The business of Problem Solving

Image from Lucy's album

Yet another reference to Einstein... J

Einstein is supposed to have said that no problem can be solved at the level at which it was created.  The solution, he said, is always at a higher level.

When we learn how to enter into our Clear Water Mind state, we are able to shift from the state of mind (the muddy mind) where all our ‘problems’ exist and from where they arise to where clarity or ‘solutions’ are found.

Etymologically, ‘solution’ derives from the sense of ‘loosening’ or ‘unfastening’.  Interesting, don’t you think? 

There are two points that I’d like to discuss here.  The first is to do with Problem Solving.  The second is to do with Problem Creation J.

The business of Problem Solving...imagine this scenario: 

You take your car to your mechanic for a service.  When your mechanic calls you later in the day to give you an update, he tells you that there’s something wrong with the clutch and recommends that you have it fixed asap.  And yes, he’ll do it for you right away if you like.

Well, it sounds serious and you certainly aren’t going to be able to repair it yourself so you authorize him to do it.  He does and charges you handsomely for it too.

Now, what if, a few days later, as you happened to recount this event to a friend, he tells you that the mechanic you’d been to is known for ‘messing with cars’ and creating problems that didn’t exist so that he could charge customers for getting them fixed?

You’d be angry, I’m sure.  And you’d probably resolve never to go to that mechanic again.

Pseudo Problem Creator, Pseudo Problem Solver

Here’s the thing:  The mechanic creates the problem and then offers to fix it for you.  And, not knowing any better, you agree.  Crazy or what???

It’s rather like the conditioned/muddy mind.  It creates a problem and then proceeds to fix it for you because you have given it permission to do so.  Or not given it alternative instructions/directions J

Actually, you’ve never even questioned your conditioned mind.  You’ve never asked it questions such as:

·       Why is this a problem?

·       Who or what has created this problem?

·       How have I come to see it as a problem?

·       Do I have to see this as a problem?

·       What is it about you (the conditioned mind) that has created this problem?

·       What if I choose not to see this as a problem?

·       What are some ways of seeing this situation other than as a problem?

Now, you might be thinking that there are occasions when you do subject your mind to this kind of questioning.  Perhaps so.  It is a great starting point. 

But if you remain in your conditioned (muddy) mind state where your problem was created in the first place to seek an answer/solution, then expect to get conditioned/muddy answers/solutions.

If you want to get clear, unconditioned, fresh, inspired answers, then you will need to go a level up – to the unconditioned, Clear Water Mind state.

And when you do, chances are, you will see things very differently.  You may even have different questions to ask J.

And so, moving on to the point about Problem Creation…

The conditioned mind creates problems because it sees differences/dissonance/disagreements that appear to threaten it. 

For example:

Someone has a different opinion or belief than mine.  That’s a problem.  Either they must come to my way of thinking or I must come to theirs.  It’s not possible for us to cohabit harmoniously when we see things differently.  Until this is resolved, I cannot experience peace or joy or love either within myself or with the other person.  OR

There is too much consumerism.  I have to do something about it.  If I don’t, I won’t be able to live with myself.  This is a problem.  I am not ready to change my ways.  This makes life hard for me.  I cannot feel at peace until I resolve this inner conflict within me. OR

So and so says I should eat this kind of food.  But someone else says something quite the opposite.  I’m never sure what to follow.  Whatever I do, I have a nagging feeling that I might not be getting this right.  This is a problem.  I’m never going to be at peace until I resolve this. OR

Someone is suffering terribly from illness.  I don’t know what to do.  I want to help but I can’t.  I feel terrible about this.  I don’t want to feel this way and I don’t want them to suffer either.  What should I do?  This is a problem.  I won’t be at peace until I resolve this.

The conditioned mind can and will (given the chance) turn anything and everything into a problem.  This is how it maintains its relevance, it's purpose.  (Pseudo) Problem creation and (Pseudo) Problem solving is its raison d'être! (You may note the parallels in societyJ) 

Shakespeare said:

‘Nothing is either good or bad, except thinking that makes it so’

I know, I know.  It goes against every fibre of our…..

Conditioning!

Yes, our conditioning. 

Not against our innate truth and wisdom.  Not against our natural, free, divine, infinite mind.  But against our conditioning.

So, the question is:  Do we want to live our lives in defense of our conditioning?  

I know I don’t J. 

Do you?

Doing same, expecting different

I want to be liberated from my ego but on its terms and conditions…

When we enter into the practice of meditation, we want to experience the many and profound benefits of our practice.  But we won’t be able to do this if we remain bound to our pet likes and dislikes, our typical attachments and aversions, our old habits of mind i.e. our thoughts, beliefs and attitudes.

It’s a simple logic: 

Do things the same way, expect the same results.  Do things differently and you will get different results.

So how do we abandon or at least suspend our likes, our attachments, our preferences, our habits?  And if this is the prerequisite for our meditation practice, are we all doomed to failure because we have held these thoughts and beliefs for most of our lives and believe (J) that they will be hard to break?!

Interestingly, one of the outcomes of meditation practice is to help us become more aware of our habits, our attachments, our aversions, our preferences and our claims about who and how and why we are and who and how and why we are not.

Hang on… 

How the heck do I abandon what I am not aware of???

If the outcome of our practice is to make us aware of our thoughts, beliefs, attachments, aversions etc, how can we be expected to abandon them if we’re not aware of them? 

Huh???

Ok, ok, ok already!  Let’s go back to what I said earlier and what I think you will agree with:

Do the same thing, expect the same outcomes.  Do something different, expect different outcomes.

Now if we agree with this, then we must be prepared to do something different when we sit down to practice. 

If we enter our practice determined that we’ll do only what we are used to doing, then nothing changes.  We might as well not practice.

  

Change is but one delightful, exciting, scrumdelicious thought away!

However, if we enter with a different attitude, then we are certainly going to benefit from our practice.

Now here is where it might get a bit confusing.  You might be thinking:

Well, I’ve come to practice meditation.  It’s something I would not normally do.  Isn’t that a demonstration of a different attitude?

No, not necessarily. 

It’s a demonstration of a different course of action but that in itself does not reflect a different attitude. 

Or, take this as another example:

I might be coming to practice because I want to challenge myself to do something I haven’t done before. 

Do I typically set myself challenges?  If I do, then this is but one more challenge I’ve set myself, nothing more.  And nothing different, really.

Or again, I might be coming because there were some things I liked about my first experience with meditation, or with the particular facilitator. 

Do I usually repeat something hoping/expecting to get the same result?  If I do, then am I not doing the same thing here?  So what has changed? 

  

You’re telling me that I shouldn’t repeat what works???

Now you may think that there’s nothing wrong with repeating something because it has produced favorable outcomes in the past.  After all, isn’t this a sensible thing to do?

Sure it is. 

If we went to our favorite supermarket to buy our favorite brand of coffee because it is reasonably priced, wouldn’t it be silly to stop going there for those reasons??!

Of course it would be.

But here’s something to consider: 

What if they no longer sold your favorite coffee?  Or what if the price went up?  How would you feel about that? 

More than likely, you’d be disappointed.  Out of desperation or with a sense of resignation, you might scan the shelf for an alternative.  But you’d likely do so half-heartedly, not really expecting to find an alternative brand that you think you’d like.

Ah, perhaps we can begin to see the drawbacks in this way of thinkingJ.  And perhaps we can also see the similarities in our thinking/beliefs i.e. the habits of mind that we have outside our practice and that we bring into our practice J

These are just a few examples of how, although it may appear we are doing something different i.e practicing meditation or keeping an open mind when we start our practice, we are inadvertently in fact repeating and reinforcing our old habits of mind.

What then are we to do?

Stop practicing altogether?

Well, that is certainly one option though I hope you choose a different one J.

Perhaps it might be useful to revisit our initial reason/motivation for wanting to practice, the reason that first got us excited about the practice.

In all likelihood, it had nothing to do with meeting a new challenge or wanting to have a particular kind of experience.  On the contrary, it probably had to do with the excitement of having a good experience or the desire to stop having bad experiences eg stress, anxiety, depression, illness etc.

At this stage, while these feelings contain seeds of attachment (wanting something) and aversion (avoiding something), they have not yet sprouted.  Whether these seeds sprout or not will depend on our attitude.

Notice that when we sit down to practice, I invite you to recall and consider what your motivation has been for coming to practice.  Then I invite you to set aside these motivations as they have already served their purpose i.e. they have brought you to the practice.  They have done their job J. 

Now, with a fresh mind and heart, meaning one that is open to fresh possibilities, fresh experiences and fresh outcomes, you are more ready to enter into your practice and more likely to benefit greatly from it J.

Before I finish this post, there are a few other points that I would like to address here.  They are related to questions that have been asked following practice.

The breath – a point of Focus, an Anchor, a Now

The breath is a point of focus.  It is always present, always available and a source of great information.  (More about that last one another time)

For now, let’s look at the more immediate functions of focusing on the breath for our practice.

When we focus on the breath, we are focusing on the present.  The breath is a very ‘present’ phenomenon.  It is happening all the time, it is very ‘now’ J.

If we understand that our job in meditation practice is to focus on the breath, than we will see that, in fact, we are practicing being in the now, being present.

Right, so tell me again, what is the point of being ‘present’?

Well, for one thing, it is a break from our typical habits of mind which are to obsess with the past or the future.  And since for most of us, the future we obsess about is a direct and uncreative product of our past, we are effectively doing and creating more of the past.  Nothing much has changed nor is going to.

Also, when we keep in mind that our job during our practice is to bring the mind’s attention to the breath, to notice when our mind has wandered, and to return it again and again and again to the breath, then we can see that this too is another way of breaking out typical habits of mind.

Typically, the mind flits from one thought to the next becoming embroiled in its dramas which are almost always inaccurate accounts of the past and uncreative projections into the future. 

The mind pretty much does its own thing and we suffer the effects of its uncreative ways mentally, emotionally and physically. 

But when we can redirect our mind again and again and again to our breath every time we notice that it has wandered away to a thought and become mired it its associated dramas, we are once again breaking that habit of the conditioned mind!

What is more, when we can do this without self-judgment, without self-chastisement, without taking ourselves too seriously, and instead do this with a big smile on our faces while gently, humorously and compassionately thinking, Ah mind, you have wandered.  Come back to the breath, we will be breaking several deeply entrenched and disempowering habits of mind!

How freeing and liberating is that! 

It is like being allowed to breathe after being held under water for a painfully long period of time, except that generally, the experience during meditation practice is not as harsh or intense J.  Instead, for most people, most of the time, it is more like a slow opening of a window or door in a very congested roomJ

I say most people and most of the time because there are certainly occasions when some people may have some rather sudden and intense experiences. This is not necessarily better or worse, it is just one type of experience.

So, breaking habits by being present, by noticing when the mind has wandered and by returning it again and again to the breath is a great start to our conscious movement into the infinite ground of our being!

Finally, I’d like to invite you to reflect on the

Habits of Mind that are being reinforced during your practice

Are any of the following true for you regarding your practice? 

·       You get sleepy and/or bored

·       You get physically/mentally/emotionally uncomfortable, strained

·       You fall into dream states

·       You feel anxious, impatient or overwhelmed

·       You feel underwhelmed, a sudden or slow loss of purpose, interest

·       You feel frustrated with yourself eg your ability to watch your breath or sit still

·       You judge yourself unfavorably

·       You chastise yourself

·       You compare your experiences with past experiences and make judgments and form conclusions accordingly

·       You conclude that your current experience/reaction is a recurring one, an old ‘problem’

·       You look for quick answers/immediate solutions and feel disappointed/frustrated/irritated when you don’t get them

·       You think that your practice is a waste of time because it is not getting you the results you want/expect

Do you experience these behaviors/responses in other events/situations in your life? 

What are the similarities/differences between the events/situations?  Between your behavior/response?

Can you see that it is the same kind of thinking/reasoning/habits of thought and belief that govern and limit your experience and thus your behavior/response?

Do take the time to reflect on these questions sincerely, patiently and with an open heart and mind!

Am I really, truly, sincerely, truly, truly ready to change my thinking, beliefs and attitudes?  (But... but...but...do I have to????)

Are you ready to choose a different behavior/response?

You know, all you really need to get the most out of your meditation practice, is

1.   A desire to benefit from your practice without specifying exactly how this must happen and in what shape and form that benefit must be

2.   Permission from yourself to allow this to happen.  In other words staying open and receptive to all possibilities  rather than dictating what and how things must happen (which draws on a very narrow set of possibilities)

You will find the same applies for anything else in lifeJ 

So, what do you say?  Shall we start again? 

That’s right – Again!

Let each practice be a brand new practice, arising out of a brand new attitude (because it is one that you are choosing to have in every new moment, every new breathJ), and consequently, a brand new experience created out of brand new possibilities!

Now seriously, can life get any more exciting than that???!!!! J

Sitting still...Coming home

Image from Lucy's album

My favourite time of day is that gorgeous transitioning between late afternoon and dusk.  It's the time when the gold in the sunlight reaches an unrivalled intensity and glow as the sun disappears below the horizon leaving darkness in its place.  

WALKING HOME IN GORGEOUS SUNSETS

Sometimes, the gold is dispersed by brush strokes of pink, crimson, violet and purple.  What a breathtaking vision that is!  What rapture I feel as I walk home under such a sky, its beauty caressing me on so many levels - an emotional, spiritual and physical coming home!

SITTING IN OUR TRUE NATURE

When we sit in meditation practice, allowing the conditioned, ordinary mind to settle, it feels like coming home too - a profound coming home, where the conditioned senses are given a break and the unconditioned senses are awakened to the extraordinary qualities of the naturally radiant, luminous mind.

Its natural peace, joy and infinity gradually become apparent.  We are effortlessly drawn into its field of infinite possibilities.  We are lifted by insight into the nature of reality, into ultimate truth.

In this sense it is very much a coming home - to who and what we truly are!

Are you ready to Joy On?

Image from Lucy's album

There are so many moments that provide us with the opportunity to release joy from within us.  In fact, every moment presents us with this opportunity.

When we are caught up in our past dramas, anxieties about our future and reactions to current events, we are not present to the opportunities of joy.  How can we be?!

MISSING OPPORTUNITIES

Consequently, we miss countless opportunities to experience joy.  We live instead with chronic joylessness, caught in a cycle of suffering and relief from suffering.

Relief from suffering is not joy though it is certainly better than suffering!

But, we want more than relief, surely!  We want to live joyfully, every moment of our lives. 

Now some people might feel a little put off by this.  

BORED WITH TOO MUCH HAPPINESS

I recall a dinner party where I happened to be sitting next to a magistrate and his wife.  She was quite keen to learn about meditation and was asking me some questions.

One of the things I said to her was:

“Everybody wants to be happy.  Everyone is seeking happiness.”

At this point, her husband joined in the conversation:

“Oh”, he protested, “I wouldn’t want to be happy all the time.  I need to get stuck in a good problem and find a solution.  I need that kind of challenge, otherwise I’d get desperately bored”.

“Hmmm…” I smiled…”And how do you feel when you’re absorbed in a problem?”

“Eh…uh…well…if you put it that way…”

INTERESTING AND ABSURD

It’s interesting, isn’t it, that we can get scared of being constantly happy or having ‘too much’ happiness?  Interesting and absurd, really J

However, in my many discussions with people about this, I’ve come to realize one thing: 

'RA RA HAPPINESS'

It’s not that people don’t want to be happy all the time.  They do.  But they don’t necessarily want to be what I might best describe as ‘Ra Ra Happy’ – certainly not all the time.

You know, that ear to ear smiling, toothpaste ad teeth showing, uncontrollably bouncing, positive affirmations spouting, life is unbelievably good, happiness is a choice, image of happy.

And that’s where we can get a bit confused because we hold a certain model or image of happiness and it’s not particularly believable or desirable for that matter.

You certainly wouldn’t want to be Ra Ra Happy in the presence of someone who’s just lost a loved one or been fired or had a nasty accident.

But does that necessarily mean that you want to be miserable? 

Well, some of us may believe that we’re obliged to feel miserable, that that is how we show empathy.  I don’t.

On the contrary, I believe that the best I can offer a person at any given time is my most powerful, peaceful, joyous and loving nature. 

Now here’s what’s important to understand:

HAPPINESS HAS MANY EXPRESSIONS

That powerful, peaceful, joyous and loving nature has many expressions, many faces. 

Sometimes, it may well take the form or Ra Ra Happy J. Other times, however, it may take the form of silence and deep listening.  Yet other times, it will express itself in the form of sharing, relating a personal experience or encouraging a certain course of action or cooking a meal for someone or taking a walk with them or giving a massage or singing a song or reading to the person or removing oneself from the person’s physical space or….

I think you get the point:

There are countless expressions of happiness (or joy, if you prefer).

We don’t need countless names or words for each of these expressions, though.  But just because we don’t have a glossary of words or a compendium of labels, doesn’t mean we should dismiss or deny the fact that happiness could well underpin all of these different expressions, that is, IF we should allow it!

Now, before I finish this post, there is one other matter I would like to address:

FEAR OF TOO MUCH HAPPINESS

This is rather a common fear and one which is mostly unrecognized.  It stems from beliefs, probably established in our childhood, that we are not meant to be happy all the time. 

It is ‘unrealistic’ to expect to be happy all the time.  After all, don’t we see that death, sickness, old age and so many other forms of suffering are part and parcel of life?  How then can we expect to be happy all the time?

Besides, thinking or even wanting to be happy all the time is ill preparation for life’s trials and tribulations!  No, no, no, none of that airy fairy stuff! A healthy dose of pessimism/insurance would serve us well!

If anything, this is a safeguard against attracting suffering reassuring the god/s that determine our fate that we are not overconfident or arrogant or disbelieving in his/their power over us!

Furthermore, suffering makes us strong! It helps us grow and learn the lessons we need to learn in life, for life!

My first response to this kind of thinking/belief is usually to quote Henry Ford:

Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.

In other words, we create our experiences according to our beliefs.

SUFFERING IS NOT MANDATORY

Now, I want to be clear about something:

Most of us do get stronger and wiser when we’ve undergone some form of hardship.  I can think of many instances in my life where I have gained insight and wisdom from my experiences of pain, hardship, setbacks, loss and other forms of suffering. 

That I have gained such strength and wisdom through suffering is true.  But does it mean that suffering is mandatory?  No.  I don’t believe so. 

On the contrary, I believe that we can choose to move from joy to joy, bliss to more bliss. 

For example, we can choose to see death as painful and undesirable.  But we can also choose to see it as yet another experience, no more and no less.  We don’t have to but we can.

If we choose to see death as painful and undesirable, we will experience the pain of our belief and attitude. 

On the other hand, if we choose to see it as an experience in the overall adventure of life, then we will experience the quiet joy and fearless acceptance of this belief and attitude.

You might have heard the adage:

Hope for the best and prepare for the worst.

I used to think that this was such useful advice.  I don’t anymore.

YOU ATTRACT WHAT YOU GIVE ATTENTION TO

If I hope, then I leave things to chance i.e. something or someone else's choice rather than to my freedom to choose what I desire.  

Meanwhile, if I prepare for the worst, then I’m expecting and attracting the worst!  No thank you!

Intend the best, expect the best and don’t interfere with HOW and in WHAT shape and form that best will turn out!  In other words, be open to infinite possibilities J

That’s the approach I prefer to take!

So, are you ready, truly ready to

JOY ON??? J