Determination without self-flagellation
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Meditations and talks from this Substack are now available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, as a Podcast called Meditate Your Face Off. Scroll to the end of the post for links to that, and for the upcoming Parenting as the Path [https://www.caralai.org/online-classes.html#/] class this Wednesday.
Above is a guided meditation on how catch self-doubt as it tricks us out of the present moment, and to stay present anyway. The paid version of this post begins with the same guided meditation, but ends with a dharma talk based off of this essay which I gave for Big Heart City a few days ago. I highly recommend the talk— and if you can’t afford a paid subscription and want one, just message me and I’ll give you one, no questions asked.
Below is me reading the written essay that follows:
In Western mindfulness teaching, there’s a ton of emphasis on being gentle on yourself. In a culture founded on independence and productivity, a lot of us tend to push ourselves way too hard, so when we go to meditate, we end up berating ourselves into the present moment. Unsurprisingly, this doesn’t work— hence the emphasis on gentleness.
But being gentle on yourself is not what this post is about. It’s about the opposite: determination, persistence, and consistency; even when things get hard. Why? I think our gentleness has curdled into capitulation— and now our feelings are running the show.
Do you ever use self-care as an excuse to not practice? Do you ever tell yourself that you’re too ADD, too traumatized, or that you’re just not the type of person who can seriously meditate? Do you find yourself highly particular about the situations or people with whom you meditate, or taking action as a way of avoiding turning inward? How might these things actually be self-doubt in disguise, telling you you can’t do it, and keeping you from realizing your full potential? Here are some excuses that self-doubt fabricates to keep us from practicing:
Excuse #1: I don’t have time
If there’s anyone who gets this one, it’s me. I take care of a toddler and a baby almost full time, keep our family fed and maintain our home, all while piecing together a full-time job as a Dharma teacher. My husband works long hours, is on the volunteer fire department, and is away on business trips at least one week per month. I manage all this by hiring childcare for a couple hours each week and getting help from neighbors, but also staying up late writing dharma talks, recording guided meditations, and finding time for “formal practice” in the middle of the night while nursing the baby.
So yeah, I understand being too busy to meditate. But I also know there’s a part of myself that likes to stay busy, because it means I get to avoid certain feelings. We get high off of staying busy, and then when there’s nothing to do, we don’t know how to cope.
Just because you don’t have 20 minutes to yourself during the day to sit quietly, doesn’t mean you can’t be mindful. No matter how busy you are, there are approximately one gazillion little pockets throughout every day when we could turn inward, but we typically choose to distract ourselves, check some trivial thing off of our to-do list, or numb out. Where is your mind when you’re driving, or at a stoplight, or waiting in line? When you’re eating? Sitting on the toilet? What about while you brush your teeth, or when you’re in the shower, or even while you’re triggered by something? How many of these moments get filled with daydreaming, planning, checking your phone, or being lost in an opinion about how things should be otherwise?
Cumulatively, we might reclaim hours each day by tending to these moments. And that makes a huge difference in our connection to ourselves, to our deeper desires, to our life. So the next time you sit on the toilet, you might have the pleasure of noticing how it actually feels to poop. You’re welcome.
Excuse #2: I shouldn’t just be sitting here, I should be doing something
There’s too much going on in the world for me to be just sitting here. I need to be out there. Doing something.
If you choose to do without attending to your inner world, what will your doing informed by? Before you go outward to do something, have you gone inward and done the practice? If not, whatever you do will still be driven by the same forces of fear, rage, and guilt that all the hallmark of the very problems we are trying to address with our actions.
You might already understand intellectually that coming inward is an essential aspect of outward action, but what actually stops you from doing it? When we do restrain ourselves from the impulse to do something, whether its writing to our senator or cleaning the toilet, we tend to encounter a belief that this moment is unbearable. Things are so fucked up and we need to change them before we can hang out in this moment. Which brings me to Excuse #3.
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Excuse #3: This situation is whack
This moment is a dumpster fire and it needs to change before I can be with it. Everything that’s happening in the world today is out of control, untenable. I feel unsafe in this place, unseen, my access needs are not being met, my identities are not being represented. These are real concerns that have helped shape societies, communities, and meditation spaces to be more inclusive, but if we believe that the world around us needs to be fully accommodating our specific needs before we can practice, we’ll never get around to actually practicing. And sometimes the excuse that this place, these people, these conditions aren’t right— is just a sneaky way that the mind tries to avoid being with something it’s not wanting to feel.
Embedded in the line of thinking that we have to a complete sense of safety and belonging before we practice, is the false premise that being mindful requires a prerequisite of homeostasis. The circumstances need to be stable in order for the mind to settle. To some degree this is certainly helpful. And I’d never make the blanket recommendation that you should never try to adjust a situation to feel safer if that’s an option. But what I’m referring to here is situations that are out of our control, that are just going to be tough or unresolved, at least for the time being. And it turns out that most moments are like that. What we’re encountering is our discomfort with not having control. So we reach for our phones or we go into our heads, where it feels like we have some agency over what’s coming into our sensory experience.
Nearly all moments feel unresolved. Many are just plain awful. Put less energy into trying to alter them, and more energy into opening to them (and your feelings about them), and your whole life will open up to you.
Ultimately, the idea that you have to change a situation before you can be with it is based on the belief that you yourself are somehow flawed, and ill-equipped to exist in this moment. Enter excuse #4:
Excuse #4: I’m uniquely broken
I have too many neuroses, too much trauma, anxiety, depression, ADHD, I’ve done too many terrible things, I'm too neurodivergent. It’s my self-care to distract. I just can’t do it.
If you think your life is fucked up, check out the story of Patacara [https://ancient-buddhist-texts.net/English-Texts/Foremost-Elder-Nuns/04-Patacara.htm]. In short, she rebelled against her parents, eloping with someone they disapproved of. A few years later, her husband, toddler, and newborn die in freak accidents; then she goes home to find her parents dead too. She went crazy. And then she found the dharma and became an arahant.
There’s a modern version of this story, too. A woman named Dipa Ma lost two of her three children when they were very young, and her husband. Devastated and desperate, she became determined to find a way out of suffering. She committed herself to practice and persisted, not in spite of the trauma, but because of it. She was a real person who even taught at IMS, and was said to be fully awake.
Buddhist literature is packed with stories about people getting enlightened from unlikely or impossible circumstances. For some inspirational reading, check out Aṅgulimāla [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A%E1%B9%85gulim%C4%81la], Kisa Gotami and the Mustard Seed [https://www.turningwheel.org.uk/buddhist_stories/kisa-gotami-and-the-mustard-seed/], and Sopāka [https://drarisworld.wordpress.com/2024/09/21/arahant-sopaka-enlightened-at-seven-years-of-age/].
This practice has worked on millions of people from all walks of life, to whom the craziest s**t has happened. Do you really think you’re so uniquely broken, and in so much pain, that you are exempt from the possibility of freedom? I submit that it’s highly unlikely that you are that special. And besides, you’ll never know if you don’t try.
I’m not trying to shame you. I’m trying to empower you. Naming our diagnoses and issues can be relieving and indeed helpful in finding self-compassion and embracing our uniqueness, until the label becomes used as fuel for our self-doubt. Watch for when self-compassion turns into it’s near-enemy: self-pity. You’ll know because compassion feels open, good, healing, and onward-leading. Self-pity feels small, stuck, contracted and repetitive.
I’m also not trying to say that you shouldn’t act skillfully and take care of yourself. But it’s important to pay attention to whether something is actually acting in your deepest interests, or if it’s postponing your awakening, keeping you stuck in the belief that you are helpless and hopeless.
***
All four of these excuses have the same thing driving them: self-doubt. And there's one quality that serves as the antidote.
The case for turning inward
In Buddhism, the quality needed to bring some balance back into the self-doubt epidemic is one of the ten Pāramis (perfections of heart): Determination. Determination is also one of the character traits that is prized in our culture of independence and productivity, and it’s a baby that should not be thrown out with the bathwater. Determination can exist without self-flagellation. In fact, it only really works if it’s paired with compassion and trust in oneself and in the practice.
The first thing I find to be helpful when accessing determination is my own natural desire and drive for practice. Why did you start practicing in the first place? What are your deepest wishes for yourself in your life? Write them down, revisit them as often as possible, make a habit of recalling them or reciting them before each sit. Feel into your intrinsic motivation. It will feel good, empowering. The opposite of self-flagellation.
With this motivation in mind, get curious about what exactly it is that’s in the way of being present, and challenge yourself to stay anyway. Beneath all of the excuses for not practicing is the belief that we ourselves are inadequate. Sometimes just acknowledging this mindset is enough to challenge that self-doubt, to stand up to it, and to stay present anyway. What if this moment is enough? And what if you have everything you need to be with it?
Then, what do you have to be with if you stay? Get curious about that, and you’ll begin to see that there are some subtle beliefs that continue to trick you out of being present. Every time you see them, you reclaim your access to this moment, to respecting and trusting yourself, and to your deepest peace.
By the way, all of the above may make it seem like you’ll be encountering some deeply troubling feelings if you choose to stay present. But usually it’s not so dramatic. In fact, the pattern is usually this: we remember we could be being mindful, there’s a subtle recognition of something we’re not wanting to feel, the idea of something more compelling to do besides turn inward, and then the thought “meh, f**k it.”
So don’t expect to find some big obvious feeling of inadequacy that sucks you into a pit of self-hatred. Instead, look for the subtle voice that says, “nah.” Seeing this, paying more attention to it, and not letting it dictate what you choose to pay attention to; if done with even some small degree of consistency, will change your life dramatically.
Over time, choosing to be mindful over distraction gets easier and easier as we develop a refined taste for the mundane. And not only do we start enjoying simple things, like the way it feels to drink water, the sound of the birds, or a good poop; we also start to get far more interested in our inner world than the doomscroll of our phone. Because it’s way more interesting to have insight, to transform, and to just feel alive; than it is to stay distracted.
The more you turn inward, the more confident you become, because you realize that all of the things that you once believed to be in your way: your broken life, your broken heart, your broken brain: like Dipa Ma, you wake up not in spite of these things, but because of them. They all turn out to be the very thing that make you wiser, more compassionate, and more fully alive. Your trauma stops being the problem, and starts being the answer.
Everything that happens to you, and everything about you is here for your awakening. But you can’t discover that or make use of any of it if you don’t turn inward, be present, and stay.
Meditate Your Face Off on Spotify and Apple Podcasts
You may have noticed that I’ve done some re-branding. This Substack has a new name, Meditate Your Face Off. Talks and guided meditations are also now available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Yay!
Parenting as the Path meets this Wednesday
Join Ofosu Jones-Quartey (Born I) [https://substack.com/profile/38431651-ofosu-jones-quartey-born-i] and me for another installment of Parenting as the Path, this Wednesday 5/20 at 4pm ET online. We’ll be talking about shame and messiness in parenting and practice. It’s generosity based, and all are welcome (parents, caregivers, expecting parents, parenting-curious). Click below to find out more, register, and to view recordings of past classes.
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