As the previous post reminds us, mindfulness practice essentially simplifies space, drawing together the scattered parts of our mind and our life and helping us in the process of integrating our lives. It does this by holding in awareness all the parts of our lives, even those which we find frightening or threatening. We try to sit with events in our lives - or parts of our selves - that are difficult and we work on the mind's tendency to flee. It seems that personal growth happens more quickly if we are open to working with difficulties rather than trying to constantly run away from them. Mindfulness helps us to see that whenever we feel that we are really stuck, it is because we have not looked deeply enough into the nature of the experience.However, simply looking at things can be difficult, especially in times of crisis or turbulence. It is in these moments when we feel overwhelmed, that we are most likely to judge ourselves or others most harshly. We have a tendency to identify with a difficulty and that affects how we see ourselves or how our life is going.One way of dealing with feelings provoked by this is to split the world into "good" and "bad", them and us, solidifiying our sense of self, maximizing distance in order to increase a sense of safety. Splitting is a defense mechanism which can be activated when we are threatened, and means that we are unable to see complexity in the situation or the person, rather seeing them as all bad. There is no grey area, histories are frozen into a moment and we let that moment define us or the other person. We solidify the most negative core beliefs about ourselves or others and let them define our life, seeing it as threatened or hopeless.
Mindfulness practice can help us be aware of these defense mechanisms arising, see fear and anger forming, and help us notice the desire to withdraw appearing, normally accompanied by a kind of defensive story-line. If we can spot this happening we may have enough of a gap to see the whole drama transparently. If so, we can question what is feeling threatened, whether it is really actually me, or some story which I have about myself and my life. If we can resist the tendency to split or identify we can come to see that everything is workable. We can then experience for ourselves that it is ultimately possible to work with everything, and to keep a compassionate heart open to others and to all that occurs in our lives
