A Story
This is a story of a young woman who had read Eckhart Tolle and had been helped by his suggestion, “whatever life brings, respond to it as if you chose it.” But, as she thought about her own life, the question arose, why would I choose to be born into this dysfunctional family with all the suffering and abuse I had to endure?
So, she goes to her teacher, Wisdom, and asks that very question.
After some silence, Wisdom says to her, “You were not born into that family, your family was born into you…”
And there was this instant flash of understanding!… “Oh!… Yes!….It was a recognition, oh, I am not this body-mind but that which perceives my body, my mind and the world…..my body and those of my family, all appear in me!!”
But that glimpse quickly leaves her and she follows up by asking, “but what about all the suffering I had to endure?”
Wisdom responds…. “I’m not denying the events that happened in your childhood.”
“However, you cannot know about the alleged one who was suffering then, unless you know the one who is asking this question right now. Right?”
“Isn’t the one who was allegedly suffering then, the same one who is asking this question right now?”
She answers, “yes, I am the same one now who was there then.”
Wisdom then asks her…. “So, do my words affect you now? Meaning, do my words change the awareness that perceives them? Is it possible for my words to injure or damage the awareness perceiving them right now?”
She thinks for a moment and responds. ”No…. they can’t damage or affect my awareness, that which perceives them.”
Wisdom continues…”So, you agree that the one here right now is the same one who was experiencing what was happening in your family back then. And you agree that the words I am saying now can’t affect you. Right?”
She responds, “yes”.
Wisdom says… “So…..was the one who was perceiving your body, mind and family back then, impacted, injured or damaged by what was happening in your family?”
OH! She said surprised! “No.”
The Insight
That’s the insight, a revelation that becomes a turning point as it relates to psychological suffering. There is the recognition that what we are is never impacted in any way by what awareness perceives. It may impact our mind, our body or both, but not that which perceives what is happening. Our body may experience pain, our mind may experience fear, anger or anxiousness, but the knower of our human experience is never impacted by whatever it perceives.
Wisdom then asks her, “why continue holding on to the past. It doesn’t make sense.” (of course, if memories and feelings arise on their own, we welcome them to unfold in the intimacy of our aware presence without interfering. But, continuing to hold on to them, to dredge them up, to blame our unhappiness on them, makes no sense.)
We Have a Choice
We have a choice about what we are, don’t we? We can believe that the awareness reading these words right now is dependent on the body or not. No one knows. Science refers to this mystery as, ‘the hard problem of consciousness’. That choice makes a big difference in terms of the quality of our life. As we do our best to live from an alternative possibility, the possibility that awareness is shared, the same awareness perceiving all minds, we notice changes in our thinking, feeling, relating and behaving as they begin to realign themselves with this extraordinary alternative possibility.
Of course, we can continue to believe to be this body-mind, a separate entity with the various forms of psychological suffering and relational issues that this belief inevitably brings, or we can be open to another possibility. It is our freedom to choose.
The Gift of Suffering
One of the gifts of emotional suffering is that it alerts us, suggesting that something is not properly understood. It’s similar to physical pain, which alerts us to pay attention to our body.
In many cases, the psychological pain experienced by minorities and women who regularly face systemic discrimination and the microaggressions of misogyny, racism, homophobia, etc., often accelerates this transformed understanding of “self”. They are forced to find that place inside that is never disturbed by their human experience.
The fact is we all experience indignities in various forms no matter the culture in which we find ourselves. And when we think about it, some of the most painful interactions come from those most dear to us.
Self-Inflicted Suffering
However, it is often our own mind that inflicts the greatest suffering! Let’s take a moment to identify our own forms of self-abuse. Does our mind periodically hound us about mistakes we made with our children, our marriage(s) or our relationships? Does our mind torment us about poor decisions and opportunities missed? Does it chastise us for things we have said, create anxiety over upcoming projects or meetings? Are there self-accusations that our mind perpetrates on us for not being enough, successful enough, good looking enough, smart enough, bold enough? Do jealousies, resentments, guilt or shames haunt us?… Do we berate ourselves for not living up to our own values? What are the verbal abuses we inflict on ourselves?
The Key Question to Ask
As we think about these moments of suffering, and ask ourselves, “if I didn’t believe myself to be a separate entity in that moment, would I have suffered? Notice that all these forms of emotional suffering are rooted in that belief… For example, if there is but one reality, one single self-aware Presence, what happens to “not being enough” in all its various forms? What happens to awareness when we experience verbal insults?
When we live as the knower of our human experience, these painful experiences become gifts. They remind us of our essential being… They remind us to ask the question, would I be experiencing this suffering right now if I didn’t believe in this moment to be a separate entity? We can then revisit the investigation, checking to see if there is any valid evidence that awareness is separate and limited. When we believe to be only this body-mind and not that which perceives it, and not the “other”, we suffer, don’t we?
Dropping the Belief to Be Separate
When the belief to be separate is dropped based on an understanding that carries the weight of our experience, it also transforms our relationship with the perpetrator because we share the same essential being. Their behavior is also rooted in the belief and feeling of being a separate awareness. As with the young woman at the beginning of this piece, we were not born into this world, this world is born in us! That’s our understanding when we stop to observe the truth of our experience.
When emotional suffering is used in this way, these moments are transformed into something that contributes, nurturing our innate and intimate connection with all of life and the sacredness of “Self”. When we know our own essential being, we also know “others” and that makes all the difference in our relationships and in our leadership.
Our Mind’s Objections
At this point, our mind may raise an important objection about the possibility of one reality. “Are you asking me to believe that this ordinary awareness, reading these words, may be universal but is pretending to be separate? That’s hard to believe!!!!”
Wisdom responds… “I know it is hard to believe this possibility but it is not foreign to us. We experience it every night as we dream. We pretend to be a separate entity, interacting with other apparent separate entities, not knowing what the others are going to say or do. Yet, when we wake up, we realize we were both sides of the conversations and interactions. Our mind was orchestrating the whole experience including creating the world in which the interactions took place…. We have the direct experience of one source manifesting itself in multiple and diverse forms interacting with each other.”
The dream world is an instructive metaphor for the “one reality” possibility, all experience arising from and perceived by a single source.
Another objection that often arises is, “but I feel these thoughts and these decisions are mine?”
Wisdom responds. “That feeling is legitimate. These thoughts and actions are ours but not ours as a person but ours as Awareness. It is much the same as in the dream. The dream character believes the thoughts, feelings and actions belong to it but they belong to the mind of the dreamer.”
Wisdom says, “see what it’s like to live from this extraordinary possibility.”
Experientially, the one reality hypothesis is not unfamiliar. For many of us, “seeing the other as our self” has already become a way of life.
If there is but one single Reality, one single I AM-ness, then our true body is the universe, isn’t it? What we are, is not only the everchanging body, mind and world but also the never-changing self-aware presence in which they appear and by which they are known. The totality is both never-changing and everchanging, and it is the totality that is eternal, the root of which is, I AM, Atman, infinite self-aware being.
Bodily sensations want us to believe that we are ONLY this body-mind and not that which perceives it and not the rest. But we are all!
That’s the gift of a nondual understanding…. a transformed understanding of “self”. But it is not something to be believed. We are not substituting one belief for another, we are simply dropping the belief to be separate based on experience. There is no need to take on a new belief, even the belief that “all is One”. Any belief is limiting. It is best to just be open, testing the oneness possibility by living it and letting the evidence speak for itself.
It is this openness to the totality that is the source of wisdom.
It’s like living at the bottom of the U in Theory U…… being OPEN to the totality of any situation and not imposing any limitations as to what we are. When we don’t know what we are, we are our “Self”.
Making Psychological Suffering Worse
The question often arises, how do I get out of this suffering once it begins?
Wisdom responds. “When we try to get rid of it, we simply make it worse because at that moment, we believe we are separate.”
Suffering is a reminder to check our understanding once again, to see if there is any valid evidence that awareness is limited and dependent on the body. We can then let our understanding take care of the suffering as the thoughts and feelings unfold, allowing them to run their course. The feelings are unpleasant but we no longer take them seriously. They have served their purpose. They were not a mistake.
In these moments we can hold our exhausted body and weary mind in the compassionate and healing arms of our witnessing presence.
As we live from this understanding, the number of times we get triggered become fewer and their duration shorter. We learn to catch ourselves before we head down misery street.
From the perspective of our true self, we are always at peace, free of suffering. At some point we discover a trust in Life. It is experienced as a quiet joy, an ease of being, freeing both body and mind to be all they can be….the experience of HOME.
“Suffering is necessary until you realize it is unnecessary.” — Eckhart Tolle
(This story, developed for teaching purposes, draws from a dialogue between Francis Lucille and a young woman at a retreat.)
