by David Kundtz
I learned a lesson about this from my mother. I was a newly ordained priest and trying very hard to get it all right, which got twisted into taking myself too seriously. After mass one morning, while on a visit home, my mother introduced me to two small children who were clearly afraid of me as I went to shake their hands. They pulled away and held on to their mother. It was politely overlooked by everyone, but later my mother said to me in her quiet way, “Perhaps you were acting a bit severe.” I clearly remember her word: severe. This was my gentle mother's understated way of saying, “Lighten up, you're not all that important!” Had I been Stopped enough to have recognized my own overseriousness and been able to lighten up, the children would have sensed it immediately and there could have been a soulful connection rather than a distancing space.
Stopping is time spent with ourselves, especially the longer times of Stopovers and Grinding Halts, that we all need in order to keep our perspective and not take ourselves too seriously.
Writer Mark Matousek tells of a wonderful moment in his life that demonstrates this idea. For half an hour he was trying to explain his spirituality to his friend, expounding on all the intricacies of self and no-self, on liberation and enlightenment, and on the teachings of inspiring gurus and saints. When he was finished, his friend, after a long pause, smiled and asked, “Do you mean kindness?”
G. K. Chesterton, British novelist and poet, captures this idea wonderfully: “The reason angels can fly is that they take themselves so lightly.”
Stopping says “No!” to the voices that say “It's selfish to take time for yourself”;“Life is by its very nature a grimly serious affair”; and “Laugh at others' foibles but not at your own.” In this way, Stopping is countercultural. It is not afraid to say “No” and say it strongly. It encourages you to discover your own voice, your own priorities, your own wisdom, and your own fun.
The problems we have with Stopping are generally not intellectual problems. Often we know exactly what is good for us and what, given our best moment, we would choose. Our problem is the one St. Paul groused about in his letter to the community in Rome: “Those things I wish to do, I do not; those I wish to avoid, those I do” (Rom. 7:17–19). Stopping is a way to assure that the things you want are the things you actually do.
Speaking of St. Paul, here's another opportunity to remember to be patient with yourself as you go about incorporating Stopping into your life. Paul was so hurried, driven, and workoriented that he had to be Stopped. He was literally knocked off his horse to the ground and made blind so that he had to spend Stopover-time in Damascus doing nothing, in order to become more fully awake and remember who he was. Sound familiar? When he did awaken and remember, his vision returned and he changed the world.
I've lived! I've got to find out what to do now!
AGNES GOOCH IN Auntie Mame
35
“I'm Afraid!”
“I am afraid of the whole world,” said poet Pablo Neruda. “Fear of life is the favorite disease of the twentieth century,” said writer William Lyon Phelps. So as we move our energy and our focus down to our roots, the first feeling we are likely to experience is fear.
I wonder if you know that wonderful scene from the movie Auntie Mame in which the comical and trouble-prone Agnes Gooch, played by Peggy Cass, painfully pregnant and bewildered, bumbles up the stairs in search of Auntie Mame and says in all her innocent confusion, “Well I've lived! I've got to find out what to do now!?” Her question rises out of the place of fear that we all carry with us at our roots.
If there is any idea that is common to all systems of wisdom, religion, and philosophy, it is the truth that the greatest challenge of one's life is oneself. Fear? Of course. Again the poet sees what we all need to see. In this case, let's look at what Pablo Neruda sees. Read the following poem aloud, if your situation allows; reading it aloud will tend to slow it down and bring it home to you.
Fearby Pablo Neruda
Everyone is after me to exercise,
get in shape, play football,
rush about, even go swimming and flying.
Fair enough.
Everyone is after me to take it easy.
They all make doctor's appointments for me,
eyeing me in that quizzical way.
What is it?
Everyone is after me to take a trip,
to come in, to leave, not to travel,
to die and, alternatively, not to die.
It doesn't matter.
Everyone is spotting oddnesses
in my innards, suddenly shocked
by radio-awful diagrams.
I don't agree with them.
Everyone is picking at my poetry
with their relentless knives and forks,
trying, no doubt, to find a fly.
I am afraid.
I am afraid of the whole world,
afraid of cold water, afraid of death.
I am as all mortals are,
unable to be patient.
And so, in these brief, passing days,
I shall put them out of my mind.
I shall open up and imprison myself
with my most treacherous enemy,
Pablo Neruda.
What does Neruda tell us about fear? Here's how the poem gets into my head: Everyone is trying to give me advice. Do this, do that! Don't do this, don't do that! I know I'm sick, but I'm still here and I'm still in charge! So I will ignore all of you and do what is most important at a time like this: face my fears and face what has always been my most serious challenge—me.
Between the lines (Remember the spaces between the notes? It's where the most interesting things happen.) I picture Neruda with his wise old face, leaning close to us and whispering into our ears: “I am writing this for you, the one who's reading it. Do it now. Spend time with yourself now, while you still can.”
This part of the book takes Neruda's words to heart and Agnes Gooch's question seriously. We will lock ourselves up with our most double-crossing enemies, us, and we will answer Agnes's question, “Now what!?” Let's form the question like this: “Now that I am Stopped, even for a moment, how do I assure myself that I will be okay and that I will not have to face more than I can deal with?
Stopping will feel safe when fears no longer have their way with you. The fears will not necessarily be gone but they will not be in control. And it is, paradoxically, by moving into your fears that you will move out of them.
That paradox is the goal here, to move out of our fears by first moving into them. Moving into them involves three simple processes: noticing, naming, and narrating. Your fears will gradually diminish and lose their power over you as you learn these three processes. First notice, or note, your fears and take them into account; then name your fears; and then narrate, or tell your story of these fears to someone else.
Recall the story of Naaman. He was the general who was hesitant to cure his illness by following the prophet's advice to wash seven times in the river because it seemed too simple and silly to him. Now is a good time to recall the lesson of the story: to respect the power of simple acts. Please don't underestimate the power of these simple acts of the soul: noticing, naming, and narrating.
Silent, hidden enemies are more to be fearedthan those that are openly expressed.
CICERO, 106–43, B.C.E.
36
Seeing the Enemy
What's the first thing you notice as you are practicing Stopping? Well, if you are like me, what you'll notice is that your body might be Stopped but your mind goes racing on. And does it race! Sometimes it seems that my mind has a mind of its own. The internal chatter seems endless.
Currently there is a clever advertising creation on television that tries to sell us batteries. It's a mechanical bunny that never stops marching, but just keeps going and going and going . . . and banging its drum, implying, of course, that its batteries are long-lasting.
This advertising animal is an apt metaphor for all the internal c
hatter, the “tapes” that don't stop playing in your head, and the noise in your mind. Like the bunny, your noisy self-talk just keeps on going, whether you are aware of it or not, whether you are listening or not, and even whether you seem to care or not. And, like the bunny, the chatter goes on willy-nilly, without apparent course, without care for what it's bumping into, and seemingly without end. This tireless bunny is very much a clown. It's purpose almost always is to act as a cover, that is, something that distracts you so that you won't attend to something else—like facing your fears.
So notice it. Just notice it. From this moment on, from time to time, and whenever it occurs to you, notice what your internal chatter is saying.
By noticing it, you will gain just a bit of control over it and maybe even quiet it down occasionally. Quieting the noise of internal chatter is a goal of Stopping and—understanding this was a breakthrough for me—this is a goal no one can ever fully accomplish. It is a challenging task, a part of what Jack Kornfield in A Path with Heart, calls “stopping the war” we carry within us. Saints, monks, and spiritual masters all tell us that they are still working on it, so we have to be easy on ourselves. Even if we still it, the chatter will come back. That's the nature of being human.
Here are some questions for your internal noise: Is your chatter in the form of actual words and sentences? Does it have the real voice of someone you know? Maybe a parent, a boss, or a friend? Does it happen more on certain occasions than on others? Is your chatter more like pictures or movie scenes that keep running through your head? Maybe your chatter takes the form of “worry cycles,” which are, as Herbert Benson describes in Beyond the Relaxation Response, “unproductive . . . circuits that cause the mind to ‘play’ over and over . . . the same . . . uncreative, health-impairing thoughts.” What is the content of your chatter? Work, family, relationship, or trivia? Just notice it and, please, notice it without judgment.
Noticing means that you do not place a value judgment on yourself for whatever you are noticing. And this is true for all of your Stopping experiences. Whatever comes up, the first thing to do is just let it come up and let it be. That's noticing. I am often tempted to allow judgment to jump right in and ruin it all. The judgment of I shouldn't be having all that internal noise is about as appropriate as I shouldn't have brown eyes. The noise is just there, that's all. And it's morally neutral; no guilt and no virtue are involved. For those who have been raised in highly structured religious systems, not judging ourselves for experiences and feelings that come on their own can be a challenge.
My own internal chatter is often musical. It can drive me crazy. It happens most often when I am alone, especially when I am walking, which I love to do and do often. I am out, walking briskly, wanting to let go the cares of work and the rest of the day's affairs, and enjoying the physical world. Then the damn music starts. It's in my head, it's not restful, and I find it very difficult to stop. The music can be anything: maybe some piece I just heard on the radio; maybe—I really hate this—an advertising slogan; or maybe a theme from Beethoven's Sixth. Anything.
What the masters tell me is: “Just notice it, David. That's all. Just notice it.” Noticing it is valuable. Noticing it is effective. Noticing it is more powerful than it might at first appear. By noticing your internal chatter, you are weakening its need to exist and letting it know that it's not as powerful as it thinks. As Dawn Groves puts it, in Meditation for Busy People, “Simply observe the waterfall of thought.” Any enemy—in this case the negative chatter that is working against us—that has been spotted is in a much weaker position than when it had the power of being hidden or unnoticed. Now, ambush is not possible.
What you'll no doubt notice about noticing is that it is also a way of creating a Stillpoint. Add a basic breath or two and focus on the nature of your chatter. This can be a way you do most of your Stillpoints as you bring Stopping into your daily life.
As your internal chatter calms down a bit, what might possibly become more clear are your fears, because those are what the clown of internal chatter is trying to cover and to keep you from noticing so they can continue to have their way with you.
So the next thing is to notice your fears. Just notice them. That's all. Noticing is the opposite of repression or pushing away fears. Instead, it is turning and acknowledging them: Oh, yes, I am afraid of people who talk loudly, I am afraid of heights, of dogs, of dark, and isolated places . . .
I want to say this about fears: don't be surprised if there are none! In my experience with people in therapy, that happens a lot. The fears they expected to find when they turned and faced themselves simply were not there. They can truthfully say, along with Henry David Thoreau, “Nothing is so much to be feared as fear.” Eighty years later FDR would say the same thing in his first inaugural address: “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”
“I thought that all these monsters would jump out at me from my deep, dark psychic pool,” said my client Roger as he was exploring why his relationships didn't seem to work out as he hoped. In Roger's case, the realization that there were no horrible monsters hiding in wait for him gave him a great deal of confidence, which indeed changed his way of relating to people. It's not that he didn't have any fears at all—we're all afraid of something—but that the fears that were there were not uncontrollable monsters, but just garden-variety fears that he could handle.
Some clients will casually mention a secret and fearful part of their current or past life with the idea, often unspoken, of seeing how I react and to test to see if this is something they should really be afraid of. When I nod in understanding or say something like, “Yes, many people have those kinds of experiences,” you can almost detect an audible sigh of relief as the possibly serious fear becomes a manageable part of their life.
But let's say that you indeed find some fears. What would noticing them look like? How would one go about noticing fears? If you were to eavesdrop on my mind as I considered my fears before leaving the priesthood, you would have heard something like this: I am afraid of losing the values that have supported my entire life up to this point; Am I losing my faith?; I fear breaking my solemn, public vows; What will my family and colleagues think of me?; I fear being a failure and being called a failed priest; I am afraid that I will not be able to support myself since this is all I am trained to do; Will I meet someone with whom I will be able to build a lifelong relationship?; Is that even what I want to do?; and, I feel very “out of it” in this area, and dating scares me to death. Believe me the list could go on. I could have said as Neruda said, “I am afraid. I am afraid of the whole world.”
During my month-long Grinding Halt, I was able to notice my fears. I just let them come and noted their presence. I logged them, saying, “there's one,” “there's another,” and “here's another one too.” They just came on their own because I was not covering them. I knew they were there, and they “knew” I knew.
Noticing is like being open: you simply take in the information, and mark the presence of, be aware of, note, and store the data. I know you will find that noticing will be more powerful for you than you expected.
HOBBES: When you're confronted with the stillness ofnature, you can even hear yourself think.
CALVIN: This is making me nervous. Let's go in.
BILL WATTERSON, Calvin and Hobbes
37
Owning Your Fear
Step two is to name your fears. By naming, I mean any process by which you talk to or talk about your internal chatter and hidden fears. Naming can include actually giving fear a name (“Your name is ‘Fear Of Failure!’”), talking to your internal chatter in order to calm it down (“Will you be quiet, please!”), or changing the words you use to talk about them (instead of “I have a terrible temper and it scares me” say, “How do I want to focus this immense power?”). Naming often involves personifying the feelings as if they were individuals, making them “persons” in order to interact with them. That automatically happens when you talk to the
m: “Hello, Fear of Disapproval, here you are again”; “Oh, here's Fear of Being a Bad Leader, she's an old friend”; “Oh no, it's you, Fear of the Worst Thing Happening, I thought you were gone for good!”
Naming is important because it gives you power over the thing named. Just as when you name a pet or a boat or—especially— your own child, you thus assume a position of power and responsibility over it, so with naming internal noises and fears.
By naming you also are accepting ownership. In effect, you are saying, “These are my internal noises. I acknowledge and accept that they are my fears and no one else's.” Think of it: if they belong to you, as indeed they do, then you can have power over them.
Noises named and fears addressed are noises and fears weakened. Now, you have them; they don't have you.
Here's one way I use naming: My internal, unasked-for, running commentary—or unrequested musical interlude—often has the effect of making me mad. I get tired of it and exasperated. Actually, there are times when I feel like clobbering that running bunny, both the one on TV and the one in my head. So when I begin to feel that way, I stop, breathe, and notice—a Stillpoint. I continue to notice. Then I do the naming. For example, I'll talk to my internal chatter and music. What I most often say comes from my father.
