Letting go of all afflictions

Letting Go

 

Hearing the bell,

I am able to let go of all afflictions.

My heart is calm,

my sorrows ended.

I am no longer bound to anything.

I learn to listen to my suffering

and the suffering of the other person.

When understanding is born in me,

compassion is also born.

-Thich Nhat Hanh

 

Put the Mask on First

 

How many of us attempt to relieve our own sense of pain and turmoil before attempting to relieve someone else's? Not too many of us I suppose. Sometimes, just sometimes,  we may even use the suffering of another as a numbing distraction from our own.   As long as we are focusing on suffering outside of ourselves, attempting to help, fix and control the so called problems of someone else, we do not have to deal with our own core issues... do we? Some call this martyr syndrome.  Buddhists  simply call it an ineffective way towards compassion.

 

Most of you would have heard the saying, "If on an airplane and it is going down put your own oxygen mask on before you help someone else."  Think about it!  How good are you going to be to the people you love if your brain and body are deprived of oxygen.  It only takes a minute to slip the mask on your face, to oxygenate your body so your mind is clear enough to deal with the issues of another.

 

Heal First

 

Albeit healing from deep core issues and perceptions of suffering may take more than a minute.  But if compassion is our goal, than the time spent on recovery is essential. How good are we going to be to someone else if our loving energy is blocked by perceptions of pain and suffering?

 

We want to be kind, giving and loving to others so they can heal but if we do not take the time to be kind, giving and loving to ourselves so we can heal...we will not truly be giving them what they need from us. We will be  giving from a place of bondage and contraction, rather than from a place of freedom and expansion.  Love is all about freedom and expansion.  We have to love ourselves before we can truly love anyone else.

 

Letting Go

 

How do we heal so we can help heal others? We begin in meditation with a willingness to let go of all resistance we have to suffering.  That resistance comes in the form of things like repression, suppression, denial, rationalization, intellectualizing,sublimation and displacement.  We use conscious and subconscious defense mechanisms as human beings  to protect us from feeling and experiencing our suffering.  In other words we stuff, forget, deny, make excuses, stay stuck in our heads, numb with substances or activities or blame and judge ....so we don't have to experience our own emotions. This creates knots within us that prevent the essence of who we really are to shine through.

 

I am dealing with some issues right now and in my attempt to help others in their own recoveries I am finding myself stuck, drained and overwhelmed.  I am gasping.  My lips and nail beds are turning blue.  I am about to faint ( ironically I am having more near fainting episodes lol) .  I need oxygen.  I need to recover from what is perceived to be going on inside me. The love I give is heavily diluted by my mucky pain.  I need to put my mask on first!

 

My Knot

 

I have come so far in this process.  I accept what my body is doing for the most part.  I accept my financial situation, the losses that have occurred in the last little bit because of my health situation but I realize that something is still holding me back.  I have a boulder sized knot in the center of me that I see as my health seeking journey boulder.  There has been so much pain and suffering around that experience, a story of victimization leading to feelings of unworthiness, shame,  doubt, helplessness, hopelessness, guilt, anger, disbelief, a loss of trust in systems, resentment,  and so much fear.  I also visualize past trauma to the side of me breathing life into this knot, allowing it to grow...blocking, restricting, contracting me so I cannot go forward in my life, so that I cannot hep in the true way I wish to help. 

 

There is so much pain there that I don't want to deal with.  So I stuff it good and deep inside me.  Sometimes it seeps out in trickles and  I go from feeling hopeless and ashamed to wanting to make people pay for what they did to me or didn't do for me even if it is just with massive amounts of guilt. Then I beat myself up for feeling the way I do and for allowing this to happen. I either blame others or I blame myself.  Sometimes I am overwhelmed by the fact that I create my own reality so I must have made this happen. I must have made myself sick and I must have made my health seeking experience go the way it did. So much shame! With that shame I curl up in a ball and try to avoid dealing with this situation and the consequences.

 It is all just a story where I play the tragic heroine or the pitiful victim. A story I too often get lost in as a character rather than as a reader of it. The creative part of me takes it into poetry or books I have written but there is yet to be a full release from the knot within or a disentanglement from   the tale of  trauma that still clings to me.  I will not be free until I step out of the  pages to become the person reading them. How can I be truly there for those I love without release and disentanglement?  I need to let go of both. How do I read what I have written instead of feeling lost and tangled up in it?

 

Meditate

Awe! "Meditate" is what comes to me each and every time.

 

Meditation can lead us to a calm heart and in that moment we are mindful and connected to presence...we are freed  from suffering. It can release and disentangle us from the 'mind stuff' that seems so much like a part of us but truly doesn't have to be. In silence and stillness.

 we can see who we are beyond all that mental chatter and perceived suffering
 

In that state we can listen to our suffering...just listen, without judgment or resistance, with acceptance, understanding and yes loving kindness.  We allow suffering. We need to listen to it without the story attached to it. With gentle hands  and loving kindness we welcome it into our moment, we hold it close like a mother would hold a weeping child and  then we gently remove  it from the hold it seems to have on our life. The knots will become undone and the suffering will be heard,  felt, experienced then quietly released if we just let it be. Only then, when we are free of affliction's  contracting weight, can we expand into understanding and compassion for all. It is then we can truly be of  service to the world. It is then we can help others put their masks on.

 

All is well.

 

 

Only when we've been able to relieve our own suffering will we be able to help relieve someone else's.- Thich Nhat Hanh

 

Thich Nhat Hanh (2011) peace is every breath. New York; HarperOne