Several years ago, I was designing a program to train mindfulness teachers. I had asked a friend and mentor for his ideas on what elements he felt should be included. The aim was to train these teachers to have the presence, confidence, and competence to work with groups of business leaders, and teach meditation practice, mindful leadership, and ways to develop emotional intelligence skills. His advice was short and sweet: “I suggest you design an ordeal. Give them something that at first might seem impossible.” I was surprised and somewhat resistant to hearing this advice. I wasn’t expecting to hear the word “ordeal.”
However, the more I reflected on this advice, the more it fit. I realized that I had gone through somewhat of an ordeal in the process of developing my own confidence as a teacher, trainer, and CEO. I often felt like an imposter in the early days of standing on the stage of auditoriums at Google headquarters in Mountain View, leading meditations and mindfulness exercises for really bright and achievement-oriented engineers. I had a good deal of meditation experience, but very little experience in teaching meditation, and no track record of working in corporate settings. It felt intimidating, like walking through fire. Little by little, through practice and a good deal of support, I learned and grew. This was my ordeal – it included my many mistakes, my fears, and my mustering up the courage to keep going, even when I was terrified.
We need these kinds of ordeals in our lives. I now begin my day with a comforting hot shower, but have added in the routine of turning on the cold water only for a minute or two. Each time it seems impossible and ridiculous as I watch my hand turn the shower knob from hot to cold. It shocks me, wakes me up, and it feels great. My whole body tingles with energy, and I feel a sense of accomplishment, having gone through my fear and resistance, even in this somewhat minor, self-inflicted way.
I have a similar experience each morning during my meditation practice. Sitting still, aspiring to let go of my usual judgements, and focus on just being curious, kind, and loving feels at times impossible. My mind continues to jump around, and the various voices of judgement are rarely quiet. And yet, this is an important practice for me. My self-made ordeal.
I’ve done many meditation retreats and there are a variety of motivations for engaging in these activities. One is this sense of doing what feels challenging, difficult, and impossible. It is a way of creating a fresh kind of space, both ordinary and extraordinary. Just sitting still, and seeing what happens.
In some way these activities of cold showers and meditation retreats are warm-ups. They’re relatively easy practices for dealing with the really impossible activities of daily life, and the ordeal of being human:
– How do we keep our hearts open in the time of war? Impossible.
– How do we take care of our aging parents, or guide and protect our children from all harm? Impossible.
– How do we live our daily lives, knowing that we will say goodbye to everyone and everything that we hold dear? Impossible.
We are impossible beings living during impossible times.
I think it’s important to train ourselves to work through whatever challenges and ordeals help us to keep our hearts open, even, and especially when, doing so is hard. This can include cold showers or meditation. Or maybe it’s sports, or music, or whatever activity is important to you. In our daily lives, raising children is an important, impossible activity, as is working and developing a career, making money, or being in any intimate relationship.
It’s all in the approach. It’s all impossible, easy, and sacred when we pay attention.
Here are some impossible things to think, in a poem by Robert Bly:
“Things to Think”
Think in ways you’ve never thought before
If the phone rings, think of it as carrying a message
Larger than anything you’ve ever heard,
Vaster than a hundred lines of Yeats.
Think that someone may bring a bear to your door,
Maybe wounded and deranged: or think that a moose
Has risen out of the lake, and he’s carrying on his antlers
A child of your own whom you’ve never seen.
When someone knocks on the door, think that he’s about
To give you something large: tell you you’re forgiven,
Or that it’s not necessary to work all the time, or that it’s
Been decided that if you lie down no one will die.