No. 29 - Friday, August 18 - 3 Minute Read - Audio Version Here​

You've Got Some Thorns in You

Quirky Brains and Stale People

Our brains are quirky things. IMHO they’re a bunch of poorly integrated biological systems cobbled together. You can reverse engineer the parts to work together reasonably, but it takes a lot of work and understanding, understanding which was not accessible to most throughout the course of history.

If that's not the case, explain to me why humans can't seem to live together harmoniously, when all it takes is a bit of self-awareness, building some emotional skills, and learning to listen to another person. You would think it would be easier to do that than to spend your life fighting, but you know plenty of people that spend their life fighting.

One big quirk that we suffer from is that we relate to people indefinitely through stale emotional impressions they made on us at some time. We may have a lot of history with someone and tighten up when we're in their presence despite 30 years having passed. All we see, at least on a feeling level, is the person that made us feel a certain way 30 years ago. That’s all they are to us. They're tiny.

That's hardly all they are though. They can't just be so tiny. Like there must be more to them. I assume they have interests, fears and sorrows, vices and vendettas, loves and joys and other things that actually make them an entire human being. But this quirk in our minds just lets us see them through the tiny aperture of one emotional set.

You’ve Got Thorns in You, You Briar Patch

I'm reading a book called The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer. He has this great metaphor of the thorn. Imagine you got a thorn in you and rather than take it out you spend your whole life avoiding things that will press against that thorn. You make your doorways wider so you don’t brush the edges, you keep your distance from people so they shouldn't bump into you, and you wear bulky clothes so they don’t rub the thorn. Rather than remove the thorn, you live a life of avoidance.

We have so many inner thorns, we’re a walking briar patch. When they lie dormant, in what the mindfulness tradition calls our store consciousness, they don't bother us. So we take the easy way and cramp our style. We go about our lives contorting ourselves so we don't disturb them.

If we are uncomfortable around someone, we try not to hang around them. We create lots of extra distance between us.

If someone makes us afraid, we avoid them. Even when they’re unavoidable. We are pretty ingenious at coming up with ways to avoid unavoidable people. You can avoid someone who you’re sleeping in the same bed with. (I said brains are quirky, not stupid.)

Inevitably we do disturb our thorns, but then we suppress them, we run away from the circumstance that generated the disturbance. No good. Not working for me. You?

Get Those Tweezers, It’s Not Worth the Price

The alternative is to take our thorns out. But it's painful to do so. (I hate pain. Not a fan.)

The way you take a thorn out is by letting it rise to the surface and allowing all the pain and discomfort that comes with feeling it. It’s natural to recoil from uncomfortable social situations, but you clean up the briar patch by seeing that impulse as a call to turn towards the trigger. The pain is a gift, the price of the removal of the thorn.

Things arise because they are trying to walk out the door and leave us, but we don't let them. Like a fine wine that one learns to savor, we can learn to savor difficult feelings and the promise of freedom they bring.

So the next time you’re near someone who elicits strong feeling, see if you can step closer, rather than move away. What happens?

If you’re on the phone with someone you have a complicated relationship with, sit down, bring your whole mind to the conversation. What happens if you lean towards the activation? You bring some more openness to it?

What happens if you don’t avoid the thorns?

There’s a whole person behind that tiny emotional impression and the reason to lean beyond it is that it helps you. It helps you get beyond designing your life to avoid the discomfort you feel in this relationship. It helps you relate to this person more completely. It helps you forgive and let go of past history. (It helps them too, but it’s easier to do things when you see how they help you.)

It's silly to relate to someone from a stubborn emotional impression for your whole life. A quirk of the brain. A thorn in your side.

What’s the cost of taking out the thorn? What is in the way of seeing a whole human rather than a slice of villainy?

A little bit of grief maybe? Some loss over letting go of a victim story? The death of an identity?

What’s the cost of leaving it in?

It’s too expensive IMHO.

Shucks, I hate pain.

Joseph

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