The Cycle of Suffering

Ideas offered by Don Riso and Russ Hudson in a recent article in “Radical Grace” periodical left me pondering. They talk about suffering as being a product of our attachments. Personally, I am attached to the idea that my spouse “should” know how to be a perfect active-listener for me, giving perfect feed back as to what I have said so that I know he has truly heard me. I constantly hit the wall of this attachment when he fails to hear what I mean and instead hears what he thinks I mean or what he needs to hear based on his own illusions and attachments. It hurts when I hit this wall and feel unheard. And I suffer. My natural inclination is to withdraw and rehash the painful situation. I hash and rehash the “rightness” of my perspective and the “wrongness” of his. I am a pro at this sort of circular, ineffective mental activity. Rehashing the situation is the mind’s futile attempt to be “right” when there is no clear “right” or “wrong” in any situation. Where there are two people, there are always two “rights” and two “wrongs”. To insist on being entirely “right” in any altercation will only cause more suffering.

But there is another way to deal with suffering. Unhook from the attachment and suffering vanishes or at least diminishes. Riso and Hudson say that in order to be successful at detaching so as not to suffer, we have to learn to consciously suffer! This is a strange dichotomy. To be conscious of anything means to turn toward that thing and pay conscious attention to it. Turning toward suffering, seeing it for what it is, and feeling it intentionally, can illuminate the causal situation so as to be able to see the problem from a more open perspective. Often we can see the belief or illusion that we are attached to. And often this belief is an illusion that is narrow and self-serving. For instance, in my personal example above, if, instead of rehashing the “rights” and “wrongs”, I turn deliberately toward the pain I feel and stay with it, not judging it, but allowing it to speak to me, I am often able to see things from my husband’s perspective enough to see that there are two distinct personalities and opinions at work and that neither is “right”. If I can see that there is no “right” or “wrong”, and detach from the illusion that both of us have to see the issue from my “right” perspective, these expectations and my suffering end.

Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor points out in her book, My Stroke of Insight, that physiologically the body needs only 90 seconds for the chemical component of any emotional feeling to run its course and dissipate from the blood. After that, a feeling stays with us because we choose to allow it to. She says, “The healthiest way I know how to move through an emotion effectively is to surrender completely to that emotion when its loop of physiology comes over me. I simply resign to the loop and let it run its course for 90 seconds. Just like children, emotions heal when they are heard and validated.” In other words, I can choose to allow the suffering to remain with me indefinitely or I can choose to consciously feel the pain, become aware of the illusion behind the pain and detach from the illusion.

Of course, a huge component in learning to detach from attachments is cultivating a very real knowledge of the unconditional love of God, Presence, Creator. Love is what makes any of this possible at all and as I become detached from illusion I need to become attached or reattached to this Ever Present Love. With this knowledge and awareness of Love comes compassion. And with compassion comes the willingness and desire to re-enter into suffering from a different perspective. We become available to another’s suffering or even Universal Suffering because we no longer need to take center stage with our own personal suffering. I cannot be available to productively help another if my real agenda is (the deep truth be known) to be recognized and placated for my own suffering.

Hence, the cycle: suffering, awareness of and detachment from illusion, compassion, reenter suffering.