And in the End Nothing Left
How does healing happen? Can you heal with a degree of grace?
Over time, you can heal with grace. Quickly—all of a sudden—and after just as much time as you need to get there. In the end, you practice life like you practice medicine.
How Will I Heal?
How? Both gradually, and you are already there.
It’s going while being; the answer is there for you once you stop looking for it. And you had it in you the whole time.
When you have suffered deeply, you heal gradually and then all of a sudden. Gradually, you find space for compassion, wisdom, and equanimity. And, all of a sudden, you discover self-forgiveness or self-acceptance, and everything changes all at once. Both gradually; you are already there.
Both gradually and now.
Physical Changes of Healing
Healing involves rewiring the brain. The old pathways are well-worn, and you need time to set up new pathways. What fires together wires together. All the neurotic crud needs to be thrown over with a cover crop of right thinking.
It is a physical change. You get to know your physical body. If you want to heal, figuring out that you have a body is glorious and important. You have a body! And you have to live in it for a while longer.
Which means the physical change has actually happened in your brain. The old ruts give way to a pathway with lower activation energy. Your brain rewires to allow right thinking. Right thinking takes time, so you heal gradually and then suddenly. Physical change in your mind, brain, and body physically changes your mind brain, and body.
In the beginning, nothing happens as there is rewiring slowly, then in the middle plateau, you feel like you can’t get anywhere because nothing happens as there is rewiring slowly, and in the end, there is nothing left.
In the beginning nothing came
In the middle nothing stayed
And in the end nothing left
–Milarepa
Learning becomes mastery. It doesn’t take 10,000 hours but it does take some time for the brain to adjust to the new patterns of norepinephrine, dopamine, oxytocin, and the neurochemistry of healing. Rewiring takes time.
RAIN Model of Healing
RAIN: Recognize, Allow, Investigate, Nurture
RAIN is a tool for compassion and mindfulness, but it is also a useful model of healing.
When you recognize what is happening, it is just that—becoming aware. Next, you allow the experience. Don’t judge or try to modify it; just feel it. Investigate is more of a physical process. How does the experience feel in your body? Where do you feel it and notice how it flows then ebbs? Finally, nurture means hearing the healing message of the experience. What do you need to non-identify with the experience and to let it go?
RAIN helps de-condition old patterns of thought and move to more beneficial, self-compassionate ones. It works slowly and then all of a sudden.
Let Model of Healing
Another model is let. Let be, let go, let.
Whatever you are experiencing, let it be. Or maybe you are curious about it. At the bare minimum, recognize what you are feeling, what you are thinking, and how your mood has been. This is meta-cognition and thinking about what you are thinking about. Whatever you are experiencing comes up and then goes away after a time. No matter what it is, the thought passes. Why not recognize what you are experiencing and just let it be? Don’t expect what your ego will throw against your wall to see what sticks; just let it be and recognize it.
Then let it go. Huh, interesting that my egoic monkey mind brought that delightful thought up yet again. I am going to practice just letting it go. I felt it, acknowledged it, and now I’m letting it go. Compassion means having self-empathy enough to allow pain that is not yours to pass through you rather than accumulate and burn you out.
That is the practice of medicine for empathetic physicians. We can’t have empathy when compassion is better for ourselves and our patients. Instead of soaking up, we empathize and then give it back to the universe. Compassion means you accept the universe is at least good enough to take all the pain of all the patients that go through your system every day. Trying to help always; take care of yourself once in a while and let go of pain that is not yours.
Sometimes all you can do is let be. Surrender and ride out the storm. That’s ok; it’s where you need to be. Growth is possible and inevitable.
Practice the Middle Path
Or take the middle path and let go to let. Many times, you can learn from the experience and have more right thinking. Or replace “unwise” speech with wise speech. Do better next time; that’s life and a growth mentality. You don’t fail until you stop trying. There are pitfalls if you try to fix everything, but growth, discipline, and compounding improvement—self-actualization—are omnipresent on the middle path.
It’s a natural sequence. Recognize and explore the experience as it is. When the time is right, let the experience go.
Visualization exercises, yoga, and lowering the activation energy of any possible good have helped me during this active process.
In that void you just created, put bright light or let in what could be beneficial, such as self-compassion. Trust your true home.
But there are long periods of plateau after growth. For a long time, there is nothing. I still play piano even though, after ten years, I have the same problems with this bit or that. But I’m still in flow playing. Plateau or not, I’m growing because flow is mindfulness. So is yoga or meditation, or prayer. Daily mindfulness helps presence in the moment.
The Practice of Medicine
It is right that we practice medicine our whole careers, just like we should practice life.
Good practice is service, music, making art, being outdoors, exercising, teaching, spirituality, religion, and anything that is “good practice” in general. Loving, kindness, and compassion help you practice finding yourself in flow with these good practices. Each day is a chance to practice belonging.
In the end it takes time to rewire your brain to right thinking, but in the end nothing left.
