Awakening Our Loving Kindness
Our minds are huge—larger than we understand—capable of being incredibly sane, clear, and beautiful. But at times, quite the opposite. We can get lost in cul-de-sacs of unresolved reasoning, like a kid in a hall of mirrors distorting and reflecting upon itself.
Today I want to address the circular, repetitive, sometimes violent thoughts that bang around our minds from time to time. Often at the worst times. Perhaps on the eve of a busy day while trying to get to sleep our brain instigates an imaginary dialogue, as if trying to resolve an unresolvable equation.
I should have said this. I could have said that. Why didn’t I just get up and leave?
One particularly curious part of this game is when there seems to be a false resolution. We roll back toward slumber, but after a moment of peace the mind shoots up again: Waiut! I could have said this! I should have told them that …
When this happens, we are too focused on trying to sleep. And that’s a problem. Each time we look at the clock, we calculate the remaining hours until the alarm rings, we are focused on something that is not the issue. The problem isn’t that we can’t sleep. We sleep almost every day. The issue is that we can’t stop our brain. We can’t let go of something.
When I get stuck with something after I’ve been triggered, I can feel how compromised my inner world becomes. My thoughts, my feelings, and my concerns around the issue stop being trustworthy. I am trapped in a self-referential world, trying different experiments to free myself, only to arrive at the same unhappy result. A crazy person once said this was the definition of insanity. I am flagellating myself, desperately fixated on what I can’t resolve.
But what is actually happening?
Let’s look at the particulars. This endless, expansive, extraordinary mind of ours was originally developed as a defensive organ. As humanity evolved, we lost our fangs, our claws, our venom—but we gained cerebral processing power. In early times, when we were threatened, our minds had the ability to strategize and escape. Likewise, we could strategize ways to increase sustenance for ourselves, our family and our clan. The mind became the great problem-solver. And to this day, it will try to solve problems—whether or not we have a problem. All it needs to initialize is to be triggered. And then, although the lions our ancestors ran from are no longer here to chase us, we are still running. We are still strategizing. We are still trying to find a release from danger.
Unfortunately, when nothing is actually happening—when we are not facing a tiger but simply a feeling of being threatened—the mind can’t find the culprit. Without a real object to land on, it spins freely, unable to find what isn’t actually there. Sometimes we’re trying to find a way out of a problem we can’t find.
So how do we work with this? I have come to think of it in five stages.
- The first stage is knowing that it will leave.
This matters because when we are caught in the cycle, it feels permanent. We are in pain, and we are desperately trying to find a way out. But even in the most intense moments, there are gaps—moments of forgetting, moments when the deluge softens, when the mind is calm, even for only a moment.
This stage is about recognizing that those moments of peace are not accidents. They are evidence. When the storm returns, it is not because the temporary storm is stronger. It is because the calm, which is the mind’s true nature, is trying to break through.
- The second stage is recognizing what is happening now.
If we trace the experience backward—looking for causes and conditions—we can quickly open a Pandora’s box. Whatever is happening now likely connects to past wounds and future fears. But this stage is about cutting through all of that with Occam’s razor, or the sword of Manjushri. What is actually happening?
Not what we wish were happening. Not “I’m not getting enough sleep.” Not “I’m driving myself crazy.” No judgment, no speculation. Just simple recognition: This is what is happening. We can’t stop our mind. That’s what’s happening. You might call this “facing the crazy.”
But stop calling it crazy.
- The third stage is
Instead, look at what’s happening without judgment or speculation. Allow it to be as it is. There is a basic law here: until we accept something we can’t discover how to work with it. And until we do that, we’re kind of stuck with it. So, before we do anything, we have to stop labeling it as broken and simply say: This is what’s happening.
Acceptance does not mean approval. It means we stop fighting. It means acknowledging reality.
- The fourth stage is beginning to work with it.
This is usually quick up to this point, but here’s where the work begins. Once I have recognized and accepted this experience, and once I have stopped judging or trying to fix something I don’t yet understand, I can turn toward it with care. Maybe even respect. Damn this is some powerful shit.
I can ask: What is this really about? What does this need?
Usually, the surface story is not the whole story. Anger may be covering fear. Fear may be covering hurt. But beneath all of that, something more immediate is happening.
This stage is about listening rather than solving. We are not trying to fix anything. That fixing impulse can be aggressive—a kind of inner patriarchal clampdown. Instead, we are opening to something sensitive and delicate inside us, something that may be wounded. We need to proceed with caution. We’re holding space and listening in. And by doing this we’re accessing a larger part of the mind that sees and cares for the spinning.
A mind that can navigate past the defensive layers, and without triggering them, touch that wound directly. And that does not need words, language, prescriptions, or explanations. It needs to be felt, acknowledged and held.
Why can’t the wounded child go to sleep?
- The fifth stage is loving-kindness.
Rather than struggling to change anything, we can recognize, accept, and work with the experience through love and kindness. By taking the time to do this with love and care it becomes clear that we are not the turmoil. We are the love. Rather than being victimized by the torrent of mind, we access the greater mind of loving acceptance. We are that mind. We can rest in her arms.
When a child runs into the room because it fears monsters, it does not need a clinical explanation. It does not need a scientific breakdown of why monsters do not exist. It does not need to be yelled at or pushed back into bed. It needs to be held. Comforted. Assured that it is safe.
Even as adults who know there is no danger, something inside still needs to feel that safety before it can rest. Before we send the child back to bed, we might ask: Are you okay to be brave now? Are you brave enough to sleep? We are not speaking to logic. We are speaking to feeling. We are taking the time to find the tenderness, to feel it, and to listen. If this process robs me of sleep, it will have been worth it—because I have learned how to work with something I cannot control.
The tigers of mind and the monsters beneath the bed are not what’s real. What’s real is the power of our love, and the truth of our suffering—that we have been hurt, that we have been shaped by experience, but that we can learn to care for ourselves.
And sometimes we’re late for work.
________________________
Can’t sleep?
Can’t still your raging mind?
Can’t find serenity in the storm?
Turn your attention away from the clock
To your heart
Let the anxiety remind you
You have access to a heart so big
It can hold a screaming mind
A heart so strong it can ease your panic.
A heart so steady it can still the storms we all endure
The brain screams loudly
And loving kindness is quiet
so it needs to be awakened and engaged
Awaken loving kindness
And let that hold you