Posts from — April 2010

Some of you may know that I am a huge music lover. I worked in the independent music business for about 15 years. I have heard things that would make your mind explode. (In a good way.) There are a few recordings that I count as my always-fresh, completely beloved, never-tire-of-listening-ever-ever musical loves. They include (but are in no way limited to) the full length recordings Muddy Waters, Folk Singer and John Coltrane & Johnny Hartmann, and these songs: Sam Cooke’s “A Change is Gonna Come,” The Allman Brothers’ “Blue Skies,” Blind Willie Johnson’s “Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground,” Vladimir Cosma’s “Sentimental Walk,” Ini Kamoze’s “Hot Stepper,” The Johnson Mountain Boys’ “Christine LeRoy,” Tony Bennett’s version of “The Way You Look Tonight,” Dinah Washington’s “You Don’t Know What Love Is,” The Abyssinian’s “Satta Massagana,” and, even though he’s not a musician per se, I have to include Lord Buckley.

I have no idea what these recordings have in common beyond that I love them. Some always make me cry, others always make me laugh, and all always, always delight me. I can’t count how many times I’ve listened to them. Guru’s first solo recording, Jazzamatazz, Vol. 1 is definitely on this list. So when I heard today that the Guru died of cancer at age 48, I was so sad and also so grateful for having heard his music.

God is Universal; he is the Ruler Universal: may you attain complete realization in whatever realm you choose to inhabit next.

Please crank up the following and wish him well on his journey–

Loungin’ (w Donald Byrd)

Le Bien, Le Mal (w MC Solaar)

Trungpa Rinpoche cuts right through to the core of our confusion and gives it back to us as wisdom. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

“We must be willing to be completely ordinary people, which means accepting ourselves as we are without trying to become greater, purer, more spiritual, more insightful. If we can accept our imperfections as they are, quite ordinarily, then we can use them as part of the path. But if we try to get rid of our imperfections, then they will be enemies, obstacles on the road to our ’self-improvement’.” From The Myth of Freedom

(handy for working with strong emotions in general)

Nothing feels worse than a broken heart, the kind you get when someone you love ends the relationship. Feelings of shame, remorse, grief, rage, and terror can overwhelm even the most heretofore stable human being. Heartbreak has the power to reframe a workable life as a disaster.

Surprisingly, Buddhism has a tremendous amount of helpful advice for working with these terrible girl/boy-loses-boy/girl emotions. It takes an approach that is quite different than the usual advice books, which basically fall into one of two categories:

The first category is called “You Go Girl!!” (Sorry guys, all the books are aimed at women.) This kind of book suggests that you need to up the cocktails:sobbing ratio, that if you go out with your friends who all tell you that you were just too awesome for him/her, get a cute outfit and a new ‘do, and cry on as many shoulders as possible, you can dance your troubles away.

I don’t think this is bad advice. Hey! You are awesome! You can look super hot! You have great friends who remind you how to have fun! This is all cool. It won’t, however, do much to alleviate the pain, beyond stuffing it for a few hours.

The second category is called “There is something very, very wrong with you and you made this happen.” This is the kind of book that says you brought this heartbreak on yourself by carrying forward unhealed wounds from childhood or, god forbid, by thinking the wrong thoughts. I kind of hate this. Of course it’s really, really important to heal your wounds and to examine your thoughts to see if they might be sabotaging you—but when the intention for doing so is to avoid pain rather than increase your capacity to love, it is unlikely to heal you. This kind of advice is often out to convince you that you can create a safe world for yourself and that you can make love safe.

Love can never be made safe. It is the opposite of safe. The moment you try to make it safe, it ceases to be love. I realize this is a bummer, but think about it. Love is predicated on receptivity, on opening up again and again and again to your beloved, each time afresh. To do this, you have to let go of insisting that he or she conform to your standards for what a lover should look like, do, be, say, and instead allow him or her to simply be him or herself. Then you take it from there. To do otherwise, to continually choose who you wish this person was over who he or she actually is, is, well, it’s not love. I don’t know what it is. (Of course none of this stands to reason should any form of emotional or physical abuse be present. At this point you can forget everything I just said and protect yourself.)

Most often, the efforts to heal a broken heart center around putting it behind you and recreating the illusion of safety. Buddhism counsels something else, something best said by the American Buddhist nun, Pema Chodron: “Feel the feelings. Drop the story.” That is the pith advice and it means turning toward what you feel, not away. It means letting the feelings be just what they are without trying to explain them, shore your self up, or excuse or blame anyone. This is called being a warrior. The more you allow feelings to burn clean in this way, the less confusion you create.

I have three suggestions for figuring out how to accomplish this very mysterious feat of feeling without attaching a narrative as to what it might, could, should, or dare not mean.

1.    Develop a non-judgmental relationship with your mind. This is best done through the practice of meditation, instruction here. When you’re under the sway of strong emotion, you come into contact with a state of being that I like to call Insane Obsessive Thinking. If only, I should have, what I really meant was, how dare she, I am a loser, you are a loser, love stinks… On and on and on. It’s really quite painful. Without addressing a mind run amuck, the chances of skillfully working with your feelings is kind of limited. So I suggest introducing a note of discipline to your everyday life, beginning today. Spend some time everyday, not squashing your icky thoughts and promoting your good ones, but simply watching your mind in a relaxed way—no matter how wild it gets, you can remain steady. This is what meditation teaches you how to do.

The mind of heartbreak is like a wild horse. You can’t just jump on and except to ride. It will throw you again and again. So instead you hang around for a while until a sense of trust develops. Meditation teaches you how to do this, too.

2.    Stabilize your heart in the open state. When you regain some sense of dominion in your own mind, naturally your attention will turn toward that raging, screaming, 24/7 searing thing in the middle of your chest—your heart.

One way to look at heartbreak is as love unbound from an object. Freed, it careens and ricochets and crashes into walls. Your capacity and longing for love is enormous and when you lose it, this is what you discover. You had no idea you could feel this raw, vulnerable, open…and it’s the openness that is so precious.

Buddhism does not counsel closing back up, not at all. Instead, in recognition that this openness is the ground of loving kindness, compassion, and the ability to connect deeply, it suggests you leave it broken and seek to stabilize it in the open state. Yes, leave it broken. The way to do this and not walk around sobbing all the time is through the practice of Loving Kindness meditation, which you can find here. In this way, you begin to shift your search for love a tiny bit, away from “I want to find someone to love me” and toward “I want to find a way to give love.” With this slight transition, the whole world changes.

When most people say they are looking for love, what they means is they are looking for someone to love them, and then they will return it. But you can turn this equation on its head entirely and have love in your life every single day by choosing to give it. This, by the way—giving love to others—is the secret, guaranteed, no fail way to heal your broken heart. Try it.

3.   View your whole life as path. With a sense of clarity in your mind and stability in your heart, the third stage becomes something altogether different. There is no practice associated with this one. With mental clarity and emotional stability comes the ability to see your entire life as path. You have created the foundation for an entirely authentic life, one full of joy and sorrow, meetings and partings, giving and taking, and deep meaning. The dark power of heartbreak has led you there.

With this openness, you see that your life is telling a story. I have no idea what it is and you may not either. But trust me, your life has a life of its own and the violence of heartbreak has the power to shatter all illusions about who you thought you were and reintroduce you instead to who you already know you are. This is an extremely powerful situation.

With a broken heart, you see how vast your longing for love is and how impossible it is to make love safe. It’s just not possible. So what do you do with these two truths? This is your path. No one can tell you how to reconcile them. The place to begin is by paying attention, by cultivating agenda-less awareness of yourself, others, and of the flow of life. When you do so, you start to notice that every single day, you are continuously cycling in and out of moments of falling in love and having your heart broken. Both are always present, shifting toward you and away, each one a tiny lesson on how to be fully alive.

Pass it on.

(And please comment! I love to hear what you are thinking and feeling.)

Bindu Wiles, a blogger who brings a fresh, warm, down to earth voice to my favorite subjects: Dharma, Creativity, and Writing, interviewed me for her blog. The interview felt like talking to a sister.

Change Gonna Come
Sam Cooke

The Dark End of the Street
James Carr

I Can’t Stand The Rain
Ann Peebles

I Can’t Stop Loving You
Freddy Fender

I’ve Been Loving You Too Long
Otis Redding

There Is An End
The Greenhornes & Holly Golightly

What Becomes of the Broken Hearted?
Jimmy Ruffin

When I Get Like This
Five Royales

Whole Wide World
Wreckless Eric

For Your Precious Love
Jerry Butler

I had such a wonderful time teaching from The Wisdom of a Broken Heart this past week in D.C., N.Y., Toronto, and Montreal (where the book is called La Sagesse d’un Coeur Brisé which makes it sound so pretty). Over and over, I’m struck by the deep well of tenderness that resides in each of us and how a broken heart puts you squarely in touch with that tenderness, like it or not. I truly believe we are born to respect this tenderness; to be kind and expect kindness. Clearly, the world doesn’t always encourage that, but the moment you extend kindness to another, their own kindness is called forth. Kindness can and will and does change the world.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama said, “my religion is kindness” and it’s not because he’s some kind of wimp. It’s because he knows that this is how to bring peace to our war-torn, aggression-fueled world where people use fundamentalist scare tactics to incite us to be kind only to those who agree with us–and to consider the rest as barely human. This makes me cry pretty much every, single, solitary day of my life.

I just wish we could all be nice to each other is my constant refrain. But how? Especially when there are those who equate “nice” (or decent, kind, humane, tolerant…whatever word you prefer) with sloppy loser-ness? Au contraire, my friends. Real niceness is not sloppy, it is sharp. Because to be genuinely nice, you have to pay very close attention to who and what is around you, otherwise your niceness is according to code and not to whomever is standing in front of you. And loser-y? Far from it, in fact the farthest you can get from it. To be nice (kind, decent, etc) is predicated on opening your heart and letting the world touch you, without agenda and without judgment–and then responding to humanity with humanity. This takes exceptional courage and intelligence. I mean think about it.

So if it’s not about being all oh I’m so nice to everyone I always put myself last, (gag) then what is it about? And how do you do it? I suggest signing

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - — – - – - – - -

The NICE Manifesto
Please print (or take a screen shot) and (electronically) sign. Feel free to add more stipulations.

I, ___________________, being of sound(ish) mind and body, do hereby commit to the path of NICE, fully recognizing that NICE could mean any number of things and is not merely (nor will it ever be limited to) exhibiting sweetness. In addition to sweet and depending on circumstance, NICE could require one to be tough, giving, angry, remote, strong, generous, and/or soft.

I know being NICE can change our world into a peaceful one. To demonstrate my commitment, I agree to the following:

1. I recognize that only by being aware in the present moment will I know which kind of NICE to be and so recognize that the path of awareness and the path of NICE are inseparable.

2. I will exhibit extreme good manners, even when no one is watching. Good manners include (but are not limited to) qualities such as friendliness, generosity, patience, discipline, respect, discernment, dressing appropriately, and always, always cleaning up after myself.

3. When encountering those who disagree with me I will continue to view and treat them as human, no matter how barbaric or threatening I may consider their views. This means not wishing they were dead or thinking such things as, “The world would be so awesome were it not for _______ (Sarah Palin, Michael Palin, Islamists, Feitishists, Night fears, Stephen Frears, Darwinians, North Carolinians, Psychiatrists, Physiatrists, Bad drivers, Noisy neighbors, Townies, Junkies, Flunkies, Spelunkers, Circus Buskers, Motherfuckers, People who like Justin Bieber, and so on).

4. I will practice speaking clearly, honestly, and skillfully, which means also knowing when to shut up. When others are speaking, I will not use that time to think of what I will say next, but will instead give myself over to listening completely, fully, and properly.

5. I acknowledge that love is the most important thing in life and vow to give my heart away at the least provocation.

Signed: _______________

Date: _________________

The first person to email me back 5 signed manifestos wins a free copy of my book, The Wisdom of a Broken Heart.

Read this today on Dennis Hunter’s thoughtful, helpful blog, One Human Journey, where he writes about his spiritual journey which includes hearing amazing talks from Ani Pema at Gampo Abbey. Click here to read the rest of the post.

A few days ago, Pema Chodron gave a teaching at the Abbey in which she defined the aspiration of bodhicitta in much more practical, immediate terms: it is the wish to keep your heart open in all situations, not to close down and harden against other beings even when they challenge or upset you. Bodhicitta is a fundamental openness and warmth of the heart, our connectedness to other beings, which can manifest as loving-kindness or as compassion.

The future doesn’t exist, and it never will. When the future arrives, it will be the present moment. The present moment is all we ever have, and it is in each fleeting, present moment that we must practice enlightenment. We will never find it anywhere else.

5 Ways to Tell.

Here are some things to consider when trying to decide if s/he is “the one.”

1. Sex is hot

OK, this probably isn’t what most experts would tell you. Everyone knows sex isn’t the basis for a long-term relationship, right?

Or maybe it is. When you’re crazy attracted to a person, that means something. It’s not an accident. And though the heat is bound to be turned down at some point, the chemistry remains. When you simply like the way a person smells, this is good. When you like their touch, this is also good. This kind of thing tends to last. It marks a primal connection that goes beyond compatibility lists and can hold a relationship together through horrendous times. When skin loves skin, touch can trump almost any disagreement.

You should love this person’s flesh.

2. S/he is nice.

I know people make lists of qualities they desire in a prospective mate, and “nice” isn’t usually up there with the loftier qualities such as intelligent, funny, responsible, etc. But I’m telling you—“nice” is the most important quality there is. S/he can be the smartest, funniest, most industrious person on earth, but if s/he lacks common kindness, generosity, open-heartedness, and decency, those other qualities are bogus. Don’t be fooled by flash. Or cash.

S/he should be very, very nice.

3. There is some uncertainty

Whenever I hear someone say, “s/he’s perfect,” or “s/he is all I’ve ever dreamed of,” I become suspicious. Is this person living in a movie or a real life? Are they idealizing their loved one? In which case, they are having a relationship with themselves, not him/her.

Some uncertainty (Is s/he really right for me?) and everyday irritation (You hate the way s/he loads the dishwasher or always loses things) mean you’re in a relationship with an actual human, not a cartoon.

So s/he should bug you a little bit.

4. When it comes to the things you care about most, you can talk to him/her about those things.

It’s totally OK if you have nothing in common—as long as you can talk about what you do/believe/aspire to with him/her and s/he really listens. S/he doesn’t have to embrace your views as his/her own, s/he just has to care that you care about them.

S/he should make you feel that your beliefs and aspirations are of interest.

5. You can imagine loving him/her a little bit more than the relationship.

This is the kicker. This is the big one.

Once I lived in another country and was going out with someone I loved a lot. But I was young and thought I should probably go back to my own country for the long haul. When we talked about breaking up, he told me he supported my inclination to leave him, even though it made him really, really sad. Why? Because, he told me, I love you more than I love us.

What a guy.

This is the key to the whole thing, ladies and gentlemen. If you can always hold your love for him/her just slightly above your love of the relationship you have, you will be capable of creating a truly happy bond. Really. Try it.

Love him/her a little bit more than you love “us.”

I’m very proud that my interview with Justine Toms of the legendary New Dimensions Media will be broadcast on April 14. We went deep. There is an audio excerpt here. Listening options are here.

In January and February I drove across the country giving talks on what heals a broken heart. The talks were based on my new book, The Wisdom of a Broken Heart. Well, what is the wisdom of a broken heart then? How can something that feels so outrageously awful contain any intelligence whatsoever? Why would anyone want to do anything besides get rid of it?

These are excellent questions, especially the last one. As anyone suffering a broken heart can tell you, it’s impossible. Try as you might, you can’t talk yourself out of it. No momentary explanation (I was too needy; he was scared of relationships), form of pampering (physical, sartorial, massage-ical), divination (astrology, numerology, palmistry), or desperation (gin, body building, buzz cuts) can do anything but momentarily relieve the agony. I know. I tried them all. But all that happened was I ended up a mentally overwrought, smooth skinned androgyne with a fabulous wardrobe and no money.

One thing that did help however, was writing. I wrote obsessively about what I was feeling, ever-changing insights about why this was happening, and my dreams, which were pitiless extensions of my daytime imaginings. When I look back at the many journals I filled with my sorrow, rage, and confusion, I see now that I was simply looking for a way to relate directly to my state of mind, to take it in so I could understand it on the deepest level possible. When I would arrive at an insight of any kind—about why this hurt so much, what in my past might have made it so, what a particular scene in a dream meant), I would experience momentary relief. Clarity brought healing. The deeper I went into my own psyche and the more I understood about my own emotional reactions (and what they were called—at first I couldn’t even distinguish between sad, angry, and exhausted), the lengthier my moments of relief became.

I spent a lot of time looking inward, developing a relationship with myself. This changed my life for good. When this awful period was over, I knew who I was in a very different way. My broken heart forced me to look at myself. And with self-knowledge (whether what you find is profoundly beautiful, surprising, or embarrassing), comes confidence. With confidence comes the ability to open to love once again.

I now see that was I was doing was meditating on my heartbreak.

Meditation is substituting for your mental chatter a different object of attention, whether it is a sound, image, or your own breath. When attention strays from this object and becomes reabsorbed in meandering thought, you simply bring it back to your substitute object. In my writing, that object was my emotions.

Paying attention to something is different than thinking about it. It’s the difference between playing with your child and reading a child psychology book. One is in the moment and the other is placing attention on the past or future.

When your heart is broken, you could place your attention on your feelings over and over, simply to discover them and actually feel them. This helps you relax. Distracting yourself from them stresses you further.

When I learned to meditate, I found an even more direct method for diving into my feelings—but this time with an important difference: without trying to understand them, but simply to feel them. It sounds strange, but when I learned how to do what Pema Chodron suggests: “Feel the feeling and drop the story,” a whole new level of healing occurred. When you sit down, invite your feelings, and get to know them without agenda some kind of magic happens. The feelings begin to dissolve. Not at first, when they might actually intensify, but in time, by staying with them, without—this is key—telling your self what they might mean. Meditation is more like lying on the ground, looking at the clouds to see what shape they suggest rather than identifying this one as cumulus and that one as cirrus. It’s a kind of focused hanging out. With yourself.

So if your heart is broken (or even if it’s not right now, but was in the past) try these things: Meditate on your feelings through writing and meditate with your feelings through, well, meditation. Finally, if you feel so inclined, share what you have learned with others. It can really help to tell your story, over and over. Each time you do, the same story yields new insights.

Here is how to begin.

Write
Try to answer these questions (these and others are posed in my book):

1. The thing that has been the most difficult for me since this relationship ended is _______.

2. When I think about our break-up, the thought or thoughts that plagues me over and over is/are _______.

3. I feel the pain of this loss most acutely when I _______.

4. What I miss most about our relationship is _______.

5. What I don’t miss about our relationship is _______.

6. The thing I regret most is _______.

7. The unforeseen benefit of this break up is _______.

8. If I could take him back right now, I would/would not and here’s why: _______.

9. The most important thing I need to tell myself right now is _______.

10. The biggest lesson I have (or hope to have) learned from this experience is ______.

In answering these questions, just write whatever comes to mind. Don’t censor. Try to spend about ten minutes on each question, simply writing in a stream of consciousness fashion. If it helps, set a timer. Pick up your pen (or keyboard) and dive in. If the first thing you think to write is screw her, screw her, screw her, then write it. If it’s I have no idea how to answer this, then write that. Just keep going. Don’t stop moving your fingers. See what happens.

Don’t feel you have to answer all the questions at once. Try one or two a day or a week. Add your own questions. Come back and re-answer them whenever you want to. The beauty of questions is that on different days, different insights may arise.

Meditate

Learn basic mindfulness-awareness meditation and try to practice it regularly. It is the single most helpful thing you can do. Why? The truth is, I can’t explain why. Sure, it has been scientifically proven that meditation makes you happier (by increasing activity in the prefrontal cortex, whatever that means) and relieves stress (by lowering cortisol), but the power of meditation to transform you goes way beyond brain waves and such. The effect is beyond words. That is why I can’t explain it. You just have to try it for yourself and see. Begin with five to ten minutes per day for a few weeks or longer. Eventually, try to build up to twenty minutes.

I offer meditation instruction on my website here.

Share
It can be very reassuring to see that you are not alone. Check out this blog post on my website to read other people’s stories of heartbreak and then post your own. There is relief in telling your story and speaking the truth.

The answers are all within you. The perfect teacher who knows exactly how to heal you accompanies you at all times. All you have to do is slow down, open up, and listen.