Even with good-enough upbringing and the consolidation of what might be called a good-enough self, according to the Buddha’s logic, there will still be disquiet, confusion, and insecurity because we are all instinctively struggling to be something (independent, solid, coherent, and self-sufficient) we can never be. Even in healthy personality development, we emerge from childhood defending against the underlying truth of how contingent, provisional, and dependent we actually are. The persistence of such feelings, far from being a symptom of parental failures (even if there have been such failures), is actually the seed of wisdom. Fighting against them only rigidifies our defenses and isolates us further. Acknowledging the emptiness that frightens us, whatever its source may be, is the key to a deeper, and truer, understanding. The emptiness that we fear is not really empty. When it is successfully turned

into an object of awareness, it reveals itself to be vast, luminous, and reassuringly, albeit mysteriously, alive.

The main theme of Buddhism,” the Dalai Lama began, “is altruism based on compassion and love.” He then went on to teach the foundational Tibetan Buddhist practice of “mother recognition”: imagining all beings as one’s mother.

Again, in order to have a sense of closeness and dearness for others,

you must first train in a sense of their kindness through using as a

model a person in this lifetime who was very kind to yourself and

then extending this sense of gratitude to all beings. Since, in

general, in this life your mother was the closest and offered the most

help, the process of meditation begins with recognizing all other

sentient beings as like your mother.

I remember talking with another Tibetan lama, years later, about how difficult it is for some Westerners to engage with this idea because of how conflicted they are about their own

mothers. “For those people,” the lama said, smiling, “I always say think about your grandmother instead.” He would have approved of my new friend Zeki’s ayahuasca memories!

Our minds are like children, and mindfulness, like a good therapist or a good-enough parent, “holds” them so that they can grow up and come to their senses. With enough practice, and enough patience, breakthroughs occur. These take many idiosyncratic forms but they are

generally of two types.

On the one hand, there is a loosening of identification with the known self; people see their self-concepts as just concepts that have arisen and accumulated in response to the particular challenges and conditions of their lives but that have no ultimate stigmatizing reality. On the other hand, there is a return to simply “being.” This is set in motion when awareness becomes dominant, when the observing mind becomes stronger than that which is being observed. As this observational capacity develops, a change sometimes occurs. Instead of one part of the mind observing another—“me” watching “myself”—the whole thing collapses and just “is.

Mindfulness, if it resurrects anything, resurrects the holding environment of the good-enough parent so that our own still-primitive minds can grow out of their tendency to cling to their own misperceptions. In setting this up, mindfulness, like therapy, helps us make peace with our personal histories while encouraging us not to be overly defined by them. Holding this dual reality is what allows being to shine through. One does not experience this as a state of merger (in which one person or one thing dissolves into another) but rather as a state of clarity, as if the conceptual barriers of who we think we are have been lifted from the mind.