Vipassana and Mindfulness Blog

Mindfulness is simply practicing awareness with what's here. That's meditation, whether you're on a mountaintop, at work, or on a roller coaster.

A Better Question Than “What If?”

Raised by a Jewish mother, I heard “what if” pretty often.

“What if you don’t study more for your math test? You don’t want to end up pumping gas for a living.” “What if you don’t get into college? Better hope the gas station is hiring.” “What if you’re late for work? They’ll fire you, and then …” You know where this is going; somehow, every scenario ended with me dispensing petroleum.

what if

There’s a time and a place for “what if.” It’s skillful to prepare for the future, and to have contingency plans ready for the unexpected or unwanted. What’s NOT skillful is using this line of thinking past the point of being useful. That’s where we seem to spend the most time with “what if” storylines; after they’ve crossed the line into grim rumination. It’s neither pleasant nor effective, but we still do it. Why?

What’s our motivation for repeatedly returning to this worry?

My own insights into this process reveal at least a few answers. One is that I’m trying to resolve a future situation, and I think that the reason it’s unresolved isn’t because it hasn’t happened yet, but because I haven’t thought “hard enough” to find the right solution yet. Another is that I’m overthinking for the most classic reason: I’m trying not to FEEL something, usually fear. (Check your oil, ma’am?)

Ironically, another reason is that I’m USING that fear to “stay motivated” to make sure I’m covering all my bases. Most interestingly, I find that I engage in miserable “what iffing” so I can feel like I’m doing something about the situation here and now, so if the worst does happen, well … at least I tried, right? It’s not my fault; I put in all this effort! Look at how hard I worried!!

You could even say that one of my “what ifs” is “what if I don’t ‘what if?'”

Of all of the problems caused by unskillful “what ifs,” one of the nastiest is the way it doesn’t just focus on the worst-case scenario; it freezes on it. When I was agoraphobic, one overwhelming fear was “what if I have a panic attack in public?” I had a mental picture of melting down in some crowded location, with everyone backing away and staring. The image stuck on that moment like an old-school film reel stopping on a single cell. Even though no moment in my life had ever gotten “stuck” like that, I was somehow pretty sure that THAT moment of peak terror would finally be the one. That led to this early conversation with the psychologist who started me on my path:

Him: “If you didn’t have panic and agoraphobia, what would you do right now?”
Me: “I’d probably go to Harvard Square.” (This was 1998; there were still a few cool shops left.)
Him: “Why don’t you go?”
Me: “I’d have a panic attack.”
Him: “Understood … that’s an extremely scary and unpleasant experience. I’m not minimizing that. But then what?”
Me: “I just said, I’d have a panic attack.”
Him: “I’m not minimizing the feelings involved with that in any way. But then what?”

He stopped talking. And his gaze indicated that he wouldn’t be speaking again until I’d addressed his question. So I thought about it, and naturally looked to my previous experience as a guide for likely future outcomes. And there was one common thing about every panic episode of any intensity and duration I’d ever had, which made my answer pretty straightforward:

“At some point, it would have to end.” And two major shifts began.

First, I got past the frozen mental image; it was no longer the final word, an eternal damnation of horror. And second – without realizing the significance at the time – I shifted from “I would have a panic attack” to “it would eventually end.” Viewing it as an impermanent event automatically loosened my identification with the experience as being “me.” It was a critical shift in perspective, and one that has affected my perception and practice ever since.

As Thanissaro Bhikkhu notes in his outstanding Wings to Awakening, “[t]he ability to focus on the right questions … is much more fruitful than an attitude that tries to come to the practice armed with all the right answers in advance.” Or, if it resonates more:

Rowdy Roddy Piper is famous for saying “just when they think they got the answers, I change the questions.”

The next time you find yourself caught in the cycle of “what if,” try shifting the line of questioning. After all, if there was a truly satisfactory answer to that “what if,” you’d probably have found it by the 20th time.

There are worse things than working at the local gas station. In the spring of 1998, I’d have given anything to be functional enough to accomplish that. But regardless of our situation – real or imagined, now or in the future – we always have some options. We have the option to examine what questions we’re asking. We have the option to assess whether they’re still useful. And we DO have the option to generate a tar pit of “what if.”

But then what?

Questions? Comments? Ready to ask some new questions? Drop me a line or set up some time for some extra light on your path.

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Staying on Track When Under Attack

Staying on track takes practice.

During a recent conversation with someone, I asked a seemingly benign question … and received what felt like an ambush of sarcasm ridiculing my query.

I know – stop the presses, right? But that’s not the interesting part.

What’s interesting is watching the train-wreck of thoughts that often unfold from that kind of experience.

First, the initial surprise registers. “Wait, what just happened?”

Staying on track

It seems like anger immediately follows, but anger is merely the hard shell that quickly surrounds fear. (With practice, our awareness becomes sharp enough to spot that soft chewy center of vulnerability BEFORE the protective outer layer forms.) “They said what? Danger! Threat! Fire in the hole!”

Finally, anger swoops in to “help” the fear, setting up a symbiotic dialogue that calcifies our sense of identity as the starring player in this deepening storyline:

Anger: “Did you say you’re under attack? Oh, trust me, I’ll finish what they dared to start.”

Fear: “But did you hear what they said to me? Can they do that?”

A: “Hell NO they can’t.”

F: “But what if … what if they’re right? Did I screw up?”

A: “They are NOT right. YOU are right. Here, I’ll replay the whole thing to you over and over, showing you each time exactly why you’re right.”

F: “But even if I’m right, I can’t be seen as someone that people can just talk to like that! How do I stop that?”

Of course, what we actually do next – based on anger’s next response – varies from person to person (and varies across time for any one person). Typically, we direct that roiling energy as an outward counter-strike or an inward simmering rage. In both cases, the well-intentioned but dysfunctional dialogue often continues for minutes, days, or even years. That’s a long-ass train wreck!

A key turning point in my practice was noticing the real question underlying this frantic inner conversation:

“What do I have to do to regain the comfortable sense of self I had before this perceived threat to it?” As soon as I saw that more clearly, a second question finally had a chance to arise in the resulting space: “if the roles had been reversed in this situation, what would I have said differently?”

That’s when things broke open.

I saw myself fielding the original conversational question in a congenial way, juxtaposed against the reaction that I felt I received. And I realized that the more general question I was asking myself was this: “would I have handled this question or situation in tune with my inner moral compass?” My answer was an immediate “yes.”

Suddenly things became super-clear, at a felt, experiential level. What else could I possibly want beyond knowing that I’d have acted skillfully? What WAS there to be done beyond that? Simply put: nothing. With a wry smile, I felt that comfortable sense of self return … only to notice that I no longer found it necessary.

Yet another freeing paradox of insight meditation: when I finally found a sense of self that couldn’t be threatened, I discovered that I didn’t need it anyway.

Ultimately, we’re each responsible only for ourselves. What “they” say to us doesn’t actually reflect on us; it reflects where they are on their path. We can wish them well or ill (and that DOES reflect on us), but that’s about as far as it goes. The only question that we really need to ask is “where am I on my path?” The answer we receive gives us something we can ACTUALLY work on … and then let go.

Now that’s keeping things on track.

Questions? Thoughts? Ready to break things open? Drop me a line or set up a session to get on track.


Insight. Not incite.

I recently spotted someone accidentally use the word “incite” when they meant “insight.”

That same day, I saw someone else mention that he wrote in his journal to deal with experiencing anxiety — and called it “fighting back” against his demons.

Funny how we default to that “me vs. you” mindset — even when the “me” and the “you” are both us.Insight

It becomes less surprising when we consider the messages we’ve been receiving in this culture since childhood (and which have their roots going back much farther). Rugged individualism; competition and comparison; who’s winning and who’s losing. 

There was a time when this wasn’t the worst thing. When our ancestors were trying to survive on the African savannah, sometimes the best strategy was to shoot first and ask questions later. That’s the part of our human heritage, baked deep in our DNA, that’s being activated every time human interaction is being framed as some kind of cage match.

Most of us don’t face the danger of an attacking saber-tooth tiger anymore, but ironically, these messages have only become stronger and more pervasive in recent decades. Debates are now “showdowns,” political elections have become “battles,” and we have “wars” on drugs and disease. When some form of problem or disagreement arises, a violent motif often follows. It’s an easy way to generate emotional turmoil (and profit).

So when discomfort inevitably arises WITHIN us, our conditioning kicks in, and we draw battle lines — against ourselves.

The very first insight I ever had when I started my practice was “if you fight yourself, you’ve already lost.” Inner civil wars are neither sustainable nor winnable. Beating an unwanted inner voice into submission today only drains the energy needed to do it all over again tomorrow.

To the person who “fought back” against his anxiety with his journal, I offered a reframing of “listening” to what it had to share. It resonated; he said that it was much more accurate to say that he had paid attention to what was there, processed it as needed, and moved on.

That’s insight. Not incite.

Questions? Comments? Ready to call a cease-fire? Drop me a line or set up some time to make a little peace.


Serenity Now?

Let’s talk about what serenity … isn’t.

I was sitting quietly waiting for a yoga class to start during a stressful time a few years ago when a teacher walked across the room to tell me, “I have to say, you’re the chillest person in this room, sitting here like the Buddha.”

Serenity now

I gave him a wry grin and said he should see the mayhem happening on the inside. He responded that the inside and outside are connected, and I couldn’t possibly sit in such a manner if it was all that bad. I thanked him and good-naturedly said something about begging to disagree.

I recalled that experience some time later when I saw a Buddhist sutta which is commonly translated as follows:

They do not lament over the past,
they yearn not for what is to come,
they maintain themselves in the present,
thus their complexion is serene.

I had seen those words many times, but suddenly they carried new meaning.

It’s incredibly easy to mistake “that person looks serene” for “that person IS serene.”

It’s just as easy to attempt to force a serene outer appearance in the hopes that the inner experience will follow. Neither of these are skillful. A problem-free life is not a requirement for a serene complexion. (If it was, the first serene human face would still have yet to be made.)

An outer appearance of serenity is simply a reflection of our inner capacity to relate to our problems in a skillful way.

I wasn’t trying to control how I looked as I waited for that yoga class to start, but in a room full of people who seemed far more relaxed than I felt, the teacher came to me. It was an “a-ha” moment for my practice; an unsolicited confirmation that I had developed the ability to give my internal turmoil enough space and compassion that it didn’t spill out into my face … or actions.

And that’s one of the funny paradoxes of holding it together: it rarely FEELS like holding it together.

Everything doesn’t have to be ok for us to relax; it’s enough to simply be ok with the thought that they aren’t.

Serenity now.

Questions? Comments? Ready to shift your inner experience? Drop me a line or set up some time to start making some space.


Karma: More Now Than Zen

“That’s bad karma.”

Karma is often summarized as “what goes around, comes around” or “someday, they’ll get theirs.” These interpretations are based on justice and vengeance, which add baggage and mystique that are irrelevant to such a basic process. More importantly, they imply that we can’t watch karma unfold directly, let alone produce and experience karmic changes now.

Neither assumption is true.

Karma is more now than zen

To illustrate: one way we self-sabotage is through a pair of cycles that appear to actually reward our own dread.

In the inner cycle, we anticipate a stressful event and picture how we’ll feel when it happens. “Can I handle this? Will I be ok?” Our irrational fears paint worst-case scenarios in a misguided attempt to “be prepared.” Our subconscious mind and body do not distinguish imagination from reality; they react as if this nightmare is really happening. These physical and emotional signals form a feedback loop and mistakenly “confirm” for each other that we are facing an actual, immediate threat. What happens next?

Instead of finding a comforting answer to “will I be ok,” we trigger our fight-or-flight response. Sound familiar?

To relieve that turmoil, we do the worst possible thing: we REPEAT the process, hoping we’ll get a more reassuring answer “this time.” Unfortunately, the anxiety caused by each trip through this cycle snowballs into the next, and we dig ourselves in deeper. Lather, rinse, repeat. It doesn’t even matter how the event actually unfolds (or the fact that it rarely matches our relentless dread-filled rehearsals); our thoughts, actions, and relationships have been infused with our self-induced suffering all this time.

After experiencing this cycle enough times, we see it’s ridiculous and we stop needlessly worrying about things. Right?

Yeah, not so much.

Rather than dropping this thought pattern, our fear develops another cycle (lovely, no?). This outer cycle is based on faulty logic: “I always worry about events, and then they turn out fine, so if I just keep worrying, I should be ok.” (This is a classic “correlation does not imply causation” scenario.) As noted above, the inner cycle’s physical and emotional signals “confirm” an immediate threat; similarly, because actual events don’t live up to our worst-case scenarios, the outer cycle always sees “positive” results from perpetuating the inner cycle. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Wait, are we still talking about karma? How does all this relate?

We plant the seeds of our own suffering and nurture their growth. Such seeds can only bear bitter fruit, whose own seeds start the cycle anew. In our attempt to “be ok,” we ironically cultivate a garden of misery.

That is karma. It’s not off in the future; it’s the way we experience our lives RIGHT NOW as a result of our own intentions and actions (including how we use thought). It’s not cosmic justice; it’s basic cause and effect. It’s less “what goes around comes around” and more “if we do what we’ve always done, we get what we’ve always gotten.”

There are at least two great things about this. First, each person’s karma is their own business. We only have to deal with our own; by definition, we can’t affect anyone else’s. Second, making small changes at any given moment can improve our karma here and now. Mindfulness and insight meditation allow us to observe our unskillful patterns — and their immediate results — in real-time. This paves the way for developing skillful intentions and actions based on clear seeing. Oh, we still prepare for upcoming events; but we do so without causing stress and suffering for ourselves and others.

The process of observation and insight builds upon itself and becomes our new cycle. A sustainable cycle.

Now that’s good karma.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Questions? Comments? Ready to change your cycles? Drop me a line or set up some time to plant new seeds.


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