And by evening....

A fourth practical truth arises out of the first three.  Fully experiencing the pain with which I awaken in the morning, learning something of its causes while I am in the shower, remembering on the way to work that joy is a possibility, I  now try to observe my simple experiences of life during the day. If I can, I try to avoid and minimize those things that exaggerate pain, and cultivate those things that support peace. In virtually every aspect, this path is about recognizing and removing friction and restriction.

I am not so fully evolved that I can remain awake from morning to nightfall. Many days, I awaken and fall asleep several times during the course of the day. Some days, I'm pretty much frozen and sore and asleep all day long. The next morning, though, I may find myself born into a day where I'm free much more often than not. 

And though I can't predict when exactly it will happen, I can see the possibility that  eventually there may come a time when I may fall asleep at the end of the day with all my energy flowing freely, pretty much devoid of fear and arthritic soreness, utterly unconcerned and trusting about what will come the following morning.

That next day's rebirth, the morning after falling asleep in trust,  that will be the one worth watching. 

In the third hour...

Having accepted the important truth that I hurt when I awaken in the morning, having looked deeply into that pain to discover the truth of its cause, a third truth follows instantly.

Even while faced with the truth that I am experiencing pain at this moment in time, I also immediately recognize that there are times when I do not hurt. At the very least, I can remember moments of bliss and utter freedom.  In this very moment, even, I may  get a brief glimpse of this freedom, especially if I have recognized very clearly what is causing my pain. 

Perhaps the most important and noble truth of all: Pain and suffering ends. There is an end to it. If I have ever in my life known a moment of genuine happiness, this is proof of that fact. Though life as we know it includes pain and suffering, the fact that we know moments without it tells us that pain ends and joy exists. 

The fact of joy is the third important truth. 

(continued above)

Just after the beginning....

Awakening with an awareness of discomfort in the body, in the mind, of the spirit, there is an immediate choice to make in the morning. I can either disagree with the fact of my pain and try to distract myself with diversions; or I can choose to simply experience it, look deeply into it, respond to it. 

The first strategy, disagreement and distraction, can pretty much guarantee me a day of quiet though familiar woe. It was my strategy of choice for many, many years, and sometimes I'm convinced that this is the typical mode for most people. Disagreeing with and running from the simple fact of pain is the normal course.

On the simplest physical level:  if I awaken and immediately choose to disagree with the fact that premature arthritis makes my ankles and hips ache, even though I am only 53, I enter the day in resentment and bitterness.

Another strategy, though, is to enter deeply into the ache of my ankles and hips, to investigate it, and to wonder about its causes.

When I don't fight my pain, but rather accept it and look into it, what I realize in the case of the physical pain of my joints, is that it arises because I have been motionless for many hours. I hurt in the joints because the energy flow seems to be dammed and restricted within me. The pain begins to dissipate almost as soon as I begin to move and allow the energy to flow once more, which tells me that my suspicion is correct.

I see somewhat the same thing when I stop disagreeing with some experience of emotional or spiritual pain and begin to look into it.  Like physical pain, it quite often arises out of some restriction or energetic friction within me.  If I cling to some hope or ideal or concept, or idea, for example, this often leads to emotional unhappiness, but when this energy moves freely, my pain lessens.

Following closely on the first noble truth ("We hurt"), a second important truth, perhaps equally noble, becomes apparent. Pain and suffering, for me at least, is a matter of frozenness. Pain has trouble existing in conditions where muscles, tendons, joints, thoughts, emotions, concepts, beliefs flow freely. 

 

(continued above)

In the Beginning...

I sometimes make the mistake of imagining that my own experience is somehow universal, that I represent the archetypal human experience. My daughter, though, likes to point out that I'm "one weird guy," and so it is perhaps a mistake for me to make conclusions about how life works for the rest of humanity. It might well be that it's this way for me alone, and not really for other people at all.

But what choice do we have?  Atfter all, the only thing we can do is genuinely experience how life is for us, share it with others, and if enough sharing goes on, we're likely to discover enough commonality to relieve our aloneness in the world. 

This is the way life is for me....

During times when I'm particularly mindful and objective, I notice in the morning that the process of awakening starts with an awareness of pain and discomfort. It's a relatively rare thing to awaken with a heart that sings. Much more often it is some form of pain that  starts the awakening process.  Sometimes the very first sensation is the ache of muscles and joints that have been inactive for many hours. Sometimes it's a bit of emotional discomfort of some kind—memory of an unpleasant event from the day before, for example. 

For me, anyway, awakening begins with a recognition of pain.  It's the thing with me when I climb out of bed and into daily life. Sometimes I think that without pain, there would be no reason for us to awaken in the morning at all.

Perhaps I'm wrong, but I don't really think this means that I'm some sort of melancholic, depressive personality. It seems to me that almost everyone awakens with pain of some kind. And if we're perfectly honest, if we drop our defenses at any given moment during that day, we'd also likely have to recognize the underlying presence of some discomfort and pain.

It seems to be a human truth, and since truth is by definition honorable and noble, this is the first of the noble truths:  Life is painful. To pretend otherwise is deception, and serves only to obscure the truth. 

(continued above)

Reflections on Fear

I've been giving a lot of thought to the subject of fear lately. 

I've been seeing a lot of it in friends and colleagues lately, perhaps a natural response to unsettled economic times and political upheaval. Good friends are either struggling to find work, or are queasy about their current jobs. Northwest airlines, 3M—I have friends wondering about their futures with these local corporations after 20, 30 years of service. 

I know fear pretty intimately m self. Earlier in my life I had a couple of periods where I was plagued by panic attacks that pretty much disabled me for months at a time, and even today, when I have the courage to look beneath whatever petty irritation or annoyance I might be feeling at the moment, there is very often a ground floor of quiet fear that serves as the foundation for other unpleasant emotions. 

These days, I'm a bit more equanimous as regards my own fear.  I see remnants of the old stuff, though,  in my feelings when I see other people's fear. I don't like it in others, at least partly because I'm still a bit afraid of my own fear. 

With a particular employee of mine, I find myself feeling some annoyance during routine meetings, and I'm aware that what I'm reacting against is my sense of his inner nervousness. At all points, he insists on knowing details of issues that really don't need to be worried about. Energetically, I feel his center of gravity humming up about the level of his Adam's apple, and I don't react well to his compulsive fearfulness and perfectionism. It puts me off, and my response is vague irritation. Same is true of family and friends: I sometimes respond to their fears with a little bit of quiet annoyance. Clearly, a bit of old baggage in me.

This morning on the bus, I paid attention to how people survey the seating opportunities when they climb aboard.  Except in instances where they know one another well, people will always look for the one seat that allows a bit of personal space to remain.  Nobody sits directly next to someone, unless there is no other option. Quiet fear at work.

When a stranger sits next to a person, that passenger always struggles briefly with just a little discomfort and mild fear, visible in nervous movement—they shift their legs, shrink away from the possibility of brushing shoulders. 

Some people have enough fear that they absolutely cannot meet the eyes of any bus passenger. 

What is it that we're all afraid of, I wonder?

This morning, observing fear in others, I found myself remembering the old days when panic lived along side me all the time. A panic attack, for me, was experienced mostly as a mind that raced frantically, utterly unable to rest on the present.  Thinking back, I now see that a panic attack was for me an attempt to desperately escape feelings that were even more unacceptable to me.  Panic was for me an escape from feelings of fear and anger and betrayal and hurt that I'd been running from my entire life. A panic attack is fear of fear itself.

As a young man, I turned the corner toward a real life at the moment when it became just plain impossible to run any longer. When there was no longer any option other than to face fear and be overwhelmed by it, it began to dissolve. 

Sometimes I forget the old lesson and find myself inadvertently running away again. This can feel good for a little while, but then pretty soon I find that there is more and more to run away from, and I need to run faster and faster to maintain the illusion of being separate from the difficult stuff.  Then irritation arises, I feel my mind begin to spin a bit faster than is comfortable, I might find myself troubled by cruel thoughts.

There is an antidote for me.  It's a strange coping mechanism, I'll grant you, but it was born long ago out of my failure to escape fear.  The answer is always to look for the fear and experience it. Once known, it stops looking for recognition. 

Somebody smarter and healthier than me once suggested a better approach, though I've never exactly made this work for me. He told me that once you learn to ignore everything that is superficial and temporary and not real,  you begin to recognize that there is nothing that ever threatens our essence. Fear then disappears entirely.

Yet another goal for a future life.