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Coming Home to Oneself - Diana Clark

The following talk was given by Diana Clark at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on April 09, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Coming Home to Oneself

Welcome, everybody. Happy Eclipse day¹. It is an amazing thing that happened over there in another part of the United States. It is such an unusual thing. It makes me wonder how, thousands of years ago, they explained something like this. How would you explain something like this if you did not know all the astronomy? I don't think knowing astrology would help you much.

Today I wanted to talk a little bit about this idea of coming home to ourselves. There is a home inside of us, a place that has a sense of ease, a sense of safety. That is a home that no one can take away from us. It is always there, and yet we are often not there. This place inside of us is welcoming and has a sense of belonging. No matter what is happening around us, this is always available. It is always there, but we are not always connected to it. We are not always home.

If we want to use this language of "home," I don't know about all of you, but when I am home, I am relaxed. I tend to be doing what I want to do and wearing clothes that I only wear at home—just being comfy. There is this feeling of being who we really are, being authentic, and not trying to impress anybody else. We are just being ourselves.

For some people, when they get home, there is a sense of transition. I know that when I worked in Corporate America, when I would come home from work, I would change out of my professional clothes and into whatever I was going to wear to lounge around in the evening. There was this sense that the changing of the clothes was like, "Oh, okay, now I can be a little bit more relaxed. I can be who I am in some kind of way." When there is this sense of being home, there is a sense that there is nowhere that we need to go. There is nowhere else that we need to be going to, and there is nothing else that we need to be. We can just be here. We can just be here in this moment.

Coming home to ourselves is related to mindfulness—being present for what is actually happening as opposed to being lost in thought, in fantasies, or in planning.

So, what are some of the ways in which we abandon ourselves or leave this home? I am using "home" as a nice way to point to a place that feels comfortable and familiar inside of us, even if it is not as comfortable and familiar as we would like it to be. Maybe it is just more comfortable and familiar than other places, like when we are out in public. What are some of the ways in which we really start to orient outside of ourselves instead of staying here with our experience?

Part of that is very simply because we are experiencing difficulties. Whatever those difficulties might be—something minor like, "I can't figure out how to fix the dishwasher," or having some really emotional difficulties like feeling really sad or angry, or having difficulty in our personal intimate relationships. Often when there are difficulties, the mind kicks in and says, "Oh, I have to figure it out." It starts to go outside. It starts to engage with things and want to find a solution, like looking up a YouTube video on instructions on how to fix that dishwasher.

But that is not the only thing that happens when we start to look outside ourselves. We start to look for answers, but often we start to blame. There are these difficulties, and we think it is something out there's fault—that person, that entity, that situation. We get disconnected from ourselves because then all the energy goes out there. Maybe there is a strong sense of self-righteousness: "I'm right, but that thing over there is wrong." That is not really a comfortable feeling. Maybe this self-righteousness feels energizing for a bit, but it also feels alienating. It is like you are hiding behind a shield and getting all puffed up. It takes so much energy to maintain this self-righteousness. It is not a comfortable way to live one's life.

So maybe that is one reason why we kind of abandon ourselves—why we are no longer home—is because we are having difficulties and we are either looking for solutions outside of ourselves or we are blaming something outside of ourselves. Either way, we are disconnected from ourselves.

Or maybe it is nothing like difficulties. Maybe we have simply gained this habit that our culture, our society, our family, and our education so often like to promote: "Let's go chase the next shiny thing." Let's have attainments, or let's have accomplishments. Let's go get whatever the advertisers want to convince us that we need, or whatever our phones tell us that we should do. It can just be a habit to always be striving and looking, trying to get something. In either way, it is again this way in which we are oriented outside of ourselves, being disconnected from this home, this place of spaciousness and stability inside.

Another reason why we might be a little bit disconnected from ourselves is that maybe being present for the moment and for ourselves is a letdown. Maybe it is kind of disappointing. "Nothing exciting here. I'm just sitting here." We are so used to having something entertaining or interesting or engaging. On the surface, to just be with our experience feels boring. "Oh, it's just like this."

But when we can gain some deeper attention, some deeper connection to ourselves, that is when it starts to become so rich, so rewarding, and delightful. But it is often not that way at the beginning. In fact, when we start with a mindfulness practice and we start turning towards ourselves, in the beginning, it can be really disappointing. We start to see all this stuff about ourselves that we wish we didn't see: all our bad habits that we can't really ignore anymore, or all the ways maybe that we have unskillfully harmed ourselves or harmed others. We start to see that more clearly. Then maybe we just want to jump out and distract ourselves with what is on a screen because this inner critic can be really vicious and mean when we start to see.

I know for me, when I started my practice, I thought I was a pretty good person. But I started to see all these ways in which I wasn't really showing up for my friends, the ways that I was telling little white lies, and these ways that I was always thinking, "Oh yeah, I'll try more later." I was not quite engaging with my life. No wonder I felt discontent with my life, because I wasn't engaged with it. When we start a mindfulness practice, when we start showing up for ourselves, it can be a wake-up call. I think it might have been Gil Fronsdal² who said something along the lines of, "All self-understanding is not necessarily good news."

That could be another reason why we are not often connected to ourselves. If our inner critic is vicious, connecting to, coming home to, and making friends with ourselves is so important. Yet, in contrast, many of us believe that self-criticism is an appropriate strategy for success. You know, it works until it doesn't. It works a certain amount; we can beat ourselves up and be mean to ourselves for a while, but then it comes at a price. A lifelong practice of this self-criticism can have a high price. It makes us anxious and makes us not want to try new things or take any risks. If we have this inner critic that's really harsh, we know that if we fail or we don't do it perfectly, we will just beat ourselves up. We will berate ourselves for quite some time. So we don't try new things, we don't take risks, we don't learn new things, and then our life gets smaller and smaller, only staying with those things in which we feel like we have some expertise or feel familiar and comfortable.

The inner critic makes us anxious and our life becomes smaller, but it also makes us dissatisfied with our life. Not being connected leads to feeling like nothing is quite right—always something is wrong. It can also contribute to a sense of being disconnected from others. If we are beating ourselves up so much and we think that we are so bad, we don't want anybody else to know how bad we are. So we are hiding behind armor or a shield.

So many of us feel like, "Well, we need this inner critic to motivate ourselves." I have talked about this a number of times in different contexts. We have this convoluted sense of self-care, like, "I have to be mean to myself, beat myself up, and say mean names to myself so that I can do things in an appropriate way or do well."

With this self-criticism, we start to have this expression, this "low-grade fever of self-doubt." Then we start to feel like not only are we disconnected from ourselves, but disconnected from everything. We really feel like, "Well, maybe I don't belong here." This famous imposter syndrome: "If people really knew me, maybe they wouldn't be okay with me."

Often what happens is we engage in this game of trying to convince ourselves that actually we are okay. It is astounding how this is such a common strategy. You might say this is a lot of what humans do: going around kind of projecting "I'm okay, I'm okay," but inside everybody is thinking, "You know what? I'm kind of struggling a little bit here." Whether they are struggling a lot or just a little bit.

We engage in this game of trying to convince ourselves otherwise. We try to say the right things, or look the right way, or do the right things, or be at the right place, or be with the right people as a way to reassure ourselves because we have this low-grade fever of self-doubt. Other people have this low-grade fever of self-doubt and they are doing the same thing too, and it kind of gets normalized, this way of showing up in the world.

Maybe we have this idea: "Well, people like me, so I must be okay." But that really relies on what is happening out there, not on what is happening in here, in our hearts and in our minds. Or maybe we think, "I have a lot of professional success. I'm a good student. My house is beautiful. The grass is green. I have all these things, so I must be okay." We try to convince ourselves of this, and it doesn't last for very long. There is always something. It is never like, "Okay, now that I got my house perfect, I'm done." Oh, I still kind of feel the same. I have a certain amount of professional success? Oh, I feel kind of the same. I need more professional success.

That is a little bit of my story. When I was in Corporate America, I had a fantastic job. I had a great job, and I felt like, "I'm still not so happy." I thought that was what was needed—to have a good job. I thought, "Well, my professional life is not going to get much better than this, so there has to be something else." I left Corporate America not really knowing what I was going to do, all these years ago, and found myself here.

Instead, there is this way that this journey can be a journey of coming home and connecting to ourselves. Here is sometimes the tricky part: in a friendly way. In a warm-hearted way. In an open, spacious way. Sometimes we connect with ourselves, but it is with a sense that we have to whip ourselves into shape, that it is this big self-improvement project: "Okay, here is everything that's wrong. I guess I'll start over here and work on it." But this journey to coming home, connecting to ourselves in a friendly way, for some of us might be a radical idea. For me, it certainly was this radical idea to take care of, honor, and respect myself and my inner life. It is really important.

This journey goes beyond just feeling good about yourself because it is not based on convincing yourself of anything. It is not based on convincing yourself that you are an "okay person," and it doesn't rely on acquiring more success, more badges of honor, or more material objects. It is not about accumulating more, even though that is definitely the message we get sent in everyday life. This journey is not exactly the same as increasing our self-esteem, because we might say that self-esteem is a way you judge yourself, like "Okay, I'm good enough." Instead, it is more about recognizing, "Okay, I have difficulties. How can I meet them with care, with warmth, with openness?"

This journey to greater freedom, this journey to coming home to ourselves, is not pretending that everything is fine. It is not comparing ourselves to others, or even comparing ourselves to how we think we should be, or to our younger selves, or our ideal future selves. Instead, it is something really different. It is saying, "Oh yeah, some of this is hard. But how can I respond to this difficulty with kindness? How can I acknowledge, honor, and respect this difficulty, this struggle that I have, with understanding, with care, with concern?"

How can we meet ourselves? How can we come home? Often, this idea of home is a place where it is relaxed, safe, and warm—figuratively or literally.

This journey of coming home might begin with a meditation practice. One is mindfulness. That is the emphasis here at IMC. I don't give a lot of mindfulness instructions; I have this basic assumption that people are familiar with mindfulness practice. But briefly, I will say it is just being present for what is happening as best we can, but with an attitude of warmth, care, openness, or spaciousness.

This is Diana's confession here: for me, with mindfulness at the beginning, I so really wanted to be mindful that I didn't appreciate that I was using a sledgehammer on the breath. "I'm here!" It turns out all it needs to be is, "Nope, I'm here." It is more like a feather than a sledgehammer. An indicator of how you are practicing mindfulness can be how you feel when the bell rings. If there is a sense of "Oh, thank goodness," then you might be doing it a little too hard, straining a little too much. But if there is a sense of, "Oh, bell. Wow, listen to how it is wavering," and then opening your eyes when you are ready—that is different. Some of us are like, "Are they ever going to ring the bell? Oh my goodness, we've been here for two hours already, I'm sure of it."

This journey of coming home might begin with this meditation practice. Not only mindfulness, where we are meeting our present moment experience. We often talk about having an anchor, which is often the breath. We just stay on the breath. The mind wanders—that is what minds do. When we notice that it is wandering, we just simply come back to the anchor, the breath. When it wanders again, we just keep on coming back. It doesn't matter how many times you have to do this; it absolutely doesn't matter.

Then, if there is something in the body that is really compelling or uncomfortable, some difficulty, let go of the breath and just turn towards the bodily sensation. "Oh, the knee, the knee." We often look for adjectives: it is throbbing, it is stabbing, it is hot, it is pulsing—whatever the uncomfortable sensation is. Then, when the mind has either slipped off or it is no longer compelling, we just come back to the breath. Mindfulness is just showing up. We have an anchor, and then move to what is compelling so that we are never in a struggle. We are never in a wrestling match trying to just stay on the breath when something else is really calling our attention. This is a way in which we just meet whatever is arising with some care and just being present for it.

I gave the example of being with the body, but it could be with sounds if that is compelling—the dogs barking or traffic sounds outside. It can be emotions. It can even be thoughts, though thoughts are a little bit more tricky.

When we start to do this mindfulness and we are being with whatever is arising, we discover that we have been compartmentalizing ourselves. "Okay, I'm going to try to ignore this part of myself that I don't like and just pay attention to this part here." That part that we don't like, we kind of excise it or hope that it will go away. "If I ignore it long enough, it will wither away." But if we are practicing with mindfulness, whatever we are trying to ignore sooner or later will become compelling. It will show up in some kind of way. Trying to shove it away won't work. Then we realize, "Oh, okay. Mindfulness practice is about allowing all aspects of ourselves." Even those ones that are well hidden and that might only come up when the mind is really quiet and the body is settled.

We might have been disconnected from some of the more subtle difficulties that we are having, so we invite them in too. This is part of how we are coming home to ourselves: we are inviting in all these different parts and letting them come home and sit in front of the hearth and get warm and cozy.

There is also a way in which this meditation practice can bring some compassion for ourselves. I use the word "care"—this warm-heartedness. "Oh, this is what's happening for me, and it's not easy." Meeting it with some openness, some warmth, and some care. Some of you might know that one way we can talk about compassion is that it is when loving-kindness meets difficulties. This well-wishing, when it meets difficulties, turns into: "May these difficulties go away," or "May the difficulties diminish or no longer be difficult." This journey home may involve some mindfulness but also some compassion too, because we will meet some difficulties in ourselves. That is part of how we come home, as we meet all these different places.

There is something beautiful that happens with this process. Not only do we come home, but it also helps us connect with others. Connecting with ourselves helps us connect with others.

Earlier I said that it is not uncommon that people are trying to project, "Okay, I'm fine, everything's fine, I got it together," even though inside there might be a lot of discomfort, confusion, or suffering. But then when you start to connect with yourself and you say, "Oh yeah, when I used to have a lot of self-righteousness or I used to brag a lot, that was because I was actually feeling kind of awful inside." So we might recognize somebody doing a behavior that we used to do, and we did it when we felt uncomfortable. So then when we see somebody doing a lot of boasting, we might think, "Oh yeah, they just might not be feeling good about themselves right now. They might just be having some difficulties." Then we are more apt to connect with them. We recognize, "Okay, they are just like us in this kind of way."

Connecting with ourselves helps us to not withdraw. Some of us withdraw into ourselves when we are having difficulties. But when we recognize that, no, this is just what it means to be a human—this is part of the human experience—then we are less likely to withdraw, hide, and isolate. We can connect with others. And of course, connecting with others makes our life richer, and often we learn more about ourselves by what gets reflected back to us by those that we spend time around.

We might say that there is no particular endpoint to this process of making friends with ourselves. It is not like, "Oh, okay, I'm finally done. I never have to treat myself with care again." It is just the way that we show up in the world. It is the way that we express ourselves. The process unfolds naturally. We care about ourselves, so then we have a little more interest. Like those people we care about—we care about what is happening in their lives, how they are. So we start to care about ourselves. "What's going on here? Why are you feeling agitated?" We might say that to somebody else, but we might say to ourselves, "Oh yeah, I'm feeling agitated. What's going on?"

This process unfolds naturally and leads to some greater understanding. From some understanding comes some acceptance, and from acceptance comes this love. Love for ourselves, love for others, and maybe just love—this warmth that shows up in so many different ways.

This coming home to ourselves can be a journey, and it can be this radical movement—this radical shift from a self-improvement project or disowning parts of ourselves to this really different movement of: "Oh, what's happening? There are difficulties here. How can I meet this with kindness? How can I meet this with warmth? How can I meet this with care?" Instead of the usual beating up that so many of us do.

To help that radical shift can be the mindfulness practice, as we start to see more and more subtle difficulties, as well as some heart practices. Maybe have a formal loving-kindness practice or compassion practice. If not, just this intention to meet with warmth the difficulties that we are experiencing, so that we can be at home in front of the fire with hot cocoa and slippers, a little blanket, or whatever a nice cozy home would be for you.

Q&A

Jim: I saw a movie yesterday and it had somebody that I think is an early mentor for me on self-acceptance. It was a comedian named Red Skelton³. Some of you may have seen he was on television for about 20 years. He was a very self-effacing, kind of goofy guy, but always had that sense of love and acceptance—at least that was my take on it. So he was an important role model, although I didn't realize it at the time. I thought he was just funny, but going back and seeing a movie that he made from the early 50s reminded me of that.

Diana: That is great to hear, that a comedian had some self-acceptance. Usually, these days they are kind of jabbing. Do you want to give any example about something he would do or say?

Jim: It is hard for me to exactly remember, but there was something about how he never jabbed like that. He would speak honestly but also kindly and kind of make fun of himself.

Diana: I think that kind of making fun of oneself in a healthy and useful way is important. Being able to laugh at yourself. Thank you for saying that. I should have spoken about that sense of play too. We can play around or experiment and see how we are. Playfulness in general is a good idea.

Participant: When you were talking about the inner critic, I was thinking about fueling the inner critic—getting in habits of talking meanly, which thankfully I don't do much. Then I was thinking of the opposite, which I've been thinking about lately. When I'm in the present moment and I'm feeling... the word that comes up lately is "satisfying." I was just this morning looking at the light on the telephone pole—something very mundane as the sun was coming up—and kind of soaking in that satisfying feeling. Thinking of it as fuel to notice, "Ah, this feels good." Not striving to have that feeling ("Oh, I want to be present"), but when I notice that I am and it feels good or satisfying, that's the state I'm in lately.

Diana: Perfect. This is so great that you are talking about this because often we do have those moments, but we are often dismissive of them, like going out trying to find something to solve or be entertaining. But I love this—just the light on the telephone pole. Fantastic.

Kurt: I wanted to share one thing that came up for me. I really love movies and good acting, and Robert Duvall⁴ to me is a terrific actor. He was being interviewed on TV once, and the guy who was interviewing him said, "You know, Robert, when you did this one particular movie you were so brilliant and you just got so emotional. How do you do that?" And I'll never forget what he said. He said, "Well, for me, what I do is I never go beyond who I am. When I was first acting, I would try to go over the top and really act in a very convincing way, but I was going beyond myself. It wasn't really true to who I am." It struck me because I've done a lot of that—trying to be a certain way, present a certain persona. He was kind of addressing that for me: that he never goes beyond who he is. He can get very emotional, but he has to stay within his own range. If he tries to go beyond his range, it doesn't come across as authentic.

Diana: Very nice. Thank you.

Catherine: You spoke about the tendency to contain or compartmentalize our emotions or our experience, and that the goal is to meet life and experience as it is. Is there also a downfall of overindulging in experience or emotions that we should be aware of? Because there is the suppressing, the compartmentalizing, but is there an overindulgent aspect that can be detrimental?

Diana: Can you say a little bit about how one would know they are overindulging?

Catherine: I mean, like being with difficulties in such a way that it perpetuates the difficulties and you just kind of get stuck in this loop?

Diana: Yes. With mindfulness practice, there is this way in which you could start to see if this is a pattern that one has. Let's say when there is a difficulty with one's intimate relationships, there is a way in which there might just be this collapsing, saying, "Oh no, it's fine, it's fine," and not talking or engaging. With mindfulness, you start to see, "Oh yeah, okay, here I am. I have this collapsed feeling again." You might just notice it because of the body being like this somehow. Then this awkward time comes: "Oh, I see that I have this pattern. I see that it's not helpful, and I'm doing it again."

That is how it starts—you start to understand or be more familiar with some ways of showing up in the world. You can't just stop because now you see it, but it does unwind. It starts with having to see it. And then again, you have to bring this warm-heartedness I talked about. "Okay, I'm watching myself do what I know is not helpful, but I'm doing it again." Just to have this recognition starts the ball rolling to stop doing it.

Catherine: I think it's the principle of it, but the fine details of the doing of it—to do it with precision—is challenging.

Diana: Yes, that's right. It is not easy. So here is a little hint that can be enormously helpful: orient towards adjectives rather than nouns. I know this sounds weird. Instead of saying "I'm sad"—which is a label, and then we start having a relationship with this word and think "I've always been sad, I'm going to be sad again"—say, "Oh, there is real heaviness in the body. There is pressure behind the eyes. The thoughts are really slow. I feel like I'm not going anywhere."

Do a descriptor instead of just slapping a label on it. If we start to say, "Oh, I have this heaviness in my body, pressure behind the eyes," then we are engaged with what is actually happening. We are mindful. This is the precision here. Then things can unfold differently if we can stay with the adjectives, with the actual experience. Any adjective is fine, describe it in any way. To avoid judgment on it and to give it space with just neutrality of description. Exactly. Like a naturalist would do with some creature in the woods: "Oh, it does this, and then oh look, it's doing that." Same thing.