Listening to Ourselves - Part 1

It is very difficult to truly be able to listen to and to be aware of how we are feeling. We do not want to face our conflicts, frustrations or insecurities so our mind pushes us away from those thoughts by distracting us. Our mind supplies us with repetitive thoughts and fantasies that preoccupy us and lets us avoid thinking about thoughts that can be threatening to the psyche. In other words our minds put up walls that keep us from being aware about how we are feeling. Much of the energy that our mind exerts is spent on holding up these walls.

 One proof of our fear of discovering ourselves is most people's inability to do nothing. We always seek distractions. When we eat, we need the TV or to read the paper because we are scared of being with ourselves. If we are driving we immediately turn on the radio lest our thoughts turn on ourselves and all our conflicts come rushing at us. We are never comfortable sitting alone and doing nothing.

I have often noticed in myself that in moments of free time, where my mind could be free to think, I compulsively start thinking about basketball. Basketball for me serves as a refuge from the conflicts that brew continuously inside my head but which I don't want to face. In fact, when I try to force myself to think, soon after, I notice that my mind has taken control again and has drifted to the compulsive distracting thoughts that I am trying to break out of.

 If you're wondering whether you do this then here's a test. Sit quietly alone for 30 minutes with no distractions. Focus on how you're feeling and why. Wonder what your fantasies are and how they display themselves. Pay attention to how well you are able to do this and how often you fall into "distracting thinking". See if you can even last 30 minutes. Notice how hard it is to listen to yourself, and how much of a fight your mind naturally puts up. Your mind is putting up that fight all day!

 Just because we ignore our conflicts doesn't make them disappear. They are still there, right outside of our conscious mind, sucking out so much of our energy. It takes energy to distract ourselves. It takes energy to constantly involve ourselves in cyclical thoughts in order to avoid thinking about ourselves. 

Being aware of our conflicts releases a lot of tension because all that energy that was spent on distracting ourselves from those conflicts gets freed up. People often report that when they discover a new insight about themselves, no matter how depressing the insight itself can be, they burst into laughter. The natural reaction to discovering our conflicts and insecurities is laughter! I too have had this experience. The reason for that is that we waste so much energy in order to not listen to ourselves. Being aware of how we feel is a huge first step in removing the anxiety and the conflicts from our daily lives and releases so much mental energy.

 But as I have mentioned before, listening to ourselves is not easy. We need to work on becoming better listeners, and to learn to overcome all the barriers that our mind naturally puts up. How do we become better listeners?

 Step 1: Listening To Our Bodies
The first step in becoming mindful of our psyches is becoming mindful of our bodies. Mark Epstein in "Going to Pieces without Falling apart"writes:

"First and foremost comes mindfulness of the body, in which the direct physical sensations of breathing and bodily experience are made the objects of meditation. When I first began to practice meditation intensively, I found that my sense of myself in my body was dramatically increased. This can be frustrating as it is rewarding because of the mind's inevitable tendency to pull itself away from its body"

Epstein goes on to recount the experience of one of his patients:

"One of my patients a mother of three young children, had a sincere interest in learning meditation but absolutely no free time to meditate. Like Many parents, Abbie felt obligated to her family but oppressed by their constant demands and frustrated by her inability to make time for herself. I explained to her that meditation need not be done exclusively in a silent environment or a cross legged position but could be done anywhere. The idea was to develop awareness of bodily experience or, at first, to develop awareness of how little awareness there was of bodily experience."

"Standing at the sink washing dishes, Abbie began to consciously focus on her posture, on how she held her body, and on how she shifted her weight. She was incredulous of how much tension she had. She found that she was holding her body in all kinds of unnatural positions which only served to exacerbate the feeling of strain that she was struggling against..Abbie had discovered the chronic state in which most of us spend most of our time". Lost in thought, cut off from our bodies, nursing a grievance or two, with physical and emotional tension accumulating outside of awareness, we perpetuate the very sense of frustration that we struggle against. Mindfulness of the body opens this up so that we can begin the process of getting to know ourselves."

"Contact with the body develops the ability to be with feelings. The physical tension that Abbie discovered was the perfect vehicle for the exploration of the psyche. Rather than walling herself off from difficult feelings, she learned to literally breathe in and out of her anxiety ridden states, using her body as the forum to learn about her feelings" -Mark Epstein