Visitors With a Tale to Tell
It's like this now. Can that be okay?
I can hear the echo of my teacher Mark Nunberg's voice asking me this and to be honest, sometimes my answer is "No! It's not okay even a little." I have Lao Tzu’s quote right in front of my face at my desk: "Let reality be reality. Let things flow forward in whatever way they like." And reminders like “no lotus without the mud” or “the future is a completely open situation” to remind me to “abandon what is unskillful, cultivate the good, and purify the mind.”
This is wise advice that I have found to be quite effective in alleviating suffering. Yet lately I have been struggling with powerful bouts of despair and doubt, temporary but painful. While that makes me human, it doesn't need to dictate my day-to-day existence. The key is to recognize despair, negativity, fear, rage, and all these sticky heart-mind states for what they really are: visitors with a tale to tell.
In the MBSR program we share a well-known poem by Rumi called The Guest House . It's aspirational, this idea about welcoming our troubles as if we were happy to see them. I can't say that I've reached the point where I am able to "greet them at the door, laughing," but I do open the door and let them in (they're pretty good at barging their way in anyhow). And let's be clear -- it is not just the expected difficult guests that show up. The minute we react with resistance or aversion or anything other than "I see you," another guest appears, and we have to deal with that one -- "oh, here's resistance, here's fear, here's mental strategizing about how to handle the first guest," and so on.
That's the idea of the Second Arrow. It's not what happens to us but how we respond to it that determines freedom and ease. Can you be afraid and freeze up? Yes. Can you be afraid and maintain balance and ease? Yes. We don't need to torment ourselves, but we have to begin to recognize what is happening.
Recently I meditated with Steve Armstrong, using a recording from a retreat I sat with him many years ago. I was in an open, willing frame of mind as I began the sit, and aware of a lot of sadness, strain, and negative talk about the pointlessness of existence (an example of what it means to show up just as you are). I chose this particular guidance based on simply wanting to hear Steve's voice, not knowing what he would be saying. Here is what I heard:
We have experienced many of these upheavals in our life, and we’re quite used them (even though we don’t prefer them). Yet we have just kind of tolerated them without the understanding that we can work with them. When we learn to understand them it weakens their grip on the mind. This takes courage and determination, and a willingness with some faith, to realize that we can actually do this work.
We can acknowledge what is distressing the mind. We can accept that this is the way that things have come to be. We can reframe our understanding and we can work with [the torments we impose on ourselves.] Not just to get rid of them, but to really accept them, open to them, feel them, come to understand them -- by observing them with interest. They come, they last a while, they leave. We don’t need to act them out, push them away, feel that they are an unmoveable burden in our life. Rather, they are a visitor that is asking to be known. And when we know them clearly, they cease to be such a torment. [emphasis mine]
Steve Armstrong – IMS morning meditation August 6, 2014 - https://dharmaseed.org/teacher/170/?page=19
Can we stop tolerating our own torments and cease the struggle against what is not wanted? Are we willing to let go of desiring something better, or comparing what is happening right now to what used to be or what we believe should be happening? What would happen if you got interested and curious in a friendly way about all the ugly, obnoxious, unwanted "visitors" who come to pay you a visit? You don't have to make up the guest room for them, but turn toward them and allow them to be however they are. You may notice that this diminishes them somewhat.
So in mindfulness practice we are training in acceptance. We are breaking the habit pattern of tolerating the suffering that results from our extra added "second arrow" reactivity, setting down the push-back, and saying, "There is discomfort (unease, pain, whatever). I accept that this is here, how it is. I want to know this intimately. This is arising naturally, it is not personal." And then see what happens.