JACK

Working with our wonderful minds.

Expectations by Jack

Freedom from Repetitive Thoughts

There are a few basic principles for learning how to release the contractions and stuck places we encounter in meditation. One of the most helpful of these principles is called Expanding the Field of Attention.

A repeated difficulty will be predominantly felt in one of the four basic areas of mindfulness. It will come either in the realm of the body, in the realm of feelings, in the realm of mind (thoughts and images), or in the realm of our basic attitudes (grasping, fear, aversion, etc.). Expanding the field of attention requires that we become aware of another dimension of the stuck place, of our insistent visitor, and not just notice its predominant face. This is because invariably we are stuck on a different level from the obvious one we have been noticing. Release will only take place when we can shift from that which is obvious to one of the other levels of awareness.

In meditation, the most common insistent visitors are the repetitive thought patterns we call the Top Ten Tunes. Normally when thoughts arise, we can simply acknowledge them and name them softly “thinking, thinking,” and in the light of loving awareness they will vanish like a cloud.

However, the Top Ten Tunes, whether as words, images, or stories, will persist and return no matter how often they are noticed. They play like old records, repeating a theme over and over. At first, to gain perspective, we can number them one through ten. “Oh, that is three on the hit parade this week.” In that way, when we notice them, we don’t have to play the record all the way through each time and we can more easily let them go. Or we can use a variation of this technique and give them a humorous name or title. I have given names to many now familiar aspects of myself, such as “The Hungry Ghost,” “Mr. Achiever,” “Attila the Hun,” “The Frightened Child,” “The Impatient Lover.” In this way, the repeated stories and emotions of fear, sorrow, impatience, and loneliness become more familiar, and I can listen to their tales in a friendlier and openhearted way. “Hello, nice to see you again! What do you have to tell me today?”

However, this is not enough. Suppose we encounter a painful repeated story about the divorce of our parents. It talks over and over about which children got to keep which possessions, and who said what to whom. Such a story can play many times. As it does, we must expand our field of attention: How does this thought feel in our body? Oh, there is a tightness in the diaphragm and the chest. We can name this, “tightness, tightness,” and stay kind and carefully attentive for some time. As we do, it may open to other sensations, and many new images and feelings will be released. In this way, we can first begin to release the physical contractions and bodily fear that we have held. Then we can expand the attention further to new feelings. What other feelings arise along with this thought pattern and this tightness? At first they may be half hidden or unconscious, but if we sense carefully, the feelings will begin to show themselves. The tightness in the chest will become anger, then sadness, and the sadness may become grief. As we finally begin to grieve, the pattern will release.

In a similar way, when we encounter a repeated physical pain or difficult mood, we can expand awareness to the level of thoughts, to notice with loving awareness the story or belief that comes along with it. With careful attention, we may find a subtle belief about ourselves that perpetuates the pain or mood, perhaps a story about our unworthiness, such as “I’ll always be this way.” When we become aware of the story or belief, and see it as just thought, often untrue, the pattern can be released.

But sometimes we need to open to the feeling level to release the stuck pattern. Repeated thoughts and stories are almost always fueled by an unacknowledged emotion or feeling underneath. These unsensed feelings are part of what brings the thought back time and again. Future planning is usually fueled by anxiety. Remembering of the past is often fueled by regret, or guilt, or grief. Many fantasies arise as a response to pain or emptiness. The task in meditation is to drop below the level of the repeated recorded message, to sense and feel the emotional energy that brings it up. When we can do this, and truly allow and come to terms with the feeling, the thought will no longer need to arise, and the pattern will naturally fade away.

Opening further, we can shift our awareness to the space around all things, and experience the vast openness of mind that holds all these thoughts and feelings. This is an invitation to freedom.

This excerpt is taken from the book, “A Path With Heart”
Printed with Jack’s permission.
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Discover What Is Asking for Acceptance

Discover what is asking for acceptance… This may sound like a very complicated and busy way to meditate, but in practice it is very simple. The general rule is simply to sit and be aware of what arises. If there are repeated patterns, expand the field of awareness. Then sense what is asking for acceptance. This is the third principle. Repeated patterns remain because of some level of resistance: an aversion, fear, or judgment locks them in. This contraction is built out of fear. To release it, we must acknowledge what is present and ask our heart, “How am I receiving this?” Do we wish it to change? Is there a difficult feeling, belief, or sensation we have contracted around that we want to be over or go away? Is there some attachment, some fear?

Struggle and dictating doesn’t work in our inner life. So we must inquire what aspect of this repeated pattern is asking for acceptance and compassion, and ask ourself, “Can I touch with love whatever I have closed my heart to?” This doesn’t mean solving it or figuring it out—it is simply asking, “What wants acceptance?” In difficult patterns of thought, emotion, or sensation, we must open to feel their full energy in our body, heart, and mind, however strongly they show themselves. This includes opening to our reactions to this experience as well, noticing the fear, aversion, or contraction that arises and then accepting it all. Only then can it release.

One of the clearest places to observe the process of contraction in our life is in meditation. Frequently we will experience ourselves contracting around and reacting to a specific difficulty that comes like an insistent visitor over and over again in our meditation. This repeated pattern of thoughts, moods, and sensations can be sensed as somehow stuck or unfinished. I am not referring to the general problems of sleepiness, judgment, or irritation we spoke of in naming the demons, but very specific and often painful sensations, thoughts, feelings, and stories that arise repeatedly in our consciousness. These are called sankaras in Sanskrit. When repeated difficulties do arise, our first spiritual approach has been to acknowledge what is present, naming, softly saying, “sadness, sadness,” or “remembering, remembering,” or whatever. Of course, certain patterns that repeat will call for a response, some wise action on our part. We must recognize these situations, and as one Zen master put it, “Not just sit there like an idiot.” However, many insistent visitors, even when we have named them or responded to them, will continue to repeat themselves, arising again and again. When any experience of body, heart, or mind keeps repeating in consciousness, it is a signal that this visitor is asking for a deeper and fuller attention. While the general rule in meditation is to stay open to the flow of whatever arises, when we encounter an insistent visitor, we must recognize that this is its way of asking us to give it more attention, to understand it more clearly. This process involves investigation, acceptance, understanding, and forgiveness.

This excerpt is taken from the book, “A Path With Heart
Printed with Jack’s permission.

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Discover What Is Asking for Acceptance

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How to Begin Naming

Begin by sitting comfortably, focusing awareness on your breathing. As you feel each breath, carefully acknowledge it with a simple name: “in-breath, out-breath,” saying the words silently and softly in the back of your mind. This will help you keep track of the breathing, which gives your thinking mind a way to support awareness rather than wandering off in some other direction. Then as you get quiet and as your skill grows, you can notice and name more precisely, “long breath,” “short breath,” “tight breath,” or “relaxed breath.” Let every kind of breath show itself to you.

As you continue to develop your meditation, the process of naming can be extended to other experiences as they arise in your awareness. You can name the bodily energies and sensations that come up, such as “tingling,” “itching,” “hot,” or “cold.” You can name feelings, such as “fear” or “delight.” You can then extend the naming to sounds and sights, and to thoughts such as “planning” or “remembering.”

In developing the naming practice, stay focused on your breathing unless a stronger experience arises to interrupt your attention. Then include this stronger experience in the meditation, feeling it fully and naming it softly for as long as it persists—“hearing, hearing, hearing” or “sad, sad, sad.” When it passes, return to naming the breath until another strong experience arises. Keep the meditation simple focusing on one thing at a time. Continue to name whatever is most prominent in each moment, being aware of the ever-changing stream of your life.

At first, sitting still and naming may seem awkward or loud, as if it interferes with your awareness. You must practice naming very softly, giving ninety-ɹve percent of your energy to sensing each experience, and five percent to a soft name in the background. When you misuse naming, it will feel like a club, a way to judge and push away an undesirable experience, like shouting at “thinking” or “pain” to make it go away. Sometimes, in the beginning, you may also feel confused about what name to use, looking through your inner dictionary instead of being aware of what is actually present. Remember, the practice of naming is much simpler than that; it is just a simple acknowledgment of what is present.

Soon you will be ready to bring the practice of naming and inquiry directly to the difficulties and hindrances that arise in your life. The have most common difficulties that the Buddha described as the chief hindrances to awareness and clarity are grasping and anger, sleepiness and restlessness, and doubt. Of course, you will inevitably encounter many other hindrances and demons, and will even create new ones of your own. Sometimes they will besiege you in combinations, which one student called “a multiple hindrance attack.” Whatever comes, you will need to begin to see these basic difficulties clearly as they arise.
Printed with Jack’s permission.

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Naming the Wanting Mind

This human world is sometimes called the desire realm because so much of it runs on desire and wanting. How to relate wisely with desire and wanting is a central question to all who wish to live with inner well-being and freedom. We can start by bringing mindful and loving awareness to desire and wanting. We can observe wanting and grasping without condemning it, and begin to learn to be aware of this aspect of our nature without being caught up in it. We will gradually see that there are healthy desires and unhealthy desires, those that lead to well-being and those that lead to suffering. Then we have a choice which to follow. To begin to better understand, experiment when desire arises: let yourself feel it, naming your experience “hunger,” “wanting,” “longing,” or whatever it is. Name it softly the whole time it is present, repeating the name every few seconds, five, 10, 20 times until it ends. As you note it, be conscious of what happens: How long does this kind of desire last? Does it intensify first or just fade away? How does it feel in the body? What parts of the body are affected by it—the gut, the breath, the eyes? When it is present, are you happy or agitated, open or closed? As you name it, see how it moves and changes. If wanting comes as the hunger, name that. Where do you notice hunger—in the belly, the tongue, the heart, the throat?

The point is not to be rid of desire but to understand it. When we look, we see how many times wanting creates tension—that it is actually painful. We sense how frequently it arises out of a sense of longing and incompleteness, an underlying feeling that we are not whole. As we hold the longing and incompleteness in loving awareness it gradually loses its power. We relax. Observing more closely we notice that desire is also fleeting, without essence. Desire is actually a form of imagined satisfaction that takes over our body and mind. Of course, at times it seems very real. Oscar Wilde said, “I can resist anything but temptation.” When we are caught by wanting it is like an intoxicant and we are unable to see clearly. Our wanting and desire can become powerful blinders limiting what we see. We only see what will fulfill it and what gets in the way.

Step back and look at desire tenderly, with kind attention. Do not confuse the wanting mind with pleasure. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying pleasant experiences. Human incarnation entails both pleasure and pain, and enjoyment is a wonderful aspect of life. However, the wanting mind continually grasps at the next pleasure. We are taught in this culture that if we can grasp enough pleasurable experiences quickly, one after another, our life will be happy. By following a good game of tennis with a delicious dinner, a fine movie, then wonderful sex and sleep, a good morning jog, a fine hour of meditation, an excellent breakfast, and off to an exciting morning of work, over and over, our happiness will last. Our driven society is masterful at perpetuating this ruse. But will this satisfy the heart?

What happens when we do fulfill wanting? It often brings on more wanting. The whole process can become tiring and empty. “What am I going to do next? Well, I’ll just get some more.” George Bernard Shaw said, “There are two great disappointments in life. Not getting what you want and getting it.” The process of being driven by desire is endless, because peace comes not from fulfilling our wants but from the moment that dissatisfaction ends. When wanting is fulfilled, there comes a moment of satisfaction, not from the pleasure, but from the stopping of grasping!

As you name the wanting mind and feel it carefully, notice what happens just after it ends, and notice what states then follow. The issue of wanting and desire is a profound one. You will see how often your desires are misplaced. An obvious example is when we use food to replace the love we long for. Geneen Roth, who works with eating disorders, wrote a book called Feeding the Hungry Heart. Through the practice of loving awareness, we can sense how much of our surface desire arises from some deeper wanting in our being, from an underlying loneliness or fear or emptiness.

Often when people start a meditation or spiritual practice, the wanting mind will become more intense. As we take away some of the layers of distraction, we discover that underneath are powerful urges for food or sex, or for contact with others, or powerful ambition. When this happens, some people may feel that their spiritual life has gone awry, but this is the necessary process of unmasking the grasping mind. We get to face it and see it in all its guises, so that we can develop a compassionate and skillful relationship to it. Unhealthy desire causes wars, it drives much of our modern society, and as unconscious followers, we are at its mercy. Few people have ever stopped to examine desire fearlessly, to feel it directly, to discover a wise relationship to it.

In Buddhist psychology desire is divided into many categories. Most fundamentally these desires are separated into painful desires and skillful desires. Painful desire involves greed, grasping, inadequacy, addiction, and longing. Healthy desire is born of love, vitality, compassion, creativity, dedication and wisdom. With the development of loving awareness, we begin to distinguish unhealthy desire from dedication and skillful motivation. We can sense which desires are free from unhealthy grasping and enjoy a more spontaneous and natural way of being without struggle. When we are no longer caught by unhealthy desires, healthy passion and compassion will more naturally direct our life.

Understanding, freedom, and joy are the treasures that understanding desire brings us. We discover that with healthy desire is a deep spiritual longing for beauty, for abundance and completeness. Then we discover that we search for these because their seeds are already within us. In truth, we are whole. Holding desire with loving awareness can lead us to discover this. One teacher of mine said, “The problem with desire is that you do not desire deeply enough! Why not desire it all? When you struggle, you don’t like what you have and want what you don’t have. For a free heart, try an experiment. Want what you have and don’t want what you don’t have. Here you will find true fulfillment.”

By studying desire, we begin to discover a deep possibility of well-being and freedom in our spiritual life.
This excerpt is taken from the book A Path with Heart
Printed with Jack’s permission.
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