Emotional Alchemy Read online

  About the Author

  TARA BENNETT-GOLEMAN, M. A., is a psychotherapist and teacher who has developed emotional alchemy, an innovative integration of mindfulness meditation and Buddhist psychology with a new dimension in cognitive therapy. For the last decade she has taught workshops on this approach with her husband Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence. Bennett-Goleman has studied for more than two decades with Buddhist masters from Tibet, Nepal and Burma. Her postgraduate training, at the Cognitive Therapy Center of New York, was in schema therapy, which focuses on changing self-defeating emotional patterns. Her humanitarian projects have included working for Tibetan causes and counselling the elderly and terminally ill. She is a longtime student of Japanese flower arranging and tea ceremony, as well as Kathak Indian dance. She lives in Massachusetts, where she affectionately spoils her two horses.

  Praise for Emotional Alchemy

  ‘May this very important and enticing book find its way into the hearts of readers near and far so that it can perform its mysterious and healing alchemy for the benefit of all. Tara Bennett-Goleman has done a great service in describing in such inspiring and precise ways how meditative practices can liberate us from the patterns of emotional reactions that, unexamined, lead invariably to suffering and harm.’

  Jon Kabat Zinn,

  author of Wherever You Go, There You Are

  Professor of Medicine at Umass Medical School

  ‘A rare accomplishment, bringing the synthesis of Western psychology and Buddhist Mindfulness practice to an entirely new level. Much more than theory, it is a wise and pragmatic guide to emotional freedom. Tara Bennett-Goleman weaves together with consummate skill the wisdom teachings of the East, the latest understandings of cognitive therapy and neuroscience, and the innumerable personal stories that bring all of it to life.’

  Joseph Goldstein,

  author of Insight Meditation

  ‘Gliding effortlessly from personal reminiscence to the latest in neuroscience, from meditation instruction to the intricacies of cognitive therapy, Tara Bennett-Goleman invites us to be part of her journey. In showing us how to use our minds to heal our emotions, she heals our minds with her heart.’

  Mark Epstein, M.D.,

  author of Thoughts without a Thinker and Going to Pieces without Falling Apart

  ‘A wonderfully clear, compassionate and insightful guide to freeing ourselves from difficult emotions. Tara Bennett-Goleman illuminates a path of transformation, blending meditative, scientific and therapeutic perspectives, that will invite, encourage and inspire any reader.’

  Sharon Salzberg,

  author of Lovingkindness

  ‘A very accessible and practical guide to transforming emotions. If you wish to know how your emotional habits can be changed, this book is for you.’

  Richard J. Davidson,

  Director, Wisconsin Center for Affective Science, University of Wisconsin

  ‘Emotional Alchemy is an amazing feast of knowledge of East and West, traditional and current. It shows how everyday emotions can be transmuted as a means of healing. All the principles of the alchemy of mind explained in one book – a must read handbook.’

  Tulku Thondop

  author of Healing and the Mind

  ‘Written with humour, warmheartedness in lively prose, . . . a landmark step forward for us all.’

  Naomi Wolf

  author of the Beauty Myth

  This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Epub ISBN: 9781409003298

  Version 1.0

  www.randomhouse.co.uk

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  Copyright © 2001 by Tara Bennett-Goleman

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

  Tara Bennett-Goleman has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  First published in the United States in 2001 by Harmony Books, an imprint of Crown Publishing Group, Random House Inc., USA.

  First published in Great Britain in 2001 by Rider.

  This edition first published in 2003 by Rider,

  an imprint of Ebury Press, Random House,

  20 Vauxhall Bridge Road, London SW1V 2SA

  Random House Australia (Pty) Limited

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  Papers used by Rider are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in sustainable forests.

  Page design by Barbara Sturman

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by Bookmarque Ltd, Croydon, Surrey

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 1-8441-3045-2

  ISBN-13: 978-1-8441-3045-0

  For the light of wisdom

  within everyone

  Contents

  Foreword by the Dalai Lama

  I

  Emotional Alchemy

  1 • An Inner Alchemy

  2 • A Wise Compassion

  3 • The Healing Qualities of Mindfulness

  4 • A Model of the Mind

  II

  Things as They Seem

  5 • Emotional Habit

  6 • Schemas in the Larger World

  7 • How Schemas Work

  III

  A Mindful Therapy

  8 • The Many Uses of Mindfulness

  9 • Breaking the Chain

  10 • Changing Habits

  11 • Working with Emotions

  12 • You Don’t Have to Believe Your Thoughts

  13 • Relationships

  14 • The Circle of Life

  15 • Stages of Healing

  IV

  Spiritual Alchemy

  16 • Perceptual Shifts

  17 • Investigating the Mind

  18 • Reframing Suffering

  19 • May Confusion Dawn as Wisdom

  Guide to Resources

  Notes

  Acknowledgments

  Foreword

  by the Dalai Lama

  We all desire happiness and do not want suffering. Because the very purpose of life is to be happy, it is important to discover what will bring about the greatest degree of happiness. Whether our experience is pleasant or miserable, it is either mental or physical. Generally, it is the mind that exerts the greatest influence on most of us. Therefore, it is extremely worthwhile to try to bring about mental peace.

  Although material progress is important for human advancement, if we pay too much attention to external things and give too little importance to inner development, the imbalance will lead to problems. Inner peace is the key: if we have inner peace we will be able to deal with situations with calmness and reason. Without inner peace, no matter how comfortable our life is materially,
we may still be worried, disturbed, or unhappy because of the circumstances.

  When we have inner peace, we can be at peace with those around us. When our community is in a state of peace, it can share that peace with neighboring communities and so on. When we feel love and kindness toward others, it not only makes others feel loved and cared for but also helps us to develop inner happiness and peace.

  As a Buddhist I have learned that what principally upsets our inner peace is what we call disturbing emotions. All those thoughts, emotions, and mental events that reflect a negative or uncompassionate state of mind inevitably undermine our experience of inner peace. All such negative thoughts and emotions as hatred, anger, pride, lust, greed, envy, and so on have the effect of disturbing our inner equilibrium. They also have a taxing effect on our physical health. In the Tibetan medical system, mental and emotional disturbances have long been considered causes of many constitutional diseases, including cancer. Scientists and health professionals in the West increasingly share this point of view, too.

  Disturbing emotions are the very source of unethical conduct. They are also the basis of anxiety, depression, confusion, and stress, which are such a feature of our lives today. And yet, because we so often fail to recognize their destructive potential, we do not see the need to challenge them.

  In this book, Emotional Alchemy, Tara Bennett-Goleman offers a method to calm the mind and free it from disturbing emotions: a practical application of mindfulness in the realm of emotion. Based on personal experience she has drawn together insights and methods from cognitive and brain science, from psychotherapy, and from Buddhist psychology and mindfulness practice. She shows people how they can use mindfulness to loosen the hold of mental and emotional habits that prevent them from being happy.

  A great Tibetan teacher of mind training once remarked that one of the mind’s most marvelous qualities is that it can be transformed. I offer my prayers that readers of this book who put the advice it contains into practice may indeed be able to transform their minds, overcome their disturbing emotions, and achieve a sense of inner peace. Not only will they then be happier in themselves, but they will undoubtedly contribute to greater peace and happiness in the world at large.

  June 3, 2000

  I

  Emotional Alchemy

  1

  An Inner Alchemy

  From the window of my London hotel room Big Ben displays itself, a prominent, elegant presence amid the vista of river, billowing clouds, and spreading jumble of skyline. Big Ben has a grandeur as a piece of architecture, but I find my eye drawn more to the broad, open expanse of sky and river. • The panorama above and below Big Ben’s rounded bluntness includes a resplendence of steeples and bridges that occupy the central view from my window. I notice how my mind, at first glance, takes in the spaciousness of the cloud-filled sky and the soothing expanse of the river below like a regal oil painting by some turn-of-the-century landscape artist, or like a postcard-perfect snapshot. • But as I gaze more carefully, with a sustained attention, I notice that the still snapshot-like rendering of this scene dissolves into a whirl of constant motion, a continuing series of tiny movements that add up to a vastly altered picture. There are tiny successive changes in the shape of clouds as they glide across the sky, sometimes opening up patches of sky through which rays of sunlight spill along the landscape, illuminating shadows into patches of light. There’s the translucent shine of buildings and roads and bright red buses as they momentarily bathe in the glow. The scene before me shimmers with kinetic energy. • And so it is with our inner landscapes. This shift in my perception mirrors how the mind works: the tendency to assume it has got the whole picture on first glance, to rush on without a closer look, and the sometimes startling fact that if one continues to look more carefully, there is always more to be discovered beyond those initial assumptions. Too often we take our first impressions, the conclusions from a first hasty glance, as the lasting truth of the moment. • But if we keep looking and noticing, we become aware of greater detail and nuance, of changes and second thoughts, and much more. We can see things more as they actually are, rather than as they appear to be. We can bring a more precise understanding to the moment.

  If we sustain our gaze within, sometimes our probe may detect pain behind the masks we wear. But if we continue to look, we can see how the patterns of pain hold that very mask in place, and as we investigate further we see even these patterns shift and rearrange themselves. We see how our reactions to our emotions can keep us at a distance from ourselves. And if we sustain our focus, allowing ourselves to open more honestly, our awareness penetrates further, unraveling and dissolving, peeling away the layers as we look still further. We begin to connect with more genuine parts of ourselves, at first in glimpses. Then, as we sustain our gaze, we connect with a source that breathes awareness into every layer of our being.

  This book is about seeing ourselves as we genuinely are, not as we seem on first glance as viewed through the filters of our habitual assumptions and emotional patterns. We will explore how through the practice of mindfulness—a method for training the mind to expand the scope of awareness while refining its precision—we can reach beyond the limiting ways we see ourselves. We will see how to disengage from the emotional habits that undermine our lives and our relationships. We will discover how a precise mindfulness can investigate these emotional habits, bringing an insightful clarity to distinguish between the seeming and the actual.

  The Power of Mindfulness • I’ve seen the power of this distinction in the lives of my clients. One client found herself obsessed by self-recrimination for not having done something well enough. Though highly successful in her career, she was her biggest critic. She told me, for example, “Last week I had to give a very important presentation—lots of people were going to be there whose opinions really matter to me. So I prepared more than usual and thought I had done a pretty good job. Afterward, several people complimented me. But one person said, ‘You did a terrific job. It could have been a little shorter, though.’ That was it. For the last several days that’s all I can think about—how I went on too long. I wake up in the middle of the night worrying about it.”

  This was no isolated event. The feeling that she never did things quite well enough haunted her—in her work, in her marriage, in caring for her children, even in her cooking. It was a constant preoccupation, one that marred her closest relationships and made the smallest challenge an occasion for self-doubt or self-criticism.

  A more systematic investigation led her to realize that at the root of this preoccupation was a hidden emotional pattern, the deep conviction that no matter how well she did something, it would never be quite up to her own impossibly high standards. This mistaken conviction distorted her perceptions, so she overlooked the evidence of how well she actually did accomplish things. And it led her to drive herself far too hard, so that she cheated herself of time for life’s meaningful pleasures. Mindfulness helps us to identify such hidden emotional patterns, bringing them into the light of awareness so that we can begin to free ourselves from their hold.

  One couple had fights that threatened their relationship. A mutual mindful awareness allowed them to detect the hidden patterns that caused them to have essentially the same argument over and over. Whenever she started to feel insecure about his affection for her, she would become needy. He would feel that she was controlling him and withdraw in anger. The result: a stormy fight. By looking closely at what had happened after they both calmed down, they were able to see how his angry withdrawal and her anxious clinging were both emotional reactions to an underlying symbolic reality.

  Their constant battles, on closer investigation, had little to do with the situation at hand, and much to do with the symbolic meanings of what had happened: his fear of being controlled and her oversensitivity to signs of rejection because of a deep feeling that she was being emotionally deprived. Learning to identify these habitual emotional reactions as they began to take hold all
owed the couple to avoid fights and to communicate more skillfully.

  A dedicated meditator who had tried to relieve the distress of her lifelong feelings of disconnection by going on long retreats found herself obsessing even more about these very feelings while meditating at a retreat center. As she put it, “Your madness follows you on your spiritual path.” But learning how to see these seemingly formidable emotional reactions as transparent and temporary allowed her to use them as fuel for her practice, deepening her compassion for herself as well as for others.

  This transformation begins with refocusing the lenses of our conditioning to see things more clearly, as they actually are. You might wonder, Who am I, if I am not my usual pattern of assumptions and self-definitions? This question can be asked from both a psychological and a spiritual perspective—a process of inner discovery that I hope this book will inspire.

  The Metaphor of Alchemy • “Each thing has to transform itself into something better, and acquire a new destiny,” Paulo Coelho writes in his novel The Alchemist. Coelho describes the world as only the visible aspect of God, with invisible spiritual forces at play that remain largely unknown to us. Alchemy occurs when the spiritual plane comes into contact with the material plane.

  I was given Coelho’s book by a client, who told me, “This reminds me of our work together.” Indeed, alchemy offers an apt metaphor for the process I will be describing.

  Alchemists, the tales go, sought to use a magical philosopher’s stone to transmute lead into gold. But lead and gold, in the more philosophical school of alchemy, were metaphors for internal states: the alchemist’s discipline was one of psychological and spiritual transformation. Alchemists realized that the mystery they sought to solve was not outside but in the psyche.