As I was walking through the park the other day I began a conversation with a man who eventually told me he was dying of cancer.  He had this cancer, he explained, because he was too stressed, too worried, too agitated. He described being troubled by almost everything he saw around him and even though he knew it wasn’t good for him,  even though he believed there was nothing he could do to correct these concerns,  he could not stop worrying and fretting.

He expressed his many concerns to me as he complained non-stop about how our government was misspending taxpayer’s money, how misinformed our medical system was in providing proper treatments for people, and a seemingly endless list of other issues and complaints.

I don’t know if it was true that he had cancer because of his agitated mind, but I do know he believed this. So it was most interesting for me when I heard him say he felt he was powerless to stop complaining about these things even though he felt it was killing him.

He didn’t even seem particularly interested in doing anything about this as he joined one bothersome issue to another, each seeming to serve as fuel for the next. He reminded me in some ways of an alcoholic continuing to drink knowing full well it was destroying him, and calmly saying there was nothing he could do about it.

I wondered about this for a long while after I left him.  Could it be true that there was nothing he could do to help himself?

I think for some people change is not possible, or at best it is a remote possibility.  It seems that there actually is nothing they can do to alter how they think, feel and act in the world, even though their life may be heading downhill.

But if they are powerless, why?  How can this be explained?

Some people can’t change because they are not interested. There are those who do nothing about stress in their life simply because they don’t seem to think about doing anything about it until it is too late.

Often these people seem to have a very limited awareness of themselves and others. Their life is hectic and non-stop almost as though they need to get to the next moment before they have arrived at this one.   They don’t seem to properly identify with or appreciate their problems, and even though others might be concerned about them nothing will come of those efforts to help other than frustration for all concerned

Some people can’t change  because they don’t see the problems in their life as having anything to do with them. Instead, it is other people, the world “out there” causing their suffering and if only ‘it” or “they” would change, their problems would be over.  Not surprisingly such people often tend to be disruptive in the lives of others.

Some people can’t change because they have given up.  They have tried many, many, times with little success and much disappointment. They have lost hope trying to feel better when nothing they have done has made a difference.  Such people can often be deeply cynical about almost everything and everyone.  As long as they still care enough to look after and protect their existing reality they can survive .  But if they are faced with an unexpected and significant life challenge they can crumble.  When they reach the stage that nothing begins to matter this is very problematic and often life-threatening.

Others are still willing to try but have no clear direction of how to actually do this and are going in circles.  The will is there but the energy is wasted.

So in these examples, I think change for such individuals in not possible; at least not under the existing conditions?  But that is not the same as saying nothing can help.

But if it is possible how can this be accomplished?

And for those who are willingly seeking to change how can this be accomplished?

For me there are many, many questions which need to be asked and answered when we talk about change, about who can change and how to to do it.

What do we even mean by change? Is change actually possible or is it an illusion?

For me the answer to the question of whether or not change is possible is, “It depends”.

I don’t mean to sound elusive in this response but I think it is correct to state it this way.  There are many conditions which have to be met before change can occur and it is helpful at the outset to consider what some of those conditions might be. In the next article I will look more closely at this.

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The answer to the question as to “who, or what am I?”  is a complicated one.  But it is primarily complicated by a confused, though perfectly normal way of perceiving reality that is almost  impossible to see for oneself . This article aims to clarify one source of this confusion.

I think it is easy enough to accept that what we are today, how we experience our self, others, and the world we live in, is very much the product of an amazing and vast number of experiences we could generally refer to as ”our life so far”. 

Given this inextricable bond to our past, then everything we do “now”, every thought we have, every belief we hold and action we take, is rooted in and flows from our history.  This connection to where we have been before has both advantages and disadvantages.

The advantage is we don’t have to continually relearn how to live in this world. 

It is absolutely critical to our survival that we possess the ability to learn from and utilize past experiences and apply those lessons to daily living.   Without such learning the world would appear as a chaotic buzz of confusion to which we would have no idea how to respond.  Within a matter of days or at best weeks, without outside support and care, we would die.

But here is the disadvantage.

Most people seem to want to change, get rid of bad habits, improve their relationships. 

For many, the search for these answer seems to point in the direction of  thinking long and hard about our life, perhaps making those tough choices we could never follow through on, not allowing ourselves to act like we have before, and so on.

Yet if our intention is to become healthier and create a better life for our self then by definition we have to learn to act differently than we have up to this point.   But how can we make new and different choices to move in healthy directions if we are using the same ”mind” that got us into difficulty in the first place?

Think about this for a moment.  If our previous way of being in the world wasn’t working for us before, how can we rely on that to guide us now? 

As motivated as we may be to live our life differently, or to end or minimize our suffering, the inescapable truth seems to be that we have to find a way that offers more than our existing methods of looking at our self and our world.

If we are going to find a way that actually promotes our psychological growth and development, we have to find a fundamentally new means of  understanding our self, our relationships, and our world. 

To do this we have to free our self from the normal approaches we take to finding answers to our life: we have to “free ourselves from the known”.

The next article in this series begins the exploration of  a “Mindfulness” approach I have developed and utilized over the last 25 years utilize in my practice.

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Have you ever stopped to consider how little people really know each other? I don’t mean casual acquaintances or even friends.  I mean people who say they love and deeply care for each other; people who are willing to commit their lives to each other.

I am not referring to whether or not they are interested in (or at least talk about) what we might call each others objective reality (how was work today, how were the kids, what did you think of that restaurant  last night etc.).  Rather, I am pointing to what seems to be a remarkable lack of interest in, and exploration of, each others subjective reality;  their thoughts, feelings, memories, desires, fears, fantasies and so on.

I would argue that it is precisely those experiences, the ones we might identify as our “interior” self, which make each of us truly unique and remarkable.  These are the deeper, more personal, immediate, and alive aspects of our being.  They are the ones that matter most to us and the ones that define our essential and vital self 

And I am suggesting that the failure of people in relationships to learn more about and respect such qualities in each other leads to a whole host of potential problems and difficulties that may never get resolved until they are understood.  And for many people, they may never get understood.

All in all this lack of interest and exploration of each other with each other creates a rather strange and confusing situation for us humans.

For example, we think we understand and know our loved one, when in fact we do not.  We think the other understands us, when in fact they don’t. What we have done instead is identify with the “exterior” of the other, and confused that with who they are.

The truly odd thing about this is that we each expect, and sometimes demand, that the other be what we have imagined them to be as a result of what we have learned about their external apearances.  But we are all so much more complex than our outside presentation.

And soon enough and sure enough, we will present to the other in a way that does not match with our exterior as they have come to know us.  But it will fit with our interior and seem perfectly natural to us.

And when that happens the other can feel surprised, shocked, dismayed, disappointed, angry, and a whole range of other negative experiences.  At these moments the reaction generally tends to be; “Hey, what’s wrong with you, get back to being the person I know and stay there.”

And inevitably, when they present their self to us in an odd or unexpected way, we will ask the same of them.

If we are each reasonably healthy we will stand up for ourselves  and ask to be known and accepted more deeply and clearly.  If we are not so healthy, we will step backwards towards the image the other expects of us and we will stay there.

But we will suffer.  And often, we will make the other suffer in a variety of obvious and not so obvious ways, for not being willing to accept the truer, deeper, and more meaningful aspects of our being.

Does this scenario have real world implications for individuals in those relationships?  I am certain it does. Can this help us understand why so many relationships struggle and eventually break-up?

Can it help explain why so many people get depressed, turn to drugs and alcohol, have extra-marital affairs and a whole host of other relationship disturbance?   I think it does explain much of this and I think it is all so tragic.

Why tragic?  Because I don’t believe people do this intentionally to each other.  I don’t think they are trying to hurt each other.  I just think they don’t know any better and don’t even see the problem being created.

So what does it mean to say  “I love you”  if at precisely the same time I don’t really know you or want to know you?  And what does it mean if you won’t or can’t tell me who you are even if I ask?

Exactly who is this “you” I love?

Although anyone can be graced with spontaneous glimpses, clear sustained vision of our sacred depths usually requires significant practice to clarify awareness sufficiently.  This is the purpose of spiritual practice.  -Roger Walsh, Essential Spirituality-

Another useful article on anxiety.  If only we could adopt this aproach with life in general.

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Here is an article on Alexithymia.  The attached comments are also interesting and worth reading.

In the last article I suggested that most people  have only a limited awareness of their own experiences.  Rather than utilizing our capacity to be aware of and learn from those experiences we are effectively blind to most of them, and don’t even know we are doing this.  This article examines one of the implications of how this limited approach to our own experiences effects our lives.

My “world” as I know it and respond to it comes from my experiences of  that world.   Similarly, who “I  am for you”  is the sum total of  the many complex and varied experiences you are having of me when we are together and how you act towards (or against me) flows inexorably out of those experiences.    While those momentary experiences and actions arise as a result of a vast number of  historical, social, biological  and intrapersonal factors, I am concerned here with the degree to which we are more or less conscious of  those experiences.

If I am not conscious of who you are for me, then what do I really know about you?  What can I say about you? If I am not conscious of my experiences of you in the moment of our being together and of my reactions to being in your presence, then what  sense can I make of those reactions and how could I possibly explain them to you if you asked.

From a larger perspective, if I am out of touch with how I am experiencing you and how I am experiencing my world,  then who am I?  And if my life is not working for me, or I want to improve it, how can I even begin to start making informed and wise choices about this.

Generally, when our world or relationships are not progressing smoothly we try to “think” our way through this.  We sit down with our self and try to rationally assess what is going on, how we have behaved or reacted to a situation, what others have done to us and so on.  While this effort is better than simply blaming someone or something else, or not even worrying about what has happened, it is unlikely to be of  much help in actually addressing the situation.

Trying to recollect and think about such complex and complicated processes after they have happened is a notoriously problematic way of making sense of events . If you have not been paying close and careful attention to your experiences as they were occurring, you will have to reconstruct them from memory.  Trying to recall what happened some time ago and then converting that limited and selective information into a certain form of rational-logic we call thinking has to result in a distorted if not inappropriate assessment of the situation.

There is a very high probability that the choices and actions flowing from this process will lead to further complications and/or conflict and then it becomes even more difficult if not impossible to resolve. Such is the situation most of us face on a daily basis.

If  I am confused about who I am, who you are and what I am doing, and you are equally confused then what kind of relationship can we have?   How can I possibly relax with myself  in a world that fundamentally doesn’t make sense.  No wonder people feel anxious and can eventually get depressed about their life and their relationships.

Surely there has to be a better way.

I think there is a better way, a more useful and productive path to follow and the next articles will begin to present that way.  I encourage feedback and responses to what I am writing and  look forward to some dialogue on this issue.

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For some time now I have been working on upgrading my web site with the technical and artistic help of the great folks at Pixel Perfect Productions, and here it is!  Primarily, beyond style changes, I wanted to incorporate a major section under the heading of Mindfulness.  This area has been a dominant theme in my work  for many years, and I also believe  it is a direction that main stream psychology is finally beginning to head.   I also believe, however, that there are so many misunderstandings, misrepresentations and misinterpretations of this area that I felt I had to express my views to offer whatever value is contained in them, and hopefully, to stimulate some dialogue about it.  I welcome any opinions, criticisms or insights you wish to offer, and I hope that this area contributes in some way to the good of us all!

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In my previous article I was arguing that we cannot truly make choices and therefore changes in our life, if we are not aware of, or conscious to, our own experiences. Since most people seem to think they are already quite aware, then either I am making a weak argument, or we are talking about very different things. This article focuses on my definition of this notion of our lack of awareness in an attempt to clarify that position and also to look at some of the implications which flow from it.

To begin, let me ask a simple question; “What does rain feel like on your face”? Now I am betting that you feel you would have no difficulty at all in answering this question. But let me push this a little further. When was the last time you chose to stand in the rain and let it fall on your face so you could intentionally experience it? I am guessing that you may never have done that, or if you have, you haven’t done it very often.

If you are like most people, the experience of “rain in your face” you are talking about is what happened when you unexpectedly got caught in the rain, and as quickly as you could, tried to find shelter, or reacted in some way so as not to have rain in your face.

My point is that there are many experiences which we say we “have”, or which we say we are familiar with, which should more appropriately be called, “experiences we tried not to have”. In fact, I think this applies to almost every experience we are capable of having which we define as negative or as unwelcome. (I would go further than this and include a much broader range of experiences but for now it might be easier to accept that we tend “not to have” the negative experiences).

Take sadness for example. Who doesn’t know what it feels like to be sad? But have you ever taken the time to really feel sad; intentionally, purposefully? Really sit with it and listen to it, hear how it speaks, where it lives in your body, what kind of memories come up and whatever else is connected to it.

My guess is that the very idea of letting yourself feel sad, or angry, or frustrated or any “negative” reaction seems strange to you. After all, these experiences hurt, they are painful. And if there is anything our evolutionarily programmed survival system does well, it is too move us away from pain as quickly as possible. Rather than feeling sad, what you may be familiar with is the experience of trying not to feel sad.

“Trying not to feel sad” and feeling sad are not the same experiences. “Trying not to feel sad” is an active attempt to suppress and alter an experience and is one example of how we try to avoid our own experiences. There is nothing odd in doing this; in fact I would suggest most people do this suppression/avoiding thing most of the time. But there is an effect which accrues from doing this and it is this effect which most people do not understand, feel very confused about when it arises, and have no idea how to solve. This is covered in the next article.

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The only reality we have is this living moment. The only possibility we ever have to make a different choice, to alter a course of action, or to change our mind, resides in “this” moment. Yes, we can plan on doing something tomorrow, but both that decision to wait and the action itself when it occurs will be choices made in present tense, “now” moments.

Oddly, it seems to me for most people the significance of “this” moment pales in comparison to how important we consider our past and future to be. This at least seems to be true given how much time we spend there. Indeed, “this” moment seems to have has little meaning, and little value.

In order to grasp the profound implications of this, it is important to first understand an interesting quality of the human mind.

Let me begin by noting that most people are not conscious to most of their experiences. They are only nominally tuned into the thoughts they are having at any given point in time, their emotional and body level feeling states. memories, decision making processes and even most of the impulses which drive the actions in which they are engaged.

The fact of the matter is that almost everything we do is done without much awareness. A very large percentage of our day is spent on automatic pilot and only in very particular circumstances do we actually have to be conscious and pay attention to what we’re doing.

For the most part, none of this is a problem. This essentially non-conscious system functions like this because we have already practiced and learned how to behave and respond to our life during our many years of growing up. Having learned to talk a long time ago I don’t have to start relearning every day. The same goes for driving my car, shopping, interacting with others, and on and on.

But what happens if I have to do something different than what I’ve learned to do? What if my ways of being in the world aren’t working for me? Somehow I have to be able to override the purely habitual and automatic quality of those learned responses which are not working for me, and adapt them to become proper and effective responses.

I cannot change something if I am not aware of what I am doing. I can only change and over-ride my cognitive and emotional responses and reaction patterns if I am aware of them in the moment of their activation. But if I am am right in my previous assertion that most people spend too much time not being present to “this” moment, then herein lies the problem.

If my previous life lessons were inadequate in some way I will constantly be bumping and rubbing up against this life inevitably creating varying levels of distress for myself and for others. Given that my choices and actions didn’t work the first time it’s unlikely they will succeed the second. When my normal ways of solving my life problems don’t work despite repeated attempts it creates a very interesting scenario almost always accompanied by some anxiety. Eventually, if enough efforts fail and my situation worsens I can even get depressed.

The next series of articles will look at this position I am expressing in more detail. I invite you to read further and see if I can answer any doubts or or questions you have about what I am saying. and to learn about what I think is the only genuine way to deal with such issues.

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