Healing Life’s Hurts…
We frequently talk about the need to release our minds from the trap of dualistic-thought, and about realising that pain is a natural part of life, while suffering is optional; but when it comes down to the practical, day-to-day experiences that challenge us — especially the ones that cause us pain — it can be difficult to stay mindful of these simple truths.
When, for example, a spouse discovers that their partner has violated the trust of that relationship, our culturally and socially engendered response is to focus our energies on blaming the other person for causing us to suffer. This is complicated in the moment, because our mind intertwines and entangles layers of issues into one “rope” that ensnares us.
For example, we recognise that there was been a violation of trust and an act of infidelity. We recognise that our partner caused us pain. Those are valid and rational recognitions. But they become complicated by the illusive belief that any of this had anything to do with us, and that we are suffering “because of” him or her. We might even blame the “other woman” or “other man” for our suffering. These thoughts are not useful and are delusions.
Every experience we have begins in our minds. In fact, it could be suggested that those experiences only exist in our minds, and no where else, but that, for the purpose of this discussion, is going a little too deep, a little too fast. Our experiences are based on our perceptions, our expectations, our beliefs, and our attachments.
Chances are that right now, either on your key ring, or perhaps in a drawer in your desk, your kitchen or some other place in your home, there are several keys whose purpose you are not quite certain about. I remember a few years back, when my nephew (now eighteen) was around ten or eleven. I was taking him to an amusement park, during his summer holiday, and as we were driving there, he looked at my keys, and said, “Wow! Do you really have that many doors that lock in your house?”
I laughed, and told him that I actually couldn’t remember what most of those keys were for, but was afraid to throw them away, in case one day I would remember! Sound familiar?
As I sat in grateful meditation that night, it occurred to me that my nephew taught me an incredible spiritual lesson that day. Keys are often used as metaphors in spiritual texts, which are said to be able to “unlock the wisdom” of Enlightenment, healing or understanding. But some keys are just attachments.
That night, I got rid of ten keys on my keychain, and eight to ten years later, I have still not found one instance in which any of those keys turned out to be the key to something I “needed”.
In our example of the “broken relationship”, chances are that we’ve deluded ourselves to believe that our happiness depended on that person. Chances too, are that we have wondered how he or she could do that “to us”. But in reality, the person engaged in the unwholesome practice of violating someone’s trust is harming only themselves. Their actions may be perceived as being painful, but we have to take responsibility for how we choose to deal with that pain. We could allow it to spiral us into depression, or we can allow it to motivate us toward growth and awareness that we only hurt, because we allowed our happiness to depend on impermanent phenomena, and then acted surprised when the phenomenon reached its natural end… as all phenomena do.
In times like these, sitting quietly in meditation, we can “unbraid” the ropes our emotions have created, and then turn our awareness to each individual strand, noticing it as it truly is, and letting it go. If a strand is a strand that causes us pain, we can “be with the pain” and let it wash over us, before releasing it, since it is not helpful to hold onto such experiences. If the emotion is anger, we can allow that emotion to wash over us, and then recognise that it is unuseful as well, and let it go.
Recently, I was berated by a man who grew up in a Third World country, who said that he resented my statement that whatever is not love is fear, because hungry children didn’t create their hunger by lack of love. The poor fellow imagined that I said fear was the absence of food! He clearly had more issues than National Geographic
True compassion and love are beginningless, and really defy our ability to completely describe, explain or quantify them. For me, this is what I call “the Ground of Being”. Often, we imagine our emotional attachments as being “love”, and while true love may actually be present in that relationship, it is usually buried beneath the baggage of what we think love is — sexual attraction, desire, emotional attraction, neediness, co-dependence, possessiveness, and so forth.
“I live my life in growing orbits, which move out over the things of the world,” wrote Rainer Maria Rilke, “And I have been circling for a thousand years, and still I don’t know if I’m a falcon, or a storm, or a great song.”