The Big Pause: Finding Freedom In Stressful Situations
Recently, I heard someone refer to this new normal of the coronavirus era as The Big Pause. When we encounter any large and abrupt change in life, resistance is a natural response. Based on our experiences from the past, our ideas about what things should be like don’t match the reality of what’s happening here and now.
The distance between these two points is in direct proportion to the amount of our suffering: our resistance to things as they are.
To varying degrees, most of us have adapted to life under the pandemic. Some of us are settling deeper into the new normal. For others, after a period of increasing acceptance, there’s a resurgence of resistance to this ongoing state of affairs. Constructive dialogue expressing different points of view concerning how governments and communities should respond to this pandemic is healthy and should be welcomed.
What I’m referring to, from an individual perspective, is how incredibly difficult it is TO BE STILL. Sitting in meditation will show you quite intimately the myriad ways in which your body-mind resists settling into stillness. Fundamentally, this is the nature of an ego: it’s perpetually in motion, always pushing and pulling, looking for happiness that’s supposedly just around the corner. But it would be difficult to overestimate the impact that the fast pace of modern life has on our inability to find inner peace and quiet. Moreover, in the past 15 years, smartphones and social media have compounded the problem exponentially.
I can certainly empathize with the struggle to find stillness. Diagnosed with ADHD when I was eight, I was certainly the last person anyone expected to be practicing meditation, let alone teaching it. When I was younger I was constantly on the go. Inevitably, I would crash and feel overwhelmed with stress, a typical ADHD pattern.
At times I still talk very quickly and fidget in my seat. By nature, I’m prone to very acute feelings of boredom and restlessness which could set into motion thrill-seeking behavior. I can see how strong this conditioning is still. However, thanks to the practices of mindfulness I’m able to become aware of these patterns. In being able to recognize them, I’m not so easily identified by them, and when I do get caught up, I can recognize what’s happening more quickly and take a step back.
Now, we have whole civilizations of people who have been trained to be constantly on the go who are being told that they cannot move, can not interact with most of their social network, and many of whom are deprived of spending time in nature. The impact on people’s mental health is predictable.
Reading interviews with people in different situations seems to be challenging for everyone. If someone lives by themself, they struggle with loneliness. If they have a partner, they can’t get any time to themselves. If they have kids, there are points at which everyone thinks they might go crazy. Seemingly people in every situation--single or in a relationship, kids or no kids--are struggling to cope with the current situation.
I don’t want to diminish the power of circumstances because our environment does have a big impact on us. For example, I think one truth that this crisis highlights is how being connected to nature is what naturally makes us feel at ease. Staring at concrete walls and computer screens all day does not soothe your nervous system or put your mind at ease. I also don’t want to downplay how challenging any of these situations might be, whether you’re lonely by yourself, can’t get time away from your partner, or are overwhelmed with the demands of your kids.
That said, we can take a step towards a sense of freedom, joy, and ease when we bring ourselves into alignment with the truth: not some grand metaphysical truth to argue over but the truth of the direct immediate experience of this moment. Nothing that you experience happens outside of awareness. So the quality of your awareness--in other words, how your mind is relating to what’s going on--is shaping your reality.
In any given moment we can ask ourselves: “what’s going on right now?’
We can notice our sensory experience: hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting, feeling, and thinking (“thinking” is considered a “six sense door” in Buddhism). It can be very helpful to come back to bodily sensations or to hearing or to seeing. It can be very powerful to simply recognize “thinking” rather than getting entranced by the contents of our thoughts.
As another practice, when we notice a powerful emotion, we can simply note the emotions that arise and pass away: agitation, boredom, loneliness, hunger, curiosity, lust, tiredness, boredom. We note this silently to ourselves. The tone of the noting is very important as the quality of our attention always is: notice what’s going on with a feeling of patience, curiosity, and gentleness--and with an absence of judgment.
As I’ve written about several times before, the practice of RAIN is very powerful. RAIN begins with the above practice of recognizing what’s happening but then invites us to allow whatever is arising to simply be as it is, without trying to push it away (if it’s unpleasant) or grab onto it (if it’s pleasant). Crucially, it invites us to turn inward and investigate, “where in my body am I feeling this emotion?”
When the feeling is the result of a belief you might find it skillful to work with the question: “what does it feel like to be trapped inside this belief?” Like dropping a stone into a pond, you allow the question to drop into your body and ripple out into your Being. It’s not a question that is meant to elicit more thoughts, but rather to be felt or sensed into. If thoughts arise that’s not a problem. You can notice the thoughts but continue to be curious about where in your body you feel this challenging emotion or feeling into what it’s like to be trapped inside this belief.
Finally, we can nourish the challenging feelings that arise by offering compassion to ourselves, using phrases such as: may this suffering be eased, may my heart feel at peace, may I be free of suffering and its causes.
Ultimately, what meditation practice reveals to us is our true nature. We begin to identify less and less with the endless unfolding of the contents of consciousness and abide in the spaciousness of consciousness itself.
We can make a very simple distinction between consciousness and its contents: consciousness can identify with its contents and think that it is the contents (I am this thought, this feeling, this image or identity that my mind has constructed of myself). But you can in fact learn to “unhook” consciousness from its contents.
When we do so we can discover a sense of boundlessness, freedom, and ease that we never knew could exist. You might find that you're less certain about who you think you are, that in fact the more deeply you look inside you are in fact a mystery unto yourself.
We can discover that in fact, we are not our loneliness or our insecurities or our limiting beliefs about ourselves. We can discover that we were in fact never broken, don’t need to be fixed, don’t need extra recognition or approval from others to feel whole and complete.
This global pandemic, this Big Pause, this too shall pass. It’s natural to have memories about the past and hopes for the future. Recollecting and planning has some value. But the more we become mindful of the contents of consciousness, the more we realize how much of our lives are spent lost in thoughts. Thoughts about the past and the future are neither the past nor the future. They are simply one form of phenomena, arising and passing away here and now. All too often, thoughts enchant us, they distract us from our willingness to be present with what’s happening in this very moment.
This very moment, in any given moment, is all that we ever have.
The Big Question is: are we making the most of this Big Pause? Are we spending time our time wisely, to learn about how our minds react to stressful and unpleasant circumstances, to find freedom here and now?