The 3rd Skill Seeing the Harm

 

You’ve noticed the signal, and now you’re able to see the ideal that’s causing the signal. But what’s wrong with having anger or frustration or jealousy or hurt feelings? Isn’t that part of being human?

 

Yes, it’s absolutely a part of the human experience, and there’s nothing wrong with feeling them. However, acting on these feelings and holding onto them can cause us to be unhappy, prolong our stress until it grows to unhealthy levels, harm our relationships by causing us to resent people in our lives, even harm our relationship with ourselves because we similarly get angry or frustrated with ourselves, holding ourselves up to ideals.

 

So feelings are not bad, nor is having ideals — they’re a natural part of our human experience. But if the ideals are causing harm to ourselves and the people around us, the perhaps we can let go of them.

 

If the ideals are causing us to do good in the world, then we don’t need to let go of them. An ideal might cause us to be compassionate or generous, for example. There’s nothing wrong with having ideals

— in fact, I don’t think we can avoid having them.

 

It’s when the ideal is harming us or others that we would benefit from letting the go.

 

And so as you notice the signal, and the ideal that’s causing it, ask yourself if it’s causing you or others harm. In the case of anger or other types of unhappiness, it’s almost certain that it’s causing harm.

 

When you notice the harm it’s causing, then letting go is a compassionate act. It’s an act of ending suffering. Letting go can

be a painful thing — after all, these ideals are often a big part of who we are and of our worldview. But the pain of letting go is often very little compared to the benefits of letting go of something that is harming us or people around us.

 

Practice seeing the harm, when you notice the signal and the ideal.

You’ll get good at this in no time.

The 2nd Skill Seeing the Ideal

 

Now that you’ve noticed the signal, the next part of the process is to turn inward and see what’s causing this signal, this symptom.

 

It didn’t just happen randomly — there’s a cause of the signal. If you’re angry, it’s not just someone else’s fault. They did something, perhaps, but that’s just an occurrence in the outside world around you, like a leaf falling or the wind blowing or a rock falling off a cliff. They just happen, but your anger comes not from the occurrence but because you don’t want the thing to occur.

 

It’s your not wanting what has happened to have happened, or your not wanting the way things are to be the way they are, that’s causing the anger or frustration.

 

Imagine if you were just a camera, recording what’s going on, neutrally and without any desires for things to be a certain way, or people to act a certain way. In this case, if someone does something, you wouldn’t get angry, because you’re a neutral observation tool, without any preferences for what happens in the world.

 

Of course, in reality, you’re not a camera. You have expectations of others, ideals for yourself, ideals of how the world should be. And it’s these ideals/expectations that cause the anger and frustration.

 

These ideals and expectations aren’t reality — if they matched reality, you wouldn’t be angry. They are your fantasies of what reality should be. The fantasies aren’t reality, and they’re causing the anger.

 

So turn inward for a minute: What ideal are you holding onto that is causing the signal?

 

Sometimes it can be hard to see what ideal you have, but if you

practice this for awhile, you’ll get better at it.

 

Just a few ideals you might have:

 

1.      People should be considerate.

2.      People should be fair.

3.      People should respect you and not insult you.

4.      People should be positive and not complain or be moody.

5.      You’ll be successful at what you do.

6.      You’ll be comfortable and do easy things.

7.      Your life will be full of joy and pleasures and no pains.

8.      You’ll be good at changing habits.

9.      People on the road or sidewalk won’t get in your way. 10.Things will be where you need them.

11.  Your home will be neat and people working and living with you will always be neat.

12.  Your kids will do exactly as you say.

13.  Your spouse or friends will be enthusiastic and supportive of all your ideas.

14.  People will immediately see your brilliance and want to hire you.

15.  Loved ones won’t go away or die.

16.  People you love will love you back exactly the same as you love them.

 

This is just a start — there are hundreds and perhaps thousands of ideals that we have at various times. We can identify them because when someone violates them, or life doesn’t meet them, we aren’t happy. So our ideal is the opposite of what has happened.

 

After practicing noticing the signals for awhile, start to turn inward and notice what your ideal is that’s causing the signal. Practice until the ideal becomes easy to see.

The 1st Skill Noticing Signals

 

The first skill is noticing when you’re holding onto something harmful — some kind of signal will appear, a sign that you’re suffering.

 

These are the signals that you should practice the skill of letting go.

 

What are some of the signals? There are many, but here are some common ones:

 

•         Anger

•         Irritation

•         Frustration

•         Stress/anxiety

•         Depression

•         Jealousy

•         Feeling hurt

•         Wanting to be right

•         Lashing out at someone

•         Procrastination

•         Wishing things were different

•         Feeling insulted

•         Wanting to get justice

•         Angry driving

 

There is absolutely nothing wrong with feeling any of these things. We can’t stop feeling them, and not wanting to feel them actually makes the suffering worse. So the first thing to  know is that it’s OK to feel these things, and that we should just feel them, accept them.

 

However, they are signals that something is going on. So after we’ve allowed ourselves to feel the feeling, we can pause before lashing out or taking an action we might regret. We can start the process of letting go, so that we don’t prolong our suffering.

How do we practice this first skill, of noticing the signals? It’s a learning process, but the first step is just to make a commitment to trying to notice when these things come up. It might surprise you, if you watch yourself, how often you feel a little bit of irritation or frustration or anger, especially if you’re around other people.

 

Just start noticing. You don’t have to do the other steps yet — just practice noticing for a few days or so, until you get pretty good at it.

Developing the Letting Go Skill

 

So we can see some of the benefits of letting go, and we can start to see how it might work. This is all great, but how do we actually develop the skill? It doesn’t just happen with a snap of the fingers.

 

Instead, we must practice the skill of letting go.

 

And to practice a skill, it helps to break it down into smaller skills and examine those one at a time, practice them one at a time, before bringing them together into a larger skill.

 

A dancer, for example, might work on various steps of a complex dance move before putting them together and doing the entire move. That’s what we’re going to do with the letting go skill: break it into pieces and practice each piece, each mini-skill. And then bring it back together as a whole.

 

Here are the pieces:

 

1.     Noticing Signals: When you are holding onto something that is harmful, it shows up in various little signals, symptoms like anger or procrastination. Seeing those signals as they happen is the first mini-skill.

2.    Seeing the Ideal: What ideal are you holding onto that is causing the signal?

3.    Seeing the Harm: Is the ideal causing you to suffer, harming your relationship, keeping you from being happy?

4.    Letting Go with Love: If the ideal is causing harm, then letting go is an act of love and compassion.

5.    Seeing Reality: Now that you’ve let go of an ideal, turn your attention to reality and see it as it is. Accept this, and respond appropriately.

Those all come together into the skill of letting go. The practice doesn’t end there … there’s still the question of how to act after you’ve let go. And we’ll discuss that as well.

 

But first, let’s examine the smaller skills, and then talk about how to practice them all and develop the habit of letting go.

Dealing with Loss

 

One of the hardest things to deal with is a major loss, like the loss of a job, the loss of a house, the loss of a loved one who has died or is dying. But actually there are minor losses that we suffer from all the time: the loss of a contract, the loss of our health when we get a cold, the loss of who we thought we were when we suffer an embarrassment or failure.

 

These losses, big and small, cause us great suffering. And this suffering from loss is a part of life … but it doesn’t have to be as great as it often is. We prolong the suffering out of habit.

 

Let’s take a few examples:

 

•         My favorite coffee mug breaks. This is a loss, and I feel sad or upset when it happens, naturally. But at this point, I could let it go and move on, and my suffering wouldn’t be too bad. However, my habit might be to get mad at whoever broke the mug, and be resentful of them for awhile. Or if it just happened, I might ask, “Why did this happen to me?” And suffer for awhile, wishing the mug were whole again and the universe weren’t so unfair to me. This prolonged suffering is caused by me, not the breaking of the mug. I’m holding onto what I wanted life to be (me having a great mug), not accepting what it is now.

•         Amir loses his job. This of course is a big setback, and his life is now arguably much worse than before. And losing a job is a big blow to the ego, so Amir understandably suffers. But again, at this point, he can let go of the loss, accept his new reality (he’s without a job), and now try to figure out what to do from here. Start applying to jobs, find a cheaper place to live, sell his car and get a bike, etc. Or he could be angry at the loss, and resentful and hurt. This continued suffering will hurt his job interviews, or perhaps even stop him from taking appropriate action. He might get into a fight with his girlfriend because

he’s so resentful. This prolonged suffering is caused by Amir, not the loss.

•         Petra’s husband Tomas leaves her and files for divorce. Petra, of course, is understandably hurt and angry at this betrayal of trust, this loss of her marriage and best friend. That’s totally natural and there’s nothing wrong with being hurt or angry

— in fact, many people try to reject their feelings rather than accepting them, and this makes things worse. But after an initial reaction, she can choose to let go of what she was (a married woman with Tomas in her life) and accept her new reality (a single woman going through a divorce) and then take appropriate action, reinventing her life and herself. This can be liberating, this opportunity for reinvention. Or … she can dwell on the loss, on the betrayal, on the pain. Wish it were different. Ask why he doesn’t love her. Stalk him on Facebook and hate his new girlfriend. Wallow in pity for months, eat to comfort herself, get overweight and unhealthy, never go out on dates because she’s still stuck on Tomas and she doesn’t like herself and she thinks her body is ugly. OK, this is a bad scenario, but it does happen in various forms. Petra has hurt herself by not letting go.

•         Justin’s dad is dying of cancer. This is extremely painful for Justin, because he’s already anticipating the pain of the loss of his father in less than a year. His anguish makes it difficult to help his father through this tough time, because instead of finding ways to help his father, he’s focused on his own suffering. Instead of enjoying the time he has left with his father and appreciating his father right now in this moment, he’s thinking ahead to what is going to happen, and can’t let go of that dread. Instead, he can let go of this anticipated future, and of what he wished were true (he wishes his father weren’t dying), and accept the situation and accept his own suffering. He can accept his dying father as the only father he has (there

is no healthy father anymore), and appreciate this new father right now. He can see the suffering his father must be going through, accept this suffering, and find compassion for his father in whatever ways he can. He can be grateful for each moment he has with his father, grateful for his own health, grateful for what his father has given him over the years.

 

And so while loss can be extremely difficult and painful, no matter how big or small the loss, we can prolong or shorten the suffering depending on whether we use the skill of letting go.

 

How can we let go after a loss? Well, we can accept our feelings about the loss, first of all. There’s nothing wrong with being angry or sad at a loss. But after this mourning, we can see that we’re holding onto something in the past, an idea of what we wish life still would be, instead of accepting how life is right now. And this holding onto an idea of life, what we wish life were, is hurting us.

 

Seeing the harm allows us to let go, because we have a choice: hold on to the idea of the past and suffer, or let go and accept reality as it is, and suffer less.

 

We can then turn our attention on reality, as it is, and see the good in it. Appreciate what we have in front of us. See the opportunity for reinvention. Find compassion for ourselves and those around us who might also be suffering from this loss or other losses. Embrace the new life we have, for it is all we have.

 

This is the skill of letting go, and it helps tremendously with any kind of loss.