So tell me, who aren't you?

So, as I continue to publish my thoughts, efforts and experimentation with Phillip Moffitt's "From Emotional Chaos to Clarity" book (as part of the Buddha Book Club) here, I'm now covering the exercises at the end of Chapter 2 - "Getting To Know The Real You".

Moffitt states at the beginning of this chapter:

"Your movement from emotional chaos to clarity begins with answering the question, "Who am I?"  

Should be a snap, right? :-)

The fundamental point here is, I think, that most people go through life without any real understanding that "The mind" is not "themselves".  With a daily meditation practice, we start to notice that the mind is, indeed, not who we are.  As we meditate, we gain a spaciousness from our thoughts.  This space gives us the ability to understand that our thoughts don't have to rule our behavior.  For many people, especially anyone with some form of addiction, this realization can be life altering.  It can be the first time this idea was ever thought possible!

To do the exercise in Chapter Two of FEC2C (From Emotional Chaos to Clarity), Mr. Moffitt asks us to spend time reflecting, not on who we are but, on who we are not!  One word of caution here...this is, as he states in the book, not a one time thing.  This is a practice you want to incorporate in to your daily life.  Essentially it should become part of your overall practice.  A good tool to check in with on an ongoing basis, I think.

He says:

"The following suggestions can help you cease being trapped in a false identity and begin to open up to new possibilities."  

I will post short versions of the exercises and some thoughts here, but I encourage you to read them at length in the book and practice them as such.

• Which type of "mistaken identity" best describes the way you tend to think? (referring to several types of behavior he reviews in the chapter.)  For me it was the "You are not your responsibilities and habits" type.  He talks about how "You can fall quite literally in to believing your identity is the sum of your duties and habits."  Any parent out there probably has some experience with this.  I can easily find myself living a routine and mundane daily set of tasks.  I have to make an effort not to.  So I definitely identified with this.  The old cliche "Variety is the spice of life." takes on a whole new meaning when you get stuck in this mindset!

• Which type has caused you the most suffering in the past? For me it was "You are not your history."  He says "Your history is simply an accumulation of actions and events that characterizes you at a particular moment in your life; it does not define your essence."  I used to, long ago, always blame my parents or other factors - but mostly my parents - for a lot of things in my life.  I let go of that a long time ago, but it used to cause me a lot of suffering.

• Become a careful observer of your behavior and the mind states underlying that behavior.  I've been trying to make an effort to do this more.  We have a tendency, I think, to see a certain mind state and say to ourselves "aha! I am behaving like this!" and then we identify with that, say this is who we are, and move on.  I think the goal here, or certainly a more skillful goal, is to remember that he says "be an OBSERVER" not a JUDGE!  Don't use any judgement as you notice these things, and don't notice it once and consider that you are that observation.  Just routinely observe, without judgement, these states of mind and be aware of it.  Then do it again. And again.  You get the picture.

• Begin to notice the difference between the experience you are having and your awareness of the experience.  He gives the example of noticing that you are hungry, but shifting  your attention from the feeling to the awareness of the feeling.  Ask yourself how it is different.  For me, this was a good example because my issues tend to be around food.  Not so much anymore, but still an area of interest for me.  So, using that exact example, I noticed that when I identify with "feeling" hungry I'm anxious and sort of driven to act.  When I shift to the awareness of that feeling, the drive seems to recede and eventually the feeling passes.  When I observed this often enough, I started to notice (and I've been doing this for a couple of years now, so it was much easier for me I think) that often the "feeling" of hunger is just a thought that sets off a chain of other thoughts that imitate a true feeling of hunger.  In other words, my mind says "Man, some dark chocolate would be good right now, with my coffee." and then there is this cascade of thoughts that happens very rapidly, almost undetectably.  "Oooh that sounds great. I love dark chocolate with coffee.  What time is it? Two more hours to lunch. How many calories have I had today? Is it raining? No. Good.  I can walk tonight.  That means I can walk extra and burn off some more calories.  That means I could eat that dark chocolate if I wanted to.  I don't need it.  I do want it.  I'm gonna have it.  Nah, I won't.  Man, I'm REALLY hungry though." and on and on.  Somewhere in there, it's as though the collection of thoughts is dropped in to a bucket that adds up to a single over-riding thought of "I'M HUNGRY".  If I shift from that to just observing that, then I start to see it riding off in to the sunset, very slowly, and I start to notice, I'm really NOT hungry.  I'm fine.  THAT, I think, is the key to this exercise.  Shifting from believing whatever your mind tells you, to letting it believe whatever it wants, while you wave goodbye to it and go about your day.

The example I gave above was a lot longer than I meant to make it, and it also kind of covers the rest of the exercise in chapter two, so I'll let it go at that.  This is a sampling of my work with chapter two, and I hope to hear from some of you as to your experiences with it.

Keep reading!
_/\_

Emotional Chaos to Clarity - Exercise One

I've been reading the book Emotional Chaos to Clarity by Philip Moffitt with the Buddha Book Club run by my dear friend @DharmaApple.  Since I haven't been posting here much, and I have stuff that is too lengthy to post for twitter, I figured this might be a great place to post my process of working through the book.  This way, it will help me get back to writing here and - with any luck - perhaps it will help someone else discover some things that could help them on their own path from Emotional Chaos to Clarity.

Before I go any further, I should say a couple of things about my mindset going in to this book.  I like Phillip Moffitt a lot.  I discovered him one day while researching something and have followed him since.  I was very excited about his new book.  Once I saw what it was about, however, I admit to having a little trepidation.

I've read just about every self-help book & business productivity book on the market, I think!  When I started looking in to this book, it really seemed a lot like a business productivity book with a Buddhist slant (which makes sense given Mr. Moffitt's background.  He was a hugely successful business magazine editor before leaving that life and devoting himself to the dharma).  I thought a lot about this before beginning.  I had a lot of feelings of this book being too "self-helpy" for me.  I'm kind of done with those books.  Anyhow, after a great amount of consideration, I ultimately decided a few things:

• If I think I don't need clarity, that's probably a sure sign that I do.
• My thinking it is too self-helpy for me is probably me being judgmental.
• What do I have to lose? It's always good to refresh with a little "Don't Know" mind!

So, with that out of the way, I dug in to the book.  I am reading the eBook, and listening to the audio (only after reading it because a certain someone that rhymes with @SharmaFlapple says just listening to the audio is cheating!).  I'm actually really enjoying it this way, as it's a lot to soak in.  I'm reading it, and using that method for highlighting and study.  I'm going back to the previous chapters and listening to the audio after reading them, mostly just to soak in the info a little more, maybe pick up on some bits I didn't catch on my read.  I'm also doing the exercises in the book along the way.  

Often when I read books that have exercises in them, I either don't do them, or I do them randomly or maybe after reading.  This time, because it's part of the club and because we have plenty of time allotted for it, I'm doing them as I go.  Also, I heard early on that if you want to truly get the most out of the book, you needed to do the exercises.  So here goes....

Chapter 1 - Beginning Your Journey To Clarity - Exercise

After opening the exercise section with the above paragraph, Phillip Moffitt goes on to describe how he wants you to perform this basic, daily, mindfulness meditation.  Since I started my practice with basic mindfulness meditation, and return to it always as my primary practice, I am very familiar with how to do it.  Because of that, when I first read this exercise I blew it off as basic instruction that I already know how to do.  I posited that since I do this routinely already, there is no need for me to do this first exercise.  After reading several chapters, I started seeing the wisdom in approaching the book with the proverbial "beginners mind".  I went back and spent a couple of weeks of practice on this one.

Instead of just repeating the basic mindfulness meditation instructions here verbatim, I will just summarize.  But I highly recommend reading it, paying close attention to it, and spending a couple of weeks at least with just this practice - regardless of your current level of practice.

The author says (in a nutshell) to:

• Start by finding a comfortable place and position.
• Feel your body and recall your intention to be mindful.
• Notice tension in the body and relax with a few breaths.
• Turn your full attention on your breath and let it be your anchor throughout.
• Spend some time noticing all of the places in the body you feel the breath and find the easiest to stick with.
• When you mind wanders - and it will - return to the breath.  Do Not Judge!
• While following the breath, note the characteristics: Short, long, deep, shallow, etc.
• If your mind really gets stuck in planning - comment to yourself on what it is doing "Planning, planning" or "remembering, remembering"
• Be patient, be kind to yourself and start over.
• Start over.
• Start over.
• You get the idea.

He ends the first exercise instruction with this deeply important and (seemingly) mundane paragraph.  Read it several times and consider its importance:

I don't have anything remarkable to report with this exercise.  As I said, I do this all the time and it's a standard part of my practice.  If you have been reading my blog for a couple of years, you already know the profound impact this kind of basic meditation had on me.  It continues to do so.  The only important message I have for you on this first exercise is to DO IT!

If I were to boil it down even further than I did here, it would be like so:

• Sit
• Breathe
• Notice
• Start over, if you need to.
• Don't judge.

Sounds SO very simple, and it totally is.  But you have to do it long term, daily - even if only briefly - to realize the full benefit.  But you will, if you do.

I hope this helps.  It gets on to other much more (seemingly) interesting stuff, so stay tuned!

Warm regards,
MS