A Most Unique Invitation

The first time I met Stephen Levine, I was in a room with 200 people and when he said, “I want to create a hat that when you put it on your head, it broadcasts over a loudspeaker all of your thoughts!” There was a collective groan, which moved through the room. Take a moment and contemplate what it would be like to put on that hat. Consider all the things you would not want other people to know – the thoughts, feelings and actions that you are ashamed or afraid of. That was what prompted us to groan.

For all of us, there are parts of ourselves we deem unacceptable and thus try to hide from others and even from ourselves. The more we hide, the more we find ourselves endlessly trying to be better or different than what we are in order to feel okay. This trying is fueled by the fear that we won’t be loved if others knew what was going on inside of us. These struggles in our mind seldom calm down long enough for us to be present for our own experience, to become one with life, for we are constantly attempting to escape from the truth of our experience.

If you’re feeling angry and you live in a world where anger is not okay you stuff it or, if it gets too intense, you throw it out into the world. Same is true for sadness or jealousy or confusion or lust or judgment or irritation or deep despair or any thought and feeling you deem unacceptable. Both the choice to hide thoughts/feelings or to throw them out into the world create great suffering, causing us to feel separate from ourselves and separate from life.

It is fascinating that the word personality comes from the word persona, which means mask. We all wear a mask, trying to project what we think will be acceptable. Look at selfies on Instagram posts or 99% of the models in magazines who are airbrushed, and you will see what I mean. This need to live up to an imaginary idea of what we should be is a core root of our suffering, for every time we buy into the idea that we should be different than who we are, we limit our ability to experience life as it really is.

How do we come out of hiding? How do we again know the joy of fully experiencing life exactly as it is? By first discovering that as long as there are things about yourself you deem unacceptable, you can’t be open to life because you will spend your energy trying to make sure these parts don’t escape the prison you put them in, deep inside. So, you find yourself half alive.

What we are exploring here is the opposite of hiding. We are talking about the art of turning toward our experience and giving it the light of our attention. When your attention is freed from following thought wherever it goes, you can then use it to be present for what you formerly ran away from. It is the light of your attention that heals.

Yes, initially this is scary because we have been so deeply conditioned to hate and be ashamed of anything that we hid inside. But everything you have rejected and deemed unacceptable about you will give you a wonderful gift as you learn how to be present with it. Imagine a lion is chasing you and the lion represents everything inside of you that you have judged and feared. You run and run and run away from your experience only to finally fall down in exhaustion. Then the lion screeches to a halt beside you and open its huge jaw and in that moment, you think you’re going to die. Instead, the lion sticks out its tongue and on his tongue is a gift he is been trying to give you your whole life.

As you begin the process of being present for what you formerly ran away from, it is helpful to know you are not alone in having a mind that is always trying to do life rather than be life. Imagine what it would be like to find a place where it’s safe to put on Stephen’s hat, a place where other people are wearing the hat too. These people will not try to change you, fix you or judge you because they understand that they have the same kind of mind. We all do!  This is what Stephen was alluding to with the idea of this hat – the understanding that there is nothing to be ashamed of or afraid of about yourself for you are not the only one having these thoughts and feelings. Everybody else has them too and is also caught in attempting to escape from the truth of their experience.

Being present will allow you to become fascinated by what stories your mind is generating rather than escaping what you’re experiencing. We have rarely been shown how to be interested, to be fascinated, to explore what’s going on inside of us. When our thoughts, feelings and sensations become something to be curious about rather than something to identify with, we start to come out of hiding and discover how to let go of acting our life in order to be our life.

Because we are almost completely identified with our thoughts, it can be helpful to start with basic things such as bringing your attention into your body before you get out of bed in the morning and finding three distinctly different sensations; or closing your eyes and really listening to the sounds of your life. Both examples train your mind to be curious about what is right now.

As your attention becomes stronger, you begin to see that life will continually put you in situations to bring up what you have hidden inside of you. And instead of withdrawing, which increases your pain, you go toward, exploring it with the light of your attention. The first time I was experiencing fear and, rather than identifying with it, I was able to watch how it showed up in my body and the stories it was telling me in my mind, was a moment of pure freedom.

The more you investigate, the more you have room in your heart for every single part if you. This opens you into a non-judging, exquisitely tenderhearted space that doesn’t cling to nor condemn any part of yourself. It is compassion that allows you to be as you are in the clear light of your awareness. Then you become the open space that allows what you formerly judged and resisted to simply move right on through you.

So if you have a friend that you deeply trust, ask them if they would be willing to put on the hat with you where each of you has a few minutes to be real about what is going on inside of you. Before you do this, make a commitment to each other that nothing that is shared will ever be shared with anyone else. If you don’t have a person like this in your life, choose a professional. And if that doesn’t call to you, put on the hat by yourself and either speak out loud what you notice or write it down in a journal.

The more we can see with great kindness how much our minds struggle and see through this addiction to struggle, the more we will know the joy of being fully alive!