Category: Law Practice

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Holistic Divorce Holistic Philosophy Law Practice Mindfulness

SCENE: Five Steps Toward Mindful Divorce

Mindful Divorce

Below I have summarized five suggestions to help clients move more mindfully through the divorce process:

  1. Settle
    In contemporary American society, most of us are highly conditioned to avoid or turn away from difficult experiences, emotions, etc.  The fracturing of a family unit or severance of a love relationship can precipitate fear about the future, questioning of the past, and a need to restructure one’s identity and life routines.A mindful, holistic approach to divorce embraces the notion that conflict between how things are and how we have become conditioned to think they should be presents unique opportunity to examine and move beyond this conditioning.The initial step in this process requires that you do not blindly react to this situation by running away or gravitating toward some sort of habitual strategy employed in the past to sidestep challenging feelings.Thus, the first step toward mindful divorce is to simply settle in.  Relax.  As upsetting as this experience may seem, realize that this will pass, and if handled in a skillful way, can lead you to a new level of inner peace and happiness.
  2. Connect
    Once you are able to settle and calm yourself, the process of transformation has a chance of taking hold.  Try to find quiet time and space with minimal distractions and begin to connect with whatever feelings arise.  If possible, it is more helpful to connect with the felt sense of what is arising in the body versus any thoughts you are attaching to these feelings.  Feelings tend to reveal more “truth,” while thoughts are by their nature interpretive and judgmental.
  3. Explore
    In connecting to arising feelings, you are presented with an opportunity to explore what is going on with inner experience.  At this point, most of us are conditioned to employ intellect to “figure out” what is going on.  Instead, try to simply rest in awareness, simply witnessing whatever feelings arise.  With time, practice, and support, you will find that wisdom is the direct product of clear, heightened awareness – not intellectual analysis.
  4. Non-Attachment
    In beginning to explore arising feelings that arise once the mind has settled, you may well find that thoughts then arise in response to these feelings.  These thoughts, as alluded to above, will often try to interpret or “make sense” of these feelings in a  highly conditioned way.  In other words, you may try to impose meaning on these feelings that square with ways in which you have come to view your “self” or your life.The imposition of intellectual meaning on feelings or thoughts that arise can operate to further solidify a sense of “self” that can be very limiting.  Try instead to simply allow these feelings and thoughts to arise and cease as they naturally will.  You will find that by practicing this non-attachment you will become less burdened by learned conditioning and habitual reactions.  This freedom will give rise to far more flexible and effective action as we navigate the legal aspects of your divorce.
  5. Engage
    The above steps in mindfulness practice will facilitate clarity and reduce reactivity.  You will soon feel on an intuitive level that you are ready to move forward and engage more fully in your life in general and your family/marriage situation in particular.  My holistic approach integrating mindfulness and law practice will provide ongoing support and direction as we implement an optimal strategy to serve the best interests of all involved.

To learn more about holistic law practice integrating mindfulness and law, visit http://www.Holistic-Lawyer.com, or call Michael Lubofsky at (415) 508-6263.

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Holistic Mediation Law Practice Mediation

Three Basic Types of Mediation

Most people seeking mediation services for the first time are doing so in search of less contentious, more cost-effective solutions to conflict.  The threshold factors in assessing whether a particular situation is ripe for mediation are the readiness, willingness, and ability of all parties directly involved in the conflict to open and listen to divergent points of view, and actively participate in arriving at a negotiated resolution to conflict.

Types of Mediation

The active participation of parties in crafting an optimal solution to conflict is the primary distinguishing characteristic of mediation versus formal litigation in the courts.  In court, the parties direct all communications to a judge and/or jury who then unilaterally decide how a case will be resolved.  In mediation, the parties assume a far more active role in crafting the solution to conflict.

Though all types of mediation share this fundamental distinction from adversarial litigation in the courts, three specific types of mediation have emerged: (1) Facilitative Mediation; (2) Evaluative Mediation; and (3) Transformative Mediation.  Each of these mediation types differ along primary dimensions including the needs of the parties, the role of the mediator, and the overriding goal of mediation.

Facilitative Mediation

At a basic level, interpersonal conflict arises when two or more people have different interpretations of a factual scenario that has arisen in the past.  Some conflicts (e.g., an accident) have involved perhaps a single event, while others (e.g., a marital relationship) have unfolded over perhaps a course of several years.  These past situations become problematic to one or more parties when they are interpreted in a way that violates thought-driven notions of how the other party or parties “should have” conducted themselves during the past event or series of events.

In many cases, these ideas of what “should have” happened in the past violate deeply held notions that have become an integral part of one’s perceived “self.”  To the extent this is the case, a party will manifest a strong interest in protecting that sense of self and will react defensively, and often aggressively, when other parties involved in the conflict attempt to justify, or merely explain, their past actions.

These dynamics involving self-protection manifesting in defensive reactions may demand a neutral intermediary who can effectively diffuse this tension to a point at which direct, constructive exchange between the parties becomes possible.  In this case, the mediator assumes a facilitative role in fostering constructive communication between the parties.  This role is at the heart of facilitative mediation.

Evaluative Mediation

In a second category of mediation, the challenges standing in the way of a negotiated resolution have less to do with interpersonal dynamics between the parties, and are more related to a lack of clarity in likely future outcomes of the relative positions held by each party.  In evaluative mediation, the role of the mediator draws on his or her professional expertise in being able to provide parties with a more clear understanding of the legal merits of their respective positions.

Evaluative mediation is more commonly invoked in situations involving complex factual scenarios.  In such cases, the parties lack a clear mutual understanding of what arguments are likely to be successful or unsuccessful under currently prevailing case and statutory law and/or legal doctrine.  With clarity provided by the evaluative mediator, the parties hope to reach a level of clarity that will position them to negotiate a resolution to their dispute that avoids more costly and contentious adversarial litigation.

Transformative Mediation

Transformative Mediation is available to parties who are interested in seizing the transformative potential inherent in conflict, and using that potential as a springboard for person and/or spiritual growth.  Parties explore these higher ideals in transformative mediation in addition to resolving the practical and legal aspects of their underlying dispute.

As was alluded to earlier, factual scenarios tend to rise to the level of “conflict” when they are interpreted in a way that violates one’s conditioned notions of “right or wrong,” or “good or bad” and other dualistic notions that may contribute to one’s core sense of self, commonly referred to as “ego.”  The transformative potential inherent in conflict begins with an understanding that these dualistic notions are the result of learned conditioning that in most cases long precedes that salient factual scenario giving rise to the current conflict between the parties.

In this way, conflict manifests a unique opportunity for parties to challenge and transcend many core beliefs that one may come to view as having significantly limited his or her past experiences, as well as adversely tainted past interpersonal relationships.

The transformative mediator will work to create a mediation environment in which all parties can feel safe and comfortable enough to feel, articulate, and explore the antecedents of, and reactions to conflict on a deeper level.  In so doing, parties will often come to realize that the way and/or degree to which they have reacted to other parties is actually the result of habitual reactions acquired in response to situations that occurred much earlier in life with little or no temporal relationship to the current conflict.

A skilled transformative mediator works with parties to heighten their understanding and awareness of learned conditioning and habitual reactions.  In so doing, parties walk away with the heightened realization that their current decisions and future actions need not be dictated by long-held learned conditioning.  In these ways, parties leave mediation with significantly heightened self-understanding, as well as an experienced sense of freedom resulting from the loosened grip of formerly long-held, entranched beliefs.

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Holistic Philosophy Law Practice Mediation Mindfulness

Put Away The Adding Machine

Much of suffering can be tied to some deeply conditioned notion that we have some fundamental baseline of “happiness.” When some event, stimuli, or phenomenon is interpreted as “bad,” “unpleasant,” or “painful,” we almost instinctively engage strategies to obtain something we interpret as “good,” “pleasant,” or “pleasurable,” to return our condition to this baseline.

Such an orientation toward experience gives rise to endless efforts towards “evening the score” or attempts to stockpile “positive” experiences in an unconscious and misguided attempt to insulate ourselves from feared “negative” experiences.

Obviously it makes evolutionary sense that we would be wired to seek out pleasurable experiences and invoke motivation to avoid dangerous and unpleasant outcomes. This basic instinctual motivation becomes problematic, however, when we come to view almost all life stimuli through a pleasant/unpleasant, good/bad lens. We come to move through life with a mental adding machine. When an event is interpreted as “loss,” we may immediately seek to change our experience or outcomes to even the score and again return us to baseline happiness.

Mindfulness practice can help us more clearly identify this scorekeeping tendency, and heighten our ability to meaningfully connect to present-moment experience apart from our cerebral judgements about this experience. When events and stimuli are simply experienced without this layer of judgement, they are never problematic. They may feel unpleasant, but this feeling quickly dissipates. There is no problem, and our lives our not further complicated and made more unpleasant as the result of misguided efforts to even the score.

Legal conflict almost always involves deployment of the adding machine of one or more parties. Because of this, conflict may present an optimal opportunity to become more acutely aware of our tendency to keep score. Mindfulness practice in the midst of conflict can help parties let go of their adding machine and connect with their present-moment experience. In so doing, they become far more aware of their conditioned tendencies to approach life through an interpretive lens that may be leading to experiential difficulties.

Holistic law practice actively integrates mindfulness to help clients seize the transformational opportunities inherent in conflict. To learn more about holistic law practice, visit http://www.Holistic-Lawyer.com, or call Holistic Lawyer Michael Lubofsky at (415) 508-6263.

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Holistic Philosophy Law Practice Mediation Mindfulness

The Importance of Mindfulness Exercises in Holistic Law Practice

The mind seems to incessantly scan the environment for problems to solve.  This active intellectual engagement with our environment likely served to ensure our survival as a species over millions of years as immediate physical dangers routinely confronted us in more primitive times.

The mind seeks problems to solve largely within the parameters of cause and effect.  Problems arise, however, when the mind latches onto a situation over which the individual lacks causal influence.  When facing such situations, one can and usually will become quickly frustrated insofar as he or she is attempting to solve a problem that is largely insoluble in an intellectual, analytical mode.

At times such as this, including times of interpersonal conflict commonly present in legal disputes, a real need arises to move beyond analytical thought and towards a wisdom arising not out of intellectual analysis, but out of a felt connection with all of life in the present moment.

Mindfulness exercises, often including meditation practice, cultivate and strengthen one’s ability to access this wisdom beyond analytical thought.

This is why holistic law practice incorporates mindfulness exercises as a necessary component of successful conflict resolution.  Insofar as parties remain locked into an analytical, thought-driven orientation to conflict, they will work – consciously or unconsciously – to reframe the issues in a way that is “intellectually manageable” and solvable largely through the exercise of personal influence.

Often, this is like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.  The frustration resulting from this type of activity over a prolonged time period, in no small part, explains why tension between parties in traditional adversarial litigation tends to escalate over time.

Clients with no prior experience with mindfulness practice or meditation often understand, in theory, the value of a more holistic approach to legal conflict, but wonder how to cultivate a more grounded and less thought-driven approach.  Mindfulness exercises incorporated in holistic law practice often begin with guided attention to the breath, body, or other somatic experience.  Within a few sessions, and with some daily practice, clients report the arising of a sense of connection to present-moment experience fundamentally different from their previously narrow thought-driven orientation toward experience.  It is this constrained orientation that has left them feeling frustrated and perhaps helpless.  With some sustained practiceS, clients begin to identify potential solutions to conflict that transcend their constrained self-interest.  At this point optimal, transformative solutions to conflict become possible.

To learn more about incorporating mindfulness in law practice, contact Holistic Lawyer and Mediator Michael Lubofsky by visiting http://www.Holistic-Lawyer.com or by calling (415) 508-6263.

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Holistic Divorce Holistic Philosophy Law Practice Mindfulness

The Importance of Mindful Spousal Support

The issue of spousal support, especially when involving highly disparate incomes of a separating couple, is one of the most challenging areas of the divorce process.  Underlying the complexity are fundamental notions of “fairness” that may significantly differ for each spouse.  To successfully deal with the issue of spousal support in a way that minimizes negative drag for both parties, it is essential that spousal support be addressed with deliberation and mindfulness, ideally working together with both parties outside of the typical adversarial framework.

For purposes of discussion, we will assume a scenario involving a significantly higher earning husband and a marriage exceeding twenty years with no dependent children.   Husband worked throughout the marriage up to a current income level of $250,000/year.  Wife has made decisions at important junctures during the marriage that the couple believed were important to child rearing as well as ensuring that household-related issues were adequately addressed given Husband’s professional commitments and is proceeding forward with minimal marketable work experience.

In the typical adversarial unfolding of a divorce, the husband is initially confronted with temporary spousal support demands along with the divorce petition or response.  At that point, staring at a written document in isolation, what he is likely to see will be limited to the bottom-line demand that he pay 30-40% of his salary to his soon-to-be ex-wife with no end date in sight.  Suddenly, despite his hard work and sacrifices over the years, he will be taking home significantly less pay every month.

From the wife’s vantage point, however, it is not difficult to understand the fear and uncertainty that she faces moving forward into the future.  Now in her late 40’s, with little marketable work experience accumulated over the past two decades, she wonders how she will be able to move forward in a way that anywhere approximates the life to which she has grown accustomed.

Pervasive social conditioning colors the respective outlooks of both the husband and wife in this scenario.  The wife may well feel that her contributions to the community have been generally devalued by society at large, and possibly by her soon-to-be ex-husband in particular.  Similarly, the husband may consider it unfair to have to give almost half his pay to his wife when she is not “gainfully employed” as this term is generally interpreted in contemporary society.

This stark difference in conditioning may be just the tip of the iceberg of how differently the husband and wife approach this situation.  A highly conscious, holistic and mindful approach is essential in helping each party gain a felt appreciation for the outlook of the other, including underlying conditioning that cannot be ignored.

Bringing a holistic, mindful approach to the issue of spousal support requires both parties to work directly with the attorney, usually at the same time.  The holistic lawyer provides each party a full opportunity to articulate his or her fears and concerns.  It is only when  both parties feel thoroughly understood the concrete financial terms are discussed.

Additionally, once a spousal support agreement is reached, there can negotiated particular protocols to see that monthly payments are both given and received in a mindful, conscious way so as to ensure that both parties feel sufficiently appreciated and valued and have not lost sight of the underlying conditioning, fears, etc. discussed at the front end of this process.

To learn more about mindful spousal support, contact Holistic Lawyer Michael Lubofsky either by calling (415) 508-6263, or by visiting http://www.Holistic-Lawyer.com.

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Holistic Philosophy Law Practice Mindfulness

The Challenge of Holistic Law Practice

In working with clients to break through learned conditioning and habitual reactions that have led to, or exacerbated, legal disputes, holistic law strives to tap into the inner wisdom of participants as the primary source of optimal solutions.  In orienting the identification of solutions towards clients, holistic law presents a fundamental challenge to the entrenched paradigm in which clients primarily look to the attorney for answers and solutions.

In addition to the client-centric solution focus, holistic law practice presents a serious challenge to the livelihood of many attorneys who have made their living as advocates within an adversarial system.  Given this direct challenge, it should be expected that the holistic law movement will be met with formidable resistance from the predominant legal establishment.

For the first time, however, there is an emerging segment of the public that has engaged in mindfulness training and practice, and has come to experience and appreciate their inner wisdom apart from their learned conditioning.  Thus, conditions now exist for a shift away from the adversarial model, and towards a more client-centric or holistic model of law practice.

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Holistic Divorce Holistic Philosophy Law Practice Mindfulness

What Is Holistic Divorce?

Partners facing marital breakdown typically are confronted with deep fears and insecurities that can trigger a wide range of emotional reaction.  Divorce often has serious implications in family relationships, finances, daily routines, and can shatter one’s sense of security.  Divorce involving children can magnify these challenges as well as pose serious long-term harmful consequences especially for young children.

Unfortunately, our civil justice system, which includes family law courts, has evolved out of an entrenched adversarial model which posits that by encouraging each party to put forth their version of events most zealously, the truth will emerge and a just result will follow.  This system largely breaks down when the parties, as they typically are in divorce, are acting largely out of fear-based conditioned reactions that are overwhelmingly emotional in nature.

In additional, traditional legal education teaches attorneys to focus on objective facts and largely ignore any emotional or spiritual component that may underlie a situation being presented by a client in a divorce context.

Holistic divorce law is an alternative to this adversarial model that incorporates the following primary components:

(1) Holistic Divorce Stresses Conditioned Thinking and Habitual Reactions That May Be Clouding Judgement

Rather than focusing almost exclusively on objective facts, holistic divorce practice aims to help clients disidentify from conditioned thinking and habitual reactions that may be seriously clouding one’s judgement at a time when this clarity is most important.  This is done by incorporating mindfulness exercises at the beginning of representation, prior to deciding on a concrete strategy for moving forward with divorce.  By helping a client connect more deeply to present-moment experience, he or she begins to appreciate that future actions need not be dictated by defensive reactions such as revenge, spite, anger, etc. that may only serve to make a challenging situation worse, both in the short term and long run, for the marital partners and the children involved.

(2) Holistic Divorce Rejects The Prevailing Adversarial Model of Litigation

Rather than viewing a marital breakdown largely in terms of a winner and loser, holistic divorce practice rejects this dualistic orientation in favor of a deeper wisdom revealed by heightened consciousness and present-moment awareness.  For most of us, we have been conditioned to confront “problems” with intellect aimed at identifying concrete solutions to alleviate difficult emotions. Holistic law appeals to a more spiritual foundation that will often give rise to creative approaches to marital and familial breakdown borne of deeper compassion towards all involved.  In this way, we can craft a plan for moving forward that can actually transform the lives of all involved in truly positive ways, rather than providing some fleeting satisfaction that might result from “winning” or gaining an upper hand.

(3) Holistic Practice Seeks To Embrace The Widest Possible Circle of Stakeholders in Crafting a Solution, Rather Than Alienating The Client

In typical law practice, once a client presents his or her version of facts to the attorney, he or she may almost never hear from the attorney who then takes the client’s version of events and plugs it into an almost formulaic procedure for divorce actions.  The attorney devises a strategy that he or she believes most likely to achieve outcomes that the client wants, while almost completely ignoring the interests of others likely to be effected by this outcome.

In contrast, holistic divorce seeks to include as wide a net as possible of those likely to be impacted by the ways in which this situation is ultimately resolved.  At the very least, the holistic lawyer will work with the client to heighten mindfulness in a way that will give rise to some degree of compassion for others likely to be effected.  It is within this compassion that potentially transformative solutions may be identified that can potentially improve the lives of all involved in the long term.

To learn more about holistic divorce practice, contact Attorney Michael Lubofsky at (415) 508-6263, or visit http://www.Holistic-Lawyer.com.

 

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Holistic Philosophy Law Practice Mindfulness

Holistic Law: Blame and Attribution As a Means of Sidestepping Legal Problems

Through evolution, as an important means of survival, it was often critical when faced with challenges in meeting our basic needs that we were able to identify a cause in the environment that we could then act upon to remove the current obstacle.  In many of these primordial situations, if one were to just do nothing, he or she could be physically attacked by a hostile adversary or animal posing a direct threat to survival.

Thus, from an evolutionary psychology standpoint, it makes sense that he human ability to find external causes for difficult situations was critical for survival of the species.

As with many of our more ingrained coping strategies, however, our strong tendency towards identifying environmental factors as causes of challenging situations has become strongly habitual.  In contemporary society, we are seldom faced with immediate threats to our physical survival.  Nevertheless, when faced with difficult situations that prompt anxiety or fear, our conditioning often looks towards external causes that we may come to believe caused our current difficulties.

If this conditioned response mode is not met with a threshold of consciousness (i.e., grounding in present-moment experience), one can quickly become absorbed and seriously distracted with thought-driven stories about how this person or that person caused or brought about the threatening situation.  This tendency can soon lead to outward expressions of anger, blame, etc. as if these expressions might somehow alleviate the challenging situation.  In the process, however, one will become increasingly disconnected from present-moment experience and come to experience deeper unhappiness that, in itself, may prompt another cycle and layer of blame and attribution.

This type of cycle may be common within individuals involved in, or considering, legal action.  Whether involved in divorce, an employment law dispute, an accident that has caused physical injury, criminal prosecution of some type, etc., it is not difficult to imagine one easily becoming enmeshed in this blame and attribution cycle.  The extent to which this cycle gains momentum is the extent to which the individual is likely to overlook creative solutions to the current situation that might potentially serve to transform his or her life in truly positive ways.  Instead, decisions are likely to be made as to how one might exact revenge or retribution against the person, institutions, etc. that are considered responsible for the current situation.

Holistic law practice works with clients to, among other things, help temper this ingrained tendency towards blame and attribution and instead heighten one’s connection to present-moment experience.  It is within this heightened mindfulness that clients can identify optimal solutions to their challenging legal situations.  To learn more, contact Holistic Attorney Michael Lubofsky at (415) 508-6263, or visit http://www.holistic-lawyer.com.

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Holistic Philosophy Law Practice Mindfulness

The Danger of Defensive Reaction When Dealing With Legal Problems

Mindfulness has at its core the cultivation of a heightened ability to consciously connect with present-moment experience.  Doing this often involves a process over time of dis-identification from “ego” or thought-driven notions about how “I am” or “you are,” as a “separate” individual.  When we remain stuck in such learned conditioning, we are far more likely to react to difficult situations in an unconscious, defensive manner principally aimed at keeping one’s ego intact and preserving our relatively static notion of “self.”

To the extent that one’s ego derails an individual from present-moment experience (i.e., “reality”), he or she is likely to become agitated, anxious, and reactive.  In the process he or she will often fail to identify creative approaches to these situations, miss opportunities to deepen consciousness, and ultimately remain stuck in old patterns of habitual reactions.

The inability to maintain one’s connection to present-moment experience can be very common when facing legal problems that may have implications for situations in one’s life that have come to form the core of how he or she has come to define his or her “self.”

Mindfulness in law practice is essential in helping clients break out of non-productive and often harmful habitual reactions to these challenging life situations, and instead open to new possibilities that extend beyond the perceived boundaries of the “self.”  The inability to approach legal situations in a mindful way will often lead to recurrence of similar undesirable life situations in the future.

To learn more about the incorporation of mindfulness in law practice, contact Holistic Lawyer Michael Lubofsky at (415) 508-6263, or visit http://www.Holistic-Lawyer.com.

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Holistic Philosophy Law Practice Mindfulness

Finding Peace in the Midst of Legal Problems

Legal problems tend to involve life situations that may prompt examination of the past and fears about the future.  In particular, one may begin to examine his or her role in bringing about the current situation a s a result of past actions and/or decisions.  He or she may also worry about how the future may manifest itself depending on how the current legal matter is ultimately involved.

Problems in this context often arise when these tendencies prompting reflection on the past and fears concerning the future cause one to become disengaged from present-moment experience.  At this point, one runs the risk of approaching his or her current situation either by defending decisions made or actions taken in he past, or by trying to manipulate the current situation so as to potentially reduce the likelihood of unfavorable feared outcomes in the future.

What is lost in this approach in an inner wisdom accessible only when one is able to let go of concerns about past and future and become more highly conscious of things as the are, right now, apart from judgements, interpretations, expectations, and thought-driven notions of how things “should” or “should not” be.

The incorporation of mindfulness in law practice can work to bring clients more deeply back to present-moment experience so as to reduce the likelihood that formal legal action or strategy will spring from learned conditioning and habitual reactions that may be highly likely to muddle and complicate the current situation.  If legal action is taken based on such habitual reactions to egoic threats, there is a high likelihood that the current undesirable situation will repeat itself in the future.

A holistic law approach that helps to cultivate a more mindful, conscious approach to legal situations holds the potential of approaching challenging situations in ways that can positively transform the lives of all involved, instead of perpetuating current conflict and difficulties.

To learn more about holistic law practice, contact Attorney Michael Lubofsky at (415) 508-6263, or visit http://www.holistic-lawyer.com.