Throwing Out Your Garbage Using RAIN

That is what we are going to be looking at today.  How can we handle the hard.

 “We wait for stuff to get easier. It will never get easier. What happens is you handle hard better.” Kara Lawson, Duke University’s women’s basketball head coach

We push things down under the line, making it unconscious, because we don’t think we can deal with it. When we push it down, it covers our inner goodness with all this crap. It’s like a closet that you throw things in that you don’t want to deal with. To get to the one thing you do want in there, you have to empty out the closet.  So we want to get rid of all the junk you have thrown on top of your inner goodness. For me, that is what practice has been. Taking this mask off and getting rid of this brick (I use both mask and brick because sometimes things are too big to call a mask.) We can’t get rid of them by pushing them away. We and only get rid of them by dealing with them.

Life throws us a lot of curve balls. If we just sweep all those difficulties under the carpet, we have covered our true self up. It is covered with all the crap we have thrown below the line, all the stuff we thought we couldn’t deal with. And then because we don’t feel good we try to manipulate the world around us.

I have a friend who has been doing binge shopping. She is not feeling good inside, so she is trying to manipulate the outside to make herself feel better. As if new clothes are going to make her feel better. It can’t and it never will. Those difficult things are still going to be there under the line. And as long as they are in you, someone is going to press a button that triggers them.  You can’t keep yourself from getting triggered. What we need to do is deal with the difficulties.

How you handle difficulties can be a continuum from being overwhelmed and feeling helpless; maybe become a recluse because it is all too much. Some people prefer to ignore the facts and pretending it is no big deal. One of those little no big deals is going to be the straw that breaks the camels back. We still tell ourselves we are not going to deal with it, we are just going to let it go. We think we are letting it go, but what we are really doing is stuffing it below the line, covering up our inner goodness. The third way is feeling a little anxious which spurs us to action. We move from one spot on the continuum to another throughout the day. We basically have three choices, we bury our head in the sand and pretend the difficulty doesn’t exist, we continue being overwhelmed by the difficulty, or we can acknowledge our difficulty, process it and learn to deal with hard things.

“So, you’re using all this energy to hold it down. Now, because you’re so uncomfortable, and you’re not feeling love, you’re not feeling joy, you’re not feeling inspiration in life, and you’re feeling guilty, whatever the heck it is, you now have to use energy to figure out what to do to not have to deal with yourself.” Michael Singer

When we push all that stuff down, we are covering up all our joy, our love our inspiration for life. We are feeling like crap. And then we have to figure out what we are going to do to make ourselves feel better.

RAIN (Recognize-Allow-Investigate-Nurture) is the tool that I use to feel better. It works because you apply mindfulness and self-compassion to the hard things in your life.  Each step of RAIN helps you build inner strength by deconditioning the habitual ways in which you resist the difficult things.  

It doesn’t matter whether you resist “what is” by lashing out in anger, by getting drunk, or by getting immersed in obsessive thinking or my go to – busyness. Your attempt to control the life within and around you actually cuts you off from your own heart and from living in the present moment. We see the hurtful words of a friend, but we don’t see how that friend is suffering. We think she is a terrible person, when in reality she is really hurting.  I saw a meme on Factbook today that said don’t give someone a lecture when they need a hug. We end up giving ourselves lectures when we really need a hug.

When you bring RAIN directly to the experience of any difficulty, you’ll discover the vulnerability that drives it. You don’t think you are strong enough to deal with that vulnerability. But when you see it, you’ll awaken your capacity for self-compassion. This will naturally loosen the grip of selfishness or any other ego coverings that limit you. You are loosening the grip of all the stuff we have thrown on top of our true self.

So, our negative self-beliefs, even when deeply painful, often give us a sense of certainty and control. We don’t like uncertainty, so we don’t change. We think, I don’t know if meditation is really going to help so I am not going t bother. We can easily stay entranced for years and decades, perpetuating our sense of unworthiness with a habitual narrative of self-judgment and fear-based thinking. It is only when we directly open ourselves to the suffering of this difficulty—how it cuts us off from others and from our own heart and spirit, how we don’t have to believe we’re flawed—that we begin to intuit the freedom possible in shedding old skin.

I have talked about how my best friend dropped me in 7^th grade. I pushed is below the line. That cut me off from my heart and from other people for many years. I kept it below the line. Remember, everything below the line are thoughts that are included in the two to three thousand thoughts we have each hour. These thoughts are playing over and over, you just don’t know it.  Those thoughts were jerking me around for years until I finally stopped and looked at it. I saw it wasn’t so scary that she didn’t want to be my friend. I found another group of friends that were better suited to me.

If you scan your uncomfortable feelings, chances are you will notice that you have ignored a hard thing or turned on yourself when experiencing difficult times.  It could be an experience from your childhood. It could be that you did not take care of a relationship (or yourself) in a skillful way.  It may be that you lashed out in anger.  Maybe you were not careful, and you made a mistake.  Or you are at war with yourself for not being the person you really want to be. You are at war because you are not sitting in meditation as long as you think you should be. Or you are not communicating as skillfully as you should be.

Think about that as we look the four steps of RAIN: The four components of RAIN are: Recognize: What is happening inside and outside of me? Admit and Allow: Can I allow reality to be reality? Can I be with what is happening, just for a moment? Investigate: What is happening inside myself: my feelings, sensations, emotions, beliefs? Nurture: What does the hurting, frightened, wounded place inside of me need right now?

Recognize

Recognize means to simply become aware of what is happening right now, without rose colored or dark glasses.  Recognizing is shining the light of awareness on your inner life: your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Some of those thoughts are our inner critic judging us or repeating painfully constricting beliefs.  If we ignore it keeps poking us underneath. When we are poked unconsciously, we often feel uncomfortable sensations in our body, which we also ignore.  But those sensations are trying to communicate to us. For example, if you are constantly shaking your leg, that tells you there is some unconscious anxiety you need to deal with. While shaking the leg releases some of the anxious energy, the anxiety keeps feeding itself. We can use the uncomfortable sensations as a bell of mindfulness, telling us to be aware of our thoughts, beliefs, or feelings instead of sweeping them under the rug.

We begin recognizing by focusing our attention on whatever thoughts, emotions, feelings, or sensations are arising right here and now. Notice that some parts of your experience are easier to connect with than others. For example, when your body feels jittery, you might not recognize that this physical response is being triggered by your belief that you are about to fail. If you feel sensations of hollowness or shakiness, you may find a sense of unworthiness and shame buried. 

Awaken recognition simply by asking yourself: “What is happening inside me right now?”  Call on your natural curiosity as you focus inward. Try to let go of any preconceived ideas and instead listen in a kind, receptive way to your body and heart.

Admit and Allowing

“Denying or rejecting appropriate emotions in response to difficult situations can diminish your resilience and capacity to work with life’s challenges. The more you practice staying with your emotions, rather than forcing positive thinking, the more you will trust your ability to fully inhabit all your emotions.” David Emerald & Donna Zajonc

When you fight against reality, you always lose. We need to see clearly that the external world is not meeting our wishes and accept that we cannot change it.  We concede that we cannot control the external world, but we can control our reaction to it. We stop fighting what is real, so we can learn from it and choose how to respond. We admit that reality is not what we want it to be, and we allow the thoughts, emotions, feelings or sensations we feel to be there. We may feel a natural sense of aversion, of wishing that unpleasant feelings would go away, but as we become more willing to be present with “what is,” a different quality of attention will emerge. Admitting and allowing is intrinsic to healing, and realizing this can give rise to a conscious intention to “let be.”

“So first, own it. Don’t blame it on anybody. You own that you weren’t able to deal with things well enough.” Michael Singer

“First, first, you get a center where you notice I can handle this discomfort. Not I can make it go away.” Michael Singer

It is really hard to just let unpleasant sensations or thought be.  You may want to whisper an encouraging phrase.  You may say, “Yes, this is happening.” Or “this to” or “I can be with this.”  At first you might feel you’re just “putting up” with unpleasant emotions or sensations. Or you might say “yes” to shame and hope that it will magically disappear. In reality, we have to consent again and again. Yet even the first gesture of allowing, simply whispering a phrase like “yes” or “I can be with this” begins to soften the harsh edges of your pain. Your entire being is not so resistant. Offer the phrase gently and patiently, and in time your defenses will relax, and you may feel a physical sense of yielding or opening to waves of experience.

“My favorite phrase is, ‘I can handle it.’ If you can handle something, it’s not a big deal. When you feel you can’t handle something, that’s when it becomes a big deal.” Michael Singer

Investigate

Sometimes, simply working through the first two steps of RAIN is enough to provide relief and reconnect you with presence.  However, if you are in the middle of difficulties – the thick of a divorce, dealing with a difficult partner, sibling or friend or dealing with a life-changing or threatening illness, you are likely to be overwhelmed by intense feelings. Because these feelings are triggered repeatedly, your reactions can become very entrenched.

“So, you store them inside of you. So now you look at that part of your being with compassion, with love, with understanding.” Michael Singer

To Investigate, call on your natural curiosity to see what is really going on. This is not an intellectual analysis that will leave you feeling drained.  If you feel drained, you are too much in your head. Investigating is letting your mind rest, so it is not so cloudy. What clouds our mind? Pettiness, jealousy, entitlement or envy to name a few.

“Open to a wider, more impersonal, big picture view of the situation – so it’s less about you and more about lots of swirling causes coming together in unfortunate ways. See if any kind of deeper insight about the other person, yourself, or the situation altogether comes to you.” Rick Hanson

Don’t analyze the situation, who said what and why – that only strengthens your neuropathways of being the victim. Instead, notice what is underneath the feelings. We all have a natural resistance to feeling uncomfortable and unsafe. So, we busy ourselves with our thinking mind, leaving our body.  Instead of accepting what is and figuring out what we need, we judge what is happening.

We begin by investigating ourselves, so we can let the mud settle and see more clearly. Investigation means calling on your natural curiosity and directing a more focused attention to your present experience.  You might ask yourself:

• What feelings and sensations are strong? Do your shoulders tighten? Does your jaw lock down? How does your stomach feel? The most important part of investigating is connecting with what it feels like in your body. That will help you be aware of the difficulty arising in the future. 
• What happens in your mind? Do you run revenge scenarios through your imagination? Do you replay arguments with the accused, saying what you wish you had said at the time? Does it make you feel important?
• What are the honest feelings in your heart? Not just the anger, but what about the fear, shame, helplessness, hurt, or sadness that sits just under that rage?”
• Widen the investigation by asking: What am I believing? How has living with this belief affected my life? Can you see its impact on how you relate to yourself and others, on your creativity, your capacity to serve, your ability to enjoy experience, your inner growth? How tightly are you holding onto that belief? Can you loosen your hold a little?
• What is my intention: to tear others down and be “one-up” or to try to improve the situation?
• What do you most long for right now? Attention? Safety? Acceptance? Connection? Understanding? Love?

Nurture

Nurture is providing self-compassion to ourselves.  We can train ourselves to allow self-compassion to arise naturally when we recognize we are suffering. By nurturing ourselves with self-care, it gives us the strength to face uncomfortable emotions and helps us realize that we are not alone. To nurture ourselves we do have to let go of the belief that we do not deserve to be nurtured.

Nurturing is sensing what the wounded, frightened or hurting place inside you most needs, and then offer some gesture of active care that might address this need.  Think about how you would treat a loved one or valued friend in the same situation.  Then offer the same kind words or gestures to yourself. That may be reassurance, forgiveness, companionship, understanding or love. You may choose to mentally whisper to yourself one of the following phrases (recommended by Tara Brach). I’m here with you. I’m sorry, and I love you. I love you, and I’m listening. It’s not your fault. Trust in your goodness.

To Nurture, ask the question: What does the hurting, frightened, wounded place inside of you need right now?

We discussed RAIN in a specific order. But you don’t always take the steps in order. If you are dealing with small irritations and mildly unpleasant emotions, you probably take the steps in order. Sometimes you only need to Recognize and Admit and Allow.  However, when you are dealing with something overwhelming, you may need to bounce from one to the other. For example, if you are on the overwhelmed side of the anxiety continuum you may not have the ability to Recognize all you are feeling. You may need to start with Nurture. If you can’t move from Recognize to Admit and Allow, letting those feelings to be, you may need to do some Investigation before you can Allow them to be.

If you want to handle your difficulties, rather than stuff them below the line and carry them around for the rest of your life, you need to Recognize what you are feeling, Admit and Allow reality and your feelings about it to be what they are, Investigate what most needs attention and Nurture yourself with self-care.