Berating Yourself & Others Will Not Lessen Suffering
From Rik Center:
Allow Compassion And Goodness Into The Heart!
From Father Alfred D'Souza:
“For a long time, it had seemed to me that life was about to begin - real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be gotten through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, or a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last, it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life.”
Throughout our lifetime the heart will be tested over and over. Confusing thoughts arise within us around feelings of comfort and discomfort, as we demand only comfort! We might wish to run from the heart and its feelings yet we are being called to meet our inner goodness, not run from it. If we never pause to consider the fact that we are an organic organism of thoughts that includes emotional feelings and bodily sensations how can ever expect to overcome the mind of despair that arrives from the delusion that wants us to be something we are not?
From Teilhard de Chardin, a French philosopher, paleontologist, and Jesuit priest who reflected upon human existence and its relationship with the divine. He expressed this... "We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience."
From my own learning, I arrived at the understanding that "living a human life is something we experience, it's not something we overcome."
One way to overcome the pain we continually cause ourselves and others is to cultivate the Brahma Viharas, the Four Humble Abodes. The first two of the Brahma Viharas that we are cultivating are Metta/Loving-Kindness and Karuna/Compassion. We may often see these practices as something we just send out toward others, hence we end up leaving ourselves out of the equation and not fully understanding their meaning.
When coming to meet our own inner pain, it must be understood and acknowledged, so we know when we overcome it. When we know the experience of less suffering, it becomes more than just a thought. We physically feel that its grip no longer owns our thinking. When feeling confused or bad, we accept what our inner experience is at this moment. It is what's happening at this moment so we turn toward ourselves, with an offering of kindness, goodness, and compassion. Continually berating oneself and others will leave out our inner empowerment to make choices and changes within our thinking and how we live. When we pause to see that we have choices we are cultivating a wisdom factor that utilizes the good heart.
From my own learning, teachings, and working with clients, it often seems difficult for people to acknowledge experience. The mind senses something and if it's discomforting, it goes right into to wanting to fix and compare how things should be. The mind creates a narrative that is based on something it really does not know as an absolute truth, hence we live in a cycle of constant judgment. Acknowledging pain and suffering has nothing to do with disliking or liking.
Self-acknowledgment is a compassionate action, which opens us to learning, change, and transformation. We enter into the unknown that is within ourselves. We become the explorer of possibilities, the creator of our happiness. Wishing to be happy would be considered a positive desire. It is important to notice that happiness is only one of our emotional states. It can't sustain its constant high, as like all emotions it arises and passes away. Our clinging or aversion to various emotional states might be what gets in the way of a truer inner peace that has the Brahma Vihara of Upekkha/Equanimity within it.
Buddhist teachings point us to see the truth and of how things are, so we can explore a path that leads to less suffering and discontentment. From my perspective, these teachings are not asking us to ignore our human life, though open to it. Through an experiential knowing that life has its up and downs, we come to recognize the importance of an open compassionate heart towards ourselves and others.
Let's pause and not fear the heart of suffering though open to it so we awaken the heart of goodness within ourselves. This way we are able to slow down our own emotional upheaval from spreading out and causing more pain in the world. Not only towards others, family, friends, and ourselves, so that our own actions and deeds may benefit all of humanity.