RAIN
I.ve been thinking about the rain. Rain is lifegiving. It can be cleansing, healing, and rejuvenating. The sound of falling rain is a natural relaxant. And yet, it is a frequent nuisance and under some circumstances, deadly. From a grand perspective, rain is inherently neutral. Yet, its manifestation could be a blessing or a catastrophe depending on circumstances.
In Buddhist Five Wisdom psychology we draw parallels between the natural elements of the world we live in and the emotions that live within us. Sadness and depression are as natural as the rain. Emotions can be joyous or painful depending on our interpretation. And any feeling can be healing if we allow it. The key is to avoid taking it personally. This depersonalization is easier said than done, particularly with regard to strong emotions that sometimes feel so very personal. The stronger we feel, the more it feels like something is happening to me.
And that’s like blaming ourselves for the rain.
Of course, we can look at ourselves for not checking the weather before we left the house without an umbrella. This is to say that although the rain is not happening because of us we can use our rational intelligence and some investigation to work with the weather. The same is true of our feelings. They are immensely powerful, and they have the potential to be our teachers or agents of chaos depending on if we are willing to work with them. And my favorite way of working through emotions is a process described in the acronym RAIN. I love the elliptical reasoning here.
Thinking about emotions, when we are caught in their downpour (or upheaval) we are sometimes swept away in a
torrent. Pema Chodron famously refers to this as being “hooked” by the feeling. If we look at emotions as being as natural as the weather, we can regard the experience as natural. If we are willing to work WITH the feelings, we can turn a neurotic reaction into a wisdom experience. The essence of Buddhist transformative psychology is turning our neurosis into wisdom. That always felt inaccessibly academic to me until I was taught that we are not transforming the emotion, we are transforming our reaction to it. In order to do this we recognize that we are hooked by a feeling and immediately accept the emotion as a natural occurrence. Then without judgement or recrimination we can look at the feeling and learn from it. This is a step-by-step process in letting go of our personal attachment to the energy and allowing the energy to be as it is.
RAIN.
RECOGNITION is the first step. It is important that we avoid judgement here and simply see what is happening. Not, why or how, but just what is happening. This is akin to the parable about the Buddha and the soldier. The Buddha pointed out that when struck by an arrow, the first step is to address the arrow. In the 12-step tradition, the first step is the recognition and admission of our addiction. We identify the problem before we endeavor to fix anything. We are recognizing the essential quality of what’s going on right now without looking getting ahead of the game. Recognition of being stuck or caught is all we do here. But the next step comes quite quickly on its heels.
ACCEPTANCE is letting go of any judgement or concept we have about the feeling. It’s just feeling the feeling. It’s important that this step comes before the third step of investigation because we are accepting before we investigate. Otherwise, when we get to investigation, our investigation is compromised because we’re trying to fix something. We’ve all done that with another person when we’ve jumped the gun and tried to fix them out of our own impatience, ego aggrandizement or our control issues. This makes a mess because we’re not actually taking the time to listen. Acceptance is about pausing and allowing yourself to feel (listen). In some cases, all we need is recognition to reduce the emotional inflammation. But sometimes, we need to go further, and dig a bit deeper.
The next stage is INVESTIGATION. Instead of lashing out with our projections, we turn inward. Instead of acting out we’re touching in. When it comes to this self-reflection, we’re still not trying to fix anything. We are just trying to relate to what’s there. And we will learn from experience that this will evolve as we go further. So, we don’t have to ‘get it right’. We take our first thought and then as we look / feel further into the experience, we might discover another layer. Commonly, anger is actually masking sadness underneath. When we recognize ‘this is anger’ without judgment or recrimination, we can see how it actually feels. This is another step-in depersonalizing. We are taking a wider view. This is inquisitiveness. We are investigating what we are here to discover. When we uncover layers of truth, they are usually different from our preconceptions. That’s the distinction between an amateur pandering in conspiracy theories online and a real investigator. The real investigator may never reach a convenient truth as they endeavor to look cleanly at the facts without popular interpretation. In this way, we are avoiding clickbait in order to experience what we are feeling.
Often what we discover is that this process diminishes the experience. And sometimes that is disappointing. Are we willing to allow the inflammation of our egoic reactions subside so we can see clearly. Often when we are triggered, we react as though we were unwilling to heal. It’s as if our ego thinks that we are giving in. But surrender in this case is letting go of the personal struggle so that we can return to balance. If we’re honest we’d have to admit that sometimes we don’t want to heal. We’d rather be right or gain retribution. We want justice! But are those not ego designations that actually keep us locked in samsara – that endless loop of retribution and salvation?
NON-IDENTIFICATION happens when we are willing to heal by allowing ourselves to let go. And when we gain perspective and begin to see clearly. This is not my sadness. It’s just sadness. This is the rain. It’s not my rain. The rain falls on everyone at some point. This is not my anger it is just anger. When we are brave enough to really be with how it feels to be human, we see below the story into the feeling, and we are able to stop clinging for or against the experience. We begin to glean that as personal as it feels, it is not about me.
Thus, investigation serves to disabuse us of taking it personally. Because we’re starting to look more and more clinically, we’re able to step back and see the situation as it is. In time, we are less inclined to be caught up in these otherwise natural energies and no longer allow ourselves to be tortured by them. Instead, we are able to ride their considerable energies, let go and allow the natural elements of life to nurture us.
Tara Brach teaches the “N” as nurturing. I love that, and I love the relationship of Nurturing, to letting go to non-identifying. When we learn to love ourselves, we no longer need to cling to others, and we become less fearful of our feelings and more able to let go into the flow of our lives. So, nurturing our heart is the way we gain the strength it takes to ride the energy of our feelings. And then we are on the horse that rides the wind, as the Tibetans would say.
We are riding windhorse.
