-Pema Chodron (How to Meditate, page 100-101)
I want to numb right now.
I have been having more and more peaceful experiencing in my day to day Life...amazing really. I feel myself settling into it more and more. Reconstructing my mind is my "job" now and I take it very seriously. I practice committedly...I really do work at it. And I am truly progressing. I can see and more importantly 'feel' that progress.
Life is still doing what Life does. The circumstances around me are numerous and pretty 'dramatic' at times but I see it all as a well set up learning environment and am able to process through it a lot better than I ever could. Well so "I think". I look at challenge differently.
I know that but still...
Last night reminded me, once again, as it always does when I start to become a cocky learner, that there is a lot of work yet to be done. As a result of facing these challenges, I awoke and felt a whole series of 'unwanted feelings' fed by 'unwanted thoughts' whirling around inside me. And as is the way, ego just added more thought and more story to the mixture, followed by a lot of resistance until I had a really good negativity soup brewing.
Now I want to numb.
Well...I wanted to numb then too and I did...I numbed with other feelings and other thoughts...and with resistance and avoiding. I stuffed some of those feelings down and covered them up with a good layer of thinking. I allowed other less demanding feelings to float to the surface to help create a coating too. My mind stirred and stirred and stirred until I really didn't feel anything.
That's how the mind works, isn't it? Our egos are the biggest pot stirrers. They love to stir it all up, create drama and make a mess. For a while...it seems like a good thing that they are doing because it is 'self' (little 'self') protective. As soon as you pull the wooden spoon from the pot though...what happens?...Everything floats to the surface!
Ego made a mess in my mental kitchen last night...let me tell ya! I awoke to face head on those life circumstance I wanted to avoid, feeling restless, worried, concerned, anxious, afraid, suspicious, angry, guilty, resentful, sad etc etc...so many emotions came bubbling over the side that I didn't want to feel. So automatically...I slipped back into old patterns of behaving and I began to numb to deal with my pot stirring buddy.
How do I numb?
I numb with thought. I 'think' my way through things. I create stories. I edit and revise stories. I control the emotional element of the story to create atmosphere...I allow some feelings in and stuff away the bigger ones. I use words to 'explain' my experience; to 'narrate' my way through Life. I 'analyze' and 'actively problem solve' because heck...I see that emotional ingredients in the soup as a problem.
I don't want to take one spoonful of it so I need to come up with a plan that involves action rather than being. I won't simply experience those feelings...I will numb them with thinking and doing like so many of us do. I will stir and stir and stir but I will not taste.
We all have our own way of numbing from 'unwanted' feelings. My way is probably considered to be the 'normal' way only because so many of us do it and it is socially acceptable...even encouraged that we cope this way. It is, however, still numbing and addictive. It still prevents us from experiencing Life fully.
If we want to experience life fully...and end suffering once and for all... we need to taste all the ingredients in the soup. We need to recognize, accept and allow all feelings to enter our experience. So many of us are afraid to do that ...so we numb. We allow ego to stir.
How Does numbing work?
All numbing...whether it is through active drug use; stuffing down unwanted feelings with food; excessive doing, TV binge watching, attachment to the cell phone and social media, sex, gambling, or thinking is there to help us 'not feel" that which we do not want to feel. We resist feeling certain emotions...certain energies that we label, judge and deem as 'bad' and ego provides many ways for us to do that.
Society(which is very much ego based) labels and judges certain things as "good" or "bad', "acceptable" or "not acceptable" and "right" or "wrong", therefore determining what is okay to experience and what isn't. It teaches us to actively avoid pain and the circumstances that cause it which it labels as bad, unacceptable and wrong.
How Does Society Teach Us This?
We have role models who deal with their pain through a variety of numbing activity: parents or older siblings who use, adults who work too much or eat too much. Everyone around us have thumbs that are glued to their devices. We follow suit and seem to panic when our thumbs get dislodged, don't we? We sell and buy products that are said to eliminate all the unwanted everything from our lives . We have a system that uses the model of "success' like a carrot in front of our faces and we are told that to meet that image of success we cannot be slowed down by pain in any form. The pharmaceutical companies have a field day with that promotion...they are determined to convince us that they can eradicate every pain there is at a cost and end up causing so much more. On top of that social media creates an idea of how we should be, what's acceptable and what isn't. Pain isn't in that one dimensional image. Society teaches us that pain in whatever form it comes in is a "no-no".
And inwardly we also learn that pain does not feel all that good. We instinctively want to feel good. So we learn to numb. The addict learns, at a very early age that pain is not only unnecessary but something to be resisted and avoided at all costs. He or she is encouraged to experiment with numbing...for the sake of being successful, for the sake of meeting social expectations of what is said to be 'normal' and what is 'happy'. Sometimes that fear-based numbing is carried to the extreme but numbing is numbing.
So, with ego's encouragement and guidance, we will all begin experimenting with numbing at some point. With every physical ache or pain...instead of sitting with it, we may take something for it or 'do' something about it. Instead of sitting with emotional pain, even if it is just boredom...we may feel the need to 'do' something about it. It becomes a pattern of behaving and eventually as soon as we get an inkling of discomfort we panic...thinking to ourselves that that pain must be relieved...must be ended and cannot by any means be felt or experienced. Pain after all is judged as a 'bad' thing and we must resist all bad things, don't we?
Most of us do this, don't we? Life doesn't go our way a few times and we judge Life as bad, Life as painful and we focus all our intention on dealing with that. We assume if Life isn't going the way it is "supposed to" then that means we are expected or "should' be feeling bad or feeling "pain". Since pain is a bad thing we either try to change the circumstances or we close ourselves up to it. We shut down from "the unpleasant moment" but when we shut down from any moment, we also shut down from Life...We numb ourselves into a pseudo state of comfort.
Proposing that we learn to sit with all of it
Let's face it...this numbing really doesn't make us happy and it doesn't take away our pain. Avoidance, denial, repression, suppression and all the other defense mechanisms used in numbing...just stuff emotional energy but like the soup in the pot it will eventually boil over. It will end up causing more pain. Ask the heroine junkie who is now living on the street how great her life is going or the workaholic who lost his family how happy he is? Resistance is the problem...not the unpleasant set of circumstances that have seemed to land on your lap, or the illness, or the depression, or the pain itself. It is your perception of it and therefore your response to it that is the problem.
We need to look at things differently. We need to see challenge and adversity for what it really is....not something to be avoided and resisted but something to be embraced.
I think of Eckhart Tolle's words when he is talking to Oprah on her super soul podcast: From a higher perspective being challenged is a good thing....the challenge forces you to transcend suffering to go deeper into presence...humans don't really grow until they face the challenge of suffering.(see link below...may not be word for word).
As long as we are numbing and not feeling...we are not accepting life with all its wonderful challenges and we are not growing. We are here to grow in our awareness of what it means to be human. And pain, dear friends...like it or not, is a part of being human.
Numbing is not the answer
Though I feel like numbing...I am aware that it is not the answer. So as part of my mental reconstruction work..I will allow the challenges in my life and I will sit with the feelings they bring up. I will take the spoon from ego and put an end to the stirring and the mess. I will dig deep to taste all the ingredients in Life's soup. I will be fed by it, growing healthily and vibrantly as a result.
I promise you that when you allow yourself to truly experience the rawness of your emotions, a whole new way of seeing the world, of experiencing love and compassion, will be revealed to you.
Chodron, page 102
Hmmm! All is well in my world.
References
Chodron, Pema ( 2013) How to Meditate. Boulder: Sounds True
Tolle, E. & Winfrey, O. (January, 2018). Eckhart Tolle: Free Yourself from Anxiety, Stress and Unhappiness. Oprah's Super Soul Conversations. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6LXoN44jxI
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