Mindfully Redefining the Expectations Surrounding Divorce

By T.W. Arnold, III

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 on the outside might think, 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?

You see, we rarely consider these questions with any real interest. Because we don't ask, the answers don't offer 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.

And, yes, of course: 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 that 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 generally is considered as the equivalent of the egoic identity, the "Little Me." Recognizing the "Little Me" for what it is, is an amazing accomplishment in itself. 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 always in an argument with what is happening, and so on and on and 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 quite beguiling like any child, dripping with sweetness and unction one moment and the most

terrible tyrant the next. Little Me is a chameleon, and as has been noted, 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.

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 aliveness of 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 experience as a lawyer, this topic is 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.
Our goal here is make it possible for you and I to navigate.

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?

Do you sense the transformative power in this question? Do you notice that 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 naturally 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 consciously consider and could not otherwise organize. This allows us to peer deeper than we typically otherwise do, stuck in the autopilot of trance conditioning as we often are. 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.

    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 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.

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.