On Suffering - Kathleen Knipp

 

Life is suffering...

This ubiquitous phrase, the first noble truth of Buddhism, is so
frequently repeated and disseminated throughout mainstream
media that even your uncle who disdains all things esoteric
has likely encountered a variation of it.  Life is suffering.
Many in my entourage are feeling the suffering.  They are
profoundly feeling it.  They keep company with others who
are feeling it.

Of all the teachings passed down through the ages, this message
has endured and become a widely recognized and popular catch-
phrase.

Why? 
 And, more importantly, how might we draw upon it as we face
these challenging times?

Many believe that the cause of their suffering is the destruction of
democracy and the destabilization of the world order.  Is this true?
Is it possible that the current catastrophes have only ripped the scab
off a subtler, root source of suffering?  Might it be that this round of
disasters serves as a compelling place to point a finger?  If that
lunatic were not running the US government (you can choose which
madman) then I'd feel OK.  Remember the early days of the pandemic
when we were all terrified to touch our groceries, no less our loved
ones?  Between then and today, maybe an illness or a death or a 
lost job or relationship took the helm of the suffering ship.

Why do we strive to rid ourselves of suffering?  Why not eradicate
joy?  Why, when, as we learn in Kashmir Shaivism:
 the Totality contains everything - everything, that Consciousness
manifests in an infinite variety of forms, not just the ones we like,
are we certain that "something needs to be done here!"  Why do I
believe life should be any different than it is?
[This is a tough question to ask oneself, especially when suffering.]

We are bound to suffering.  Might we ask ourselves, "What does
suffering actually feel like?"  How is it expressed in me?  Through
me?  Is it a nagging nebulous unsatisfactoriness or more of a
screaming painful certainty that I am in imminent danger?

[Or experiencing a chronic illness, or sudden decline in the body.]

Perhaps we can find a little time each day to sit on our cushion,
or lie down on our mat, or be wherever we are in whatever
position we happen to find ourselves, and we feel into the suffering.
Sense it deeply.  Every nuance of it.  Feel how we reject this
agony.  Sense the tension in our muscles, the knot in the belly,
the clenching of the teeth.  [Feel the anxiety and fear that arise.]
Feel how we protest and blame.  Recognize how we distract or
how we try to rearrange our lives to avoid feeling that which is
inevitable.  [Trying to rearrange the chairs on the deck of the Titanic :]
Engage this practice with curiosity and with love.  
Give it all you have.

Maybe inquire, "Who is feeling this pain?"

For sure, there is fallout from the current political scene.  There is
no denying that the lives of many people have been adversely 
affected, and that, likely, they will continue to be...

.....this human gig is temporary...
this particular set of crises, well, they too will pass.....

Observe with gentleness our very human tendency
to identify with mind and its contents...

[to forget] that it's a never-ending play of Consciousness.

Kathleen Knipp
Pathless Yoga
Non-Dual Teacher
Excerpts from "On Suffering"

[brackets mine]

~

Photo - Art - Mystic Meandering
Light and Dark Vortex

2011

 

Befriending Ourselves - Matt Licata

At some point along the way, each of us will be asked
to revision the ideas that have accompanied us to this
moment in our lives.  Although at times the call arrives
quietly and slowly, as a whisper guiding us into new
territory, for many it comes as an unexpected visitor,
erupting in the night as we find ourselves in transition,
confused, angry, heartbroken, uncertain, or depressed.
However it arrives, it is a reminder that even our most
sacred identities and beliefs tend to become encrusted
over time, worn-out symbols of a living reality no longer
so alive.  Somehow what was clear only days or even
moments ago lost its meaning and is no longer able to
accompany us into the next phase.

[.....]

To see our pain, confusion and struggle as an intelligent
communication from the deepest parts of ourselves is a
radical approach... To suffer consciously is an ancient,
sacred art lost in our time, replaced by a well-intentioned
solar self-help industry designed to take us out of the 
darkness and complexity and into consistent joy, flow,
happiness, and bliss...

[.....]

True healing is not a state in which we become liberated from
feeling, but freer and flexible to experience more fully the
deeper, more complex, and more nuanced dimensions of the
psyche... to touch the fullness of what it means to have taken
birth here....in the universal human experience.

[.....]

This exploration [of befriending ourselves] is not oriented in
transcending our vulnerability - fleeing into a state of power,
untouchability, and control - or safely hiding in some protected
spiritual cocoon where we've risen above it all.  It is not taking
refuge in spiritual concepts.  It is in knowing that in any moment
life will reorganize and rearrange all our constructed spiritual
identities and fantasies...

[.....]

We will never feel fully alive through embracing only those
feelings, images, and parts of ourselves that our families,
societies and [religious] authorities claim are worthy and
valid, but only through the courage required to embrace the
entire display, to befriend it all, and to transform the raw
material of our lives into the luminous expression of
wisdom and love in all its forms...

Matt Licata

Excerpts from the Introduction to his book:
A Healing Space:
Befriending Ourselves in Difficult Times

~

Photo - from the Internet