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It’s been a while since I last released a piece. The reason for this hiatus is that my mom was recently diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Since then, our lives have moved quickly. I wanted to make it back to California before her surgery. Fortunately, I did. Unfortunately, the surgery was far more extensive than anticipated. The cancer had metastasized to the bowels and other nearby regions. It was a successful surgery insofar as the surgeon was able to remove all the cancerous tissue he could find. All in all, we were in the hospital for a little over two weeks. Now we’re back at my parents’ place, and we’re focusing on supporting my mom through her surgical recovery while also preparing for chemo.
We’re trying to find what joy and ease we can, trying to figure out what our Kindergarten Retreat looks like under these circumstances. On some days, we succeed more than we do on others. Sometimes this attempt takes the shape of shadows stretching out ahead of us as we stroll around the cul-de-sac. Sometimes, it’s the act of playing trivia in the evenings. And sometimes, it might even find its form in the simple act of sitting down to meditate with one another. These are little things. But the little things can sometimes make a big difference.
I can’t describe this situation in a sentence or two, so I won’t try. Instead, I’ll just say that things are very difficult. A statement which falls flat. But yes, things are certainly difficult. Even so, I feel proud of my mom and the rest of my family. Their capacity to share their love and to receive it, remains undiminished. There is fear and sorrow and frustration. But love resides within us as well. With it, we’ll do what we can to hold the rest.
The purpose of Orange Blossom Moments has been, and continues to be, to share from my personal path, and this cancer diagnosis is now a part of it. I’ll likely share more about this experience in the future, but for now, I just want to thank you once again for joining me on this journey.
Over the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing three practices that have been particularly useful in navigating my relationship with pain, fear, and anxiety. To describe these practices without offering any additional resources for engaging with them feels like a job half-done, so I’ve decided to share a few guided meditations related to today’s piece (You can access them either on Substack under the “Orange Blossom Moments: Meditations” section or on Spotify. I’ll do the same in future when I share other practices that have helped me. I don’t have any formal training as a meditation teacher. I just have my experience as a meditator and my experience working with chronic pain over the last two years. However, just as I’m sharing these pieces of writing as someone who is healing, and not as a healer, I want to similarly share these guided meditations as a fellow meditator and a friend, rather than as a teacher.
I developed these practices by incorporating my personal meditative experience with inspiration gathered from various teachers over the years. Today’s practice is particularly influenced by the meditations that Dr. Howard Schubiner offers in his book Unlearn Your Pain. These practices have benefited me immensely. I hope they do the same for you.
Today, I’ll focus on just one of the many experiences we may feel aversion to: that of pain. Even though pain is inherently unpleasant, it is not synonymous with suffering. The simplest way to demonstrate this is with the example of physical exercise. Out of context, the aches and elevated heart rate associated with intense exercise would be quite alarming; however, within the context of exercise, they’re just part of an overall enjoyable experience. This example displays that the degree to which we suffer as a result of an experience is based less on the experience itself and more on how we’re relating to that experience. When exercising, you accept these sensations as a part of the process, and so, don’t suffer as a result of them. This is what is suggested by the Four Noble Truths I presented in the previous piece. Suffering arises from non-acceptance. It’s not inherent to our experience, but instead, is a product of our reactions to experience. It just so happens that there are certain experiences, aversive ones, that we naturally push away, and so, we often suffer when they’re present. This is what happens for most of us when confronted by a sensation like pain. But this doesn’t have to be our reaction. Over the next few weeks, I want to ask: what happens when we’re truly present with an aversive experience? What happens if we accept it? How can we learn to do so? And how will this shift in our relationship with the experience impact the quality and intensity of that experience? What follows is a practice to begin this enquiry.
The Practice
I ground myself with a few deep breaths, allowing my attention to drop down into my lower abdomen, away from my head, away from the pain. I notice the gentle rise and fall of this part of my body. I notice how the tension of the skin on my belly changes throughout each breath. My mind may flicker away to another part of my body, or pirouette around a passing thought. When it does so, I gently lead it back to the experience of the breath in my abdomen.
After some time, I let my attention slide back up my body to my head, to my temples, to my brow, and to the top of my head too. The pain is radiating all over. And as I watch it, it begins to expand and the pressure increases. This has happened before, especially when I first began to meditate with the pain. This, I believe, is because there are fewer distractions when meditating. I’m forced to confront my pain. When I encounter it, my natural reaction initially takes over. The “I don’t like it!” part of my mind begins to pipe up. I notice a subtle clenching and tightening in my jaw, my glutes, and my hands. My body is bracing against a sensation that it wants to block out. As the pain intensifies, a part of me worries that it will continue to get worse, worries about how bad it will get. This anxiety acts as a danger signal, which is enough to increase the pain (as I’ve explained in a previous piece).
This is okay, I remind myself. The pain is here, and it’s increasing. Even so, can I let it be welcome? I notice myself subconsciously take a deep breath as I attempt to stop struggling with the pain. I just want it to go away. It’ll go away if I just accept it, right? Right. So that’s what I try to do. I sit, eyes closed, waiting for the pain to go away because I am letting it be. This is what I tell myself I’m doing. And I wait some more… And some more…
This is where I’ve been caught before, caught in the subtle trap of “in-order-to mind” as one of my favorite meditation teachers, Joseph Goldstein, calls it. This is an example of conditional acceptance. What I mean by this is that I’m trying to accept something with an ulterior motive, in this case, with the express purpose of getting rid of the pain. Unfortunately, this reaction to pain won’t do. “In-order-to mind” reveals that I still see pain as aversive and bad. If my mind is viewing it in that way, my acknowledgement of, and engagement with, the pain will still generate an emotional response. The anticipation of an unpleasant sensation is sufficient to elicit a response of fear. Then, this emotional response can act as a danger signal that completes this self-fulfilling prophecy by activating the pain centers in my brain (explained more fully in this piece). And there you have it, I tried to accept it, and now it’s worse, or if not worse, not any better, because a part of my mind continues to grapple with it. I need that conditional acceptance to melt into the unconditional. We’re wired to have a mental “get that away from me” response to pain. All we have to do is accept the experience we’re struggling with. It’s simple, but it’s not easy. Today’s practice, as well as the other two practices I’ll be sharing in the coming weeks, have been immensely helpful for me in achieving this simple, yet challenging, feat.
Expanding the Experience
I began this meditation by focusing my mind on my lower abdomen and followed the breath there. It can be helpful to step away from the pain, especially when I notice I’ve slipped into “in-order-to mind”. I often choose a point just below the sternum at the center of my torso, the lower abdomen, or the feeling of pressure on my glutes from the cushion or chair. I encourage you to explore this practice with a variety of different parts of your body. It can be quite helpful to attempt the following practice with a part of the body that has a neutral sensation as well as with a part of the body that has a pleasant sensation.
Resting my attention with a part of my body that isn’t in pain serves two purposes. Firstly, this alternative experience shows me that the pain is only a part of a much larger whole. It can be incredibly helpful to realize that there’s a lot happening in my experience that isn’t aversive. It’s easy to develop a tendency to fixate on that one “worst” part of experience and block out the rest. I also find it beneficial to pick a part of the body that is distal from the pain. This physical distance might translate into psychological distance and decrease the likelihood that my mind will slip back to the pain in moments of distraction. However, I try not to suppress or push away the pain. If my attention slips back to the pain, away from this neutral or positive sensation in my body, I gently acknowledge that my mind wants to attend to this aversive experience, but then guide my mind back with a kind determination, telling myself that I know that I’m in pain, but I don’t have to attend to it right now. It can just be.
If I’m having a particularly hard time with the pain, I find that picking a part of the body that feels slightly pleasant reminds me that there is almost always some aspect of my experience that’s ready to be appreciated if I allow myself the wherewithal to realize it. This might be something as simple as noticing that I’m being held up by the soft cushion below me, feeling myself sink into it as the cushion rises around my legs and gently cradles me. This simple shift in attention is an example of an orange blossom moment, which I previously explained. I rest my attention within these pleasant sensations and give myself the permission to relax for a moment, to drop all the demands placed upon me by the pain and the fear.
Secondly, this practice can also provide a template or act as a goal. In this next stage of the practice, I begin to explore my relationship to these neutral or positive sensations. They’re perfectly fine. I don’t mind them at all. If I hadn’t purposefully attended to them, I probably wouldn’t even have noticed these subtle sensations. My attention is all that is required to access these simple moments of peace and joy.
Once I feel sufficiently well acquainted with these sensations, I shift my attention to the way I’m relating to them, rather than continuing to explore the sensations themselves. I notice that I’m not pushing them away. I’m also not anticipating any changes in the sensations, even though they are constantly shifting in small ways. This approach proves that I have the capacity to notice and hold an experience in consciousness while watching how it changes with detached equanimity. It’s welcome, and the manner in which the experience unfolds does not have to matter to me. I may feel a bit more pressure on my right glute rather than on the left, but that doesn’t matter. It’s just a detail. It would be equally fine if my left side had more sensation than the right.
Once I’ve become acquainted with the nature of my relationship to this experience, I can return to the pain, while attempting to maintain this mindset of calm acceptance. Previously, I had been tracking every little fluctuation in the intensity and quality of the pain, hoping it would subside, worrying that it wouldn’t. But I can use the example of my relationship to the pleasant sensations to help me form a new relationship with the pain, such that I might come to be able to watch it with the same detached curiosity I felt when observing the pleasant or neutral sensations. However, this isn’t a one-and-done sort of practice. When I notice my mind slipping back into its usual habit of struggling, I return to another part of my body to remind myself of the sort of relationship that I’m trying to cultivate with the pain.
Sometimes, I allow my awareness to expand to include the sensations in my entire body, and even invite in whatever sounds or smells might be present around me. Then, I rest in this spacious awareness. My mind might brush against different aspects of my experience, first noting the sounds of traffic from the street below, and then sliding to the sensation of the breath at the tip of my nose. That’s fine. This spacious awareness is amorphous and will subtly expand and contract and shift its focus from one experience to the next. I just watch my mind as these changes occur. When my mind gets snagged on an experience it’s passing over, I patiently untangle myself and expand my attention once again. On days when my mind is particularly distracted—when it has a tendency to narrow the scope of its attention as it flickers from sensation to sensation, or from thought to thought—I let this narrowing occur and stabilize my mind by attending to the sensations in a specific part of my body once again. I don’t shut out other experiences. I let them come and go as I focus on the sensations in a particular part of my body. I let these sensations expand to predominate my experience. When I do this, the other passing thoughts and sensations diminish in size, become less intrusive. I let myself rest within these sensations with a patient curiosity. If I feel that my mind has become calm once again, I widen my awareness such that it can hold all my experiences at once. Even though it’s far from easy, I know that I have the capacity to guide my mind away from the pain to let it be filled with all sorts of alternative sensations. My experience is always vast and ever-changing. I’m so much more than the pain.
Applying This Practice Beyond Pain
While I’ve spoken about pain today, any aversive experience could be substituted. A part of the practice I described above requires working with the fear and anxiety that arises in response to the pain. I apply the exact same methods I use with the painful experience when working with fear and anxiety themselves.
I’ll use the example of stress. Imagine there’s a looming deadline, and you just don’t feel like you have enough time to meet it. In this situation, rather the directing your mind to another part of your body, try instead to bring to mind a memory that has a positive feeling-tone to it, whether one happiness, gratitude, or tranquility. Recollect this memory with as much detail as you can. Transport yourself into that frame of mind you occupied at the time. This can help remind you that feelings other than stress have been, and continue to be, a very real part of your existence. Realize too that the feelings contained within that memory arose and passed away, and so too will your current state of stress. Once you’ve managed to contextualize this stressful situation by exploring a memory and its attendant emotional states, use your relationship with this alternative emotional state as a template of how you might learn to relate to your stress.
But emotions rarely show up alone; battalions of thoughts tend to march by their side. Consider these thoughts. And now, instead of cultivating an alternative emotion, generate an alternative thought, unrelated to the source of your stress. Think of something else you are going to do in the future, perhaps close in time to the event that you are anxious about e.g., the deadline. This can help you realize that the event you so dread is just one of many events that constitute your future. Your life contains within it so much more than just the source of stress. Notice your emotional response to this alternative future action or event. It could be as simple as getting a cup of coffee at your favorite café. Just as you can do with physical sensations and emotions, use how you feel about, and relate to, this alternative future scenario as an example of the relationship you could eventually cultivate with the stressor. Could you respond to the approaching deadline in the same way you respond to the thought of visiting your favorite café?
A Question, a Challenge, and a Few Meditations
I’ve introduced quite a lot today, but the ideas are just that: ideas. Their true value comes through application in practice and in one’s life. So, the following question and challenge of the week are intended to encourage you to consider engaging with some of what I’ve shared today.
Question of the Week: What is a part of your experience that you are consistently pushing away? It could be pain, anxiety, thoughts of work, feelings of inadequacy, anger, resentment, or anything else. Pick one that feels salient, and you feel ready to work with.
Challenge of the Week: Next time this experience arises, consider trying today’s practice. Make yourself comfortable and sit for however long you want. Ten minutes is infinitely better than none. Since this practice can be quite challenging, especially at first, I have found sitting down in formal meditation is helpful, but it isn’t necessary. These explorations can be done at any time of the day when an aversive experience is present.
As I mentioned at the beginning of this piece, I’ve released a few initial meditations related to today’s practice (meditations on Substack; meditations on Spotify). Should you sit down to try these meditations, you may find your mind is too distracted to engage with them properly. So I’ve also released a few traditional mindfulness of breath meditations. If you’re new to meditation, I’d encourage you to give these, or other guided mindfulness of breath meditations, a try. Although they may be simple, mindfulness of breath practices can be very helpful in cultivating concentration and equanimity. In these meditations, you practice watching your experience with clarity, letting it unfold without interference. Such practices may help focus and calm your mind such that you will be able to engage more fully in the other practices I share. If you enjoy the meditations, consider leaving a review on Spotify to help others find them.
I encourage you to find the meditations that work best for you, whether they’re the ones I release or those guided by others. If you buy Dr. Schubiner’s book, Unlearn Your Pain, you can access guided meditations on his website with a code provided in the book. The UCSD Mindfulness Center also offers free guided meditations. Free meditations and dharma talks are available on the Dharma Seed app. And lastly, I personally use the meditation app, Waking Up, which I have frequently recommended to family and friends in the past. It requires a paid subscription, but if you can’t afford it, you can email them, and they will give you a free subscription.
If you try the practice I introduced today or listen to the guided meditations I’ve shared, please comment on this post or drop me an email to share your thoughts. I’m always open to feedback. And if you have other ways of dealing with aversive experiences that have helped you, I would love to hear about them. Finally, please share this with others if you think it might be of value to them. Thank you for joining me once again.
With much love,
Chris
orangeblossommoments@gmail.com
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Acknowledgements
When sharing my own practices, I feel it’s important to acknowledge that they will invariably be influenced by practices of teachers I have engaged with over the years. I thank all the teachers I have come across, and particularly want to acknowledge the teachings of Joseph Goldstein, Sam Harris, and Dr. Howard Schubiner for their influence in formulating today’s practice. As always, thank you to Lauren for offering her insightful edits.
Selections From the Archive
9. The Essence of Buddhism: The Four Noble Truths
7. My First Orange Blossom Moment
8. Why is This Called Orange Blossom Moments?
So glad we got to talk yesterday! Once again you articulated this episode extraordinarily well! Deeply appreciate your sharing your journey!! Holding you and your family in my heart.