Hi everyone, it’s Judi Cohen and this is Wake Up Call 441.
Pema Chodron calls Chapter 19 of The Places That Scare You, “Heightened Neurosis.” She explains this towards the end of the chapter when she quotes her teacher, Trungpa Rinpoche, as saying that “awakening warriors would find themselves in a constant state of anxiety,” and that personally, she had found that to be true.
I have, too. I have a lot of anxiety. When I first noticed it, or became mindful of it, I thought I was “developing” it: that anxiety was something that was “coming on.” But now I don’t think that’s the case. I think anxiety has my companion for a long time.
I was raised by an anxious, unhappy, mom and a passive, dreamer, dad. They loved my brother and me. And although they did the best they could, they didn’t pay much attention or provide much of a refuge. I’d say that they instilled some really good qualities like a good work ethic, determination, and curiosity. And, my childhood was a recipe for anxiety, or in the language of mindfulness, anxiety was one of the natural outcomes of the conditions of my early life. My strategy: push through. Hold everything together. Strive.
And then there were the conditions of the law. I went in early, at 24, and the Four Perils were front and center for me: the huge volumes of work, cultivating an issue-spotting mind, zero room for error, and living surrounded by conflict. Those conditions supported me in developing a huge capacity for work (which continues to serve me well..and continually points me towards taking on ever more, even now); a quick mind; perfectionism (for better and worse); and an ability to stand my ground (also for better and sometimes worse). But also, they were a recipe for anxiety. And so again, my strategy: work hard, push through, keep my head above water, wake up after five hours of sleep and do it all again.
I stumbled on mindfulness, as I’ve mentioned: I took a class back in 1993, just because that was what was happening on a rare weekend when my ex was willing to take care of our daughter. No one had told me mindfulness would be helpful, probably because I hadn’t shared with anyone that I needed help. And the reason for that is because I hadn’t shared that with myself, because even I didn’t know, because, even though I was flat out terrified during those early years of being a single mom and trying to support my tiny family and find my footing in the law, I had drunk the cool aid: I believed I couldn’t be weak, couldn’t show the whites of my eyes, and had to have a attitude of “I’ve got this,” every day, all the time. So I did – that was my strategy – even though I felt very much the opposite. Even though things often felt like they were falling apart.
But it’s what we do as lawyers, isn’t it? We’re fine, we’re busy, we’ve got it covered.
And when I did notice fear, or shame or anger or really anything difficult, my strategy was to turn away. Which is one of the traps Pema says we encounter in practice. She says, “We wish to surrender our useless baggage, but in the process, we use the teachings themselves to distance ourselves from the unsettling, chaotic quality of our lives. In an attempt to avoid the fact that our partner is an alcoholic or that we’re addicted to marijuana or that we’re in yet another abusive relationship [or in my case, that we feel like we’re in over our head], we train to relax into spaciousness, openness, warmheartedness.” In my case, in an attempt to avoid the inadequacy and helplessness I felt, I cultivated an open, loving heart. That was my strategy.
And I touted that, which is the second trap Pema says we lay for ourselves. “We use our training to feel superior, to increase our sense of being special. We are courageous to do this training. We are turning our lives around. We are proud to be doing something so rare in this world.” And I fell into the third trap, too, which Pema says is to practice mindfulness in order to “become a better person” as opposed to the terrified person I actually was, or as she says, “trying to jump over issues to attain some idealized notion of all-rightness.”
So there was the anxiety I was feeling and that I began to notice through the practice of mindfulness. And then there were the traps I fell into – the strategy – of using the practice to solve for the anxiety, by distancing myself from it, which I became proud of, and believing it would enable me to attain an idealized, anxiety-free life. As Pema says, “welcome to the human race.” Meaning, this is how we roll.
The question is, if mindfulness is not about solving for anxiety and all of our other troubles, what is it about? It’s about getting comfortable with them. It’s about being able to settle into whatever the moment brings, whether that’s anxiety, fear, or difficult state of mind.
We could be forgiven for thinking this isn’t the good news. Or even for considering giving up on the practice of mindfulness, if that’s where we’re pointing. Because who wants to practice mindfulness for years and years, spend all that time developing courage and grace and the ability to be a spiritual warrior, as Pema calls us, and not solve for the hard stuff?
But the truth is, we can’t solve for anything by trying to make sure it doesn’t happen. Fear will come up. Anger will happen. Sorrow will visit us, and maybe stay awhile. Again, welcome to the human race, or maybe a little bit more compassionately, welcome to how hard it is to be human. Because to be human, and a human lawyer, means to encounter pain and suffering, not to solve for it.
As Pema says, after a while I realized that since the shakiness wasn’t going away [and here, she means the shakiness of not being able to solve for the hard moments of life], I might as well get to know it. When our attitude towards fear becomes more welcoming and inquisitive, there’s a fundamental shift that occurs. Instead of spending our lives tensing up, as if we were in the dentist’s chair, we learn that we can connect with the freshness of the moment, and relax [into]…compassionate inquiry into our moods, our emotions, our thoughts. … This is how we get to the place where we stop believing in our personal myths, the place where we are not always divided against ourselves, always resisting our own energy. This is how we learn to abide in prajnaparamita [, compassionate wisdom].
And I would add, this is the place where we stop strategizing, and finally relax.
