The wise and wonderful Joseph Goldstein said, "We paint pictures in our minds of what will be, and then become frightened of our own imaginings." Have you found this to be true? I certainly have. I've written before about the danger of rigid expectations, and during my recent retreat I was blissfully liberated from my deeply ingrained habit of thinking I know what the future should or will hold. 

My job on retreat was to clean the administration building each morning after breakfast. I enjoyed this task, as I got to practice Alexander Technique and mindfulness while cleaning the bathroom, sweeping and vacuuming. Service to something you love brings joy. But one morning, while cleaning an office, I saw a list of new yogis who would be arriving the next day, September 1. At the Forest Refuge, people come and go as they wish, but when there's a change of month, it tends to bring an influx of folks arriving for a month-long retreat. My instant and automatic reaction was resistance, contraction, and fear. My mind began spewing out thoughts like, "this will be so disruptive. 10 or 12 new people? It's going to ruin the deep calm vibe we have going now. More people? Ugh." And so on.

Because I had been practicing for nine days, I could watch this reaction and get curious about it. I was mildly shocked at my negative feelings about people in general and surprised at how proprietary I felt about my retreat, my sangha, my experience. I saw that I was clinging and afraid, and I accepted that habit as a familiar pattern in me. At the morning guided sit that followed, our teacher reflected on the calendar change, which also meant a switch of teachers. She shared her desire to welcome all the new folks who would be entering the retreat space, wishing them well as they settled into the community we were co-creating. 

I was dismayed that the choice to welcome my fellow seekers never once occurred to me. I judged myself for this at first, but then a sense of gratitude arose, because I was able to see so clearly my conditioning around relating to other people. I saw my (old) belief that when I am vulnerable and open someone will come along and ruin it or hurt me, and that groups are invariably fraught with difficulty and danger. [See last week's WOW News, It's Better When We're Together]

The Pali word Vipassana means "clear seeing," and so I spent the next day or two making space for my habitual, conditioned reactivity, watching it operate. Like everything else in our human experience, these patterns came and went, arose, stayed for a while, then faded or changed. I watched my mind create scenarios of what it would be like as a dozen new yogis folded themselves into the community. I saw my desire to flee, as I planned a long walk in the woods on the afternoon most of them would arrive. I told myself I should sit and practice metta (loving kindness) for an hour or more. I extended self-compassion to the parts of me that felt threatened. And eventually I found myself in an easy state of being, just flowing along with the days, wondering about what might be ahead but mostly staying rooted and interested in the present moment.

What actually happened when all those new folks arrived is that I barely noticed it. It was not disruptive, they did not all arrive en masse, there was perhaps a slight difference in the meditation hall as the energy shifted, but other than that, the only disruption was in my mind.

Fast forward to now. Since being back home I have found a new freedom from the ways I upset (or sometimes terrorize) myself with the ideas my mind comes up with. It's not that I am suddenly free of these mental/emotional projections; negativity bias is a neurophysical function that exists to be helpful, even when it isn't. What is changing is how I relate to these habit patterns. News flash: you don't have to believe what your thoughts are telling you. 

It's not that I didn't know this before but having had the wonderful privilege to practice seamlessly for many days, my system has somehow shifted, and I am much more likely to question my own stories before they can take over. I can "catch my mind," as some dharma teachers like to say, and I don't have to suffer as much. Do I still have fearful thoughts and emotions? Yes. Do I also have ideas about positive ways I think my life should be going? You bet. The difference is that I can see it operating, step back a bit, and wonder: is it so?

The answer is almost always, I don't know. I just don't know if more people will sign up for my meditation classes, or Qigong. I don't know if the services I offer for learning and healing will attract more clients. I don't know why it's so hard to find a contractor to do the work on my house that so desperately needs doing. 

What I do know is that it is unlikely that the versions of the future my mind creates will come to pass. And even if they do, I know that none of that is happening yet, and I can let it all go in favor of being present to what is real, here and now. What is real is always changing, and our liberation is in dancing with the change.

Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them; that only brings sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow forward in whatever way they like. – Lao Tzu