In the Footsteps of the Buddha pilgrimages with Shantum Seth across India and South Asia. Other spiritual journeys that transform. Mindful travel.
Filed in Vipassana, Mindfulness (sati)
Finding True Refuge
A mindfulness tool that offers support for working with difficult emotions
Watch our new video teachings by the author of this article, Tara Brach, here. From 2/11 to 2/17, she'll be available to answer questions online, so don't be afraid to ask! Please post your questions on the video teachings page linked to above.
Imagine you just found out that your child was suspended from school. Imagine your boss just told you to “start over” on a report you’ve worked on for a month. Imagine you just realized you’ve been on Facebook for three hours and have finished off a box of cookies in the process. Imagine your partner just confessed to an affair.
It’s hard to hang out with the truth of what we’re feeling. We may sincerely intend to pause and be mindful whenever a crisis arises or whenever we feel stuck and confused, but our conditioning to react, escape, or become possessed by emotion is very strong.
Yes, there are times when being present feels out of reach or too much to bear. There are times when a false refuge can relieve stress, give us a breather, and help lift our mood. But when we’re not connected to the clarity and kindness of presence, we’re all too likely to fall into more misunderstanding, more conflict, and more distance from others and from our own heart.
About 12 years ago, a number of Buddhist teachers began to share a new mindfulness tool that offered in-the-trenches support for working with intense and difficult emotions. The tool is called RAIN (an acronym for the four steps of the process), and it can be accessed in almost any place or situation. RAIN directs our attention in a clear, systematic way that cuts through confusion and stress. The steps give us somewhere to turn in a painful moment, and as we call on them more regularly, they strengthen our capacity to come home to our deepest truth. Like the clear sky and clean air after a cooling rain, this mindfulness practice brings a new openness and calm to our daily lives.
I have taught RAIN to thousands of students, clients, and mental health professionals. I’ve also made it a core practice in my own life. Here are the four steps of RAIN, presented in the way I’ve found most helpful:
R
Recognize what is happening
A
Allow life to be just as it is
I
Investigate with kindness
N
Non-identification
RAIN directly deconditions the habitual ways in which you resist your moment-to-moment experience. It doesn’t matter whether you resist “what is” by lashing out in anger, by having a cigarette, or by getting immersed in obsessive thinking. Your attempt to control the life within and around you actually cuts you off from your own heart and from this living world. RAIN begins to undo these unconscious patterns as soon as we take the first step.
Recognize what is happening.
Recognition is seeing what is true in your inner life. It starts the minute you focus your attention on whatever thoughts, emotions, feelings, or sensations are arising right here and now. As your attention settles and opens, you will discover that some parts of your experience are easier to connect with than others. For example, you might recognize anxiety right away, but if you focus on your worried thoughts, you might not notice the actual sensations of squeezing, pressure, or tightness arising in the body. On the other hand, if your body is gripped by jittery nervousness, you might not recognize that this physical response is being triggered by your underlying belief that you are about to fail. You can awaken recognition simply by asking yourself: “What is happening inside me right now?” Call on your natural curiosity as you focus inward. Try to let go of any preconceived ideas and instead listen in a kind, receptive way to your body and heart.
Allow life to be just as it is.
Allowing means “letting be” the thoughts, emotions, feelings, or sensations you discover. You may feel a natural sense of aversion, of wishing that unpleasant feelings would go away, but as you become more willing to be present with “what is,” a different quality of attention will emerge. Allowing is intrinsic to healing, and realizing this can give rise to a conscious intention to “let be.”
Many students I work with support their resolve to “let be” by mentally whispering an encouraging word or phrase. For instance, you might feel the grip of fear and whisper “yes” or experience the swelling of deep grief and whisper “yes.” You might use the words “this too” or “I consent.” At first you might feel you’re just “putting up” with unpleasant emotions or sensations. Or you might say “yes” to shame and hope that it will magically disappear. In reality, we have to consent again and again. Yet even the first gesture of allowing, simply whispering a phrase like “yes” or “I consent” begins to soften the harsh edges of your pain. Your entire being is not so rallied in resistance. Offer the phrase gently and patiently, and in time your defenses will relax, and you may feel a physical sense of yielding or opening to waves of experience.
Dear Tara,
I learned the RAIN acronym several years ago at a retreat you taught with James Baraz, and I have been using it off and on since then. A year ago my husband passed away and this practice became a regular part of my meditation. I found grief to be an emotion all to itself, unique and new to me, easy to recognize and to drop the stories around it. The Allowing part of RAIN was the most important to me, to sit with my heart completely open and let the waves of emotion pour over me. The word "allow" was so important. I gave myself permission to feel as deeply as I could rather than pushing it away. Sometimes it was so intense - beyond any emotion I had ever experienced. My meditation teacher had told me years ago that my heart was big enough to hold anything that came up, and I believed her. I did this practice over and over again, sometimes dropping into my body and feeling the physical sensations of grief. After difficult sessions, I would practice metta. The RAIN practice was an important part of my "getting through" this year and as the first anniversary of my husband's death approaches, I am experiencing gratitude for what I have learned from my Sangha and from my daily practice. I realize that I have a choice - that I can sit at home and feel sorry for myself, or celebrate his life and my spiritual journey through this year.
Much love to you,
Ila
Hi "Searching"
I want to honor your awareness of what is unfolding, and your "caring about caring." Your heart, that loving presence, is there. Just not in a way that you can discern.
Is it possible to let it be okay that this is not a season of feeling loving feelings, to forgive the inner weather systems for being as they are? Forgive does not presume wrong-doing, rather it is a letting go of the expectation that things should be different. That you should be different. Just as we might put a hand on our heart and send a loving blessings you might explore putting your hand on your heart and forgiving that it is closed at this point.
It's natural to want things different, to want to feel loving. But what if you forgave what is, and met the experience with curiosity? What if you investigated the sense of being cut off--the anxiety and fear that surrounds it-- asking how those experiences wanted you to be with them?
Whatever is happening can be a portal to freedom--to deepened trust in who we are--if we surrender into letting it be there, and open to what is with mindfulness. Naturally there are wise, skillful supports, such as our friend zipporah mentions. And..the bottom line is making peace with how it is right now...trusting that this too is part of the path and that presence with it can carry you home. Wishing you all blessings on the journey. With love, Tara
Hey Tara,
First off thanks so much for this amazing article. There is no doubt that it will be of extreme benefit for all of us! I just have one personal concern…and a pretty big one at that.
What if I were to tell that I had been practicing exactly as you have suggested through the RAIN approach, and it was allowing me to live life in the most meaningful way…with a complete sense of openness and unconditional love for all of creation…However, at some point along the way, what I am guessing was anxiety crept in, and I wasn’t able to approach it as I normally do…for some reason, this sensation has been escalating since that point and it has reached a situation where I cannot feel love…I feel completely dead inside and can only feel “negative” emotions…and from what you have said, and from what I know, LOVE towards self and other (for ex. the step of investigating with kindness) is the key…but what if you can no longer generate that love, or find that love within you? (and I have tried what I feel is every approach to unconditional love, but I simply cannot feel anything)…and so I have been living in a perpetual (24-7) sense of anxiety, anguish, fear because I know I should be feeling love…and that’s the other big part of the problem… I KNOW so much cognitively, but I cannot feel (anything “positive” ie. gentleness, tenderness, joy, etc)…almost a complete disconnect, a bystander watching but not engaging with life…any insight would be saving grace.
Hello "Searching",
I just read your response to Tara Brach's article and feel moved to respond. I have had several bouts of depression in my life, and what you are describing is just what I have felt in depression. I have been advised by different health professionals to take medication which I resisted for a long time. But I finally accepted their advice and have been taking very small doses of two antidepressants. I wonder if you might need that support to get out of the pit you have fallen into. Other practices have also helped me. The Lovingkindess meditation, imagining myself in the middle of a circle of spritual beings who are saying the prayer to me. Also the mantra, "Love and Gratitude" to remind myself that I experience those feelings in my life. When I am in a depression, I am very identified with the negative emotions and judgments of myself, and that feels like the Truth. I'm sure that Tara will respond to your cry for help. Please know that this state of mind will pass, and you will feel your love again. I hope that this is of some benefit to you.
with metta,
zipporah
And forgive me if any of this is incoherent as my mind has been in complete agitation for so long now
(furthermore I do many things such as yoga, running, deep breathing...but to no avail?)
I am writing in reply to all of you as I agree with both Tara and Z
The anxiety that is going along with your feeling of apathy which is what it sounds like (inability to feel love) rings very true to clinical depression and yes medication along with talk therapy certainly can be very helpful and I would not rule it out. At the same time if you are able to allow yourself as Tara said to step back and dissasociate and examine the fact that you are experiencing this without judgement and know that it will eventually change as nothing remains the same. With persistant practice and support this may work on its own. Never feel you are a failure though if you reach out to the Western support therapy in conjunction with mindiful meditation. As stated in the article those of us with PTSD may indeed need to have an additional support system engaged to begin. We are now using Mindfulness with our PTSD soldiers and I myself am a veteran who along with the loss of the military am losing a marriage of 47 years. I am readily taking all comers for help. It is a journey and for me there has been a need to include some Rx adjuncts to the mindful meditation. It is the meditation though that has been lifesaving. Do not judge yourself just let it be and be compassionate with you. It has taken me a long time to do that but it was worth the effort.