neurosis – KM Huber's Blog

Often, we get caught up in transforming our lives. We decide that we will no longer assume an old way of being or an old way of doing. In other words, whether it is New Year’s or not, we make a resolution not only to do better but to be a better person. Just like that.

What we discover is that letting go of a habit or a behavior requires a lot more than filling ourselves with resolve. Letting go is a lifelong practice for we revisit old habits, old behaviors–neuroses we once cherished–often, we recognize them immediately but sometimes, they are disguised as something new and possibly, beneficial.

The three difficulties (or the three difficult practices) are:

1. to recognize your neurosis as neurosis,
2. then not to do the habitual thing, but
to do something different to interrupt
the neurotic habit, and
3. to make this practice a way of life

(Pema Chödrön)

Recognizing what we no longer wish to do or be is usually obvious but recognizing all that it has meant to us–how it has disguised itself in order to be an integral part of our every day– is a lifelong practice of recognizing neurosis as neurosis.

For a while, just rising above the neurosis is reward enough. Yet, life is uneven and the rise of the unexpected often dissolves our resolve whether it lasted for minutes or months. Thankfully, life is impermanent, and we get lots of practice in letting go.

What we get to do each time we recognize that once again we have invited in a familiar neurosis is to accept that is exactly what we have done. That is the first step in letting go, accepting what is. Think of it as resolving to refrain rather than resolving to deny.

Refraining comes about spontaneously when you see how your neurotic action works. You may say to yourself, `It would still feel good; it still looks like it would be fun,’ but you refrain because you already know the chain reaction of misery that it sets off.

(Pema Chödrön)

Even if we have begun to set off the chain reaction, we accept that we have and refrain from going any further. We set our resolve to refrain because we accept where we are. Refraining allows us to halt and not go where we have gone before and unhook from the neurosis.

Resolve serves us as long as it is to accept that life not only changes but masks itself in new faces and different viewpoints, allowing us to experience familiar habits, recognized behaviors, and old relationships through yet another perspective.

Transformation is not a matter of discarding but an accepting of all that we are and were. Such resolve is the genesis of transformation, a lifetime practice of experiencing, letting go, and when we are ready, refraining.

This week’s Thursday Tidbits post ponders neurosis or what Pema Chödrön refers to as Training in the Three Difficulties:

“The three difficulties (or the three difficult practices) are:

1. “to recognize your neurosis as neurosis,
2. “then not to do the habitual thing, but
to do something different to interrupt
the neurotic habit, and
3. “to make this practice a way of life”

(Pema Chödrön’s Quotes of the Week).

KMHuberImage; St. Mark's Wildlife Refuge; Florida; USA — KMHuberImage

In light of my metaphorical faucet fixing last week, I found this examination of neurosis rather revealing. For most of my life, I have been considered anti-establishment, a deeply 60s term and apt label for my own neurotic groove, the face I show to the world.

In these last few years, my inner self has taken up its own anti-establishment banner so that within and without are the same reflection, not always true in previous decades. It is my way of saying “no” to what I have known and “why not” to what is uncertain.

As part of my “training in the three difficulties,” I am reminded of a favorite morning meditation on the true and false self from Mark Nepo’s Book of Awakening:

“… It is the true self that lets us know what is authentic and what has become artificial, while the false self is a diplomat of distrust, enforcing a lifestyle of guardedness, secrecy, and complaint.”

“…Each time we experience a change in reality as we know it, we must choose whether to declare or hide what we know to be true. At such moments, we either need to bring the way we have been living into accord with that shift of reality, or we need to resist the change.…

“Whether we live in our true or false self depends on our willingness to stay real.… Staying real becomes the work of keeping our actions in the world connected to the truth of our inner being, allowing our true self to see the light of day” (Mark Nepo).

It is the “staying real” that reveals our every day practice, how much we actually train, how much we exercise our resolve and whether or not we leave it on the training mat, a hard habit to break….

One way to keep the training fresh and the resolve intact is in hearing new voices. This past week, I learned about Jeff Foster on Tomas’s blog where I discovered the following quote that originally appeared on Foster’s Facebook page:

“I don’t want to fix you. I don’t want to give you answers. I don’t want to impress you. I don’t want you to change. I only want to meet you, exactly as you are, beyond your stories, your hopes and dreams, your games, your masks, here and now.

“If you feel confused, feel confused now. If you feel frightened, feel frightened now. If you are bored, let’s get bored together. If you are burning with rage, let’s burn together awhile and see what happens. I want to meet what’s really here. Perhaps then, great change is possible” (Jeff Foster).

If our training on the inside is reflected in the face we reveal to the world, then our daily practice is who we are. Why not, then, a change of habit, a foregoing of neurosis, even great change?

Finally, I include a 1960s blurry, black and white video of Simon and Garfunkel singing, “I Am a Rock.” Before the song, however, Paul Simon offers a comment on neurosis.

Thursday Tidbits are weekly posts that offer choice bits of information to celebrate our oneness with one another through our unique perspectives. It is how we connect, how we have always connected but in the 21st century, the connection is a global one.