We live in a culture that tries almost anything to avoid feeling bad. We distract and medicate ourselves, often to the point of addiction or self injury, in an attempt to distance ourselves from pain that might actually provide growth and change. When we feel bad, we drink, or take a pill so we don’t cry. Or we stay so busy we don’t have time to feel anything but tired. Or maybe we buy a new car, or throw ourself into a love affair. Many of us have developed intricate coping strategies to avoid feeling grief or fear or sadness. Buddhist teacher Pema Chodron suggest that these strategies often compromise the enlightenment and growth we seek. She recently wrote "The journey of awakening happens just at the place where we can’t get comfortable. Opening to discomfort is the basis of transmuting our so-called “negative” feelings. We somehow want to get rid of our uncomfortable feelings either by justifying them or by squelching them, but it turns out that this is like throwing the baby out with the bath water. According to the teachings of vajrayana, or tantric, Buddhism, our wisdom and our confusion are so interwoven that it doesn’t work to just throw things out. By trying to get rid of “negativity,” by trying to eradicate it, by putting it into a column labelled “bad,” we are throwing away our wisdom as well, because everything in us is creative energy—particularly our strong emotions. They are filled with life-force."
She is not suggesting that we wallow in negativity but rather to fully embrace being human and staying present with what life has to offer. "If we just try to get rid of negative feelings, we don’t realize that those feelings are our wisdom. The transmutation comes from the willingness to hold our seat with the feeling, to let the words go, to let the justification go.” In other words, to allow the lesson of the experience to reveal itself, and recognize that everything “offers awakening”. She further suggests that this is important to coming to know yourself in a spiritual rather than egotistical way. If we justify, rationalize, self medicate or distract, we are throwing up walls to avoid feeling discomfort and trying to deny the duality of life. We are labeling feelings as good and bad and creating distance between ourselves and others, fixating on doing instead of being, and preventing ourselves from knowing who we truly are. Making friends with ourselves means accepting all of who we are, even the shadow sides of self that make us feel uncomfortable, for that is in those shadows where true change can manifest.
“...by beginning to look so clearly and so honestly at ourselves—at our emotions, at our thoughts, at who we really are—we begin to dissolve the walls that separate us from others. ….These walls come from our fear of knowing parts of ourselves.” So the next time you feel an uncomfortable emotion, try sitting with it for a moment before you evoke your coping strategy to make it go away. (Of course, there are lessons in simply recognizing your coping strategies :) The next time, maybe sit for two moments, then three. This type of meditation may prove very uncomfortable, so it might be helpful to remind yourself it is "at the place where we can’t get comfortable” that real awakening begins.
She is not suggesting that we wallow in negativity but rather to fully embrace being human and staying present with what life has to offer. "If we just try to get rid of negative feelings, we don’t realize that those feelings are our wisdom. The transmutation comes from the willingness to hold our seat with the feeling, to let the words go, to let the justification go.” In other words, to allow the lesson of the experience to reveal itself, and recognize that everything “offers awakening”. She further suggests that this is important to coming to know yourself in a spiritual rather than egotistical way. If we justify, rationalize, self medicate or distract, we are throwing up walls to avoid feeling discomfort and trying to deny the duality of life. We are labeling feelings as good and bad and creating distance between ourselves and others, fixating on doing instead of being, and preventing ourselves from knowing who we truly are. Making friends with ourselves means accepting all of who we are, even the shadow sides of self that make us feel uncomfortable, for that is in those shadows where true change can manifest.
“...by beginning to look so clearly and so honestly at ourselves—at our emotions, at our thoughts, at who we really are—we begin to dissolve the walls that separate us from others. ….These walls come from our fear of knowing parts of ourselves.” So the next time you feel an uncomfortable emotion, try sitting with it for a moment before you evoke your coping strategy to make it go away. (Of course, there are lessons in simply recognizing your coping strategies :) The next time, maybe sit for two moments, then three. This type of meditation may prove very uncomfortable, so it might be helpful to remind yourself it is "at the place where we can’t get comfortable” that real awakening begins.
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