A Practical Conversation With Clients About Mindfulness in Shaping Their Divorce

[Client - Attorney Q and A]

A. This may be your first, second, or even third divorce. I've had my own obligatory divorce, but I've also had 500 (whose counting?) other folks' divorces as well. Patterns repeat since the experience of divorce is essentially the same. I say with confidence that I know what you're feeling, thinking, how you are likely reacting, and where things are probably heading. I have watched lots of needless suffering.

All suffering is mind-induced. Suffering simply doesn't exist in the 'real' world. I understand this may sound like zen-speak or 'mindful platitudes,' but Reality is never what we expect. It is impossible for anyone to give Truth - or hold it back for that matter, and so it doesn't matter if what I say means to you what it means to me: We must all experience what we discover for ourselves in order to know it.

I can give some pointers in hopes they trigger some resonance and interest, so that you might explore beyond what is familiar for you. My purpose includes being a force for positive change, and while I don't know why the universe would choose me to become a mindful divorce lawyer, 'all that is' has an exquisite sense of humor and irony.

Mindfulness is the key to freeing yourself from the tyranny of resentment. The tyranny of mind is what creates and destroys relationship. If you want to survive your divorce or other family/relationship dispute, mindfulness may be useful to you. Divorce, a kind of dying, is an invitation to awaken and surrender.

Q. What is meant by mindfulness?

A. Mindfulness is as old as our experiencing of consciousness, and has been known by many names that all describe the same experience. Mysticism is found in every culture, from our earliest times painting animals and hand prints upon the dark roofs of caves by torchlight. For examples of this voice in our collective psyche you can look to Meister Eckhart from 13th century Catholicism, to the Buddha 2,500 years ago, to Christ, to Thomas Merton, to Rumi and Hafiz and the Sufi poets and the whirling dervishes, to Mohandas Ghandi, to the studies of Joseph Campbell, to Henry David Thoreau, to Ramana Maharshi, to Emerson, to Krishnamurti, to his Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama, to Alan Watts, to Ram Dass, to Rudolf Steiner, - an unending list, and you have your own favorites. When we look we find that each and every single one of these amazing human beings is describing exactly the same thing.

Today in our times, thanks in part to teachers like Thich Nhat Hanh and Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn, one way we speak of these Truths is in terms of "mindfulness." Kabat-Zinn pioneered stress reduction clinics at the University of Massachusetts in the 1970's using a uniquely western, scientific, approach to meditation. Using eastern themes of Presence and Awareness which Hanh and all the others introduced from the east, Kabat-Zinn reworked techniques of meditation and yogic breathing to create a simple system of focusing attention. The purpose of mindfulness training and meditation includes training the mind to return to the present moment even as we reflexively become lost in the chaotic trance of thought. This is what Buddhists have been doing with meditation practices for thousands of years. In this way we may stop being so identified with our thoughts that we believe that they are all true. Thinking tends always to be habitual, reactive, and circular - 95% of the content and structure of most of our experiencing of thought comes in the form of an internal dialogue going nowhere and having nothing to do with what is really happening outside our heads. Have you noticed this? It is worth considering whether the causes of divorce, and the experience of it, might be altered by this simple recognition.

Kabat-Zinn has described mindfulness as "paying attention, in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally. Mindfulness is not about thinking, it is about experiencing. It is a form of meditation, and is available in every moment." This does have the power to transform our experience, and evidently to rewire our brains.

Mindfulness is indifferent to overt spirituality (heck, spirituality is one of the most sophisticated traps used by the mind!); yet, it is fundamentally spiritual in attitude. This spirituality rests not in any particular philosophy, religion, or belief system but underlies them all. It does not even require a belief system, and so suits the atheist and agnostic. Mindfulness is bringing the attention to the mind and body into the present moment. When this is done everything else spontaneously takes care of itself. This an amazingly powerful tool, and a big relief. Being mindful of mindfulness becomes a richly non-spiritual form of textural spirituality. It is especially useful in guiding choices, points of view, recognizing the destructive presence of reactivity, and in reshaping the experience of marital and non-marital breakup.

Q. Are there practices that can be of use?

A. Kabat-Zinn developed what he coined as MBSR, which is but one tool at your disposal. According to his website, his programs are designed to "help you befriend yourself in the only moment you will ever have - this one - and to enter into and dwell for a time in the domain of being, whatever is going on in your mind or in the world in any given moment or on any given day, and thus restore and strengthen your health and well-being at the level of the mind, the body, and the heart, which I see as one undivided whole. By cultivating mindfulness in a disciplined way, as a radical act of self-compassion and intelligence, you are tapping into your own deepest resources for learning, growing, healing, and transformation, resources that you may not even know you possess, but that emerge as we cultivate the kind attention at the heart of these meditations."

There are many others. I am constantly updating our Resources pages. Generally we are speaking of some form of meditation. You've practiced meditation throughout your life: Noticing with awe a stormy sea, or the smell of rain just after a thunderstorm, or the birth of your child, are simple examples.

My purpose is not to parrot the practices of mindfulness, but to remind us that they are available. I hope to convey how it might work within the context of being a divorcing person served by a divorce lawyer. Kabat-Zinn's work is specifically directed to stress reduction utilizing techniques of breath focusing, guided meditation, and similar practices and is a transformative method of instilling and recovering equanimity in the face of calamity, and as a simple grounding force in quieter times. There are many other ways. Any form of meditation practice will do.

I am personally committed to using these tools which in my personal and in my professional life, and I urge my clients to investigate these techniques for themselves, because without some form of practice mindfulness and equanimity are impossible to maintain. This is just the truth. Even with practice, one tends to only enjoy glimpses of it. But glimpses are a crucial beginning, and they tend to have a life of their own and to start us out on a journey where we need and want to go. As one teacher says, "they may be a seed or a bomb." These practices are no different from those that underlie all faces of religion, spirituality, poetry and philosophy. They are not in conflict with anything that you already know. Mindfulness is a tool for escaping our suffering and the inevitable dissatisfaction with the process of divorce.

Q. What does being mindful require?

A. Mindfulness requires nothing because it exists outside the realm of achievement. It is always based within the present moment, and the present moment just exists without concern for past or future.

Divorce tends to be mindless.The present moment doesn't care about striving to change anything. It is not in argument with "what is." In the present moment, nothing matters other than the present moment. The present moment is always an existing fact, here and now - can we say the same about a remembrance of what happened yesterday, or what we hope or fear will happen tomorrow?

Which is not to say that we are not forced to come to peace with the past and with the future. As topics and timeframes, these concepts remain relevant. It is not enough to say "this too will pass" or "in the present moment you cannot be harmed" because not only can that seem incomprehensible at times, but mindfulness without perspective risks failing to protect the person from destructive harm. It is not our common experience that we disappear in a cloud of bliss. Mindfulness offers perspective.

For purposes of divorce mindfulness begins by recognizing what is mindlessness, and the forms of thinking or behavior that mindlessness takes. It is often easier to see the insanity of everything than how things are all interconnected. This sensitivity does not begin by changing anything; the impulse to change things is just more trance, wearing emperor's clothing. Recognition is all that is ever required, the rest takes care of itself. But without attempting to see what is and what is not zombie like reactivity, there is little room for positive desire and intention to sprout and take root. The method of mindfulness allows for a constant re-dialing back to the simple presence, without demand and even without plan.

But, beware, the mind ('the ego') moves nimbly and so quickly. As soon as these words form, are expressed on paper or read, they tend to coalesce into a plan of action into "a doing" - an activity. And so mindlessness begins anew.

Is this confusing? Absolutely - its filled with paradoxes because ultimately the mind cannot grasp it all. Instead, the mind can point to illustrations that cause a felt sense of recognition which usually cannot be explained. Have you ever awakened to the fact that you've been unconscious until that moment? Doesn't this happen every day, all the time? For instance, suddenly you are at the bathroom mirror with a toothbrush in your mouth and you have no idea nor remembrance how you got there? Someone has been talking and that you've not been listening and have no idea what they just said. You've clicked to this page or away from it, and don't recall the clicks in between or the content of what you observed. That you have been distracted by some story of your mind while driving, and now arrive at your destination uncertain who was steering or what route they took? Where did the present go?

Q. This all seems easy to say. How do I know when I am "Present"?

A. We all know mindlessness. And that is a good place to start. Sometimes knowing things from their opposites is a good beginning.

It is at once much more subtle and much more sinister when we apply this concept to emotional reactivity as people experience it in divorce. In our daily lives we are constantly being triggered into reactivity, and that reactivity manifests in anything from self-talk, to angry speech, to dangerous behaviors directed at ourselves and others.

Divorce causes reactivity on steroids. "Divorce" can be defined as "an often emotionally violent disentangling of human interrelationship and affairs, including the division of accumulated possessions and attachments, caused by an unmanageable reactivity by one or more persons towards another which includes deep suffering to the parties and others, and which usually occurs outside of conscious awareness, requiring the involvement of third parties to conclude."

This is also a good definition of the mindlessness of divorce. It is almost always an emotionally traumatic crisis. It requires a disentangling of people, places, and things to which people have become stubbornly attached and identified. It is aggravated by a reactivity and self-centeredness of at least one and usually both of the partners, and it is almost invariably accompanied by shame and blame. Reactivity itself usually occurs outside of awareness - yet, reactivity can be held in awareness. A common attribute is that the parties are usually helpless to resolve the matter on their own in any satisfactory way.

It is not the goal here to wear the psychologist's hat. Instead, the aim is to notice the dynamics of what is in play and to discuss how mindfulness may be brought to bear to resolve the matter with the minimum of suffering. If we understand this definition mindfully, we can gain some clue how to address the process and our role within it, in a way the presents an opportunity for a redefinition, and then a creative course of action.

Indeed, the first consequence that a practice of mindfulness can achieve in looking as divorce is monumental: We can redefine divorce in a manner consistent with a vision of our best intentions. This avoids experiencing life by default.

Q. What is meant by "Redefining the expectations surrounding divorce"?

A. If you could choose (and you can), what might you want your divorce and its affects on people to look like? Not in terms of what someone outside might think although that might give useful feedback, but how would you like it to feel today, tomorrow, next week, next year, in 10 years, or as you reflect upon your life as you lay one day dying?

We rarely consider these questions with any real interest. Because we don't ask, the answers don't tell themselves. This is mindlessness in practice.

As with most questions, it is natural and reasonable to start from the center of our own interests - that is, our selves - but consider for a moment how you might like your divorce to feel to your children. Or your parents. Or your friends and co-workers - you know, all the people to whom you complain most bitterly and helplessly.

How might you like your divorce to feel for your spouse?

Mindfulness teaches us to look carefully at what arises when we ask such questions - not to judge them or suppress them, but just to begin to hold the question by applying attention to it. It is illuminating to consider how deeply and where these questions, and the wounded answers that naturally arise, rest within the mind. For examination reveals their linkage with how the self-centered "me" feels. In today's parlance, this self-centered egoic personality is the "Little Me". Our worse fantasies, most selfish or destructive thoughts, and our day to day self centeredness all derive from a sense of wounded Little Me.

What is egoic conditioning? This Is the equivalent of the egoic identity, the "Little Me." Recognizing the "Little Me" for what it is is an amazing accomplishment. It opens the door to recognizing something infinitely larger, that which sees the Little Me, and therefore has an existence apart from it. Some call this the "Inner Guru." We are all familiar with both characters, whatever we name them. Our highest aspirations, and our most transcendent moments, resonate within and are observed and recognized by our Inner Guru.

"Little Me" is the character that we think we are. The one that judges our selves and everyone else, the one with all the opinions that surprisingly can shift and invert from moment to moment, the one that wants to be entertained and attaches to material things and romantic imagery, the one that is in an argument with what is happening, and so on.

Our Little Me is not awake. Sure it moves, it bustles around, it can seem quite energetic - hell, it bounces off the walls all the time. But that is not a state of Awakeness. The Little Me might beg to differ, but let it beg. No answer or response will satisfy it anyway. The Little Me is our 2 year old personality structure at an arrested emotional stage of development. It can be beguiling like any child, dripping with sweetness and unction one moment and a terrible tyrant the next. Little Me is a chameleon, and getting rid of the Little Me is like trying to rid yourself of your shadow. A ridiculous and impossible exercise unless you choose to live in total darkness, which doesn't seem to be a satisfactory option.

Remain conscious in divorce.Your Inner Guru, however, is something quite distinct. It is large and wise enough to be all embracing and all inclusive. The Little Me knows of it. Unlike the converse, your Inner Guru subsumes the Little Me, and so much more. Yet to the Little Me the Inner Guru seems to fly on gossamer wings, ephemeral, fragile, and tied to some other dimension. This perception is not true.

Mindfulness is nothing more than the Inner Guru expressing its aliveness in any given moment. It is allowing the natural spontaneous truth of life to express itself through an awareness of what is, at that moment and each succeeding moment but only then as each actually unfolds. It seems a quite task to remember that. This sense of difficulty is natural, and simply a mistaken apprehension.

Q. So, what might one do?

A. Consider this question: How would I like my divorce to feel? In my earlier experiences as a lawyer, this topic was never discussed. Until I began to wake up, it never occurred me to ask, and no one has ever raised the question. Certainly some folks, more fortunate than others, have a sense of the question and operate from that sense.

To find an answer, it is important to consider who is asking the question. If the sense we call Little Me is asking the question, then buckle up.

It is through mindfulness whether as a meditation practice, gentle self-inquiry, or just a gradual flowering of recognition and intention, that we allow the Inner Guru to address the question.

Let us the ask the question differently: How would my Inner Guru wish this divorce of mine to feel, to me and all other beings?

There is transformative power in asking this question. When the Little Me drops out of the equation, when "I" am not the central questioner, a previously unnoticed constellation of possibilities pops into being.

Here are some possible answers. You will have your own, all unique to the experiences of your life. We need to begin somewhere, and a list is as good a place as any. When we honestly connect to our own heartfelt place of best intentions, and cause ourselves to examine those intentions in a committed manner, certain themes will arise that we did not previously consider. This allows us to peer deeper than we otherwise might, when stuck in the autopilot of trance conditioning. It doesn't matter whether you list what you don't want or what you do want, but try listing it from both directions. Pick which ever is easiest for you to begin, and grab a sheet of paper or better yet a journal.

Are any of these affirmations true for you?

I don't want to cause pain to my loved ones.

I don't want my children to be hurt, or suffer now, or in the future.

I don't want to repeat my own parent's experience.

I don't want to be angry.

I don't want to be scared.

I am tired of blame.

I am tired of shame.

I don't even want to cause pain for myself.

I don't want to be stuck.

I don't want to be self-centered all the time.

I don't want to impose my story of suffering on those around me.

I don't want to feel vulnerable all the time.

I don't want to feel a victim.

I don't want to be sad.

I don't want to feel physically unwell.

I don't want to react all the time.

I don't want to need to apologize because of what I've said or done.

I don't want ______

Do this exercise with gentle humor and patient kindness and understand what is written above may be a long list for you, or maybe a short list. The key is to keep listing until you've exhausted the thoughts and feelings that arise and wish to express themselves. You can also run another sheet at the same time, or wait until you are finished with your first one, but however you approach the list, each item will suggest its opposite.

I want to love.

I want to be loved.

I want peace.

I want to be a positive force.

I want to be awake.

I want to be mindful.

I want to forgive.

I want to be forgiven.

I want to get on with my life.

I want _______.

You get the idea. Now, when you are done with both lists, ask yourself this question: Is the best of what I want for myself, the same as what I want for all others? Is the best of what I want, what I want for my divorce? Is it what I want for my spouse or partner? Is is possible that they would want the same things for themselves and for me? And even if they don't want the same things for me, does that matter - for me?

Finally, write down a summary of what resonated for you in making these lists. Entitle it "Mission Statement" or something else. And consider making a prayer, or whatever you wish to call it, that these goals remain your highest intention and that you may remind mindful of them, in pursuing them.

What might a zen divorce feel like?Then, congratulate yourself. You have just examined more than most people consider in an entire divorce lasting months and years! You have glimpsed deep mindfulness, and have a sense what it looks like and where to find it. You have expressed an intention to be present and well, and so begun a journey to healing.

And you have arrived at the door to a way of being that may guide and carry you safely through the journey, all the way home.