A healing touch

Over the last few days I’ve gone into a fairly regular kind of energy slump where even listening or thinking becomes painfully exhausting. It’s as though my body is so tired that even moving my mental muscles to form a thought makes me ache.

Yesterday, as I was lying in bed I caught myself trying to do a metta (compassion) practice when I was too tired to think straight. I was trying to form kind and caring thoughts about being in pain, but this mental ‘trying’ just increased my pain.  Hmph!  I was stuck. 

Then a section of Toni Bernhard’s book ‘How to be Sick’ (oh, how I love that title!) came to mind. Toni writes about cultivating compassion towards herself in the face of chronic illness by using phrases of care and understanding such as 'My poor body, working so hard to feel better'.  She then writes:  'Whatever words I choose, I often stroke one arm with the hand of the other. This has brought me to tears many times, but tears of compassion are healing tears.'

Following Toni’s suggestion, I stopped trying to think compassionate thoughts and just started stroking the top of my hand with my other hand.  This kind, compassionate touch went beyond all thought, straight into the heart of the matter; ‘Oh, I’m sick.  How sad.’ 

I was transported back in time to when I was very young – 5 and 6 years old – and spent months in hospital with asthma. I was not only isolated from the world, but also cut-off from my immediate surroundings by a thick plastic tent covering my bed.  Asthma medication was pumped into the tent, so I could breathe it in and out. The intention was to heal, and it probably saved my life many times over, but the experience was confusing and so very lonely. 

The simple act of touching my own hand brought me back to this sad time; a time where all I really wanted was kindness and a sense of connection – to hope, life, and the outside world.  It felt as though offering myself this care, even 30 years on, was a kind of healing. This beautiful and simple practice gave me a sense of mothering and caring for myself. 

Thankyou Toni! 

Beautiful Gili Air - Lombok - Indonesia

How to be @$#%!!!

I've been noticing over the past week how much resistance I have to certain thoughts and feelings that I think are 'wrong.'  Anger is one of the biggies, and I suppose it's like that for a lot of people (particularly women). 

As I was sitting with feelings of anger yesterday and noting my resistance, the title of Toni Bernhard's book How to Be Sick came into my mind.  (I just love that title; it's both clever and poignant). I did a little flip on the title and found myself saying instead -  'How to be angry.  This is how to be angry.'  

I imagined a little alien standing in front of me, newly arrived on earth with no idea how we human beings operate.  'How to be angry?' he asked.

'This is how,' I replied, describing my 'symptoms' for him. 'You screw up the muscles in your stomach, you feel your blood racing, your face looks all pinched, your temperature rises, and you think of a person who did something to hurt you.  That's how you feel angry.'

I watch as the alien practices feeling how I'm feeling; screwing up his face and clenching his fists. 'Yes, you've got it!' I say.  'Hi 5 Alien-creature! That's how to be angry.'

Spontaneous and creative practices like these seem to cut off the blood supply to my resistance.  It's impossible to resist and judge my anger whilst simulaneously teaching an alien life-form how to feel it!  

Throughout the afternoon, as emotions and thoughts arose, I'd use the same technique.  How to be despairing...how to be bitter...how to be sad...how to be @$#%...how to be peaceful...how to be.

Phrases of Self-Compassion

Over the past week or so I've been busy digging a truckload of dung into my garden (metaphorically speaking of course, I don't think I could lift a shovel if I tried). 

 

As I've been digging I've been developing some phrases of self-compassion and kindness to help me as I face all the crap that surrounds me - grief, despair, helplessness and hopeless. I think of these phrases as my little cheerleading support team. They are 'Team Emma' - waving their pom-poms around and giving me a good old razzed-up cheer when I finish yet another hour of digging through my truckload of crap.

 

Here are a few of my phrases:

 

'Oh, this looks like anger.  It's here, but I'm sure I didn't do anything to deserve it. It's not my fault.'

 

'I don't expect too much of myself today. However I feel is fine.'

 

'Oh, more anger. It's OK. If I am angry, that's OK.  If I'm not angry, that's OK too.  I don't have too many expectations of how I'll feel - it could go either way.'

 

And, if I'm sitting with any kind of pain - emotional or physical - I say:  'Pain, yes...this is pain.  I'm so sorry.  I'm so sorry it's here.'

 

I've just returned from a visit to my doctor. I dragged myself out of bed to go (only realising when I arrived that my jumper didn't completely cover my pyjama top underneath. Oops!)  Anyway, as I was sitting waiting for my appointment I shut my eyes and noticed my physical discomfort.  I had a racing heart, a tight fist of tension in my stomach, and my head and back hurt. 

 

'Oh, this is pain,' I said to myself, 'I'm sorry.  I'm really sorry it's here.'  And, as I sat waiting the tears started rolling down my cheeks.  It was such a relief to give myself some sympathy and kind attention.  In those moments it didn't matter that other people in the waiting room could see my pyjama top peeking out the top of my jumper, or the tears on my cheeks.  I  just a great relief and sweetness at being able to express some compassion towards myself in my suffering.

 

The view from my front-yard at dawn.

 

Meditation Resource List

If your illness or life circumstances prevent you from attending meditation classes it can be very helpful to have a good book or CD course to guide your practice.

Below are some resources that might be useful. They’re divided into two groups – the first is specifically aimed at illness/pain, and the second is a list of general resources.

Resources specifically for people with chronic illness or pain

Darlene Cohen - a Zen teacher, who has rheumatoid arthritis. One of her books is Turning Suffering Inside Out (A Zen approach to living with physical and emotional pain). She has a website with podcasts, written talks, and more books.  Darlene’s work tends to be thought-provoking, funny and wise.  She’s a real straight-talker, and shares a lot of her personal experiences with pain in her books and talks.

Toni Bernhard – an ex-law professor now living with CFS.  Toni has written a book called ‘How to Be Sick’, which will be released in September 2010. The book is a beautifully written Buddhist-inspired guide for the chronically ill and their carers.  I’ve read a few chapters of it and found it eloquent, moving, and very down-to-earth.

Jon Kabat-Zinn - One of his books is the well-known, Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain and Illness.  His website sells CD’s of his books and meditations.

Miriam Greenspan – Healing Through the Dark Emotions: The Wisdom of Grief, Fear, and Despair .This is a fairly intense book, and beautifully written.  Miriam talks about the usefulness of feelings such as despair, and offers many different techniques for working with the ‘dark emotions’.

Pema Chodren –   When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times.

Shinzen Young -  books, CD’s and a website specialising in meditation for pain management. His Book/CD set Break Through Pain contains a series of guided meditations with step-by-step techniques to help with pain management. I find some of Shinzen’s guided meditations to be a little clinical and dry, but they are certainly thorough and he's developed some interesting meditation techniques.

Steven Levine - a renowned writer and meditation teacher whose work focuses on death, dying, illness and the spiritual journey. He has written many books and has a personal website which sells CD’s of his guided meditations.  Steven’s books are intense, and can be heavy reading at times.  They are also profound, deeply moving, and very human.

Vidyamala Burch -  a UK teacher who lives with a spinal cord injury. She has a website, and a book, Living Well with Pain and Illness: The mindful way to free yourself from suffering.

                                                                                                                        

General  meditation resources

Bodhipaksa – meditation teacher with a very friendly and informative website with free on-line tutorials. He will  answer e-mail questions about meditation and also has an excellent CD called Guided Meditation: for Calmness, Awareness, and Love.  I’ve got the CD and highly recommend it for anyone looking for guided meditations.

Meditation Oasis – free meditation podcasts and a written meditation guide. The meditation podcasts  are short, simple and easy to follow.  The website also sells an online medition course (US$95) and CD's of meditations.

Plumline – an on-line Buddhist meditation group, conducted through Yahoo Messenger. Useful for people who want to connect with other meditators, but can’t leave their home to do it. Currently they meet on Mondays at 10:00 AM and 6:00 PM US Mountain Time Zone. (The 6pm group is 11am in Australia).

Sharon Salzberg  - a down-to-earth teacher focussing on insight and Loving Kindness meditation.  Has a website with books and CD’s and here is a link to a podcast of a full-day workshop with Sharon.

Sounds True – on-line store selling a wide variety of meditation and spiritual CDs and downloads. Has an excellent free weekly podcast interview series called Insights at the Edge. Many of the teacher s and writers listed in this article have been interviewed in this series.

Tara Brach  - Tara is a psychologist and teacher of Buddhist insight meditation. She has a particular focus on dealing compassionately with issues such as shame and anger. Her website has books, cd's and podcasts. A very gifted teacher who combines psychology and Buddhism.

I hope this list is useful to you.  Please feel free to e-mail me if you have any more resources I could add to this list. 

The Church of Hard Knocks

This post was written in December 2009, when I was spending a month staying at a Buddhist monastery near Sydney, Australia.

13 December

I’ve been reading a book by Petrea King called ‘Sometimes Hearts Have to Break.’ Petrea is a well known Australian healer and counsellor who’s worked for years with people who have life-threatening conditions. In her book, Petrea tells her own story of recovery from leukemia, and the stories of some of her clients.

One of the stories was of a young, newly married couple who were members of a type of Christian Church where illness was believed to be caused by lack of faith.  Getting any treatment or using pain-relief to deal with an illness was seen as mere pandering to the devil; the person had to heal through faith alone.  If they didn’t heal, it was because their faith wasn’t strong enough.

Tough stuff – but could see how I run a particular branch of this church in my mind.  I have a strong belief that my illness was caused by something I did wrong.  This is how the thought pattern runs in my head: I’ve been kicked out into the wilderness of pain and illness by some spiritual or ethical flaw, and my task is to work as hard as I can to fix myself and be allowed back into the land of the well. These beliefs run very deep and are hard to see – and when I do see them they’re difficult to deal with.

In Petrea King’s story about her clients, the husband had been diagnosed with bowel cancer 6 months previously.  He’d had no treatment, and no pain relief.  Now, he was dying, and as well as having to deal with an early and difficult death, he felt an enormous sense of failure because his faith obviously wasn’t strong enough to save him. Petrea counselled the young couple and talked to them about the idea of a loving, compassionate, caring God – not just the judgemental God of the Old Testament. The man died the day after he saw Petrea – with less physical pain (because he accepted morphine), but also, with some freedom from the terrible burden of self-blame that he’d carried.

Here’s what Petrea wrote after telling his story:

‘Many people fall into the trap of trying to earn their recovery, believing if they only find the right combination of therapies they will be able to undo the cause of their disease.  This thinking is quite popular in our society at present and the worst misunderstanding of this philosophy is that we create our illnesses in order to learn some spiritual lesson from them....
This is a complex area and is often grossly simplified by proponents of this philosophy.  It can serve as a terrible judgement and certainly doesn’t facilitate the experience of deeply joining together in our humanity. There is often a hidden agenda which says, ‘If you eat the right foods, forgive the past, meditate for hours a day, drink your vegetable juices, take your vitamins, and only focus on the ‘positive’ , then you might not die of your disease.’

 It seems natural that we all search for certainties when the only constant in our world is change. Impermanence is scary. I can see that my mind struggles constantly to find reasons for things I can’t explain – why am I sick? Why are some babies born with AIDS? How can thousands of lives be snuffed out in a tsunami?

Sometimes this immense and incomprehensible suffering leads us to develop systems of judgement and blame – just so we can feel some small sense of control.  We can use these systems to assure ourselves that we can find a way out of our own pain (if we just meditate long enough/eat raw foods/buy enough crystals/fix our flaws). We can also use these systems to reassure ourselves that the terrible pain that’s happening to someone else won’t happen to us (she got cancer because she repressed her anger – but that won’t happen to me!)

 I can see the system of blame I’m running in my own mind, but I can’t change it. A constant thought stream buzzes through my head- if I just work harder at meditation, if I could just relax more, if I could just be more peaceful/less angry/more open-hearted – then I’d get well. Those demanding and critical thoughts run deep, and fighting them just seems to leave me more exhausted and entrenched in blame. I’m trying to close down the church branch in my mind – but it just doesn’t want to go! I try to remind myself that just witnessing it, just being aware of its existance, is an important first step.

Just Relax!

This post was written in December 2009, when I was spending a month staying at a Buddhist monastery near Sydney, Australia.

7th December

At lunch today I was talking to a woman named Jacqui who’s come up from Sydney to stay here for a few days.  Over our dhal and rice, we talked about my experiences with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and the time she’d spent with an auto-immune disorder.

She made a comment that I thought was really interesting. She’d been to see a psychologist, who was also a Buddhist and he told her that her illness was caused by stress.Jacqui’s face became animated, and she talked about how this comment made her feel.

‘I asked him why he said that,’ she said. ‘Because it’s just not helpful!  It might be true, but for the person who’s having the illness it’s not helpful. It’s up to the person themselves to come to some sort of realisation about what their illness is caused, or not caused by.’

‘That’s so true.’ I said. ‘It’s like someone wagging their finger in your face saying ‘just relax!’ – that’s not relaxing at all.  All that happens is that you have your original problems and then on top of it you feel ashamed because you think you shouldn't be stressed, but you are!'

Of course, that doesn’t mean I’m not guilty of thinking other people should ‘just relax;’  my sister and I have often fantasized about dropping a valium in my mother’s cup of tea in the hope it would calm her down -  or at least make her sit down.  (We never used it; you’d need a bulldozer and a ten battalion fascist army to subdue my mum – I’m fairly sure mere pharmaceuticals couldn’t do it).

Jacqui and I talked about the best way to get the ‘just relax’ message across without making the other person feel judged. We both thought that it was important to be able to support and encourage people to relax, not to just wag a finger in their face telling them what to do.  Better still – just provide the supportive conditions and encouragement without even telling the person you think they should be more relaxed.  After all, what’s more delightful and helpful to hear?

a)    You’re so stressed out...just relax!
b)    You’re a great friend and I really care about you. Life seems hard for you at the moment – would you like to spend a week chilling out in my multi-million dollar Byron Bay beachhouse?

OK – obviously a rhetorical question, but as I was typing I spent a few seconds imagining a friend in front of me saying a) and b).  When I imagined someone saying a) I had tightness in my chest, and feelings of disappointment and not being understood.  When I imagined b) I felt relaxed, delighted, and very connected to my imaginary property tycoon friend.

I also winced at the thought of how many thousands of times I’ve told someone to ‘chill out’ or ‘just relax’ and how this might have made the other person feel.  Because my illness causes a lot of adrenal problems and anxiety, I probably order myself to relax many more time than I say it to anyone else. So, maybe I’ll try to take a break from telling other people – and myself – to ‘just chill out.’  (Because it’s probably the least likely thing to induce any chilled-ness!)

Coming back down to my little caravan in the bush after my conversation with Jacqui  I lay on the wooden deck outside the van, and started listening to a Tara Brach talk. She said, ‘ I sometimes get impatient with the instructions that are given traditionally for meditation which is ‘just relax, just relax, be in the present moment’...as if that’s, like, an easy thing to do!’

Relaxing is not, like, an easy thing to do – or we’d all be walking around in a state of calm equanimity.  I must try to remember that next time I’m with an uptight person (such as myself!) and am thinking impatiently to myself, ‘Could you just relax!’

My fantasy Byron Bay beach house. Boy...could I relax there!

My Little Everest

This post was written in December 2009, when I was spending a month staying at a Buddhist monastery near Sydney, Australia.

Monday 7th December

Yesterday I had a long chat with one of the monks who live at this monastery, and it turned out to be very helpful.  Because I’m usually housebound or bedbound with my illness I can’t get out to meditation classes, so I’m pretty much on my own as far as meditation instruction goes. Being able to come to Santi Forest Monastery for a few weeks, and have people I can talk to about meditation is so valuable.

I first got in contact with this monastery through telephone.  I rang, talked to the Abbott, and then rang him every few weeks to ask meditation questions.  I was very embarrassed when I met him to find out what an esteemed and extremely busy Abbott he is – to think I was bothering him with my oh-so-basic meditation questions still makes me cringe a bit.  After the second or third phone call, he said that I could come and stay at Santi if I wanted to. He said I didn’t have to attend breakfast, morning meetings, or do any work – I could just come as I was and do whatever I was able to do.

This was a big challenge for me – firstly to summon the energy to get to the monastery, secondly, to deal with the shame I felt at not being able to get up early,work, and meditate like everyone else, and, thirdly, to overcome the fear at spending 6 weeks with no distractions – just me and my illness. I had spent the past 10 years doing everything I could to avoid feeling my pain, and now it was just going to be the two of us for 6 whole weeks!  How romantic – me and my Chronic Fatigue Syndrome in a little hut in the woods.

It turned out to be even tougher than I thought it would be.  I got very sick after I arrived and struggled even to get to the main midday meal and have a shower.  All I seemed to do was lie in my bed in my little hut and cry.  I felt like I was in prison. Looking at the people around me all I could think was, ‘What are you doing here?  Why do you seem so happy...this is hell!’ Whenever I talked to the Abbott I’d cry, and I kept thinking that he must be thinking, ‘Why did I ask this crazy woman to come here?!’

I vividly remember talking to him just before I left. I apologised for spending the whole 6 weeks in tears. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘Every monastery needs someone who just sits in the their kuti [hut] and cries.’ I smiled with relief, and we both laughed.

‘You’ve done a good job, ‘he said.  Somehow I knew that he was being completely sincere - although, if anyone else had said this to me I wouldn’t have believed them. I felt that he really did think what I’d done was difficult, and I’d done well in persisting with it.  I have to say I agreed with him – I certainly didn’t feel any better physically, but I knew that in facing my illness head-on I’d climbed my own little Everest.

My Breath and I, We’re the Best of Mates

This post was written in December 2009, when I was spending a month staying at a Buddhist monastery near Sydney, Australia. 

Last night, after an intense meditation where I was feeling a lot of tension and resistance in my mind and body, I went up to the monastery library to see if I could find anything helpful to read.  I really felt completely stuck – I could observe the tension, the fighting, the utter dislike of my own thoughts and experience – but I couldn’t find any way of working with them.  Every ‘technique’ I tried just left me feeling more and more stuck. 

I found a book by the Buddhist monk Ajahn Brahm called Mindfulness, Bliss, and Beyond. Ajahn Brahm was born in the UK, but for many years has been the Abbot of a monastery in Australia.  (He’s currently in the news for controversially ordaining women, and being kicked out of the Thai lineage his monastery  belonged to...but that’s another story).

Often when I go searching for something in a book that will help me during my ‘stuck’ periods I find nothing, but this time I found a really beautiful section on relating to meditation in a friendly, relaxed, way.  It was exactly what I needed to read.  Here’s the section – may you find it useful too.

‘I love meditation.  I enjoy it so much...Meditation is like a dear old friend that you want to spend time with...as for the meditation object, the breath, we’ve had such a good time together, my breath and I. We’re the best of mates...The opposite of course, is when you know you have to be with that friggin breath and you don’t like it...you see it coming along the other side of the street and you think, ‘Oh my God, here it is again.’

I use the following method to overcome any ill will toward my breath.  I look upon my breath like a newborn son or daughter.  Would you leave your baby at the shopping mall and just forget it?  Would you drop it as you’re walking on the road? If you appreciated your breath as much as your child or someone else who is very, very dear to you and very vulnerable, you would never drop, forget, or abandon it. ...When you have loving-kindness towards the meditation object you do not need much effort to hold it.’

I just love Ajahn Brahm’s happy, uncomplicated, joyful view of meditation.  After I read this I realised how much I see meditation as a chore; ‘I’m sick, and I’ve obviously done something wrong to be given this illness, so now I’ve got to do all this awful, boring, hard work to get better.’  I usually feel like I’m trudging along a long road with a heavy load.  Reading Ajahn Brahm’s book is a good reminder to me to take things a little more lightly – and a lot more kindly.

                                                                       Ajahn Brahm

Hope Begins in the Dark

Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: You don't give up. 

Anne Lamott

I read this quote yesterday and smiled grimly to myself, because it pretty much pins down how I'm feeling at the moment. If I had to draw a picture of how I feel there'd be a cartoon character hanging by one fingernail to the side of a cliff while a bunch of coyotes waited at the bottom (with a few buzzards circling in the sky too - just for good measure).

OK, a bit dramatic - and I'm not so sure buzzards can even fly - but I'm sure you get my drift.  I'm just hanging in there; stubbornly hoping, and not giving up.

This meditation caper aint easy!  True, there are occasional moments of insight and peace, but I'm spending an awful lot of time just feeling pain, feeling distress, feeling despair, feeling hopelesness. Just to make life a little bit harder for myself I'm also feeling that if I was a better meditator, if I just 'got this', then I wouldn't be feeling all this...this...CRAP!

So, it's good to come across quotes like the one above.  I just hope my stubborness will see me through. 'One more breath, just one more breath...'

  

An hour later... 

Well! Waddaya know?!  Buzzards can fly  - and here's one doing it...

Source: Wikipedia Commons

Ego - a dirty spiritual word?

A few weeks ago I met a man, Mike, who was very involved in meditation and yoga. When I tried asking Mike any questions about himself, or his plans, he seemed to block all my questions by answering in a kind of mantra...'We're just floating through the universe...I'm living in universal love; the rest is ego...It's all illusion...' Making a lunch-date with Mike was really difficult, because he almost refused to say what he might do ten minutes into the future because he was, 'completely in the present moment.'

When he found out I wasn't well, Mike's response was to suggest it might be past-life issues causing my illness, and that I also had to think less. I felt criticized, misunderstood, and frustrated.

Later, I sat down and really allowed myself to feel how judged and impotent I felt in the face of Mike's unsolicited opinions about my illness. After sitting with these feelings for a while I had a moment of intuitive realisation. I had a strong feeling that, in his head, Mike was constantly telling himself how he should be - 'don't think...be equanimous...it's all an illusion...' - and that these inward judgements, of course, led him to be outwardly judgemental as well. I felt  that what Mike was really trying to do was avoid ordinary life; trying to 'jump over' it in order to get to some vague spritual ideal. 

At the same moment, I realised how I was doing the same thing myself.  I constantly boss myself around in my mind with a barrage of thoughts along the lines of - 'you have to be more peaceful...you have to relax...you have to meditate more to get well...' It became obvious that my judgement works like a barrier that separates me from what is actually going on in the present moment. Of course, like Mike, this inward judgement also leads to me judging my friends and family a lot.

I felt an incredible sense of connection with Mike, and for the pain our minds can cause us when we try to control ourselves so much with our thoughts. I could really sense this 'inner dictator' that so many of us have. It was the first time that I've been able to go beyond the terrible frustration I feel when people make judgements about me and my illness, and felt some small sense of compassion for the ways in which we try to constantly control ourselves in order to avoid the difficult, messy, and constantly changing 'here and now.'

The interesting thing was that it was really just by sitting down and feeling my feelings that I came to this understanding. It wasn't through thinking, or intellectualising, or 'shoulding' myself into feeling compassion.

Yesterday I read a section from Jack Kornfield's excellent book 'A Path With Heart,' that helped me further understand the interaction I had with Mike. I can really relate to the part about trying to make a "spiritual bypass"...

He writes,

"Misconceptions about selflessness and emptiness abound, and such confusions undermine genuine spiritual development. Some people believe that they can come to selflessness by struggling to get rid of their ego-centered self...We have described how some students use emptiness as an excuse for a withdrawal from life, saying it is all illusion, trying to make a "spiritual bypass" around life's problems. But each of these diseases of emptiness misses the true meaning of emptiness and its liberating freedom. To try to get rid of the self, to purify, root out, or transcend all desire, anger, and centeredness, to vanquish a self that is "bad," is an old religious idea..." (p. 203)

 I also found a really interesting Vancouver Sun article titled 'Meditation can often mask a downside' that explores the idea that common misunderstandings or misinterpretations of ideas such as 'killing the ego' can lead to people using meditation to deny, rather than connect with, their darker emotions. Part of the article reads,

"Ken Wilber, another sophisticated spiritual thinker who is working to integrate psychology, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity and philosophy, also warns against North Americans treating meditation as a be-all and end-all. ... when Eastern meditation teachers tell people to "kill their egos," it runs the danger the students might "dis-identify" with their more unpleasant personality traits.

Meditation for many "becomes a process of transcend and deny ... rather than transcend and include," Wilber writes in his book, Integral Spirituality: A Startling New Role for Religion in the Modern and Postmodern World.

The Eastern teaching that people should have "no ego," an idea espoused by Vancouver-based spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle and many others, encourages meditators to try to be "empty," to have no viewpoint, says Wilber. The trouble is many meditators believe that means having no viewpoints at all, even on important issues. As Wilber says, many meditators don't believe in anything."

So...here's to having viewpoints, believing in things, seeing our minds with compassion, and perhaps even signing a peace-treaty with our egos!