Many years ago a friend shared Pema Chödrön’s book, When Things Fall Apart – Heart Advice for Difficult Times. I was facing a significant life crossroad, and while my friend knew Chödrön’s writing would help me, she had no idea how relevant her teachings would be to me.
She begins one of her earlier chapters with this statement: “Generally speaking, we regard discomfort in any form as bad news. But for practitioners or spiritual warriors—people who have a certain hunger to know what is true—feelings like disappointment, embarrassment, irritation, resentment, anger, jealously, and fear, instead of being bad news, are actually very clear moments that teach us to perk up and lean in when we feel we’d rather collapse and back away. They’re like messengers that show us, with terrifying clarity, exactly where we’re stuck.
This very moment is the perfect teacher, and luckily for us, it’s with us wherever we are.
Each day, we’re given many opportunities to open up or shut down. The most precious opportunity presents itself when we come to the place where we think we can’t handle whatever is happening. It’s too much. It’s gone too far. We feel bad about ourselves. There’s no way we can manipulate the situation to make ourselves look good. No matter how hard we try, it just won’t work. Basically, life has just nailed us.
It’s as if you just looked at yourself in the mirror, and you saw a gorilla.
The mirror’s there; it’s showing you, and what you see looks bad. You try to angle the mirror so you will look a little better, but no matter what you do, you still look like a gorilla. That’s being nailed by life, the place where you have no choice except to embrace what’s happening or push it away.”
Many years ago, I found myself avoiding, running away, sticking my head in the sand – basically being unconscious to the “bad life stuff” that happened to me. I didn’t know how to see these experiences as teachings. I typically saw the other person as being wrong—totally disagreeing with what they did or said to me. I’d think, “How dare they!” Then I’d call a friend who would agree with me and say, “Yes, he or she is a jerk. You’re absolutely right!”
Notice how we pay plenty of attention to the negative thought patterns that seek us out day in and day out. Try as we may, that little voice in our head won’t let us get rid of those thoughts. It has a power all its own and we can’t seem to quiet it. We want to ease the pain…and right now, please! It’s like we’re on automatic pilot. Pema, however, invites us to take a different perspective: to be open, relax, and lean in.
So how do we work with our minds when we are “being nailed by life?” First of all, let your emotions feel what they feel. I remember once telling someone, “I can’t feel this way!” She said, “Well you do anyway, so go ahead and feel it.” In other words, don’t just reject or deny it. Rather than look for escape, move toward the pain as best as you can. To quote Pema: “Let it pierce you to the heart.”
Pema shares an arrow and flower metaphor and concept that I found intriguing and now, in most situations, successfully use it in my life. All of us have felt emotionally attacked in one way or other, perhaps betrayed, or confused. You may have found yourself in a situation that felt unbearable or unacceptable. Now, imagine that someone has just hit you with an arrow. The arrow represents the attack, be it betrayal, unkind words, disappointment, or something similar.
The arrow strikes and pierces your heart. Now, rather than strike back in counterattack, with an equal attack, you remove the arrow and allow it to change into a flower. The arrow represents pain, and the flower represents openness. With this openness you become curious and aware of what’s happening within the scene. You ask:
● What can I learn from this pain?
● Has this happened to me before?
● What is life asking me to do differently?
● What’s my role in this?
● What is the truth here?
● How can I best let go?
In my personal life, I have learned to lean into the pain, get accustomed to it, make friends with it. I was able to see how I was a player in the drama and how I was keeping it alive. I took my attention off the other person, or the situation, and focused it on what lessons I could learn. I paused to answer these questions that allowed me the time and space to work through what I needed to process. I changed the pain of the arrow (metaphorically speaking) into a flower, seeing the many gifts the lessons represented.
Was this easy? Absolutely not. A friend and I were talking the other day and he commented on what is easy in life. Not going to work out is easy. Not drinking eight glasses of water each day is easy. Not saying I love you and thank you enough is easy.
What is not easy is to live in truth.
I get knocked down and it hurts. However, I don’t get knocked down very often now and when I do, I don’t stay down very long. And I get stronger. Remember three words here: frequency, duration, and intensity. Knock-down life events are infrequent, the repeating voices don’t occupy mind-heart space for long, and these feelings are much less intense.
I have come to understand that life is about death, right here, every day on this planet. The word death, like sex, money, and politics, is a one of those charged words. But I think it describes perfectly what has to happen inside us. I mean the death-ofthoughts that reflect negative conditioning and beliefs that do not serve us. Every day we can, indeed we must, choose the thoughts we let in and the ones we keep out. Rather than dwell on painful thoughts, we can use them as a way to awaken us, to make friends with our hopes and fears, again and again. To be more awake in the midst of chaos.
A good friend made a remarkable comment. She said, “It’s okay to be angry in your mind. It’s not okay to be angry in your heart.” When anger hits the heart, it becomes very destructive. At that point, forgiveness is impossible.
Remember: This very moment is the perfect teacher, and it’s always with you. You can choose the arrow or the flower. I’ve changed many arrows into flowers and will do that for the rest of my life! For me, that is the only choice!