Yet another attempt to make a point...

[outlier_lynn]

This is attempt number 6 or 7 to write this post. I was completely stopped. I would get five words down and stare at the screen. Sigh. So, I want to be able to hand out free tickets to life. And I can't. No one can. I was stuck, stuck, stuck in the "doing" mode and that will grind me to a painful stop every single time.

Back to "being." Oh, my! I just found the other cork in my bottle about this post! I'm pissed! I have peeled it back enough to realize that I am not pissed at people, just at a common attitude. Read the rest of this with that in mind.

Suffering is optional, people. And it costs a lot of emotional and physical energy to have that heaping helping of suffering along with the circumstances in your life. If you musts suffer, do it in silence. STOP trying to get everyone else to buy into your suffering. Here, have two cups of pity for your suffering. Now get the hell off it. No awards for drama queens and kings. Have some cheese with that whine.

There are events that scare us, thrill us, cause happiness and sadness. We feel sorrow, love, joy, lust and anger. Lots of emotions to feel and enjoy.

Suffering, on the other hand, isn't an emotion. It's a reaction to the fiction we create about some circumstance in our life. We create suffering for ourselves. We tell ourselves some pity story, then we treat it like the truth. CRAPPOLA. It's all a fucking lie. Stop believing it.

STOP BEING RUN BY THE CIRCUMSTANCES IN YOUR LIFE.

Everyone has a computer in the back of our minds. It's purpose is to protect us from pain -- physical and emotional. It remembers every event that ended in pain. That computer is doing a constant query on the pain database and comparing the results with the current situation. And it is talking to us constantly. If tells us how to look good in every situation. It isn't interested at looking into the future, either. It is only concerned with current trauma.

Because of that, it is stealing the future from us.

But the damn program that's running is buggy. Each and every time it tries to protect us from pain, it just increases it. It disconnects us from humanity. It causes us to not trust anyone. To resent those who love us the most. And it cranks up the drama. and it's all a lie.

The key, of course, is to be responsible for how we are being in the world. Bad news, eh? We create the suffering, blame it on someone else then suffer that they caused our suffering. yeah, right!

Love (cause I'm always love),
Love and Light

Comments

[calialleykat.livejournal.com]

a dear frind of my and sometime surrogate mother used to say.. Ok take your time on the pity pot and enjoy it, THEN GET OFF IT!

[machineplay.livejournal.com]

There's a quote somewhere that says essentially that the one freedom which can never be taken away from us is the freedom to choose how we are going to react in any given situation. That's so huge and so *hard* to learn. When I was 20 and complaining about my life and how my parents had 'ruined it', a friend finally said to me, "Hon, it was your parents' fault that they did that when you were a kid. You're an adult now and if your life is 'ruined' the only person you can blame is you. Make new choices." It still took me more than ten years to put that into practice. :p

"Each and every time it tries to protect us from pain, it just increases it." This was one of the key eye openers for me when reading through Pema Chrodron's Start Where You Are for the first time. She talks about the compassionate heart and the ever escalating battle to defend it. Very good lessons there. "Victory to others, blame to myself." Not self-flagellation, just surrendering the endless cycle of hoarding joy and passing off blame.

I'm glad you wrote this. It sums up so much of what my frustration is with some of the people I love most. I have a lot of energy when I know someone is rising above the muck (and I know some people are knee deep in it). The person on my friend's list who has fourth-stage Hodgkin's Disease is a constant source of wonder and inspiration for me, even when she's in pain, or grieving, same with the person with Rheumatoid Arthritis. There are other people on my list who are whole and healthy and yet the very process of them going to work daily exhausts me when I read about it. What you say is right on but so very hard to learn for some of us, including me.

Now that I think of it, yesterday I was looking back at last year and thinking "Wow, was I ever suffering a LOT back then. I was in pain all the time! What changed?"

[firecat]

When I was 20 and complaining about my life and how my parents had 'ruined it', a friend finally said to me, "Hon, it was your parents' fault that they did that when you were a kid. You're an adult now and if your life is 'ruined' the only person you can blame is you. Make new choices."

I remember having that insight around that age. It has to be constantly renewed.

[patzilla]

The very definition of suffering is to feel pain or distress. I am in agreement with you that most emotional suffering that we humans put ourselves through within our relationships with others is self-inflicted with the inability to let go of past transgressions. Simply put, if someone or something is causing you emotional distress, then remove yourself from the situation. I think accepting responsibility for how one feels is something that very few people can do on their own. But these words are easily spoken, and not easily acted upon because our race as a whole is very immature. We don't like to accept responsibility for our actions or our deeds when we can always blame someone else for it. We want to give over the power of our emotions to others. Problem is, our emotions only belong to us, and thus, can only be controlled by us.

A wise man once told me, "Be a thermostat, not a thermometer." Control yourself or be controlled. Be more proactive and less reactive.

[scixual.livejournal.com]

*loud cheers*