A couple of weeks ago I went to listen to Ruby Wax. Ruby Wax has a long list of merits from acting and comedy to writing, lecturing and public speaking. She is a mental health campaigner, and which I didn’t know, she is trained in mindfulness-based cognitive therapy.
As part of promoting her latest book “How to be a Human – The Manual”, she was speaking at the Portsmouth Cathedral on a Saturday evening. In the panel with her she had a neuroscientist and a Buddhist monk. The evening was entertaining. Lots of laughter, and strong language (this is Ruby Wax after all). Hope the church won’t ban her!
The topics were of course anything else but light; evolution and how have we ended up ‘here’, why is there so much suffering, what is the role of the brain in our actions, can we influence on anything, is it possible to feel happy – and other wonderfully easy questions.
The biggest yield to me was the dialogue they had around ‘Why do we behave like we behave and is there anything to be done’. I wrote down some things I empathised with. Go to listen to her if you can.
Evolution. “We are biological creatures with biological traits.” Like our approach to stress – when we face a threat, we still are programmed to fight, flight or freeze, like in the cave man days. In today’s world that wiring does not necessarily fit to the types of stressors we face. The brain has not changed as quick as our environment has. The reaction to stress is as physical as before; heart races, body tenses, breath quickens. Being on a high alert. Even if objectively the situation doesn’t require us to run or defend ourselves.
“We know how to live with scarcity but not how to live with abundance.” This is especially true in the western world. For the early man, life was hard, but it was also simpler. Plainly put, it was about getting food to ‘the table’ and not to get killed. Of course, the complexity has not come to our lives overnight, but rather crept in bit by bit the more ‘developed’ we have become. The complexity and the number of subjects we have to master each day is overwhelming. Being available to everyone and all the time. Information that is there but we can’t keep up with. Expectations – our own and the others’. Materia that we ‘should’ have. The pressure of living each moment to the fullest. And even the amount of choice. Abundance has become another source of stress in our lives.
“We have to understand our part [in how the world has become] and forgive ourselves.” Facing our lives as they are and acknowledging our own part in it requires a good honest look to ourselves. Meditation is one way to deeply listen. Pausing from auto-pilot can show us what is really relevant, true and notice the choices we have in front of us. We often have more choices than we think.
“Stop being at war with your thoughts.” Mindfulness does not mean clearing or emptying the mind. The brain will always think. And at times this is crucially important. Like survival-like important. In mindfulness we shift our focus. We choose to pay attention to something else than the internal monologue. When we change our focus from thinking to sensing for example, a different part of our brain activates. We can drive a car and think at the same time, but we can’t focus on our breath and thoughts at the same time. This is why mindfulness works. Sensing the breath and thinking happen on different parts of the brain. When we do the former, for that moment, the latter ‘stops’.
Mindfulness creates space between an impulse and action. Rather than fighting off all the things that trigger us on a daily basis, we stop. We step away from the impulse-driven auto-pilot and pause to see what is really going on with us. This brings us to see our options and the situation we are in with fresh eyes. The attitude we offer to ourselves is not self-blame but friendliness and compassion.
And furthermore: “Compassion is the advanced level of empathy where you have developed resilience and strength to respond skilfully to the struggles of others and yourself”. Yeah. Basically, we have a choice. We can influence our circumstances and we can do this is in a way that is at the same time productive and self-caring (rather than passive acceptance of our situation or disproportionate automatic reaction to something that we feel uncomfortable, angry or anxious about). Just pausing for a couple of breaths can sometimes give us this space.
Next time pay attention to this: “How much time do you spend thinking why you are sad and how much time do you spend thinking why you are happy?” It is likely there is a difference.