The Beyond Help Series [Pain and Suffering]

Hola! Everybody,
I’ve been keeping away from posting on the current state of politics because a part of me doesn’t want to give terribly flawed POTUS candidates any attention. I am disgusted by the corporate media’s reality show treatment of this critical moment in our history. I guess that’s it: I’m disgusted.

However, I’m sure I’ll be back at it tomorrow.

Acceptance, Pain & Suffering

Pain is the breaking of the shell of your understanding.
-- Kahlil Gibran

Early on when I first began picking up the pieces of my life, I came upon the phrase suffering is optional. Like most new things, I didn’t understand it at first, but a friend instructed me just to keep at it with an open mind and I would eventually understand.

Today, I make a distinction between pain and suffering. Because of the way we use language, whenever we come face to face with a problem, our first impulse is to fix them. We try to get out of the quicksand. As an evolutionary adaptation and in our external world, this problem-solving approach is effective most of the time. Being able to figure out how to get out of undesirable events, such as being preyed upon, getting eaten, or natural catastrophes, is essential in securing our place as a species.

However, it is also unfortunate that we try to use the same “fix it” mentality when it comes to understanding or coming to terms with our inner world. When we encounter painful psychic content within ourselves, we often resort to what we always do: fix it up and sort it out so we can get rid of it. The truth of the matter is that our inner lives are not like our external world. For one thing, humans live in the context of a history, and time moves only in one direction, not two. Psychological pain has a history and, at least in some respects, the heart of the matter doesn’t entail getting rid of something. It is more a matter of how we deal with it and evolve.

Acceptance as I use it here is based on the perspective that, as a rule, trying to get rid of your pain only makes it worse, entangles you further in it, and eventually makes it more traumatic. This is best illustrated by what I call emotional quicksand: how meeting the suction force of quicksand with tension only makes you more. Our psychological lives are a lot like that. When you’re engaged in fighting for your life, living your life -- thriving -- is often pushed aside. 

The alternative -- a little dangerous to say because at this point it can be misunderstood -- is to accept pain. Acceptance, in the context that I use it here, is not the same as self-defeat; neither is it tolerating and putting up with your pain. It is very different from that. In fact, that type of negative acceptance is a far cry from the vibrant form of acceptance of the moment that can be liberating.

For now, try to think of throwing away the impulse to meet power with power, tension with more tension. Pain is an inescapable fact of life. It happens. You get up early in the morning, and you bang your toe on something. Pain! However, I define suffering differently. I see suffering as pain mixed with tension. Pain can be accepted and even used to transform our suffering. However, if we’re adding tension to pain, then we’re suffering. We have what’s there (pain) and then we have what we bring to the table. Add tension to pain and you have deep suffering. Here it is as a formula:

pain +tension = suffering

Most of us haven’t had much training in the active form of acceptance that I attempting to illustrate here. I want to ask you to keep an open mind and thank your mind for whatever it says this term means, but don’t try to pigeonhole it right now. This form of acceptance is difficult to describe, and learning to be willing to have and live your own experience is something I will focus on a little in future posts. In the meantime, be patient and open -- as well as a little skeptical -- about what your mind might be guessing what I mean right now.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…

Sunday Sermon [The Ego Delusion]

Hola mi gente…
Some heavy shit sits on the horizon… More shall be revealed later in the week.

* * *

I'm going to make a seawall
with my small happiness...
I don't want the sea to know
that pains go through my breast.

-- Julia de Burgos

Let me begin with the following advice, and keep in mind I almost never offer advice, for I find it disabling and condescending. But let me offer this if just this once:

Don’t allow life to harden your heart.

Perhaps you have been hurt many times. I also know that you may despair of ever finding someone who will love and understand you. I’ve been there, I know what that feels like.

And sometimes your broken heart surrenders to anxiety, anger, resentment, and blame. And yes, I know there are sick people out there, Hungry Ghosts, who in their mad grab for an emotional fix will do or say anything. Theirs is a painful hell.

But if you look under your hard-won armor, you will find a softness, a living vulnerability. Cultivate it because that is where your true strength lies.

My sad heart teaches me compassion. So, in a very real way, those who have hurt me taught me to love. In fact, I have come to the realization that no one can truly hurt me, whoever I am. Yes, if I allow it, there are people who can hurt my self-concept and make me doubt my self-esteem, but that’s small. In truth, the divine spark of which I am made -- of which we are all made of -- can never be hurt. My Higher Self encompasses and embraces their madness. The throbbing of my heart is a profound blessing that I can turn into a tool for living my life as an offering. And let’s get real: the only true prayer is to live our life as an offering of our deepest gifts.

Your ego is a thought borne of fear. You see, my dear reader, it goes this way: you are an unstable collection of coincidences held together by a desperate and irrational clinging. There is no center -- no center at all. Everything depends on everything else, your body depends on the ecology, your thoughts depend on whatever conditioned debris floats in from the media, your emotions are mostly from the reptilian end of your DNA. Your intellect is a chemical computer that can’t add up a zillionth as fast as a pocket calculator. Even your best side is a superficial piece of social conditioning that will fall apart as soon as your significant other abandons you and leaves with the money in the bank account, or the economy fails and you get the sack, or they give you the news about your brain tumor. To name this combination of self-pity, vanity, and despair self is not only the height of conceit, it is also proof that we’re a deluded species. 

The ego is merely a belief system we create to shield ourselves from the pain and hurt of life. It is but a figment of your mind. It is such a small part, that if you would reflect upon the larger whole, it would resemble the smallest sunbeam of a vast Sun, or an almost imperceptible ripple that calls itself The Ocean.

It’s our seawall and we can no sooner hide our pain from the ocean as cover the sky with our hand.

Don’t accept this little, defended, fenced-off aspect as the totality who you are. In fact, the sun and the ocean are nothing compared to your true Higher Self.

The sad thing is that you believe that without the ego all would be lost, while in reality without all this clinging all would be Love.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…

Sunday Sermon [Self Concept]

Hola mi gente…
I made a grave error yesterday. I took on a paint job that I know, deep down inside, stresses my back in a way I can’t handle. Today it took me two hours to get up from the bed. The job isn’t finished and I can’t possibly continue, so I’ve called a friend who could use the cash.

* * *

I'm going to make a seawall
with my small happiness...
I don't want the sea to know
that pains go through my breast.

-- Julia de Burgos

Let me begin with the following advice, and keep in mind I almost never offer advice, for I find it disabling and condescending. But let me offer this if just this once:

Don’t allow life to harden your heart.

Perhaps you have been hurt many times. I also know that you may despair of ever finding someone who will love and understand you. I’ve been there, I know what that feels like.

And sometimes your broken heart surrenders to anxiety, anger, resentment, and blame. And yes, I know there are sick people out there, Hungry Ghosts, who in their mad grab for an emotional fix will do or say anything. Theirs is a painful hell.

But if you look under your hard-won armor, you will find a softness, a living vulnerability.

My sad heart teaches me compassion. So, in a very real way, those who have hurt me taught me to love. In fact, I have come to the realization that no one can truly hurt me, whoever I am. Yes, if I allow it, there are people who can hurt my self-concept and make me doubt my self-esteem, but that’s small. In truth, the divine spark of which I am made -- of which we are all made of -- can never be hurt. My Higher Self encompasses and embraces their madness. The throbbing of my heart is a profound blessing that I can turn into a tool for living my life as an offering. And let’s get real: the only true prayer is to live our life as an offering of our deepest gifts.

Your ego is a thought borne of fear. You see, my dear reader, it goes this way: you are a unsteady collection of coincidences held together by a desperate and irrational clinging. There is no center -- no center at all. Everything depends on everything else, your body depends on the ecology, your thoughts depend on whatever conditioned debris floats in from the media, your emotions are mostly from the reptilian end of your DNA. Your intellect is a chemical computer that can’t add up a zillionth as fast as a pocket calculator. Even your best side is a superficial piece of social conditioning that will fall apart as soon as your significant other leaves with the money in the bank account, or the economy fails and you get the sack, or they give you the news about your brain tumor. To name this combination of self-pity, vanity, and despair self is not only the height of conceit, it is also proof that we’re a deluded species.

The ego is merely a belief system we create to shield ourselves from the pain and hurt of life. It is but a figment of your mind. It is such a small part, that if you would reflect upon the larger whole, it would resemble the smallest sunbeam of a vast Sun, or an almost imperceptible ripple that calls itself The Ocean.

It’s our seawall and we can no sooner hide our pain from the ocean as cover the sky with our hand.

Don’t accept this little, defended, fenced-off aspect as who you are. In fact, the sun and the ocean are nothing compared to your true Higher Self.

The sad thing is that you believe that without the ego all would be lost, while in reality without this clinging to ego all would be Love.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…

Sunday Sermon (It's Too Much to Hope for)

¡Hola! Everybody...
Today is the Dominican Day Parade. I will be there as the [un]Official Parade Culo Inspector... LOL

I don’t know if the following was written by a Buddhist, but it sure does capture the core Buddhist POV on pain and suffering...

* * *

-=[It’s Too Much to Hope for ]=-

It's too much to hope for a life without pain,
It's wrong to expect a life without pain,
For pain is our body's defense.
No matter how much we dislike it,
And nobody likes it,
Pain is important,
And,
For pain we should be grateful!
How else would we know,
To move our hand from the fire?
Our finger from the blade?
Our foot from the thorn?
So pain is important,
And for pain we should be grateful!
Yet,
There's a type of pain that serves no purpose,
That's chronic pain,
It's that elite band of pain that's not for defense.
It's an attacking force.
An attacker from within
A destroyer of happiness
An aggressive assailant on personal ability
A ceaseless invader of personal peace
And,
A continuous harassment to life!
Chronic pain is the hardest hurdle for the mind to jump.
Sometimes it is almost impossible to jump,
Yet, we must keep trying,
And trying,
And trying,
Because if we don't it will destroy.
And,
From this battle will come some good,
The satisfaction of overcoming pain.
The achievement of happiness and peace, of life in spite of it.
This is quite an achievement,
An achievement very special, very personal,
A feeling of strength
Of inner strength
Which has to be experienced to be understood.
So, we all have to accept pain,
Even sometimes destructive pain.
For it is part of the scheme of things,
And the mind can manage it,
And the mind will become stronger for the practice.

-- Jonathan Wilson-Fuller

What is even more remarkable about this piece is that it was written when Jonathan was only nine-years-old! Read more about him (click here)

Love,

Eddie