I’ve had the great privilege recently to sit with my pain, sadness and fear, along with my worry and anxiety. I’ve been examining where these feelings came from, where they reside in my being and the subtle effects they have on my life. Since I consider myself an above-average happy and well-adjusted person, I’ve basically avoided these unpleasant feelings for a long time.

Early in my yoga training I learned that all fear is fear of death (says Yogi Patthabi Jois), and since early childhood I’ve had a terrifying concern that when I die I become nothing. I don’t want to be nothing! It’s scary! I’ve protected myself from this scary feeling by ignoring it.

I've found, however, that if I avoid this painful feeling (fear) of being alone I actually beget more loneliness in my life. Protecting myself from feeling pain I do things to avoid it like enacting controlling behaviors, distancing myself from uncomfortable situations, and hardening myself towards others. These behaviors create more loneliness, and thus, more pain. A terrible self-fulfilling prophecy.

Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh says that avoiding painful feelings creates a state of poor mental circulation that can lead to all sorts of mental/emotional problems (see his book, True Love). I think he’s right. With the right skills, instead of avoiding painful feelings we can connect with them inside ourselves, give them breathing room, and examine their origins. This act of connecting creates flexibility, a soft, open presence, and an ability to embrace, reach out to and understand ourselves. Connecting with our own feelings models the path of connecting with others., creating the opposite experience of loneliness. This path of conflict resolution is very vulnerable but so worth it.

Connecting with my feelings gives me the opportunity to gain insight. Looking deeply, I’ve found that my fear of death is related to the belief that I’m just me, separately existing alongside everything and everyone else. When I die, my fear is that if I’m separate, then I’m alone, disconnected from life and from love. Creepy!

Looking deeply, I can also see that we are interconnected and not separate. We are all mini-collections of everything- earth, air, water, food, the sun, our genetic inheritance, the input of family, teachers, friends, etc. No part of us exists without the influence of many, many other things. We are the continuations of our parents, ancestors and nature.

When we die we can’t become nothing. We get recycled into everything. Our bodies can nourish the earth, and our past words and actions impact others. We don’t disappear, alone and separate- we continue on in everything we’ve touched.  

A few weeks ago I woke up in the morning and gave myself a Reiki session. During the session I had this dream:

My mom said to me: “ I need you and Sophia to get your money situation together. One of you needs to worry about money so that you can have safety and security when you have kids.”

I looked at my mom, took her face in my hand and said,” I really appreciate that you want us to worry about money so that we can be safe, but I’m not worrying anymore, it gives me migraines. There has to be another way.”

My mom fell to the ground, in the fetal position, and started crying. She was paralyzed by the fear that I wasn't going to worry, i.e, take care of what she perceived to be a very threatening situation.

She wouldn’t let me touch her or look at her.

I wanted her to get up and calm down, be okay.

I awoke and had a flurry of thoughts, insight and realization:

I recognized that in real life my mom often avoids pain by taking immediate action. For example, if I am upset it's very hard for her to be with me- it’s too sad and uncomfortable and she will do nearly anything to make me stop crying. She wants me to get up and calm down, be okay, just like I wanted her to do in the dream. I know that she loves me so much and it's painful for her to see me in pain. She just wants to make it stop. For both of our sakes.

Taking action to avoid pain is not necessarily a bad thing. At the same time, it can be a slippery slope of a habit. It can translate into habitual worry and anxiety.  If I don't want to sit with my pain, I can constantly externalize my experience to avoid my internal feelings. I can anxiously fixate on doing things, or get angry with other people for not doing things that I think are important. 

I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve anxiously cleaned when I’ve felt out of control. Or blamed people for stuff (Remember my discussion on Righteous Blame?), or worried about the future and tried to control it with checklists and planning.

Planning is not bad and being angry or hurt is not wrong. However, if we use planning to habitually avoid being present we can miss our life and stay stuck in the future, worried and anxious about what might happen. If we externalize our hurt by habitually blaming others we miss the opportunity to get present with ourselves, widen our perspective, and look deeply to gain valuable insight into the origin of our hurt. 

There are many other ways to avoid pain through action. They can include activities like reading, watching TV, eating, working, playing sports or checking social media sites. If I want to avoid my feelings I can focus on doing any number of distracting things instead.

Again, doing things is not bad. It can be helpful, though, to examine if and how we might use these things to avoid ourselves.

I have also avoided sadness, pain and fear when it came up in other people. I saw it as a sign of weakness, of feeling out of control and hopeless. It must have touched the sadness in me, which I didn’t want to be with, and thus I avoided it through the above mentioned habits.

Sometimes I pushed other people away when they were in pain.  I actually got angry with them: “Why are you so sad? Get over it. Life is good. Don’t cry. Don’t be so depressed.”  Ugh.

In my dream I told my mom I was giving up worrying because it was giving me migraines. My worry and anxiety were coping skills to avoid feeling fear and sadness. When I awoke I realized all the myriad ways I've perpetuated worry and anxiety for myself through my habits. I also realized how those habits were transmitted to me by my family.  Each of my ancestors developed their own coping skills to deal with the challenges and pains that arose in their lives. They did the best they could.

I thought of the song Sophia and I sang to each other at our wedding, and saw an image of me along with my fear and sadness by my side. I held hands with them like they were children, and they were beautiful, and I wanted to help them, acknowledge and love them instead of yell at them. We sang:

            Now I walk in beauty

            Beauty is before me

            Beauty is beside me

            Above and below me

Thich Nhat Hanh’s teaching on good mental circulation suddenly made even more sense. I have joy and happiness in me, but I also have fear and sadness, and it’s discrimination against myself to avoid some feelings and seek out others. The fear and sadness deserve space to be held and heard too. If I avoid them they stay in me, hard and silent, dark and stagnant, like a tumor. If I make gentle, loving space to acknowledge them, they have room to move, circulate and gently decompose. They can actually make compost- nourishment for the seeds of joy and happiness in me. Maybe one really can’t live without the other?  

If I transform the negative habits in me, I transform them on behalf of all those who came before me and all those who will come after me. I am the continuation of my mother and father, as well as all my blood and spiritual ancestors. I know that all my habits, good and bad, were passed to me by them. All the work that I'm doing now is work for both future and past generations. All the ability to do the work I'm doing is possible also because of what my ancestors gave me. There's nothing in me that did not come from them, and I'm so grateful for all the seeds and compost.