“Only conscious suffering has any sense.” – Attributed to Gurdjieff’s Study House in Prieuré
“The only cure for the pain is the pain.” – Rumi
“You have to be free from the painkiller / To be free from the pain” – Fetish
Avoiding pain is a great source of suffering. Some of our biggest problems in life might be considered solutions to the problem of pain we do not want to feel: addictions, depression, anxiety, even behaviors that actively hurt us or interfere with our desires. When coupled with the tyranny of positivity, avoiding pain hurts us. Sometimes the thing that heals mental illness is learning how to feel the suffering a person does not want to feel.
During one of my attempts gardening, a friend explained to me that regular pruning can help plants to thrive, even when its branches were not already withering. He told me stories of fruit farmers taking heavy chains to beat trees, the stress of which would cause the trees to respond with more life energy, becoming hardier and generating fuller fruits. I’ve heard about “fire climax pines” who reproduce only after burning. Given my difficulty at keeping plants alive, I took more insight than practical accomplishment from this information.
These examples suggest to me that some capacities emerge only in response to adversity. Episodes of chaos and challenge confront us with what does not work, what is lacking in resilience. The converse is also true, as we discover what solid ground supports us, what truly endures. When facing adversity, we could abandon what is no longer useful and dedicate energy to what is resilient, potentially enriching life.
When suffering, some folks tend to close up and withdraw; others become angry and hostile; others dramatically perform pain; still others behave as though everything is fine while inside feeling a sense of desperation and collapse. These strategies can all serve as forms of denying the truth of what is happening inside and outside by fixating on one tendency, one facet of experience. Denial can be a life-saving coping mechanism when used judiciously. Denial is problematic when it is our only tool and we do not realize we’re using it.
Prescribed Burn Near Beaver Village, Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge, by Shannon Nelson
When we prevent ourselves from facing the anxiety of the challenge, however, we lose an opportunity to respond creatively. Crises can precipitate a time of great growth and renewal in personal, spiritual, and systemic development. Long-standing structures of belief and habit that blocked growth give way, making energy available for new forms.
(I recommend not saying this or anything like it to someone sharing fresh pain and grief with you. Messages like “How can you make the best of this?” or “This will lead to better things” can be experienced as cruel, dismissive, and potentially as blaming the suffering person. I’ve done it. You’ve probably done it. Quashing that urge is hard, but try! If you are fortunate enough to not be in the midst of a crisis and talking to someone who is, I recommend starting with simple empathy and offers of help. Later, when the person is ready, you can start talking about meaning and growth.)
We do not need to rush into this kind of change and growth. Those alarms going off inside are worthy of attention and respect, though not necessarily obedience. We can give ourselves time to avoid and freak out. We also need to give ourselves time to feel the pain and disruption of the challenge. We can also give ourselves time to check inside and ask, “What is it that I want for myself? What kind of life or system do I want to create?” I often need to remind myself of this. We do not need to know how to get there. In fact, it’s better to not cling too tightly to any one solution when in the middle of a crisis. What helps is simply to orient the inner compass toward the life we desire and try to connect to the hope that you will get through this crisis and thrive.
For almost seven years I have committed to a daily meditation practice. Some days I am only able to manage a few minutes, other days I sit for a half hour. I go through minutes or weeks in which during meditation my mind wanders to television shows I recently watched, conversations recently had, things I want for myself, things I worry about, anything but attention to what is happening in the present. Recently I sat, after a long period, and became aware of an exquisite sense of discomfort and attention to the dark blankness that lay behind my eyelids. An acute sense of boredom came upon me.
“Ugh, I’m stuck in here with myself.”
The practice of sitting still and focusing on breath or observing myself sounds simple, but simple is not easy. A lot of the problems people create for ourselves seems to come from our resistance to simplicity. We have to train ourselves to become simple, which requires a surprising level of complexity. Every time the mind wanders from the practice, we have to invite our attention back again and again. We develop skills of will, self-observation, delaying gratification, enduring discomfort, emotional self-management, these complex subroutines that contribute to moments of stillness and inner silence that deepen and expand into rich presence.
Any skill worth cultivating requires such practice. When beginning a practice, we might be tempted to compare our clumsy first steps to the elegant performance of a master, but again any master has put in time and discipline to reach such grace and simplicity. Hours of practice forge that appearance of effortlessness.
From the Golden Tarot by Kat Black
To change ourselves requires such practice, discipline, and self-forgiveness. There may always be a part of me that feels disgusted with myself, that would rather be anywhere but in this body, in this life, but there is another part of me that knows sitting with all of this helps me to connect with something greater than the individual pieces, greater than the momentary discomfort, greater even than the self-loathing. Spiritual traditions point toward these greater realities and advocate practices and values to help people grow into them.
Making any change in our lives means confronting the ambivalence that keeps us stuck. Ambivalence is different from indifference, though often we use them interchangeably. Indifference means not caring at all, one way or the other. Ambivalence means caring very strongly in two opposing directions. “I really want to meditate this morning, and I really want to hit snooze and get more sleep.” No matter how often I go to the gym and value the benefits of regular exercise, a part of me wants to convince me that I’m not feeling up to the task and would be better served eating chocolate and resting on the couch.
Resistance will meet whatever it is we need to make our lives better — taking medication, going to therapy, reaching out to loved ones, eating well. That resistance is what helps us to become stronger. We do not develop muscle or aerobic health without pushing against a physical resistance. Our bodies and spirits need something to push against, and they also need time to rest. Too much of one or too little of the other both create problems. Ambivalence points toward the need to recognize these conflicting impulses and strive to find some way to honor both.
If I want to know myself, love myself, and be the most myself I can be, I need to sit with the part of me that gets bored, hates myself, and criticizes all my flaws. I need to practice bringing my attention back to the more that is happening now. There is always more than this problem, whatever problem holds your attention. There is always another breath to take. There is the firm support of the ground and the expansiveness of the sky.
Changing one’s self requires accepting one’s self as we are now. Worthwhile, deep, profound change comes from taking on a discipline and returning to it regardless of how one feels. It’s hard to exercise four times a week, but the benefits of maintaining that rhythm are healthier and longer-lasting than what comes from taking short cuts to force one’s body into a socially acceptable shape. This kind of discipline is imperfect. After seven years, my mind still wanders in meditation, and I forget to bring it back. Seven years is truly not that long, but the person I have become in that time has depended upon that foundation of cultivating inner stillness and self-observation.
A Pero Manescu (Q-Art) conceptual analog photography
The part of us that lives in the unconscious is hard to sense yet easy to find. Jung coined the evocative image of “the Shadow:” banal, somewhat hidden, ever-present, often overlooked, at times sinister. Where there is light, there is a shadow. If a light is on, there is a shadow somewhere. Just behind you, under your fingers, in the places you aren’t seeing. We only have to shift our attention. Some folks experience this kind of work with a natural, intuitive instinct, knowing that attention to those dark unknowns can lead to transformation, freedom, and greater self-power. I think this is true personally and socially: what we deny as a culture keeps us sick. We see this in our most painful scandals: the cover-up might be worse than the crime, compounding an already awful wound with lies and manipulation. The evils we refuse to acknowledge in our hearts, families, and communities become toxic and connected to greater evils in our culture.
Western culture has internalized enough psychological language and insight as to give even the most uninterested person a casual understanding of concepts like the unconscious, at least to have heard a joke or cliché. This kind of awareness does not always carry with it the understanding of why anyone should care about the unconscious or how it could help us live a life of depth, meaning, and integrity.
The imagination is powerful and often undisciplined. Our minds fill in empty space with images and stories of what might be, and our bodies react as though those things are truly happening. What we imagine says so much about our personalities, our histories, and our relationships. What we imagine says so much about our mood and state of being at any moment.
If I’m busy and do not hear back from someone, I might forget about the message or focus on other things. If I’m feeling good and confident, I might assume they’re busy or working on it. If too much time passes and I feel insecure or tired, my imagination starts spinning different stories. Feelings of persecution may set in. I might imagine arguments between myself and the absent person, or imagine that I’m being ignored because I am worthless, or marginalized with deliberate intent to harm. I might imagine something bad happening to myself or the other person.
This is a common feature of people with anxiety, and most of us have some level of anxiety at some point or another. For people with high levels of anxiety, these imaginations can become so intense and frightening that they inhibit us from doing what we need to do. We might have piles of mail, dozens of unread emails, a voicemail box that is chock-full of unheard messages. We might have bills in collections and debt spiraling out of control, all because the idea of facing and dealing with it is terrifying and we have already admitted defeat. Or we’ve convinced ourselves that by ignoring a thing we are able to postpone defeat.
That’s not the case with everyone. I’ve learned that some folks might be active in managing these issues, calling the utilities and credit companies to attempt to negotiate for better payment schedules and adjust financial burdens. That conversation we’ve been dreading might be one that the other person wants to have. Help might be available if we can tolerate the anxiety and face the thing we’ve been avoiding. When we find ourselves worrying about what might be wrong or imagining things for which we have no evidence, can we stop, take a breath, and try to imagine something different? The goal is not to argue with anxiety, because to argue is to have already lost. We can stop letting worry set the terms of how we think. We can focus on what is working in life, times when we reached out and found help, or our own capacity to resolve the issue.
IMAGINATION by archanN
To discuss anxiety in this way is not to say that our minds are always wrong. Some of us may find that we have accurate intuitions into what is happening, particularly with unspoken communications that we recognize are out of the norm. If you are prone to anxious ruminations, however, it may become difficult to parse out what is useful from what comes from your typical hopes or fears. We might take our cue from cognitive-behavioral therapy and ask ourselves, “What evidence do I have that this idea is true (or false)? What would it mean for me if this was true (or false)? If this is true (or false), what could I do with this information?” It might be time to take action, or to wait and gather more information. Sometimes we can spare ourselves hours of agony just by calling someone up and checking out our inner story with their thoughts or feelings.
This comes back around to the major point: while choosing to wait is an active response to a problem, avoiding the problem or anything that reminds us of it is not. By avoiding, we shut out information that could confirm or disprove beliefs, and wall ourselves up into a self-perpetuating loop of anxiety. I believe that people with anxiety are capable of courageously confronting their lives. Perhaps they need more courage than most to do what may look from the outside like simple tasks. We may find, with time, that confronting these anxiety-producing situations fills us with energy and drive.
I missed my weekly posting last week, and nearly allowed myself to miss this week’s. I am in a major transition between one phase of life into a new one, and many things are changing personally, professionally, and socially. All of this is positive movement toward my goals, and I feel an inner pressure to present only a joyful, confident face to go with this. There is a fear that if I show any sense of the underlying vulnerability, insecurity, and grief, then that may mean I’m defective, or made a bad choice.
While free writing, I wrote something like the title of this post, and realized one of the characteristics of change and starting fresh. There is a comfort in staying stuck in patterns, relationships, or circumstances, even the ones that no longer work, that are harmful, that inspire self-doubt and despair, or simply feel stagnant and need to change. There is a fear of what might happen if there is change.
Stepping into the unknown change takes courage. So does the steps after. We move into a new neighborhood and don’t know the people, don’t know where the grocery store is, don’t know how to get to all the things we need. We start a new job and don’t understand the politics, the job is new, the technology and responsibilities are different. We risk meeting a new person for friendship or intimacy and don’t know their sense of humor, whether a particular joke is a compliment or insult, where their pet peeves and preferences lie. And we have to do all this work to discover those things outside of ourselves while continually deciding whether to stay open and vulnerable in revealing our own preferences, wishes, opinions, insights.
I’m not a believer in getting rid of fear, if only because I have not discovered the way. For me, courage is this recognition of the fear and vulnerability and continuing on regardless. I have done it before and survived. Now I might think well about my past jobs, relationships, and lives, and even miss some of the comfort and joy of them, but I was just as scared and vulnerable when I began those.
Perhaps this is only scary for some. I have met people who seem to thrive on such change, but I only know their outward faces and did not know what was in their hearts.
What is your sense of the life that you long to live? Is there within you some image, some feeling, some idea, some sensation that speaks to you of what you desire, what you would work for, what you hope to make of yourself?
For some, this image of desire is fleeting and hard to find. For many it arrives by disguise as inflated fantasies or fears, daydreams of being discovered as the next big rock star, fantasies of fighting on the front lines against evil, even nightmares of being chased by something repulsive. These fantasies might be overblown images attempting to get our attention to what in our lives desperately longs for attention, energy, and work. The repulsive monster could be the life-fulfilling project that you’ve avoided. The fight against evil might be simply engaging in an honest but confrontational conversation with a loved one. With these seemingly mundane activities, though, is a sense of being alive that calls uniquely to you.
Spark of Life by HuMPHReY_92
When life feels like it is a shambles, chaotic, and spinning out of control, tapping into this sense of possibility can be redeeming. We can sense into how action or inaction leaves us feeling. A step may be terrifying for good reasons or misleading reasons, but does moving into terror fill life with color, excitement, and vitality? Does engaging in another angry diatribe leave you feeling drained, despairing, and overwhelmed? These senses of life can guide us to what feels meaningful and rich. When we don’t know where to go, we can tap into that life we hope to have, and imagine what next step can take us closer.
Sometimes sensing this possibility is painful, bringing up feelings of shame or self-abuse for failing to achieve something, or thoughts of it being impossible, or all the millions of genuine authentic-looking reasons that interfere with moving forward. All of these arise as traps to keep us locked within our own prisons of thought and expectation. A rich life is not one of untroubled happiness. Sometimes we have to shake things up a bit, step into conflict and mess, upend the gentle restrictions we’ve allowed into our lives.
That sense of possibility and desire helps. Knowing where I want to go helps me to get oriented and direct my actions toward enlivening purpose. My values and sense of life feed the engine of living that makes everything else easier. As humans, I think we can tolerate distress when we believe deeply that we are choosing to do so to promote something important to us. Hell is suffering without purpose.
Imagine in yourself there is some sense of purpose. Perhaps a word, a sensation, or an image, something stripped down to its barest essence. You might be gifted with a clear, comprehensible, coherent map of your destiny, but that is not necessary. Even a simple word like “peace” or a sense of energy and relaxation can trigger growth. We can let this carry us through distress when things get hard, and we can thread this quality through every moment of our lives if we are willing to choose it, over and over.
Every goodbye is a hello. Each exhalation makes space for the next inhalation. The river moves, currents pulling forward, each molecule of water greeting the instantaneous confluence of light, space, earth, time, and passing into the next.
Sometimes we feel stuck in time. Things that have occurred to us in the past, hurts that continue to hurt, joys that seem forever lost except for our floundering attempts to keep hold. Projects that accumulate because we cannot finish them and we cannot let them go. Empty space that remains empty. Desire left unspoken from the fear that if it’s gained, it will be lost.
Every hello is a goodbye. The earth’s turn toward darkness and away from the sun. Pulling away the curtain of light to expose the stars, first one, then a hundred, then thousands if we’re lucky enough to live in clear darkness. Without emptiness, we have no room for something new.
We can pause long enough to linger in the pain that honors connection. We can offer gratitude to all that has arisen and passed away in our lives. We can feel stuck, grouchy, and depressed because we know change is coming. We can stand and decide for ourselves to shape the change that occurs. We can long for a place of rest and keep walking. We can let go of what is no longer working. We can start something new.
Hello to every breath, goodbye to every breath. This moment is sacred.
Today I can stretch to include more of myself. I notice the urge to choose between and cut away, dismiss, or marginalize something. A part of me wants to say there is only one correct version of reality and the rest are deceptions, lies, or pathology.
I notice my mind racing, trying to figure things out. I notice restlessness, the urge to act and do something, the belief that doing something will dispel the restlessness and bring me peace. I notice that acting and doing and thinking seem not to bring peace but support the cycle.
I do not need to reject my mind, my activity, my busyness. Right now, I can take a breath into my center, and imagine I can drop my awareness into my heart. My heart carries another truth. My heart longs to experience this moment in all its juice, complexity, pain and delight.
I can take a breath and drop deeper into my body. My body that wants food and water, wants to be active and wants to be still.
What would it be like to imagine holding these parts together? What lies between the instinct to act and the longing for rest? What would it be like to feel both disappointed and grateful? Can I allow myself this completion? Can every part of me have a place at the table?
Within these seemingly conflicted and contradictory parts of self is a wholeness. We can connect to this wholeness by noticing first the feelings of division, the apparent contradiction and conflict. If we can tolerate this, we can feel into the emptiness and space between parts. That emptiness is the fabric of Being, that which makes us whole. Within that space is stillness, silence, emptiness, the dark matter that allows the stars to shine.
Do not be afraid of feeling divided. Invite your conflicts and contradictions closer. Let them speak, and take a breath, and imagine you can sink into the space between them.
