Hope you are prepared to suffer?...There are two types of suffering: The kind you run away from that follows you everywhere and the kind that you face and that's the gateway to freedom.
Jack Kornfield
We are all looking for peace...well not so much "looking for" but wanting to return to that state we are. We can do it on two levels: we can avoid anything we feel might disturb us farther (as most of us do) or we can simply turn and face that which is disturbing us.
When we take the first option we tend to run from disturbance without ever getting away from it...we, in fact, create more disturbance in the long run. Or we can turn around and face those challenging and difficult emotions that are emerging because of some trigger out there.
Running From Suffering
For example, someone pulls out in front of you while you pull out of an intersection and that triggers an old samskara or tendency in you (you unconsciously want to avoid anything related to near accidents because you had a terrifying accident in the past...the emotional component of which you suppressed inside you because it was too challenging to deal with at the time of the accident). In a matter of seconds you are slamming on your brake, you feel this rush of blood and emotion pumping inside you. Automatically your hand goes to the horn and you start to beep, and honk, and beep...sending a lovely hand gesture to the car that pulls away with the red faced driver in it. It seems to take forever to get the heart rate and breathing back to normal. You tremble all the way to work. When you get there you have to tell everyone about this incident and the terrible stupid driver, who should never have a license, that cut you off. You think about it all day and fear having to go through that intersection again after work. You reacted to something disturbing ...you reacted to something you were trying to run away from for a long time ( the emotional energy of the accident you had years ago)...But you just cant seem to get away.
If you make the other choice, however, and turn to that which is disturbing you, you will do a multilevel healing. You can instead of running further away... push the door that is opening because of the disturbance...the reaction... all the way open and walk through it. You can walk through the chatter of the mind...the painful thoughts, feelings and beliefs that seem to be pushing you out. It may be scary and confusing but if you see the door opening and know that on the other side of it is healing, you are more likely to walk through that gateway.
Sure we have to recognize, acknowledge, allow and accept the disturbance at these gates before we can walk through but being willing to do so is what will save us.
Face Suffering
If this person who nearly had an accident took the second option and just pulled over after the incident; if they took a quiet moment to recognize what they were feeling in that moment, "Oh man that really scared me. I feel terror and anger. I am reacting to this experience. Maybe, it has something to do with the accident I had years ago? " , they would not have suffered in the way they did in the first scenario. If they were to allow it, and to nurture self a little bit they would have had a different experience. Instead of following the desire to constantly push the samskara back down while they got lost in the reactivity of the incident, there was always a better option.
We can, in similar moments of reactivity, of suffering, recognize what the mind is doing with the incident...recognize what the heart and body are feeling...instead of pushing it back down...sit and be aware of it. We can find some love and compassion for it and for the self experiencing the momentary experience, our reaction to it, and to the old wounds that have been triggered. We can notice the impersonal nature of it all . "I am not the only person who reacts like this, who has this type of pain inside them." Then we can take that loving kindness and compassionate awareness and expand it to others who may be suffering.
This is what will bring us back to peace. Facing suffering will take us where we want to go.
Hmm! Well that is what I got from this.
All is well.
Jack Kornfield/ The Knowledge Podcast (Jan 10, 2023) A Practical Guide on Finding Inner Peace.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9ayv-y4XBo&t=19s
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