Sacred Life Sunday on Saturday: Suffering

Because I am notoriously bad at following the rules... I am posting Sacred Life Sunday on Saturday.

It's all about identity. The identities we choose. The identities we claim.

I am too fat. I am impatient. I am sloppy. I am not smart enough. I am too smart. I am too skinny. I am American. I am Thai. I am British. I am tall. I am short. I am loud. I am quiet. I am a sister. I am a daughter. I am a mother. I am a father. I am a survivor of child abuse. I am a formerly abused woman. I am a student. I am an elder. I am ....

I am....

And then....

It's too hot. It's too cold. The neighbor's music is too loud. This doesn't taste good. That doesn't sound good. This fabric is too rough on my skin. It's too windy. My groceries cost too much. There's too much traffic. Everyone keeps bugging me.

How often we declare these things and in the process make them true. How we attach ourselves to them and use them as definitions of who we are.

We use them to separate ourselves from others and to bond to others. How often do we use our suffering as a way to bond with others? We are a group of child abuse survivors. We are a group of formerly abused women. We are a group of men who have been in prison. The sangha of the oppressed.

From the minute we come to this planet through our mother's womb, we start screaming. We start criticizing. All of our senses scream. Taste, feel, smell, hear, see. All the input from the external world begins to irritate us.

That's the suffering inherent in being alive in the material world. All these sensitivities. The sensitivity, the impingement and the irritations come through until we die.

It becomes important at some point to view these things differently. We have to see the world as it is, instead of judging it - or each other. We become identified with the ideals. Our critical minds tell us what others should be, what governments should be, what parents should be, what our partners should be... It's always predicated on some peak experience. Peak experiences are wonderful but they're not sustainable. Everything changes. Constantly. We can become conditioned - or we can become open.

I've noticed myself doing this a lot. I have such strong ideals, such a strong sense of what's right and what's wrong and balance everything against that, that I am making myself miserable.

There's a huge difference between being depressed and pessimistic or truly accepting the world as it is but still finding the beauty in it. The more we are attached to our identities, the less we can see the beauty because we're too caught up in defending our ideals.

Suffering becomes noble when we can finally see it as a learning experience, as an opportunity - even a challenge if we choose it that way. Rather than fear sensitivity, be fully sensitive instead of trying to protect ourselves endlessly from pain or misfortune. Embrace it, understand it, be open to it, admit it, and finally to accept it. That begins to give us some freedom from the pain, the frustration and the irritation, no matter what form it takes. Instead of asking "why me", just say "why not me".

And the final, most important thing, is to detach ourselves from our identities as "those who suffer."

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