Loosening Our Attachment to Preferences: Difficult mind states
I don’t know about you, but sometimes trying to understand the human mind can leave my head spinning. This morning I found myself contemplating some of the various aspects of the human mind, especially two powerful preferential mind states… like and dislike, pleasant and unpleasant.
Most of the time we are so lost in thought we don't even realize how much force these two states exert in our lives. But when we begin to be mindful, we see that whatever we are thinking and feeling can in someway be traced back to an initial place and time in which consciousness and object first met.
Let's unpack this for a moment. As soon as our mind makes contact with an external experience, preference arises. For example, I was walking down the street this morning and I noticed a bright red cardinal fly by. As soon as consciousness arose, the mind labeled the experience as pleasant. Next, a smile came to my face. I felt gratitude for having the opportunity to see this bird.
So, If the mind finds an experience pleasant, we think "I like this". From this preference we began to move toward the experience, even wanting more of it. From this place of pleasantness many of us try to sustain contact with the experience, quickly forgetting the law of impermanence. For many of us the next experience is one of longing… longing for more of what the mind finds pleasant. When this preferential state gets out of control we began to experience craving and greed. In the extreme, we may even find ourselves doing things that are against our values simply to get more of what has been felt originally as "pleasant".
On the flip side, if the mind finds the external experience unpleasant, the immediate thought is "I don't like this." And, from this place we began to back up, move away. If the external experience involves another person our experience can become complicated by all of the stories that begin going through our head about that person and about ourselves, not to mention all of the difficult emotions that we begin to feel.
When we experience difficult emotions in interpersonal circumstances, most of us get lost in focusing on the other person. Why did they do that? What were they thinking?
In addition, we may get stuck in the feeling state that has arisen such as anger, irritation, or annoyance. I'm so mad. I am so irritated. I'm so annoyed. When we get stuck here, we go round and round experiencing the emotion over and over. You may have realized that spending too much time in either one of these places unfortunately doesn't produce results that lead you back to peace of mind. When dealing with difficult emotions, there is actually a third option that has much more promise of returning you to peace of mind.
You can choose to spend time looking at how the mind is relating to the emotion. As you shift into this awareness. new questions can open up. For example, if you are feeling angry you can ask "how does this anger feel in the body", paying close attention to the raw body sensations. Label the sensations… tightness in the gut, constriction in the throat, coldness around the heart. You can also ask "how is this feeling hooking me right now and taking me away from peace of mind?"
As you make this shift to looking at your mind's relationship to the particular feeling state, you are no longer sending out strings of blame that keep you bonded to the external situation. You are now free to look at what you have some ability to heal and transform.
This transformation involves a shifting in your perspective. You move to a place of taking responsibility for what arises in your own mind and what happens to you internally and interpersonally as you get hooked into a certain feeling state.
As human beings, it is very easy for all of us to get caught up in blaming and believing that our feelings/thoughts are reflecting some truth with a capital "T"! As you practice moving your focus and energy from the external situation/other person to your own mind's relationship to the feeling, you begin to sense freedom. As you do this more and more (and it takes practice) you change your long-standing interpersonal patterns. Life with others becomes a little easier and peace of mind becomes more available to you.