The two wings of growth

Siddhattha Gotama (the Buddha) was a seriously smart dude.

He didn't have access to research facilities, neuroimaging technology, psychotherapeutic training or the DSM (the manual for diagnosing mental disorders). He achieved penetrating insight into what it means to be a human, out of sheer, singular attention. The incredible insights he gained from his awakening were the fruits of profound noticing!

Gotama noticed that there were two essential elements of growth towards awakening (or dharma practice as Buddhist types call it): insight and serenity. (It just so happens that meditation practices fall broadly into these two buckets, but I'll post on that another day.)

The reality of this was clear to me last week when I was listening to a friend of mine who's going through a very tough time. Her introduction to the conversation:

I just can't believe this shit-show! Honestly, I sometimes think I can't keep going!

About a year ago this friend was abandoned by her husband of 15 years who, upon turning 50 found himself thrashing around in a classic midlife crisis. Even before he moved out he was on several dating apps, going out every night meeting new women. He then moved out, started helicopter flying lessons, bought himself a flash new car and procured hair plugs.

My friend and her daughter have been, understandably, hit for six by this.

For much of the past year, she has been in overwhelm, not helped by also having an ailing mother and her job becoming redundant. She has been in coping mode, just trying to keep herself functioning as a person and a mother.

I've been really impressed with her on this front, doing what helps to keep her keel in the water. She's been getting some counselling but also using exercise as one of her key coping tactics with regular yoga and visits to the gym. She reaches out to me when she needs to talk.

Last week we had a long chat and I found myself reflecting back to her that while she's doing a good job of the serenity wing of growth, she's still stuck in the same place she was a year ago on the insight wing.

She's flying lopsided, and when that happens we fly around and around in circles.

It's not that the insights haven't been available, we've touched on many of them in our conversations. But these insights can be painful to truly absorb, and she hasn't been willing yet, to really sit with them, because to do that she needs to be willing to feel fully the pain she's afraid of feeling.

Again, it's understandable! She's had a lot of pain in the last year. Of course she's feeling aversive to more. The problem is, there's productive pain and there's reactive pain. She's been stuck in reactive pain, going around and around telling the same stories about the situation - I just can't understand why he'd do this; listing off examples of how out of control he is etc. She's stuck in righteous anger and the pain of being a victim, which to some extent she truly is.

Again, anger and collapse are totally understandable. They're not helpful though. Indeed I think they are the primary culprits for keeping her stuck in reactivity. But they probably feel better in the moment than the pain of powerlessness, sadness and grief - both for losing her husband and life partner, as well as her vision of what her future was going to look like. They probably feel better than the fears that might be lurking about loneliness or un-lovability, or failure or unworthiness.

The stories playing on loop are all resistance. They're ways of avoiding feeling what's there under the anger. And there's a saying in therapeutic circles that what we resist persists.

Sometimes we need to let go of serenity in order to gain insight. We need to cultivate enough calm first so that we can walk into some turbulence and keep going, but then we need to take off the floaties. We need to be willing to feel those highly unpleasant feelings - fear, grief, powerlessness - in order to look our demons in the eye. Until we are willing to do that, we can't truly know them. And it's knowing them that produces the insight.

This is productive pain. And productive pain offers the possibility of movement, of dialing down the fears and allowing us to move through the experience. We're fully capable of doing this if only we'd be willing to stop blocking it out and actually have it.

Like in the picture below, we need to invite our demon in for a tea party. You can see the girl isn't looking thrilled about this tea party - she's not exactly having a ball. But she's there, fully attentive, having invited the demon in, poured it a cup of tea, and is intent on knowing it.

The demon's feeling a bit like a fish out of water too. It's not used to being invited in, it's much more comfortable rustling around in the bushes outside. So we need to help it feel safe - to let it know we are here to know it fully, as it is. It's expecting us to show it to the door any second. We need to engage our spiritual warrior courage and be fully present and committed to understanding it, not just go through the motions while waiting for it to leave.

Inviting our demon in for a tea party

It's through doing this that our body-minds learn that the fear and pain is not as dangerous as we thought. Painful maybe, but not an existential threat, which is what we mistake it for while ducking and weaving and blocking it out. By looking it in the eye, we can right-size the fear. We stop reacting to the shadow-monster and look at the object casting the shadow. We realise that object is just a hand. It's nowhere near as scary as the shadow had us believe.

When we do this with 100% commitment, and the true intention of getting to know our demon (rather than scanning hopefully for signs it's going to split), something shifts. We don't make that shift happen directly, it happens naturally when we've done a thorough and wholehearted job of getting to know our demon.

This is productive pain - pain that produces a different experience of our life. A lighter one of greater ease and freedom - of less stuckness, heaviness and angst.

The word that's often translated as rebirth in Gotama's teachings is punabbhava. It literally means again becoming. We can think of it as repetitive existence. This is what happens to us when we're stuck in reactivity. We allow the same mind activity to play on loop, it generates more stress, pain and reactivity, which sends the loop off again on its vicious cycle. We're stuck. We don't have full access to our competence and creativity. We're ensnared, fettered, chained.

My friend actually noticed this about her experience. She's a very smart, capable person but she noticed she couldn't bring her proficiencies to bear in this situation. This is a telltale sign that we're either overwhelmed or stuck in reactivity.

To get out this cycle we need both wings of growth practice - insight and serenity. One without the other sends us flying in that circle of stuckness.

My friend seemed receptive to me sharing this insight about her process. She then asked me how she can stop resisting; how does she face the demon?

My answer to that is, in her instance, to find a good therapist to help her do it (the one she's been using has retired). Tea parties with demons are possible on our own if we're skilled in personal growth and have a good process for it (I have a tool available here for exactly that called Inviting our Demons in for a Tea Party - the snip above is taken from it). I use this process myself when I notice strong reactivity arising and it's very powerful.

But when we are in true overwhelm as my friend is, we can need some help navigating the depths and contours of the mud puddle we need to walk into - the conversation with our demon - and to hold the space for us - to ground us, be an anchor, a support, and a guide to help us through the storm. This is where a skilled psychologist or psychiatrist can help (not just any old 'therapist' many of whom are great at the empathy thing but not so good at helping people shift their experience).

How well balanced is your growth practice? Do you attend to both insight and serenity - calm, grounded equanimity - as well as being a courageous spiritual warrior, willing to look your difficulties and fears in the eye? Or are you flying around in circles, giving birth to the repetitive experiences of reactivity?