Suffering: Supposed to Be

 There is not a grain of dust in the whole universe that isn't where it is supposed to be. 

Alan Watts

Still thinking about suffering in the form of "stress",  what makes it and what helps diminish it.  I came across this video by Alan Watts today and though I only got 30 minutes in before Life called me away...I heard  everything I was feeling and thinking echoed in the words of this very wise man who so effectively took the wisdom from the east and made it contemporary in the west. He had a gift and he used it well.  He had a mission and, I believe he nailed it...even if he was not well accepted by the more traditional institutions of North America and Europe at the time. Anyway, I am grateful for the opportunity to be able to tap into that wisdom so easily now. I am grateful for my own evolution that took beyond my fear based conditioning to where I can be open to this teaching.

Anyway, back to suffering. Watts  mentioned how ego leads us into a futile attempt at resisting pain through establishing a posture of chronic muscle tension...as if by tensing  up the body we can stop the "bad" things from getting in.  It, of course, reminded me of the issue I have with my jaw and teeth. 

He also spoke about resistance and validated my belief that resistance to pain is a very big social "problem' and a cause of so much of our collective suffering  We are taught, at a very young age,   to avoid pain because we are taught it is "bad, wrong, shouldn't be" (have an article coming out with that title). So we resist and struggle against or avoid/numb from anything that is judged or believed to be painful.  When we do this we resist such a big portion of Life because the so called 'negative' aspects of Life are just as much a part of existence as the so called 'positive'.  We not only resist Life but we resist our true Self.

In our dualistic tendencies we tend to view that the life circumstance or 'happening' is one thing and the person it is said to be happening to is another thing.  We are always breaking things down into nouns and verbs...where there is a noun, there must be a verb; where there is an action or something done, there must be a doer; where there is a happening there must be a doing. Watts challenges that notion by saying This happening is not happening to you becasue you are the happening. Happening and doing are one and the same.  So no matter what we do or what we 'don't do' we cannot prevent suffering from 'happening'.  

A wonderful thing, however, takes place within when we learn to accept, allow, and embrace suffering without our judgements and perception.  We open up to Life and all it is.

Hmm. The stress I am experiencing right now...simply is. I truly do want to lean into it rather than tensing up agaisnt it. What helps me is learning that everything that is happening is happening just the way it is meant to. These circumstances are not random punches from the Universe...that I should duck and avoid...they have their purpose and their place.

All is well. 

Alan Watts/Uncle Evevy ( Jan, 2021) The Inevitable Ecstasy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzjIKqO5ILI