Tag Archives: judgment

Show Up

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Jon and I have been writing to you all for about a year now. We agreed with each other early on to show up each week for whoever stopped in. Some weeks one of us has to email the other to check up on a “late” post, based on our deadline of Tuesday morning. You can see, for instance, that this week I’m running late. Yes, the world has continued rotating on its axis. Still, I don’t like being late, mostly because I made a commitment to show up.

There’s a basic instruction that I’ve been re-iterating over this past year, in different ways, via different forms, possibly until you’ve gone blue in the face. This week, let’s cut to the chase and boil it down to two words: Show Up.

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Show Up is about commitment, and it’s about following through. It’s a simple thing. You determine to keep your eyes clear and your heart open to what’s actually happening right now in this place. And you just do it and do it and do it.

An important part of basic training in meditation is learning how to Show Up, and how to do it well. Interestingly, the tricky element of this involves learning how to accomplish a great big ol’ bunch of NOT Doing. This you must paradoxically begin one step prior to Not Doing, simply by discovering the many, many things you usually do other than Show Up. This can be a rocky road. It requires a huge heart of self-compassion to Show Up to your very current and human self, in order to see your own habitual snarky retorts, habitual puffed up or self-denigrating reactions, your habitual recoiling from the messes you don’t enjoy and your running off toward some habitual escape mechanism or other. Usually we’re very busy seeing how everyone else does these things, which is much easier than observing the same thing in ourselves. Seeing your own habit of focusing on others’ faults is another major part of learning to Show Up.

To put it simply, a proper start is to Show Up to all the ways that you yourself avoid Showing Up.

Just committing to Show Up in this way begins a beautiful alchemical process by which you begin to Show Up more and more, and you naturally start to do less and less of the old not-Showing Up-type activities. Critically Important: You don’t try to stop these thoughts or behaviors; that would be getting ahead of yourself and it’s actually a big step backwards in the Showing Up game. So you don’t try to stop doing anything, you just keep Showing Up. For instance, in a situation of frustration, you might have some old habitual thoughts of escaping or blaming, but you start to notice them in this new way, to really Show Up to seeing this kind of reaction as it is, maybe even feeling like you’re observing someone you’re truly seeing for the first time. Soon enough you start to notice that although these types of thoughts and reactions are still happening, you’re not acting on them. You do nothing instead, and simply show up to the habitual reaction itself. Now you really get to see habit for what it is. You may notice an insane argument against unchangeable historical facts arising in your mind. You might feel words of blame, derision, or self-recrimination rising up to your tongue. You’ll notice a lot of uncomfortable body sensations, like muscle tension or heat. And you do nothing. You just stay with Show Up. You let the internal insanity run its course. And then, something, something brand new, just appears. This is where it gets really interesting.

Having a solid meditation practice where you sit still on a cushion or a chair for a while each day is invaluable for this whole process. I’ll tell you why: if you don’t stop and Show Up, it’s really difficult to see any of this in the first place, and if you don’t give yourself time to do nothing, that moment of the brand new just flies by without your being able to catch onto it, and you find yourself falling back to the old stand-by habitual reactions. This stuff is all flying by so fast, it’s a lost cause unless you agree, you really commit, to slowing down enough so you can actually learn to Show Up.

I could simply say, Show Up, and if you were to follow that precisely and wholeheartedly, then literally, the rest will take care of itself. So I will.

Show Up.

~ Margaret

A+

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Around two years after I started reading about meditation and all the unusual and amazing things one could discover as a result of learning to pay attention, it became abundantly clear that in order to really learn, I would have to do. Reading about meditation is pretty much like studying cookbooks: great for whetting your appetite, useful for discovering new and practical information you’ll need along the way, and no good for satisfying your true need.

Sitting still and quietly came easily to me, once I had made the decision to get on with it. I bought a kitchen timer, set it at five minutes the first day, and kept notching it up one minute each day to build up my tolerance level. When I would hit a point of impossible discomfort, I would dial my timer back a minute for a few days, and then try adding to it again later on. I built up to 45 minutes after a few weeks, and learned a whole lot about myself for having done so. Starting a meditation practice under your own steam is fantastic work. Teachers later told me it’s brave and rather rare. I didn’t know anything about that at the time.

Soon enough, with all of that sitting and noticing, I realized that I wanted a teacher. Those books and all their intriguing, often baffling teachings had whet my appetite for knowing what those authors had come to know. Enter Norman Scrimshaw. Norman is my teacher. Like the meditation teacher you might love to picture, he’s a wise, gentle man who lives on top of a mountain a distance north of here. Norman told me lots of things, but more importantly he lived out what I went to him to learn. He never asked me to believe anything, just offered what he knew for my consideration and investigation. I want to tell you about one of his teachings today. It goes like this:

Everyone is always doing the best they can.

This is a profound hypothesis that took me a while to consider, let alone realize at some level for myself. My mind had a lot to say about how wrong that had to be. Maybe right now you are able to watch your own mind arming for the battle against this outrageous statement. Perfect. One of the main ideas with meditation is to become familiar with the causes and effects of believing the thoughts you believe. This becoming familiar produces a deeply beneficial, and also different set of causes and effects than have been available previously, without your having to make a big project out of attaining anything. I could stop here for today; you’ve got your assignment, for the week, maybe for life.

I’m going to continue, however, and tell you about another teacher, from another tradition. A few years later, I decided to add to my meditation experiences by learning to teach Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR.) I happen to be fantastically lucky in this regard; I live a short 90-minute drive from the Center for Mindfulness at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. My first teacher there was Zayda Vallejo, and during the very first class we all had with her, she gave us this same teaching, in a sweet and subversive way.

You all get an A+ in this class, she told us with a smile. Lots of people exchanged glances and chuckled. Good course, the pressure’s off! we thought.

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It was only after following the instructions for this fantastic meditation intensive-in-life called MBSR that I saw what she had really given us with this A+. Zayda had invited us to see that we are all doing the best we can, all the time. All of us, all the time, meaning the big ALL. This was her shorthand for Norman’s teaching. And how amazing that simply learning to pay good-hearted attention to life, under the guidance of someone who lives and breathes A+, and thereby to really see what’s happening, that this gives you access to this profoundly relaxing, healing and ultimately liberating truth.

I offer my deep gratitude to Norman and Zayda, and to all the teachers who I continue to learn from. You can find out more about Norman’s teachings through his ongoing spiritual community, Awakening Connections, at  http://www.awakeningconnections.org/index.html

Zayda continues to teach at the Center for Mindfulness. To find out more about Zayda and the Center, please visit: http://umassmed.edu/Content.aspx?id=42408

The Simplest Possible Thing

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There’s nothing like a graduate school course on mindfulness to stimulate all kinds of mind phenomena about what is in essence the simplest possible thing.

Let’s establish, at least for today, a working definition of mindfulness meditation. This will include the aim, as well as the act of cultivating, and finally the result, all in one definition. Here it is: knowing what is happening as it’s happening, and generously allowing what’s happening to be what it is.

This is a very simple idea, and in fact a very simple thing to accomplish. It’s happening to all of us much of the time. You feel a kind of empty, longing sensation in your tummy, and know it as hunger. You bump your elbow getting up from the table and almost immediately register a sensation of sparkling heat and pressure in that region of your body. You see your sweetheart’s face looking charming to you in a particular moment, and sense an emotion, perhaps enjoyment, feeling a warmth in your chest that might be followed by a smile spreading across your cheeks and lips. It’s basic, it’s human, and by the way, it’s incredibly difficult to sustain.

Where the real study takes place

What sidetracks this way of clear, direct experiencing from continuing? In a word, elaboration. Let’s look more closely at this moment with your sweetheart. At the moment your gaze lands on that face, and you are registering pleasure, what happens? Does the experience come and go in simplicity, or is there something extra? Check your stream of thoughts for anything like the following: Oh, cute, he looks good in this light, he must be getting better sleep these days, good thing we got away for the weekend, we should eat here more often, wait, is that breakfast on his tie, heavens, I can’t take him anywhere…

Bare seconds later, appreciation has morphed to encouragement, then pride, changing to curiosity and to surprise, landing at annoyance. Can you catch all the thoughts, images, memories, feelings, assessments, resistances, etc., etc., as they are happening? If you’re able to stay with yourself amid all the lightning-fast action, you’re keeping up. I think most of get distracted from knowing what’s happening before the smile has even fully formed.

Losing track is not a problem, just an invitation to engage in a fantastic challenge called mindfulness. Choosing to cultivate a steadiness of attention that can stay with what’s happening is a big adventure, and a worthy one. So worthy, in fact, that you can find it being taught in all kinds of academic settings. And thereby arise such things as graduate classes in mindfulness. The class I’m currently taking is fantastic, with a gentle professor well-versed in theory and, most importantly, in word, deed and practice. We students are  about twenty in number, a group of sincerely interested folk engaged in the study and practice of mindfulness. We’re reading books, scientific papers, we’re hearing classroom presentations, also discussing, blogging and writing about it. What a delicious temptation, to make such a big something out of, to use one of Jon Kabat-Zinn’s favorite sayings, “what looks an awful lot like doing nothing.”

Keep it as simple as you can, friends. And, don’t hesitate to study it. Simply.

~ Margaret

The Set-Up

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Today I visited a man named Joe in the hospital. (Actually, he goes by another name, but let’s call him Joe.) We had a very pleasant visit together. He demonstrated what I admire in a good conversationalist: a willingness to talk about his history, his ideas, balanced with curiosity toward his companion and the capacity to pause and really listen, with interest.

What do you carry into a visit, knowingly and unknowingly?

This was the first time I was meeting Joe. A friend had asked me if I’d be willing to stop in, having already recommended me to Joe as a friendly ear and gained Joe’s agreement to the visit. I told my friend I’d be happy to go, and carved a bare half hour out of my day to spend with Joe. When Joe and I met, we briefly exchanged backgrounds, and Joe told me about the stroke and fall that had landed him in his current home away from home. He talked about the sometimes agonizing process of discovering what changes had occurred in him as a result of the stroke and fall. In one week, he reported, he had been able to see an important new need that he now has, to speak to one person at a time, in order not to become confused, frustrated and angrily outspoken. He seemed grateful for having figured this out for himself. After a bit, Joe’s uncle came along, and we all chatted just a minute more. I left him in that good company.

When I got home, there was an e-mail waiting for me. My friend thanked me most sincerely for my willingness to visit. More to the point, he was writing to forewarn me about Joe’s lifelong anger and that I should be prepared for that potential. I missed receiving this warning before I made the visit.

Reading the after-the-fact warning, I had to ask myself: what would the visit have been like, had I received my friend’s email prior to going? I appreciated my friend’s desire to prepare me for likely possibilities. With the information in the email at hand, would I have walked in with a different look on my face, different body language, a different willingness around openness with a stranger?  Bottom line, would I have “set myself up?” Any answers are pure speculation, and also highly instructive.

I felt a guardedness arising as I asked myself, and noticed some apprehension mixed with care. I could feel my body tensing up in preparation for the imagined meeting. I wasn’t aware of any of these attitudes and body sensations being present in the real meeting. They didn’t turn out to be needed; Joe was having a good day. I wonder what kind of day he would have had if I had read my friend’s email and made it into a real set-up? It’s not exactly a matter of having or not having expectations in interaction. Advance information is useful; taking it into account is often wise, a great human capacity. But what if expectations cloud your view into who or what is actually in front of you? Checking in, and knowing for yourself what’s in your mind in the way of expectation, fantasy, unfounded or well-founded anticipation can keep the door open for meetings to happen in reality. It’s the best setting I know of for true meeting.

~Margaret

Taking a Cue From the Creative Spark

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I’ve been having a bit of fun reading a couple of reviews, and especially the reader comments, about the book “Imagine:  How Creativity Works” by Jonah Lehrer.  One review is glowing and the other slams the entire premise and style of the book.  Part of my amusement is that the nasty write-up got 27 comments, mainly from some very articulate folks saying to the reviewer, “Atta boy.  That’s the way to nail this sort of drivel.”  The favorable article drew 4 comments and most of those disagreed with the reviewer.

This all goes to show that we are more inclined to act when we are feeling feisty.  I won’t say feeling negative but that’s generally the case too.

Now for those who haven’t heard about Lehrer’s book, in it, he dissects the neurological and social roots of creativity.  He’s a little too glib for my taste but when I heard him interviewed, I liked his explanation of why we tend to have bright ideas at certain moments, like when we take a shower.

In the shower, we’re off the clock.  You can’t really get a lot done in the shower except take a shower.  Lehrer says at times like these, our mind wanders and that’s when the right side of our brain can pop out a notion that the left side of the brain says, “Hey, that’s pretty cool!”  Lehrer gives examples of companies, like 3M, that build free time into the regular schedule where people still get paid, but are formally off the clock in that they are supposed to do something other than work on a company project.

My gut sense is that in the shower, my internal editor is putting his heels up.  He’s not watching and judging every thought that crosses my mind, giving that one a thumbs up and the other a thumbs down.

Most of the time, he’s like the readers of those reviews.  He’s on the case applying all the little rules he uses and he’s a little more energized by things he dislikes than those he enjoys. As a result, some fresh material doesn’t pass muster and never makes it to consciousness.  It becomes the collateral damage of my cognitive process.

The habit of judging too early isn’t limited to our internal life.  It happens all the time in our relations with  others and that’s where we might stand to learn from the creative process. I defy anyone to say there’s never been a time when some bit of malarkey that came out of another person’s mouth turned out to have some merit at the end of the day.  The challenge of living consciously is to have that flexibility to withhold judgment and let things evolve –when we’re not in the shower.

~Jon

One Attribute Re-Heat

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This week Jon asked us to observe the initial moment of perception impact, when taking in another person and also when assessing yourself. Did you notice what your own way with this is? His post asks us to see if one attribute dominates or even reigns supreme in your opinion. Maybe it’s the initial impression, or maybe one particular element that sticks out. Maybe you’ve found that you constantly lead in one direction with this; maybe everybody seems smarter, or grouchy. Maybe there’s a particular attribute that instantly pushes a button.

I want to thank this week’s followers for the honest, heartfelt comments.

And, I want to tell you a story about Jill. Jill was a new hire at a company I had just joined. She came in as an accounting assistant just before I was hired as the Cost Manager for a large back-office banking operation. And Jill, as it turned out, did not have basic math in her skill set. It took me a little while to decipher this, and that whole process was pretty rotten for both of us. The longer I spent adding yet another basic math function to the list of those Jill needed training with, the more steamed I got. Pretty soon, all that Jill was to me was the accounting assistant who couldn’t retain that 1/2 was the same as 50%. This was not okay, and I made sure she knew it.

With gratitude and chagrin I can give you the upshot now: I came to the plain-and-simple agreement one day that Jill was math-challenged and I was being a Class-A jerk about it. No problem, just, this is how it is. And, when this happened, an entirely different dynamic opened up for us. I started working with Jill to recognize when this was going to be an issue, and identifying the many supports she had around her to resolve any sticking points. Turns out, there weren’t that many with this job. Turns out, Jill was one of the most eager, generous, diligent people I ever worked with. Turns out, it was my one-attribute sticking point that was pretty much our only sticking point. Once I was able to see my one-attribute (anger) bumping up against the one attribute I was mesmerized by in her  (math-challenged ) our world opened up. I got bigger, finding patience and my inner-trainer. I saw how she was much bigger, showing me her enthusiasm for good work and desire to learn.

I would have missed all of that without the moment of acceptance. And, that’s acceptance of ME we’re talking about, in case you missed that. I had to accept myself entirely as the Jerk. Without making it a problem. Really, without making it into my own one-and-only attribute that day. Why is this the hardest part, friends?

~Margaret

One Attribute Does Not a Person Make

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I was booking down the sidewalks of New York when I passed a young guy with a pronounced limp.  My first thought was to contrast my long, distance-eating strides with his halting step and I felt for his diminished capacity.

But my second thought sent the first one packing.  Perhaps he would like to walk more smoothly but why on earth should one aspect of a person’s life define who they are in my thoughts?  To think that it does takes more away from a person than just their mobility. It says this one element is more important than their character, their sense of humor, the books they like, their favorite dishes and everything else that makes a person a person.

via Wyoming Jackrabbit, Creative Commons, Flickr.com

My next thought was that we might do this more often than we think, to ourselves as well as to others, which gets us to this week’s Thought Starter.  At work, where judging and being judged abounds, it doesn’t take much to find weakness or fault — often correctly so.  The issue is, how far do we take it?

Consider for a moment whether you have berated yourself for falling short in some area.  Let us agree that you should have done better and should try to do better the next time, or get out of doing that particular task.  More broadly though, have you allowed that self-criticism to range too far?  Have you applied it to more than just the single shortcoming that it is?  Did it become a criticism of yourself as a person?

You can ask these same questions relative to your assessment of others.  And then ask yourself, is this truly valid? How often do we take one bit of evidence and apply it with a broad brush?