Photo: audreyjm529

To be at ease means to be in harmony with circumstances.

When we’re at ease we’re unselfconscious and confident. We feel connected. Our body is soft, natural, fluid, and graceful. When we are ill at ease we’ re self-conscious and tentative. We feel isolated. Our body is uptight and unresponsive. But the more we try to be at ease, the more we feel anxious and self-conscious. In the following I suggest three ways to escape self-consciousness.

Let’s look at situations which tend to make us feel ill of ease:

Performing in front of others.

When we’re ill at ease, our mind is filled with thoughts about how others see us, and that maybe we’re not good enough. I remember the first time I was Ino (chant leader) at one of Robert Aitken Roshi’s sesshins in Honolulu. As I was getting ready to chant, I looked around the room and recognised at least 10 really experienced chantleaders. I felt petrified and thought, “They’ll think I really suck at this.” In actual fact nobody was thinking about me. I was the only one! It took me two days to realise this. Then I settled down and started to enjoy the role. I learned that a good way to regain ease is to focus on the task and let go of evaluating one’s performance. I found that the easiest way to focus on the task is to experience the sensations in one’s body as one performs.

Being the centre of attention.

My partner, David, is a tango teacher. He loves dancing. When he hears music he likes, he’ll jump up, grab me, and start dancing. That might happen in a restaurant or even in the middle of the road. As we rotate, people’s faces float into view: mouths open, eyes agape. At those moments David is caught up in the trance of the music. But I’m not. Or not at once. I’ve learned how to relax and start enjoying myself half way through the dance, though. I’ve found that the way to more ease in such moments is to resolutely let go of self-reflective thoughts, like ‘They’ll all think we’re crazy’ or ‘I really suck at this’, or ‘

I wish I could disappear into a crack in the floor’ and so on. It also helps to focus one’s senses, and to pay attention what one hears, sees, smells, feels and so on.

Feeling isolated at a party.

Imagine that you are at a party and don’t know anyone at all. You are standing alone, clutching your glass and feel self-conscious, wondering why you came. What do you do? Look around and spot someone else who is ill at ease. Go up to them and start talking. Focus on getting to know them. Ask open-ended questions (ones that can’t be answered with ‘yes’ and ‘

no’.) Set yourself the task to connect with seven people at the party in this way. As your interest in others is kindled you’ll begin to relax and forget yourself.

The royal road to ease is meditation.

These practical tips will help you relax in stressful situations. But it’s important to develop a deeper sense of ease with oneself. This is what meditation can help. The reason it helps is because the focus of life slowly changes from the me-tape of ‘I, me, myself’, to attention on whatever the present moment offers. When we are fully immersed in the moment, there is no room for the ‘

me-tape’ in the mind and little by little we forget to be self-conscious and develop ease.

Photo: johnelamper

Are you grateful?

Do you think that’s too sweeping a question? Maybe you prefer to give me a qualified response. Something like this: “Well, I’m grateful for my health, but I’m hacked off about my boss. My kids are doing ok at school, but they’re getting a bit lippy. The wife and I get on alright, but not much is happening in bed.” “Yes, but…”, “Yes, but…”, “Yes, but….”

Do you think that someone who answers like this is happy and content?

I once read some interesting research on how couples feel about their relationship: If people experience as many good moments together as they have bad moments, they think that their relationship is in trouble. People only experience their relationship as happy if they have five good experiences to every bad encounter!

That’s interesting, isn’t it? It means that bad moments have much more impact on us than good ones–especially if we take them for granted.

Let’s take some liberty with these findings and transfer them to the problem of gratitude. This would mean that in order to feel content, we would need to find five things to be grateful for, for every one thing we dislike about our life.

Gratitude is a muscle that needs regular exercise.

Otherwise that emotional ‘muscle’ atrophies, and we become angry and bitter instead of happy and content.

Here’s a very simple way to do gratitude ‘push-ups’: At night, just before you go to sleep, go back through the day and make a list in your mind of all the things you can be grateful for.

Photo by Bruno Girin
Spiritual practice can be like a cargo cult. There’s a widespread religious movement in Melanesia where people believe that one day their ship will finally come in, sent by the gods. It will be laden with washing machines, TVs, sofas, cars, fridges, and everything else they have always waited for.

Do you look to the future for fulfilment?

Maybe you’re not waiting for fridges. But what about more intangible goods—such as enlightenment or wisdom? Do you hope that at some point in the future your spiritual practice will finally resolve all difficulties in life?

When I first began training in karate as a lowly white-belt I looked up to the students who had more experience. I watched the colour-belts train and thought, “One day, when I’m a colour-belt, then I’ll be the real thing!” A couple of years later, when I was a colour-belt I thought, “When I’m a black-belt, then I’ll be the real thing!”

Fast forward some years and I was finally in the middle of three hours of hell to attain my first black belt. Finally the master tied it around my waist. At that moment I realised that I had been the real thing all along, ever since my very first class! And I regretted missing out on the joy of each step of the journey, instead of focusing on future attainment.

Waiting for something to happen in the future blocks the light of this moment right now.

There is a fine poem by Philip Larkin, called ‘Next, please’. It is about waiting for what he calls the ‘armada of promises’. The last two verses are as follows:

We think each one will heave to and unload
All good into our lives, all we are owed
For waiting so devoutly and so long.
But we are wrong:

 

Only one ship is seeking us, a black-
Sailed unfamiliar, towing at her back
A huge and birdless silence. In her wake
No waters breed or break.

 

Larkin is right: one day we’ll catch up with the future. That’ll be when we end up in a wooden box.

Let’s enjoy life while we’re still alive!

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