we’re experiencing is actually the only thing we can relate to. We may not have any control over the weather or our partner’s mood, but we have a lot of potential control over how we relate to these circumstances. When our vacation is not a reward that is “compensating” for a daily life of “problems,” we’re more likely to deal with whatever arises in an immediate practical way—without complaint and possibly with appreciation.

  A GOOD STATE OF MIND

  So if a good state of mind is not the same as having positive experiences, then what is a good state of mind? Although impossible to really pin down, it could be understood as a mind trained into an attitude of unconditional appreciation. Some qualities of this attitude include embodied presence, spontaneity, openheartedness, alertness, humor, courage, clarity, resilience, equanimity, confidence. These are all ways in which we engage with our experience—they are not experiences in themselves. It’s having an almost neutral attitude, one that’s ready and interested in whatever may come in the next moment. One that’s ready to taste and feel and be affected, as deeply as we are able. We are prepared to experience and engage with anything that may arise in the stream of our experiencing. If it’s some vulnerability, we participate fully in that. If we are avoiding some vulnerability, we participate fully in our experience of our avoidance. It doesn’t mean we’ll do a great job of it or that others will approve. It doesn’t mean that we won’t get cancer and die or that we won’t feel fear. It just means that we’re willing to enter each moment of our life with no formula, no reassurance, and to fully participate in whatever we find.

  This appreciation is supported by our various practices of immediacy. By returning over and over to what’s most true in this moment—to our embodied experiencing with no interpretations and to openheartedness toward whatever we find—we discover for ourselves whether it’s workable to be present and engaged. We begin to understand that a workable mind is even more reliable and important than workable circumstances. We may discover that the most satisfying life is one that is fully lived, rather than one in which we’ve accumulated the most positive experiences.

  HOW WE PROGRESS: PATH

  From a fruitional view, path is understood as the work we do that will enable us to consciously participate in what is already true but currently out of our awareness. The activity of pretending to not be aware of what is already true is the activity of ignoring. Of course, we must be aware of something to selectively ignore it, so ignoring is not a mistake or stupidity. Rather, it’s an ongoing activity of intelligence, not to be confused with wisdom. For instance, if someone is angry, it’s now a common idea that perhaps under that anger that person is feeling hurt or scared. He is using the anger as a way of “pretending” to not be aware of the deeper vulnerability. But he has to really be aware of these deeper feelings to have the impulse to defend against them. He is consciously “not aware” while unconsciously “aware.” He is actively ignoring what he is actually aware of feeling. As another example, a parent who claims she was not aware of her child being abused was almost certainly aware of something being hidden. In this case, the ignoring is not about knowing specifics but about a refusal to acknowledge and investigate a sensed problem.

  Of the three forms of fundamental aggression toward reality—attachment, anger, and ignorance—Vajrayana Buddhism focuses on ignoring as the most basic cause of unnecessa
ry suffering. The capacity to ignore seems to be an inherent ability we have as humans. Just as we have an innate ability to learn to use language, think about the future, and have empathy, we seem to have an innate ability to ignore that which is disturbing. And, like most abilities, our ignoring capacity will have both sane and neurotic expressions. It’s very helpful to be able to ignore what could be a distraction when we’re focused on some task, to not be constantly overwhelmed by the suffering in this world, and to be able to choose what aspect of our experiencing to pay attention to. But it’s not so helpful when we ignore important realities of our practical and emotional lives just because they make us uncomfortable.

  The accomplishment of neurotic organization as a child is really the capacity for a stabilized ignoring function, which is vital to the child’s ability to not be continually overwhelmed by too much intensity. But as we’ve discussed throughout the book, such a stabilized process becomes, over time, what we think of as neurotic structure. When this structured ignoring—which was completely necessary and healthy when young—gets carried into adulthood, it comes with a very significant price tag: the experience of feeling divided against oneself. The resulting layers of dissociation, confusion, and struggle generate a chronic state of hypervigilance and self-absorption.

  Our path of cultivating a good state of mind can be understood as the process of dissolving our continually maintained states of self-absorption. Both psychotherapy and Buddhist practices share the intention of gradually dissolving this experience of self-absorption. Because therapy takes the self as real and existent, however, the most basic sense of split is rarely addressed. Usually the result of a successful therapeutic process is an improved experience of self-absorption. This is very valuable, as it reduces unnecessary suffering and should not be trivialized, but it will never give rise to unconditional freedom. In therapy, we work to bring into conscious awareness and ownership exactly what we had to disown as powerless, dependent children. We stop pretending that we don’t feel anger or grief or powerlessness. By bringing our sense of self into alignment with our current adult realities and capacities, we relax our anxiety-driven need for self-absorption.