The art of doing nothing

Enlightenment comes in many shapes and sizes. The classic story of St. Paul on the road to Damascus, or the Buddha sitting under the Bodhi tree, or  Sir Isaac Newton getting hit  on the head with an apple, come to mind as examples of  insights that changed the course of history. 

Photo by Drew Coffman on Unsplash 

  

But for most of us, insights come in more modest packaging. And  like the previous examples, they can come after months or years of preparation.  Suddenly, one day, we see something differently that changes our lives. 

I recall a moment  many years ago,  when something I knew intellectually, abstractly, I suddenly knew with my whole being.  

One of my own breakthroughs came as I was sitting on a noisy bus. 

I had been struggling with anxiety, and here I was again, feeling jittery.  And then, it hit me: I don't have to do anything. I can just let these feelings be there. 

Bam. 

Years of striving to find the right  way to cope with my emotions  just seemed to fall away-- at least for the moment.  All this struggling to fix things  was in fact, part of the problem. 

The real strategy was no strategy....not doing anything. And this non-doing was a revelation for me. 

In their wonderful book, Embracing the fear, Judith Bemis and Amr Barrada, outline several paradoxes on the road  to overcoming panic and anxiety. And one of those paradoxes  is  this: don't  try to fix it or get rid of  anxiety.  Accept it.  Allow it to be there.  

I also learned that emotions are transitory- they will pass.  (Some experts say that the average emotion sticks around about 90 seconds, unless we continue to feed it with our thoughts.)And by not doing anything, we shorten their life span.

 This isn't to say emotions should always be ignored. They may have important information, that we need to listen to - at times. We might even have to take action (e-motion) to change something. 

Although the word mindfulness was never used in Judith's  book, it wonderfully fleshed out one of its key attitudes:  non-doing. This may be the most subtle aspect of mindfulness practice -beautifully outlined by Jon Kabat-Zinn in his classic work, Full Catastrophe Living. 

The tricky part is that mindfulness can seem  like doing: you learn a bunch of "activities" and exercises  to deal with stress and anxiety- and hope that after a while, your  pain or troubles all go away. 

Oops. 

The real aim of mindfulness, like Judith's book, is not to make anything "go away." It is to change our response to difficult feelings and thoughts. The approach,  paradoxically, is to stop trying to always  fix things or  make them  "better." 

And for me, this took a long time to understand on a gut level. Like most teachers, I'm a fixer. I think, plan and problem solve all day- and sometimes at night, too. 

The other wonderful thing about Judith's book (and the metta  part of mindfulness practice), is the way it teaches us to replace the negative and critical self-talk  with kind and compassionate way of talking to ourselves. Again, this isn't achieved over night. It takes a long time to ingrain this new way of speaking to yourself. 

But  if we don't really have to do anything about our emotions or thoughts, why do mindfulness  at all? 

For some, mindfulness as a formal practice may not be necessary. Just the "accept and allow" attitude may be enough. Or people have other ways they've found to cope. There are probably as many methods of dealing with fear as there are people. 

However, habits, both mental and physical, can be deeply ingrained. "Not doing" can be a whole new way of approaching your experience, and it can take practice.

Mindfulness  is  one way to interrupt our patterns, and insert  new ones, like focusing on the present moment; taking some breaths; or saying some kind words to yourself. Slowing down. Being still. 

And if mindfulness is understood in the more general sense of self-awareness, it is definitely a necessary step for changing any behavior.