Working Through the Pain

by master isolated images @ freedigitalphots.net

After talking with a friend tonight, who is going through a bit of a hard time, I realized just how much I've been skirting around my own problems lately. The tendency is to avoid the deep-seated issues at all costs, either by covering them up with pleasant experiences or getting distracted with different material altogether. While both of these options seem convenient and might serve to offer some temporary relief, the root of the problem remains and is waiting for the soil to ripen for it to sprout up again.

I know what I need to do, but yet I am playing the game of denial and avoidance. The last couple months have been pretty challenging for me. I've subjected myself to this ongoing experiment, determined to invite austerity and renunciation into my life, with some idea that it will bring me closer to the truth. But the truth is, it won't, at least not by itself. Yes, it has brought this truth into the limelight for me to see many times, the truth of the myriads of problems that I have yet to work through, but if I continue to avoid them, my experiments will prove to be of no service to me at all.

I remember on my first meditation retreat, the teacher talked about how if we weren't careful, it could actually make us regress in our practice. At the time, I refused to believe that all that time and effort could result in a situation where it would have been better off if I hadn't gone at all. I think I'm starting to understand what he really meant. If we grab onto pleasant experiences and push unpleasant ones away, we are just reinforcing the very reactive tendencies of the mind that we are trying to do away with in the first place. You could argue that the trying is the problem, but I'm not as interested in a philosophical inquiry into the role of effort as I am in finding tangible solutions.

On the surface, I've had quite a bit of success with my little experiments. I've managed to keep to the 90 minutes of meditation a day rule for the last 60 days, and I've also done at least 12 sun-salutations (a yoga sequence) everyday. I've chanted in the morning and evening nearly everyday, and my diet has been mostly vegan, with the exception of giving in to some ice-cream from time-to-time. So from a materialistic standpoint, I've been doing really well. Nonetheless, after one of my co-workers, who seems to be supportive of my ambition, asked me last week if I was still going strong, I admitted, "Yeah, but not on the inside."

But isn't that what really counts? 

The truth is, I'm going through the motions, but I'm still avoiding the pain. Sure, I've been working through the pain a little bit, but only because I've had to, there hasn't been any real intention or system to dealing with it. I guess what it took was a good reminder from a friend for me to see that I could be doing more to meet my pain head-on so as to uproot the core of the problem itself.

So what can I do to work through the pain?

Well, I guess it depends on what's there. You shouldn't bite off more than you can chew. If the problem is really big, don't try to tackle it all at once. You have to chip away, like a sculptor hoping to slowly reveal the inner beauty of a finished piece. And to chip away, we need to do our best to see what material is in front of us. We can invite the problem to show itself so as to be able to identify when it's at work in our lives. When we know what it is, we can at least be aware of it and have a chance to act accordingly.

What does it mean to act accordingly?

Again, it depends on what we are suffering from, but if we know that avoiding the problem is effectively multiplying it, we can start by allowing ourselves to feel whatever is there. As it arises, we can do our best to refrain from resisting it. Instead of being trapped in the mind, which is bound to be spinning out on the typical story of "poor me, I shouldn't have to suffer," we can try to stay present with the actual physical experience of suffering. What I've found in the past is that by allowing myself to suffer, the suffering in turn diminishes. Getting out of the story and into the direct experience means that we are able to break down the sensations associated with the unpleasantness and see it for what it really is, nothing more than passing phenomena.

When we see our suffering as being impermanent, we can take a step back and not take it personally. It's not really who or what we are, it's just something we are experiencing. If we take it personal, as the mind would have it, we are reinforcing its power over us. Although we aren't looking for power here, we want to be careful about letting the mind suck us into the trap of feeling sorry for ourselves.

Instead, we can practice surrender, knowingly and intentionally, and stop trying to fight the fact that suffering is a part of life.

I think what I'm learning from this, as it's coming up in this very moment, is that the surface details don't matter in the end. The only thing that matters is the extent to which we are free from the confines of our own habituated tendencies to react to incoming phenomena without even a shred of awareness or the ability to choose. I don't know about you, but I'm personally more scared of being an automated drone than I am of death itself, for it's much worse to die free than to live a prisoner of the mind.

by markuso @ freedigitalphotos.net

The thing that separates us from machines is not our ability to think, but rather our ability to feel. So when you feel that you are ready to face your pain, sit down and let yourself feel what's there. Allow yourself to become intimate with this pain, to know it fully. Know what it feels like, where it arises in the body, what triggers it, what makes it go away. Know the way it causes your mind to react. Notice as much as you can about your suffering and try to stay as objective as possible. Notice that all experiences come and go, and yet you remain, the witness to the passing moment.

Dig down deep, and then give up completely, for absolute strength is total surrender.