Notes From a Fellow Traveller

ADHD and Meditation

     Estimates suggest that between 3 and 5 percent of children are currently diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), or approximately 2 million children in the United States.  This disorder is characterized by a combination of symptoms of inattention, hyperactivity, and impulse behavior that is age inappropriate and significantly interferes with customary age-related activities.

    As there are no objective diagnostic markers for ADHD diagnosis involves standardized subjective evaluations and judgments performed by qualified professionals.  Although many factors have been considered as possible causative agents in ADHD – ranging from genetics, to early brain train trauma, nutrition, and environmental influences – the source or cause of this disorder is unknown. ADHD can be accompanied by alterations in normal brain development and morphology that are most likely correlative rather than causal.

    The inability to identify a singular causative agent has led to multimodal treatment efforts. These include singly or in combination: medication, behavioral therapy targeted at skill building, environmental adjustment, and coordinated and supportive efforts of family, practitioner, counselor, and teachers. Combined treatment appears to offer some relief although medications are often accompanied by significant side effects. Symptoms may diminish or dissipate as adulthood is approached, although a significant number of individuals may carry these symptoms at varying intensity into later life.

An Integral Perspective

    Given the absence of specific identifiable causal agents or circumstances, the limited effectiveness of current approaches, and the significant and often unacceptable side effects of medications it may be of value to consider alternative understandings and approaches to this disorder.

    From an integral perspective the individual experiences life through  consciousness, biology, social interactions, and cultural institutions. It follows that in order to embrace the wholeness of human life we must understand and address issues of health and disease from each of these arenas of human experience. Failure to do so results in an inability to consider the multi-dimensional nature of health and disease. This leads to partial understandings and partial efforts at therapy, healing, and health. The value of the integral perspective is that it reminds us to consider the multi-dimensional nature of the human experience.  However, it is essential to remember that although these four aspects of human experience may appear distinct and can be addressed separately they are in actuality inseparable from each other. Human life is a unified and integrated experience.

    In contrast to the integral approach the current understanding and treatment of ADHD is limited to the conventional perspectives, understandings, and capacities of modern times. For example, we are most familiar with attributing health and disease to biological factors and thus changes in brain function or morphology are emphasized as being causal rather than correlative, and medical therapeutics is usually the default response. Psychological interventions such as behavioral therapy have entered the mainstream of western culture following the work of William James in the late 19th century. As a result, this contribution toward treatment of ADHD is a natural extension of psychological theory and methodologies developed in the West since that time. Finally, our more recent understanding of social and cultural influences on health and disease has broadened our approach to healing. All of these elements have been brought together, in the best circumstances, to address the complex and poorly understood phenomenon of ADHD.

Consciousness and Health

    Yet we are lacking a very significant perspective on this disorder and its treatment. Beyond the more limited psychological understandings of the cognitive mind Western culture, as a result of its successful preoccupation with the biological sciences, has failed to explore the unique human domain of consciousness through a contemplative science and its respective methodologies. Yet, it is the potential of our mind and its far-reaching capacity for consciousness that most distinguishes humankind from the animal kingdom.

    Human consciousness is a series of ascending developmental levels of experience. Broadly speaking these ascend from basic instinctual and patterned behavior, to rational cognitive thought, to the open, expansive, and non-cognitive domain of spiritual consciousness. An individual’s developmental level of consciousness and its character – healthy or afflictive – is a major factor in health and disease particularly in those arenas of human experience that are strongly influenced by consciousness.

    There can be no argument that ADHD is a particular human phenomenon that is related to the unique character of human consciousness much as is stress, anxiety, depression, suffering, and high level well-being. I propose that further advances in the understanding, treatment, and potential alleviation of ADHD may depend on our willingness to consider the important role of consciousness, incorporating the understandings and practices of a contemplative medicine into current multimodal treatment approaches.

ADHD and Contemplative Practice

    The microscope and its extended versions are central to investigative and therapeutic biological medicine. Contemplative practice, meditation, is central to contemplative medicine. Biological medicine is directed at healing and maintaining a health body and physiology. Contemplative medicine is directed at expanding consciousness, alleviating mental suffering, and enhancing the quality of human life. There is little doubt that ADHD, seen from the perspective of biology, is conceptualized as an anatomical, developmental, or physiological disturbance. However, when seen from the perspective of consciousness theory it is understood as a disturbance of consciousness.

    Contemplative theory is the foundation for contemplative practice, the healer/teacher relationship the keystone, and the diverse methodologies the paths to an expanded consciousness.

Contemplative Theory and ADHD.

     Contemplative theory poses two levels of distraction or inattention. The first level, the most fundamental one, is an unconscious and conditioned loss of an open natural and naked awareness – our mind’s still, unobstructed and pervasive essence. A simple way of grasping this is to experience the brief gap between two thoughts. This gap offers a glimpse of our natural resting non-cognitive consciousness that we can no longer sustain beyond such brief glimpses. As a result of conditioned mind habits we unknowingly wander away and are thus distracted from this ground consciousness by being drawn into a tight relationship with cognitive mental activity. This habit of falling into cognition and distraction by straying from ground consciousness is deeply ingrained. It is the first and most primary level of mental distraction.

    The second level of mental distraction results and follows from this enmeshment in cognitive activity once arisen instantaneously and automatically moves in one of two directions. First, it may fix or ruminate on a single mental movement – thought feeling or visual image. Or, this second level of distraction as is most common to ADHD, may show up as a floating distraction. The mind floats from one mental movement to another – the hallmark of inattention. This enmeshment with the cognitive process is simultaneously embodied in our physiology and expressed in the outer world through speech and action. What follows in the instance of floating distraction is an outward projection of impulsive and hyperactive behavior that corresponds to the hyperactive mental activity.

    In summary the cycle of mental events is as follows: the initial distraction from natural ground awareness – the primary distraction - is followed by the automatic and spontaneous emergence of the cognitive process – thoughts, feelings, and images. Cognitive activity may then take the form of a focused fixation or a floating fixation. The result is outer behavior of speech and action that corresponds to the specific character of mental activity. This is the perspective form which contemplative theory understands and approaches ADHD. It is seen as a functional disturbance of an undeveloped consciousness.

The Practitioner-Client Relationship

    Contemplative practice follows contemplative theory. It’s aim is to alleviate suffering and promote human flourishing – the experience of profound and enduring health, happiness, and wholeness. Both are perceived as accomplished by the alleviation of the dysfunctional aspects of consciousness and the simultaneous expansion of the mind’s capacities. There are various steps in the pursuit of this goal. I will address only the more basic and essential steps.

    Central to the implementation of contemplative practice is the role of the teacher/healer. In modern times this is frequently ignored or considered of secondary importance. We have lost this powerful healing modality as a result of our reliance on generic diagnostic categories, methodologies, and instrumentation. We label and justify this as clinical distance and objective medicine. Metaphorically, the laboratory has gradually replaced the ritual of the ear gently being placed on the chest listening for the sounds of the beating heart in an unspoken communion of healee and patient.

    However difficult it may seem in modern times the relationship between the patient with ADHD and the teacher/healer must be re-invigorated with deep empathy, patience, availability, heart, devotion, presence, and continuity. This is at the core of all healing and in particular the healing that arises from contemplative practice that is traditionally taught in the context of and empowered by this core relationship. This cannot be substituted by group activities, brief visits, or team approaches. Each individual is unique in capacity, temperament, and needs. Diagnosis and care cannot be generic. The one-to-one healing relationship at the core of contemplative practice must be close, personal, and present.

Contemplative Methodologies

    As developed in the East for greater than two millennia contemplative theory and practice have directly addressed the issue of inattention, distraction, and dysfunctional behavior with countless methodologies – contemplative and behavioral. Contemplative methodologies begin with one of various techniques whose aim is train attention through the use of the mental faculties of mindfulness and vigilance. These approaches are best tailored to the individual, their age, capacities, and temperament. This may mean frequent fine-tuning of the frequency and duration of meditation, and shifting its form, focus and timing in both the formal meditative session and the post-meditation period of daily activities. This may change week-to-week as new skills are developed or new obstacles arise.

    It may be helpful to note, particularly for the client with ADHD, that it is a tradition in the East to encourage the beginner to practice meditation for “short moments many times.” Because our habit of distraction is so deeply ingrained it is difficult for the beginner to hold attention beyond a few moments. Strong efforts to do so will only further engage the cognitive mind, frustration, anxiety, and sense of failure. Short moments of meditation many times allows for the experience of attention to be gradually entrained in the mind while avoiding the negativity engendered by strained effort. In time the individual can naturally extend and stabilize the state of attention gathering new skill, capacity, and confidence at his/her own pace. This is an example of one of the many nuances of mind training.

    It is not my intent here to cover the scope of contemplative methodologies appropriate for clients suffering from ADHD. And in actuality that would likely be of little use as the practitioner must be actively involved in contemplative practice to fully understand – theoretically and directly – the essence and subtleties of these approaches. Intellectual understanding is insufficient as is practice experience that is limited to a small number of approaches.

    Assisting an individual in training attention requires great flexibility on the part of the healer/teacher. When proper motivation is present and the appropriate practice is skillfully taught and applied every individual can experience a capacity to work with his/her mind that was previously unknown. However brief and unstable the experience of attention or inner stillness may at first be the fact that it is possible is often a relief and revelation.  It is essential to clearly point out and re-enforce this possibility the moment it is realized in the individual’s personal meditative experience. The issue is no longer the possibility of attaining a focused mind but rather one of extending and stabilizing what has already been discovered within through personal effort. Helplessness and confusion is replaced by hope and empowerment.

    What is important to re-emphasize here is that the human mind is plastic and trainable, if it was not there would be little use for any form of education. This is supported by neuroscientific research which demonstrates that functional and morphologic change is possible through mental training whether it be that of the master pianist or contemplative adept, and the same would assumedly apply to the individual struggling with ADHD. However, much as a great tennis player maximizes his skills through the assistance of a master coach, the individual with ADHD will gain most from contemplative methodologies when taught by a highly skilled practitioner.  We cannot measure the value and effectiveness of contemplative practice without attention to the capacities and qualifications of the teacher.

The Larger Issue

    The individual with ADHD is the proverbial tip of the iceberg. Inattention, mental distraction and the excesses of outer activity are reflections of an untrained and undeveloped consciousness. For most of us we call this lesser level of ADHD “normal.” In actuality it is the social norm in Western culture. However, when seen from the perspective of a fully developed inner life, with its qualities of clarity, wisdom, inner peace, and universal embrace, this social norm is seen as merely a culturally acceptable lesser level of dysfunction.

    The greater teaching of ADHD may be its role in highlighting the universal and pervasive dilemma of undeveloped human consciousness. The disabilities experienced by the individual with ADHD may one day be seen as an instructive microcosm of the accepted and less seen disabilities challenging all individuals. Our aim should not be limited to returning those with overt symptoms to “normal,” but rather, assisting all individuals in attaining the full possibilities of the human condition that arrive with the intentional development of our unique endowment of a higher consciousness.

In Summary

    By adding contemplative practice to the multimodal approach now used to control the symptoms of ADHD we can bring to bear a powerful set of methodologies specifically directed at training attention, mental calm, and beyond. These methodologies, whose theoretical base and practical application have been developed and time-tested, are diverse and highly nuanced. They are grounded in the practitioner/client relationship and can be tailored to a wide range of individual capacities, temperaments, and dispositions.

    Beyond their capacity to train attention these very same techniques can assist the individual in moving beyond the relief of symptoms to a greater well-being. Exposure to these approaches in childhood or young adulthood will allow these individuals many years to which to learn and fully develop an important group of life-enhancing skills and practices. Although our initial effort is to ameliorate disturbing and dysfunctional symptoms, our larger goal should be to assist the individual in “using” the gift of ADHD as a step to a higher level of living.

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Mental and Spiritual Development

The great Indian sage Aurobindo divided psychospiritual development into 12 progressive stages. His work falls within the great philosophical and spiritual traditions, East and West, that identify an ascending development of consciousness reaching from a survival-based instinctual life, through progressive levels of mental experience to the highest attainment of direct spiritual experience. This final apotheosis transcends all previous levels of cognitive mental experience.

The Basic Mind

The earliest level of mental experience is primitive and instinctual. This stage of development is characterized by perspectives and actions that are largely instinctual - formed and shaped by stable and enduring personal and collective patterns and habits whose aim, much like its physical equivalent of homeostasis, is to assure survival and stability.  We can all identify with this level of mental life as it’s still present in our reactive moments when intention, choice, and discernment become subservient to compelling, fixed, reactive, defensive, and protective behavior. Watch carefully and you will see it arise in your own life. This reappearance of man’s earliest level of mental development may overcome your more rational self for minutes or days.

Gaining A Larger Mental Capacity

As we mature and gain greater consciousness the mental capacities of intention, discernment, choice, and reflection increasingly guide our behavior Our education is geared towards supplanting earlier mental life with these developing and maturing aspects of mind. For most individuals the development of the rational mind constitutes the highest level of mental attainment.

But there is more, much more. Our mental life can become increasingly clear, pure, freed of disturbing emotions, harmonious, and calm. This higher mental level is arrived at through further inner development primarily using the tool of meditation. Meditation trains the mind in attention, mindfulness, and stillness, simultaneously offering access to a wider perspective that delivers transcendent insights and understandings regarding self, others, and existence. In time, the continued process of inner development leads, in a few courageous adventurers, to an illuminated and visionary mind that can see beyond ones ordinary mental life and its narcissism to a larger impersonal embrace of life. This level of mental development is characterized by a growing sense of interconnection, wholeness, oneness, even-minded peace, universal love, and compassion.

Individuals that approach this highest level of mental development are the gems of human existence. They are the sages that bear great wisdom. Such individuals have blessed humanity over time and across cultures. Unbound from mental conventions and their constraints, they see beyond the constructed self and cognitive mental life to a larger universe. At its pinnacle we call this level of mental development the spiritualized mental life. It is a level of inner development that is still bound to mental life as it remains in the world of cognition, albeit higher cognition, and is still marked by duality of subject and object. It is a visionary seeing through higher cognitive function, but it is still not the naked, and mentally unfiltered experience of life as it is which characterizes the spiritual experience itself.
The distinction between a spiritualized mental life and spiritual experience is critical. If we do not understand this distinction we will mistake our highest mental life for an actual spiritual life and this misunderstanding will result in the loss of the richness, knowing, and other unique qualities of the genuine spiritual experience. When we speak of the difference between our highest spiritualized mental life and the spiritual experience we are speaking about the difference between a sage and a mystic – one who knows through the highest capacities of contemplation, discernment, reflection, and analysis and the other who knows from merely having arrived. It is the difference between knowing everything about the taste of a mango and tasting a mango oneself. It is the difference between cognition and direct experience.

The Spiritual Experience

We have all had a glimpse at the spiritual experience. We’re given small tastes and touches whose significance we often overlook. That’s to say we have the experience but miss the meaning. This glimpse can occur in communion with nature, the first blush of romance, the peak of orgasm, in the arts and music, meditation, and the heights of athletic performance. It’s the moment of timeless presence when, for a brief moment followed by a quick return to ordinary consciousness, self and cognition dissipate revealing a spacious choiceless and open awareness unfettered by usual mental activity.  But these are only glimpses of the real thing. They are neither fully developed, matured, or stable. So we cannot hold these experiences and they rapidly drop back into our day-to-day level of development. If we grasp or attach to these “peek-peak” experiences we end up with suffering and addiction rather than the liberation and enlightenment of the genuine and fully developed spiritual experience.

What is revealed in these brief touches of the divine is neither created nor constructed. This liberating open, non-cognitive awareness is always present untouched and untainted by obscuring and unceasing mental activity that hides us from our source. This place of inner peace free of suffering and custodian of the transcendent and permanent qualities of wholeness, happiness, love, and compassion is hidden not absent. These brief glimpses we have spoken of beak through the obscuring clouds of our active mental life and for a moment we see what has always been present and discover the key to the end of all suffering and the emergence of the fullness of human life.

To turn a glimpse into a permanent reality is to develop our inner life, expand consciousness, accurately understand the nature of mind, self, and reality, and progressively extend and stabilize this higher and direct level of human experience. It is not that we abandon the rational cognitive mind, but rather than we abandon our fixation on it, its misperceptions and afflictive emotions. The center of our life is lived from a spiritual awareness and our rational capacities to investigate and know the relational day-to-day world become the instrument and servant of a higher consciousness, a spiritual life.

If we do not understand the distinction between a higher mental life and a spiritual life our development will be frozen at the mental life. We may be wise but we will neither attain the final and complete freedom from suffering that is immune to life’s adversities nor the enduring and changeless qualities of the enlightened spirit.

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Overcoming Disturbing, Afflictive, and Destructive Emotions

When we are out of touch with our inner self we are always in state of dis-ease. This can be quite apparent, subtle, or inapparent. Disconnection from our deepest self can appear as anxiety of body and mind. It may be quite subtle and barely detectable such as an underlying and ill-defined discontent or inner longing. Or it may be disguised and covered over with busyness, distractions, and the anesthetizing pursuit of temporary pleasures. Unless we choose to develop our inner life disturbing emotions, overt or driven underground, will remain a constant theme of our life. In actuality, what most of us consider ordinary living (as compared to a fully lived life) is suffused with seen or unseen unhealthy emotions.
The emotions we experience when out of touch with our deepest self are disturbing, afflictive, and destructive to health and life. Whether it be anger, jealousy, excess pride, hatred, desire, attachment, fear, depression, boredom, confusion, unrelenting doubt, meaninglessness, or any of their many varieties they are all thieves that rob our life of its vitality and health. They occupy our mind for hours and days, and yet we know so little about them and even less how to overcome them. Merely observe your chattering mind. You’ll likely find one or more of these emotions occupy much of your waking, or we should more aptly say day-dreaming, mental life.

Disturbing emotions form a thick cloud over our deeper life. They obscure our essential self and profound health, happiness, and wholeness much like clouds obscure the sun. The sun is always present but it can be easily obscure by clouds. Our true self is always present but it similarly can be obscured by disturbing emotions which hijack our mind. When we are engrossed and taken over by these powerful emotions it is very difficult to jump to the final remedy to all disturbing emotions which is none other than the remembrance of who we really are. So there is both a long and short term approach to defeating the destructive power of these emotions.

The long term approach is the commitment to ongoing contemplative practice. Contemplative practice brings the mind to stillness and open awareness that offers valuable insights which diminish and finally eliminate the power of these disturbing emotions – cutting them at their roots. Daily meditation practice quiets disturbing emotions, allows for a stable inner refuge, and offers a wider perspective through which we can understand and ultimately conquer these demons of mind and body.

However, meditation practice and inner stability take time to develop. So what do we do in the interim? In addition to daily practice where do we start in our daily life? In a general way we have already spoke about how we bring practice into daily life. We do this by intermittently stopping and bringing attention to the activity of the moment. In addition, we particularly focus our attention on listening to others with an open and non-distracted mind. In this way our daily practice session and our practice in daily life will greatly assist in avoiding the generation of new mental afflictions and diminishing the power of old ones.
As we work with practice there are other skills and understandings that will help us to work with disturbing emotions. We start with the most gross and temporary approaches and then work ourselves up to the subtlest, most effective, and permanent ones.

Avoidance

When you are in a burning house, get out! When you are unskilled in dissolving certain very strong disturbing emotions the first rule is stay away from people and circumstances that may provoke your reactivity. You wouldn’t walk into a burning house or an otherwise dangerous situation so why walk into a situation that may provoke emotions that you are not prepared to deal with. You may say, “Well, I didn’t know this would happen.” But much as we have learned the signs or situations that indicate physical danger we must also learn to identify emotional danger zones before we enter them.

At any time and in any circumstance it’s essential to know what we can handle and what will overwhelm us. There will come a time when our increasing skills and capacities will enable us to extend our boundaries, allowing us to be in circumstances that previously provoked intense and uncontrollable emotions. Then we will be to handle them from a more skillful and wise perspective. It’s intelligent and courageous to leave some situations for another day. Rather than wasting our energy dealing with overwhelming emotions it’s far better to channel our efforts toward developing a more stable interior that will serve us better in the future.

There is a certain level of judgment that is involved here. The questions is: “What can I handle at this time and what would be best to avoid?” Cultivate the skill of knowing the difference between the two and acting accordingly.

Insight

With inner work we begin to gain inner stability and clarity. That allows space for fresh insights and understandings which may upgrade our ability to work with destructive emotions. Consider the following. One of the most troubling afflictive emotions is anger. “This person did this or that to me.” Let’s look at this statement. Everyone wants happiness and no one wants suffering. Everyone wants to be liked and cared for and no one wants to be disliked and scorned. That’s just natural to all of us. It follows from this that any individual that acts in a manner that brings suffering to others and as well as to them self cannot be acting voluntarily. It is not an act of free will. Suffering is not what anyone would choose. Anger, like other negative emotions projected outward, are involuntary repetitions of old fearful and protective behavior. Such individuals are at the moment under the influence of powerful mental patterns. Best be angry at these old and afflictive mental patterns. That’s where the real culprit lies.

Sure it is possible that the other individual might momentarily feel relieved or pleased with their negative actions. But it is apparent that their actions, irrespective of a brief touch of perceived satisfaction and revenge, will in fact bring suffering upon themselves. What’s thrown out will always in time ricochet back. Their actions toward you are likely directed at others as well. Not only will there be suffering, however silent it may be, in their disconnection and separation from you, but it will also occur with others – and often loved ones. Compassion is a more appropriate response than returned anger and hostility.

No one is being let off of the “hook.” All reactive and negative actions will come back to the individual, without your involvement, as suffering and alienation. Don’t worry! No one gets off free from destructive behavior. But what you must concern yourself with is your response. If your response to a perceived wrong is to lash out with anger this is also involuntary and will lead to your suffering. And if you cannot control your reactivity and involuntary behavior how can you expect others to do differently!

To realize that all negative behaviors that lead to suffering are involuntary is to release oneself from a reactive response and substitute it with the more appropriate response of compassion. This does not mean saying or doing anything to the other. It may mean just being silent, wise, setting boundaries where necessary, and getting out of the line of fire until you are more skillful in your capacity to remain still and respond appropriately. When you can remain still in the midst of destructive emotions that are thrown out at you won’t be consumed and the other individual will be left with the emotions he or she tried to dump on you. Another person’s involuntary behavior doesn’t become infections. If your mind can remain still in the midst of perceived adversity - congratulations! And I mean it.

This is an example of how a correct understanding of the source, nature, and driving force of a destructive emotion gained through the insight of a still and clear mind can release you from years of reactivity. Just seeing what is as is can dissolve your reactivity. The other individual will either suffer their behaviors without your intervention, or gain similar insights into the truth of their actions. And you will be freed of inner turmoil.

Equalizing

As our insight grows you will see more and more of the truth. Consider the following common sources of emotional distress. Desire and attachment and anger and aversion are two very common misunderstood afflictive emotions.

Desire and attachment result from an exaggerations of the positive qualities of a person or situation and a simultaneous minimizing of the negative qualities. Take the first few weeks of romance. Our partner is perfect. Everything is loving, delightful and pleasing. There are no undelightful qualities. How desirous and wonderful this person must be, or this new job, or this new car. So of course we want it and more of it. And this desire soon turns to craving, attachment, and addiction. We enjoy the pleasure but wait for the other shoe to drop.

And it will. Our unwillingness to see this individual or circumstance in its entirety and complexity leads to the suffering that will in time come when we are forced to see what is as is. First we may point to the other and say, “Why did you change?” Or, we may blame the circumstance, “But they didn’t tell me all the facts.” But alas the fault is our own. We only wanted to see what pleased us, and not the total truth of the person or situation.  And as none of us are as yet fully enlightened we can assume there are always two sides. We exaggerated what we liked and pushed away until we no longer could what we didn’t like. Observe this in yourself and the disappointment that occurs when your self-made illusion dissipates as it must and reality in all its complexity reasserts itself.

The same could be said for the negative emotions of aversion, anger, or hatred. In this case we exaggerate the negative qualities of a person or situation and minimize or deny the positive qualities. Again, in time, reality will break through. Nothing is all positive or all negative, all delightful or all undelightful. Best we see the whole in a balanced way from the beginning. Illusions may be comforting in the moment but are laced with future suffering as they are unreal.

What does this insight offer us? We can abort the endpoint of the suffering related to desire, attachment, anger and aversion by knowing our one-sided habit of maximizing one set of qualities while minimizing the other - seeing what we like and turning away from would we don’t like or the opposite. When we feel these destructive emotions arising we stop, recognize what we are doing, and balance our view. We seek to get a more balanced view of all of the qualities of the other person. We might even have to force our self to look truthfully at potentially unpleasing or negative qualities or in the opposite case the pleasing ones. Surely loved ones are not perfect nor are enemies always bad. You can take it on face value that unless the other person is Jesus or Buddha or you are living in a utopia that no one and no situation is all positive or all negative.

By consciously equalizing and balancing our emotional responses we diminish the arising of the afflictive emotions of desire, attachment, anger, and aversion. That’s a big way towards a more stable and balanced life.

Self-Liberation of Disturbing Emotions

Every thought, feeling, or image is a mere mental movement, a neuro-electrical discharge. These mental movements arise, abide, and fall for a fraction of a second if we do not grasp on to them. We see this best in meditation when we can stand back and just watch the mind at play displaying for our awareness one movement after another, one appearance after another, from beginningless time. From this witnessing perspective all mental movements are in their essence of the same nature – electrical discharges or appearances in awareness. They only take on a specific “color” or “shape” when our previous mental experiences take hold of these otherwise brief mental blips and elaborates a story around them. We can also observe the tendency of the mind to grasp, freeze, fix, and elaborate a mental movement when we observe the mind in meditation.

As we get more comfortable with just watching the play and display of the mind rather than following our customary pattern of identifying with these mental movements, we will give them less attention, cease objectifying them and they will quiet down on their own. This process of quieting down and effortlessly dissolving back into awareness is quite amazing to see when we observe the unattended mental movements for the first time. We call this quieting of afflictive emotions by self-liberation at their origin. What does this mean? It means that a thought, feeling, or image effortlessly dissolves, or liberates itself, immediately upon arising – must as occurs when we write on water with our finger. The mental movement is freed from the clutches of our grasping and holding on.

Of course, at first this is a more difficult way of dealing with afflictive emotions than merely avoiding them or gaining a matured and correct view through insight. It’s more difficult because it’s subtler and requires more training and mental stability in the face of adversity. Here we are working at the source of all disturbing emotions – our tendency to grasp onto and identify with and elaborate with our past history these otherwise innocuous mental movements. Working at the source is ultimately more efficient and effective. A large barn fire is far more difficult to deal with than the first spark. If we can watch our mental movements and let them naturally dissolve all mental movements will be of the same essence and none will get to the point that it becomes afflictive or disturbing.

Remembering Home

The root cause of all afflictive emotions is our failure to remember our natural home of choiceless awareness (the aim of our second meditation practice)  – the polished mirror that reflects all that plays on its surface (mental movements) without clinging to any of them and fabricating an entire disturbing story out of old experiences and patterns. This is where we discover that it is definitely possible to bring all disturbing emotions and all suffering to an end.

This state of wholeness and oneness is a non-dual, non-cognitive, non-mental state of mere presence. Surely, in yourmeditation you have touched this state of open presence for moments – a condition of complete peace, wholeness, and oneness. You may have also touched this choiceless awareness in other ways – during peak athletic performance, through the arts, nature, sexuality, and so on. What is important here is to notice the state of being – however brief ¬– in which there is no “I” and “It” there is just the simple and pure awareness of “what is as is.” It won’t last long before our ordinary mind clings to a mental movement and takes over again. But for that one pure moment you have touched the end of disconnection, the end of afflictive emotions, and the end of suffering. You have cut the third and root cause of suffering at its source. Just to know this is possible, even for moment, is deeply relieving.

Why is this relieving? It’s relieving because you now know that you have within your self the formula for bringing all suffering and mental disturbances to and end and replacing them with a peace that surpasses understanding. Of course it requires practice to enter this state voluntarily, extend and stabilize it. That’s the only difference between a master and yourself. This is why inner development is so important as it is the only way to get to the source of a complete and perfected health and well-being, cutting off suffering and distress at their roots. And we gain ground as soon as we firmly place our self on the path to inner development using the tool of meditation.

In Summary

    Avoidance, insight, equalization, self-liberation, and the cultivation of our natural state of being in choiceless awareness is the progressive set of methods that gradually take us towards permanently defeating disturbing and afflictive emotions. The more skill and training we have in inner development the easier we can move to the more subtle and effective ways of dealing with our distressing mental life. However, as we are all on the gradual path to wisdom and knowledge the more the skills we can develop the more varied our resources to address the variety of adverse circumstances that challenge us from within and without.

So the bad news is that our mind is trained to constantly grasp onto our mental movements, forget our natural home of choiceless awareness and create unnecessary mental distress. The good news is that our mind can be re-trained to see our mental distress in an entirely new way that frees us from its web. And even more so it’s possible with the virtues of time, practice, discipline, diligence, and patience to develop stability and ease in resting in a natural clear presence and awareness. In such an awareness suffering and  distress cannot simultaneously be present. So we begin with study, reflection, and daily practice.

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