Episode 2: Navigating Difficult Times

Transcript

[0:01] All right. Hello. Welcome back. This is episode two of Loving Kindness Wins, a podcast where wisdom teachings meet real life. I'm Kyle Jackson, your host, and I'm excited to get into episode two.

Today in this episode, I'm going to talk about navigating difficult times. These are very turbulent, chaotic, anxiety- and fear-provoking times for a lot of us. And we may also be going through personally difficult times — whether that's depression or anxiety, losing a job, going through a difficult breakup, being hurt in various ways. Lots of situations in which we might find ourselves as we go through life that are difficult, that are challenging for us. So that's what this episode is about: navigating this. And this is my offering in how to do that, which comes down to the very powerful question: what do you want?

[1:02] So that's what we're going to get into this episode and unpack and unravel a little bit, so that we can better deal with the chaos and conflict that is going on out there and in here.

In these difficult, turbulent times — whether it's because of the external global situation or if it's just personally a difficult time, a breakup, or you're overweight and can't lose weight, or whatever it might be — we think: what should I do? And when it's intense, when there's a lot of confusion, what there is to do actually requires us to recognize that there's a step before that.

[2:03] In the previous episode I introduced the teaching: be, do, have. The order of things is to be first, then allow doing to flow from that, and having a result will occur automatically.

So when we ask the question "what should I do," we have to recognize that before that, we need to first answer: who should I be? Or another way of putting that is: what do I want? Where what I want is a way of being — something our heart wants, something we deeply yearn for, but perhaps hasn't surfaced yet. So this is what we need to look at. What do I want? First, before we look at what the doing is, what actions should I be taking, we need to answer:

[3:04] What do I want?

All right, so let's get into that question a little bit further. I offer that it is a feeling, not a form. So I'm just going to distinguish form versus feeling. The form of something — the form something takes — is what shows up in this physical world. We might call it a goal. To lose weight — that's form. Or it might be: I want to get a better job, I want to have more money, I want a bigger house, I want a car. Something like that. That's something that you have. The way something shows up is its form.

But we don't really want the form. What is beneath that is the feeling, or the way of being. So in the losing weight example, we don't actually just want to lose weight. If we were just the same and the number on the scale was different, that's not what we're really looking for.

[4:05] What's underneath that is the feeling. The feeling might be the feeling of being mobile and agile, moving through the world — feeling like an athlete. Or it might be intimacy, affection, love with another human being, where being overweight is in the way of that because of our shame. So what we wanted is the being of intimacy, of affection, of contact, of connection. That might be what is there. So that's the being that we need to connect to.

If we're feeling very depressed and can't really function very well, what we might be wanting is just the feeling of being okay. Being just okay at existing in the world. I went through a long time where I didn't feel that, and I work with clients in that space. So I know that when we're in a deep depressive state, for example, what we want is just to be

[5:07] okay. And that in itself can seem almost impossible. So we need to look at what is it that we want in the form of a feeling. This is who we want to be, and that's what I think we need to focus on.

So in order to do this, we can take two different approaches. The first is to look directly at what we want, and we can look around our life in various areas. There are different ways to slice this. The one I use has seven different areas of life.

The first is body — health, fitness, weight. That's one category or area of life. A second area is career, money, wealth. A third is

[6:08] creativity, art, expression — that might be writing, art, any sort of creative output. A fourth is intimate partners: wife, husband, girlfriend, boyfriend. That's the fourth area. A fifth is travel, adventure, exploration — newness, having fun, exploring our world locally, internationally, whatever it might be. A sixth area is community, friendships, the tribe of people that we hang out with. And the seventh is spirituality — our connection with the divine, with the world, however that shows up for you, but a spiritual path. So those are the seven areas.

[7:11] Spirituality, body and health, travel and adventure, career and money, our intimate partners, our friends and family, and creative expression.

So we can look directly at those areas of life — or any other way we want to look at our life — and choose: what do we want? We can look at those areas and see directly, yes, I want that. And if it's in the form of a thing — having a job, or money, or better health — let's look at what's underneath that form and see what it is the heart wants. What is the quality, the way of being that is deep inside your heart that is driving that?

So that takes some time, some work, some effort, some

[8:13] attention to allow that clarity to arise. It might seem a little confusing at first, but that is actually the seed of clarity. Clarity arises within confusion. So allow the confusion to be there. But when you see what your heart is leaping towards, and as you cut through the layers of form — I want money. Actually, you don't, right? You maybe want the feeling of safety, security, groundedness, the feeling of being at home, contentment, peace. There may be a lot of anxiety around money, and so actually what you want is to feel at peace. So we need to look deep and carefully with the heart, not really our thinking mind. We're looking for what the heart is leaping towards. So that's what we want.

[9:15] The first way to look at what we want is directly: what do we want? The second way is to look at what we don't want. So we can again look around those seven different areas of life and see what it is that we don't want. It's often much easier to find out what we don't want than what we want. Sometimes when we ask the question "what do we want?" it's like, oh, I don't know. But if we start looking at what we don't want — I don't want this in my relationship, I don't like this about my job, I don't like this about where I live — it tends to come much, much easier.

So that's great, because that makes it easy. We can see what we don't want. And then the trick is: okay, if that's what you don't want, what is it that you do want instead? And so we do the same process. I don't want this aspect of my relationship. Okay — what is it that you want instead? It might be to feel seen and understood, to feel intimacy, to

[10:17] feel connection, to feel loved and loving. Perhaps that's what you want instead of what you have now, which might be a feeling of not being seen, not understood, not listened to, judged — or whatever it might be that shows up in intimate relationships or friendships. Or in your job: I don't like the way my boss treats me. So perhaps what you want is a feeling of being powerful, a feeling of confidence. So that's what we need to look at when we look at what we don't want. Okay, what is it that you want instead? And then look at what is the feeling, the way of being that underpins that, that underlies that.

[11:20] Okay. Now let's come back to difficult times and how that interacts with this question, or our answers to what we want. In fact, difficult times illuminate more brightly, more sharply, what is going on in our mind. If we can look, we might be feeling very scared — a really base level of fear that is illuminating what's going on. The nature of what's really difficult is fear. And so we can look and we know that we don't want that. We want something else. So what is it that transcends fear? Well, we need to look for ourselves. But it might be safety, security, it might be confidence, it might be

[12:21] trust. So the difficult time actually illuminates. If we are experiencing a lot of anxiety, and it is far heightened by the difficult time — so heightened that we can barely manage because the anxiety is so high — that really brightly illuminates it for us. And so we can look at what is it that we want instead. A feeling of just being okay, some sense of peace, of contentment, of just okayness. That's what we want. That's what our heart wants. And so that is the answer to the question of what do we want. It is more brightly illuminated if we slow down and look.

[13:22] Whatever is the obstacle in our mind — whatever is going on, what's making it difficult — is it fear? Is it anxiety? Is it feeling less than? Is it a lack of intimacy? Whatever it might be gets really heightened in difficult times. And so, of course, we go through the experience of that being really difficult. But also, from that, we can much more clearly see: this is what's going on, this is what's really difficult, and I don't want that. I want something else. What is it that I want?

It becomes, in a way, easier because of difficult times, because it's in such high contrast — a big shining light on what's going on in our mind that we may not have noticed before, or it wasn't so important to us because we were doing okay. But then difficult times arise — whether externally or at a personal level — and those difficult times make it really visible. It starts to impact us. So difficult times, yes, they're difficult, but also they

[14:22] actually contain the light that we need to see what it is that we really want.

Another aspect of difficult times is related to the path that we are walking. You could say that there are two paths in life. One is the outer path — our lives, our families, our partners, our children, our jobs, our houses, our activities, things that we do. Outer human life. That is the path that we walk and engage with, fall down on and get up from. We go to work, we come home, we laugh and we cry. There's this human path — we could call it the external path. And then there is the internal path, which we could say is the

[15:23] spiritual path — the path to enlightenment, to raising our vibration, to healing the mind. Different ways of saying this, but this internal path of inner growth, of working with the heart and mind. So that's the inner path. And we are all involved with both of these paths to a certain degree, and we are called perhaps at different times to engage with one or the other to a greater or lesser extent.

Something about difficult times tends to be that it highlights the need for the inner path when we are struggling internally. It is showing us, highlighting again, this inner path. Perhaps we don't engage with that very often — we're a lot more involved with the outer path,

[16:24] our lives, our families, and so on. And then when something big happens — maybe a death occurs, or we have a heart attack, or we lose our job, or a war breaks out in our country or close by — these kind of big events, these difficult times, tend to highlight the inner path. And they will again show our obstacles: what isn't there that we need to work at?

So again, the difficult times are difficult, and they highlight what it is that needs to be worked at on the inner path. And indeed, our experience on the outer path is far more influenced by our inner path than many people perhaps realize. If we've done a lot of work with the inner path, we tend to see what is going on out there as a reflection of

[17:25] what is going on in here. If we are internally full of conflict, avoidance, and judgment and egoic states, that's what we're going to see out in the world, that's what we're going to experience. The reality out there is a mirror of what's going on in here. There's a powerful teaching which is: as without, so within. Meaning what's out there is actually what's in here. And it works the other way too — as within, so without. What goes on in here is out there.

So when we look around and see difficulties in our outer path, it can be a great impetus to go inside and work with what's inside. And of course, that's exactly what this podcast is trying to point out and work with — where wisdom teachings meet real life. Talking about the teachings that work with the inner path and how they affect

[18:25] the outer path, and vice versa. And so when we experience these difficult times, check in, look to see what's going on inside. That's what we can work with — not just working it on the outer path, but perhaps more importantly, or with more long-lasting change, if we work with what's going on inside.

Let's get into a little bit of the nature of difficult times. What does that mean? At some level it's obvious — everything's awful, right? But if we unpack that a little bit, what is happening is that there is conflict. There's an inherent conflict to existing in this physical reality. Think of just anything, like a seed becoming a

[19:26] tree. Growth occurs. The seed pushes through the earth. It displaces whatever was there before. So to exist in this physical reality, we have to essentially displace or take the place of something else. Inherently this is a conflict-based reality. The rejection of this, the avoidance of this fact of reality, is essentially what causes difficult times. We build on top of that layers and layers of discomfort — the discomfort of not being okay with conflict.

So we see this in people who shy away or shut down in the face of something difficult. We don't like the inherent feeling of conflict and so we avoid by shutting down, going quiet, pulling back. Or other people

[20:26] might react to an inherent conflict by getting aggressive. And obviously we see this played out in society around the world right now, with so many wars spilling out everywhere. This way of handling conflict by trying to get rid of the other person, the other country, a whole people — trying to get rid of the other — is actually a way of removing conflict.

So we handle conflict by trying to avoid conflict. Even aggressive acts of war, or shouting, or fighting with your partner — these are ways of avoiding conflict, actually. If you start to pierce down into what's occurring, we don't like what's happening. We don't like that there's a conflict. He wants this, I want that — that's a conflict, inherent. But it's

[21:29] not necessarily a problem. Perhaps two people wanting different things is not inherently a problem. That is the nature of this reality. A tree being here and another tree wanting to be in the same place at the same time is going to be a conflict. So this happens all the time with people. But it becomes problematic when we engage in our conflict avoidance strategies — whatever those might be: to shut down, to silence, to fight, to avoid, to manipulate, to sabotage. Lots of these neurotic ways of avoiding conflict.

So that's the nature of difficulties, of difficult times — it's actually conflict avoidance. If you're struggling with being in reactivity, swirling thoughts, don't know what to do, perhaps binge eating or watching TV, tuning out or scrolling the news endlessly, and then an hour later you're back reading it all again, scrolling Facebook — all of that —

[22:30] these are avoidance strategies to what is really going on, which is the conflict itself that we can't handle.

We are feeling the difficulty of the conflict. And so what we are doing, primarily perhaps, is engaging in activities that are avoiding the conflict — shutting it out, or talking endlessly internally or with our friends about how awful it is.

This is not to say it's not awful. But the activity of constantly talking about how awful it is is an avoidance strategy in itself. We're not actually responding in some way to what's happening. We are actually avoiding. We're trying to build a

[23:32] safety zone in which we can talk about these things. And of course, some of this is okay — this is not about judging whether it's the right thing to do. But it is about piercing through and seeing: when are we engaged in these conflict avoidance strategies that are not particularly helpful? It might be useful if we need to get out of a dangerous situation, but often what we're doing is actually getting involved in conflict avoidance strategy.

So what I offer is that the way to navigate this is to return to a very primary question, which is: what do we want?

So maybe a few more examples of what we want, when we look at the way of being that is underneath the form of something. From working with clients and from

[24:34] my own life — if it's something to do with the body, perhaps losing weight or getting in shape, what we may want is intimacy: that yearning of the heart to be in intimate contact with somebody. That might be it. Or mobility. We've talked about anxiety or depression — the feeling of being okay, the feeling of being at peace, or an even stronger one: that sense of peacefulness, relaxation.

We can look at our activities. If we are going through difficult times, what are we doing? Maybe we're binge eating, reaching for snacks. That's something that I do as a response to difficult times. When I look at what's underneath that, what I'm actually looking for is

[25:38] connection. It's not necessarily obvious, but when I've gone in and looked and asked: what is it, really? When do I reach for these snacks? It's when I feel lonely, disconnected, isolated. So I have some isolation tendencies, and what I do there — the sort of neurotic activity — is to snack, to eat. So if I look at what I actually want, it's connection with other humans.

We need to look at what's going on. Are we binge-watching TV perhaps? Again, when I look at that, what I wanted was connection. So often, connection is what we might want. If we tend to be more isolated, or if we live alone, or struggle with friendships and having community, then those activities keep us in that state, and we involve ourselves in ways of avoiding that conflict —

[26:40] avoiding the feeling of disconnection. So instead of accepting it, seeing it, looking at it, we avoid that by engaging in something else, like TV watching, or news scrolling, or being on the phone, or eating. So when we look — what does the heart want? Connection. So that's what we need to do: allow clarity to arise out of this confusion.

All right, let's zoom out a little bit and discuss the nature of reality, the nature of consciousness. We talked about the inner path. As we move from form into feeling — as we look at what we want, not just through the lens of the outer path: the house, the car, the job, the money, the

[27:41] relationship, the objects we have — as we move deeper than the level of form, the things in which things appear, and we look towards what it is that we want in terms of a way of being, what we're doing is walking the internal path, the spiritual path. And what we are doing by placing our attention on that — instead of only on the outer form — as we place our attention on the way of being that we want, what we are doing is moving closer into alignment with the background energy of loving kindness. The makeup of reality, the background energy from which this reality arises, is loving kindness. And so as we move towards intimacy, connection, love, kindness, compassion, peace — as we move towards these by

[28:43] placing our attention on those qualities within us, developing and cultivating them, recognizing: ah yes, that actually is what I want. I don't want to lose weight just to change form. What I really want is the feeling of being intimate with somebody, or the feeling of mobility, or flexibility, or freedom. These are qualities that move us along the spiritual path to a higher vibrational state, more into alignment with the background energy of loving kindness itself. And so we are actually coming into higher vibrational alignment with reality behind the physical form, which is consciousness itself.

[29:44] Okay. So I'm going to leave it at that for this episode in terms of the teaching and looking at what do we want.

A final word: this is intended to be completely practical. This is not just information for understanding's sake. I really mean this to be practical. Actually look into your heart. Do the exercise of looking around these seven areas of life, looking at what you want in terms of form, then look behind that to: what is the feeling? What is the way of being that my heart really yearns and leaps for? I mean this in a highly practical way. Do this as an exercise.

This is one of the most important

[30:45] axes of transformation that I believe there is, which is this shift from where our focus is on understanding something to our focus being our experience. As somebody who loves to understand things, all through my life I've adored information, knowledge, understanding, insights, and so on. This was a difficult transformation for me — to shift from that being where my focus was. I got my kicks, as it were, from understanding something. And for some of us, that's great. And I see this when working with people all the time.

The focus on the question why — when we are struggling with a difficult time, we tend to ask why. Why am I going through this? Why is life unfair like this? Why is this happening to me? And we might go and talk to people, counselors and so on,

[31:48] about why. We have this immense focus on why, because we think that understanding will give us the answers and make it go away, or then we'll know what to do. But it's the booby prize. It's not actually the point. The point is to practice what makes our life change — what brings us happiness, or intimacy, or connection, or love, or whatever it is that we're looking for. The point is to get that. To be in an experience where we feel loved, where we feel connected, where we feel happy. Understanding doesn't get us there. Practice does. Be, do, have. So understanding doesn't actually

[32:49] get us there — it tends to be a big detour. And so this transformation axis that we have to traverse is a shift in where our allegiance lies, what we focus on: from why, understanding, information, to practice, experience. And then understanding can come after. It's important to hear information to get us going, but if we stop there, we won't actually get anywhere. We won't transform. We might change for a while, but we won't transform. We have to practice. We have to shift our focus to be on the practice. And so this is a big shift that many of us have to make — it was a big one for me. I didn't want to give up understanding as the point of it all.

So please practice this. Put your attention on what you want, which means in the first place we

[33:51] have to find out what it is. That's what this podcast episode is all about. And indeed, that's what this whole podcast is a lot about, which is this shift towards actually practicing the things that help us with what we want.

The next podcast episode is going to continue with that theme of how to make this work — how do we put this into practice? That's the reality creation loop, a three-step process for how to be okay. I know what I want now. I want to be loving. Okay, how do we do that? How do we be loving in various situations? This three-step process is what I call the reality creation loop. So that's what we'll talk about next week — how to make this new reality, a different reality, come into being.

[34:52] How do we shift the reality that we're in — the one in which we're depressed and isolated, or overweight, or however we are, whatever difficult time we're going through — how do we shift that and actually create a new reality in which that's not the case? So that's the process of the reality creation loop that we'll cover in the next episode. I look forward to talking with you then.

In the meantime, please practice loving kindness. This podcast is called Loving Kindness Wins. For that, we need to all practice loving kindness. That's the world in which I want to live, and I think a lot of us want to live in a world in which loving kindness does win. And for that to occur, we have to practice it. So all of the things that you want are steps towards loving kindness. Please practice loving kindness.

I'd love to hear your stories about loving kindness winning. I'd love to hear situations in which you

[35:53] have practiced loving kindness rather than aggression, rejection, hate, or isolation. If you have short stories to share about loving kindness winning, I'd love to hear that. I'd also love for you to follow this podcast if you find it useful. Subscribe on YouTube or follow on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

And also, if you want to get more of what I talked about today in written form, with an actual written exercise, it's all in an ebook that I have on my website. Go to coyotejackson.com and right at the top there's a spot to get access to this book, delivered in a series of emails and a download. Go there, sign up, and you'll get a workbook with a set of exercises. So go sign up, practice loving kindness, and I'll see you next time.