#722 Suffering & our Sense of Self

     “The only thing suffering cannot stand is being seen clearly. The reason for that is, that at the root of suffering is an illusion. You can’t do anything to an illusion, because there’s nothing there. You can’t do anything to the water in a mirage. You can’t go and collect it, you can’t purify it, you can’t drink it. You can’t do anything to it because it’s not there. The very best you can do is go up to it and see that it’s not there. That seeing relieves the desire to manage it or collect it. It’s like that with suffering. 
     At the heart of suffering there is an illusion – a nonexistent self. You can’t do anything to a nonexistent self. There is nothing there to do anything to. Seeing, which means experiential understanding, clear seeing is the best you can do. And as a byproduct of that clear seeing, this suffering vanishes, dissolves in time. 
     Because in order to remain present, suffering needs the illusion of a separate self. It revolves around the illusion of a separate self. If that is truly seen to be nonexistent, the suffering simply cannot stand. There may be old habits in the body-mind that run for some time. But because they are no longer supported by the belief and feeling of a separate self, these old habits gradually dissipate. So suffering vanishes as a byproduct of this exploration, not as its goal. Suffering vanishes in the same way a headache vanishes. You wake up in the morning with a headache, you get to the evening and you realize ‘Oh, my headache’s gone. I don’t know when it went. I don’t know where I was when it went. I don’t know how when it went.’ You just notice it’s not there any more. That’s how suffering disappears. It’s a byproduct, not a goal. Its disappearance is a byproduct, not a goal. If you make it your goal, you perpetuate suffering. In fact this is one of the ways the separate self perpetuates itself, sometimes for decades, by trying to get rid of itself. 
     Suffering is to the mind what pain is to the body. You put your hand in the fire, you experience pain. The pain is not a mistake. It’s not something that’s wrong. The pain is there – it’s the intelligence of the body telling you ‘Take your hand out of the fire.’ So pain is working on behalf of your wellbeing. Suffering is exactly the same at the level of the mind. It is cooperating with your desire for happiness. It’s telling you ‘You’ve got your hand in the fire.’ In this case, it’s telling you ‘You’ve mistaken yourself for a separate, limited awareness. Take a look. Take a look.’ So suffering is to the mind what pain is to the body. It’s just a wake-up call. It’s saying ‘You’ve mistaken yourself for an object, for a limited self. Have another look.’ You’re taking a look in order to look at the separate self that you have mistaken yourself for. In that moment you are thinking and feeling on behalf of a separate self. So you are now looking at the separate self on whose behalf you are thinking, feeling and acting. 
     It’s like you spend your life preparing jars to collect the water in a mirage. Your suffering tells you ‘Go and have a look in the mirage. Go and have a look at this water you are spending your entire life organizing and planning around.’ What’s going to happen when you go up to the mirage and see the water isn’t there? What’s going to happen to your water jar business? You’re just going to lose interest in it. You’re just going to stop manufacturing. There’s no water to collect. You just forget it and move on. Suffering is saying ‘Go up to the mirage. See that there is no water there. Go into your experience. See that there is no separate self there.’ That seeing will take care of everything else. And then if you want, you can engage in these loving contemplations, which is a kind of cooperation with the dismantling of the water jar business. It’s post-going-up-to-the-mirage. It’s post-enlightenment sadhana. Enlightenment is seeing what we are. The dismantling of the water jar business is a post-enlightenment sadhana. It’s what we do after the recognition of our true nature and it’s just a gentle, loving cooperation at the level of the body, with what we have already understood. We’re just helping the body feel itself in a way that is consistent with our new understanding. … 
     Don’t worry if this extraordinary event called enlightenment doesn’t seem to have taken place. Remember that enlightenment is not 'an event'. It doesn’t 'take place'. The mind is not party to it. It’s not present when this non-event occurs. It knows nothing of it. So don’t worry about that. 
     Just keep exploring what you truly are. Am I a separate limited awareness? Or is the awareness I know myself to be, totally open, unlimited and ever-present? Because the belief and the feeling that what I am comes and goes, and is limited, and therefore lacking - that single belief and feeling, is at the heart of all your suffering. That’s the only thing in suffering that needs to be explored, not the whole paraphernalia of whatever it is that seems to be causing the suffering. Because if you explore each of the causes in turn, it’s just endless – money, work, relationships … it goes on forever. All these different colors, different facets of suffering, ... It all hinges on one thing: the belief that what I am, the ‘I’ that is knowing my thoughts, and hearing these words right now, the awareness I know myself to be shares the limits and the destiny of the body-mind. That’s it. With that belief, we seem to shrink into a separate self and all our suffering is dependent on that belief and feeling alone. So once that’s clear, you become naturally one-pointed. You see that all your suffering is just based on one thing. So all your disparate energies are now gathered together in that one direction. What am I truly? You even forget about suffering, because you’re dealing with what’s at the heart of it. You forget about the paraphernalia of suffering. Who is this one, this self that is suffering? Who is this one on whose behalf I spend my life thinking and feeling, acting and relating, I spend my life serving? This self – who is it? I’ve never seen it. Where are you? Come out. I want to make your acquaintance. Show me what you’re made of.
     The analogy is of a servant who’s been living in this big old house, serving an old man all his life. And the old man is extremely demanding and unreasonable. The servant is up at five o’clock every morning, cleaning his shoes, making his fire, doing his breakfast etc and he spends his whole life, morning till night serving this old man. He never actually sees the old man. The old man is a bit of a recluse and lives in his bedroom. The servant just has a routine. He just goes through his routine. He begins to get curious. He goes to the pub every now and then on a rare day off and his friends tell him ‘You know you should go and talk to the old man. You should go and see him if he’s so unreasonable.’ So eventually he plucks up his courage and knocks on the bedroom door to discuss his work with the old man. He doesn’t answer. The next day he plucks up courage again, he doesn’t answer, so he takes a peek through the door – can’t see him. The next day he has a bit more courage and opens the door a bit more, puts his head inside the door - he’s not there. So then he get’s a bit bolder and goes in, looks around – it’s funny, he’s not there. He looks in the bathroom – not there. He explores the whole room. And he realizes that this man I’ve been serving all my life, this tyrannical man on whose behalf I’ve been laboring, he’s not there! He was never there! 
     The separate self is like that. We spend our lives thinking, feeling, acting and relating on behalf of a self that is not there. So that’s what we do here. We explore all the bedrooms, then the bathroom, then the cupboards, then the drawers. We look everywhere. The more we look, the greater our confidence grows in knowing that he’s not there. Now it doesn’t necessarily happen at one moment – ‘OK now I’ve discovered that it’s not there’. There’s just a growing confidence day-by-day. It may come in one moment, but it usually doesn’t. It’s just this confidence, this conviction grows in you. He’s not there. And in proportion to that conviction, your thoughts, feelings, activities and relationships begin to change accordingly in direct proportion to your conviction that the old man is not there. You may never be able to say ‘At that moment I discovered he wasn’t there.’ It’s not necessary. Most people can’t say that.”                                Rupert Spira

Above transcribed from this video:

#708 Authenticity, Safety AND Courage

     Authenticity is an absolute requirement for peace of mind and real life satisfaction. Yet, we rarely express honestly who we are & our core values. Too often we feel that who we really are would be unwelcome - even unsafe, to share with colleagues, friends or even family.
     The mind-numbing "comfort zone" is where we tend to languish. A lot of unhealthy pressure builds up from "living a lie", so we "act out", causing ourselves & others untold suffering.
     A number of "safe places" have been created to allow people to speak from their heart: sweat lodges, talking circles, individual and group psychotherapy sessions, truth and reconciliation events, restorative justice processes, support groups, Balint groups for physicians, etc. But these are only safety vents, not living an undivided life.

      Living authentically - thriving - happens at our growing edge. So it demands courage and energy to show up there. Living an authentic life is all about showing up, over & over & over again, at our growing edge, with an open heart-mind.
     A wonderful example of one person's courageous resolve to live authentically is beautifully explored in the 2014 documentary by and about Lacey Schwartz: "Little White Lie", available on Netflix and iTunes.

Lacey Schwartz - Photo: Nicholas Calcott

 

#676 Brokenness & Unconditional Love

     People seek help from psychotherapists when they feel broken and want to feel whole. 
     Ideally, psychotherapists themselves first undergo psychotherapy. Doing so, psychotherapists are better able to hold both their own brokenness and their own wholeness. Before we can accept others, we must learn self-acceptance.
     Psychotherapists ideally hold clients in "unconditional positive regard" and "meditative equipoise." These terms suggest great spaciousness, porousness, awareness, acceptance, unshakable love, understanding, peace, stillness, silence, wisdom. These therapists' qualities ideally remain stable, despite the variability & severity of problems and personalities of their clients.
     Obsessing about our needs, our brokenness, how we didn't receive unconditional love as children, is an endless wallowing in misery. It's also backwards. To heal, an inversion must occur.
     Unconditional love does appear to be the very core of human life. But our wholeness, authenticity, true happiness - all appear to be proportional to the degree to which we embody, we are the source of, unconditional love. Indeed, when a person feels utterly miserable, the best thing she can do for herself, is to help others in similar or worse situations.
     Traumas do hurt, traumas do crack our armor, and mercifully, the cracks do light our darkness. But our authenticity is in shining - being unconditional love.

Springtime at Luxembourg Gardens, Paris

#447 Shutting Down instead of Growing, Learning

     While it's relatively easy to think & talk about various physical or psychosocial capacities, embodying these is a qualitatively distinct matter - see: http://mindfulnessforeveryone.blogspot.ca/2013/11/445-barriers-limits-ceilings-friction.html
     It's both fascinating and sad to see someone shut down, while I'm talking to them about a level for which they're not ready. Their eyes suddenly loose sparkling aliveness - like blinds suddenly dropping to quickly cover the scene beyond their status quo. Retreat to safety is their sudden silent cry. Though they may continue to agree, it's a dull, lifeless agreement which means "no".
     Skillful teaching, mentoring, coaching, psychotherapy, etc involves helping people feel safe while experiencing liminality - their growing edge. This is exceedingly challenging, because people normally feel vulnerable, exposed, out of control here. The resultant fear often leads to simple avoidance - "shut down," but can even manifest as anger & aggression - see: http://healthyhealers.blogspot.ca/2012/02/control-and-liminality.html
     A good educator requires many of the same qualities & skills a good psychotherapist possesses. Students, especially today, have extremely fragile egos, which makes learning particularly traumatic for them and thus may well project this outwardly, misperceiving educators as adversaries.
      Students with the will & skills to succeed 
1) recognize their own boundaries, & do not mistake these for solid, permanent barriers; 
2) do not mistake educators, therapists etc as enemies, but recognize them as collaborators; 
3) confidently, persistently, keep opening up to more & more broadly encompassing knowledge.

#85 Phoenix Process

     “Everything can change in a moment; we have little control over the outer weather patterns as we make our way through the landscape of life. But we can become masters of the inner landscape. We can use what happens on the outside to change the way we function on the inside. This is the moral of the great teaching myths. The hero conquers a monster; the heroine completes a quest; the reward at the end was there all along – the true self, the awakened consciousness. Joseph Campbell said, ‘What all myths have to deal with is transformation of consciousness. You have been thinking one way, you now have to think a different way. Consciousness is transformed either by the trials themselves or by illuminating revelations. Trials and revelations are what it’s all about.’
     When we have been through a trial and survived it – or better still, transformed its terrors into revelations – then we begin to approach other adversities with a different attitude. Change & loss may still knock us off the horse, but soon we are back in the saddle, stronger & wiser than ever. As life progresses, and we continue to transform and refine our consciousness, we gain more insight & humility, greater strength of character, and deeper faith in the meaningfulness of life.
     But how do we do this? How do we transform terror into revelation? How do we stay sane & courageous in the midst of a trial? … the process of transformation (is) a journey of brokenness leading to openness, descent to rebirth, fire to Phoenix. Difficult journeys are best taken in a sturdy vehicle, or at least with a trusty guide & a helpful toolbox. …
     The practices I used most often to stay on track during a Phoenix Process are meditation, psychotherapy, and prayer. These tools continually encourage me to keep my heart open and my mind awake when I would prefer to shut down or go back to sleep. The practice of meditation has helped me develop a steady heart and a less reactive & agitated mind. Psychotherapy had opened me up to an inner world of cause & effect. At a critical time, it pushed me to take responsibility for my own happiness – to stop waiting for that elusive someone or something to mend & define me.
     Sometimes … meditation & therapy – seem tedious & boring; at other times they can be intimidating & challenging. We may want to give up. But the hard work demanded by a Phoenix Process, and the courage required to break open & stay open, are worth every moment of struggle. The payoff is enormous: We come into the liberating presence of our authentic self.”

     Lesser E. “Broken open. How difficult times can help us grow.” Villard, NY, 2005.