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[post_content] => Early in my practice, people told me I should choose one area of medicine to specialize in, but I was resistant to it because of the lack of variety. Also, it seemed that the natural specialization for me would be pain since I have a knack for treating it, and that sounded, well, kind of boring.
But I gradually began focusing in that direction, and over the years my understanding of pain broadened. I became interested in the whole human experience of suffering, which was like finding a loophole because it’s a pretty vast spectrum.
Suffering is fascinating.
As much as humans hate suffering, we have a curiously complicated relationship with it. We watch movies and read books about it for entertainment. We ache when we see others suffer, but we kind of like the ache. We try it out intentionally (ghost peppers anyone?) and we’re compelled to learn the graphic details of a tragedy just so we can feel it more richly. Often we simultaneously generate it and resist it. And sometimes, we turn it into an incredible, life-changing blessing.
To an extent, it seems that when good outcomes happen after a period of suffering, it's evidence of healthy adaptive mechanisms that help us make the best of a bad situation. But occasionally the suffering appears to be a kind of magic ingredient that provokes an evolution (or a revolution) that wouldn’t have otherwise occurred.
Few people would ask to suffer, but studies show that when they look back on how suffering ultimately facilitated a great favorable change, most say they wouldn’t change anything.
Well, maybe one thing.
If only they could have trusted, they reflect, it could have been a different experience.
On top of the discomfort of suffering we often add an additional dimension of discomfort in the form of resistance (which is often triggered by fear). When the resistance stops – because we just can’t keep it up any longer, or through a conscious choice to trust and relinquish the resistance – this is when something else enters the equation. What do you call it? Grace? Clarity? Insight? And the suffering becomes a portal to a new way of being.
Today, when you encounter some suffering – maybe it will just be a little micro-suffering – what happens if you don’t resist it? What happens when you say, “I choose to trust” and dive into it?
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this (in the comments section below). Have you had experience where suffering facilitated something good? What was the pivotal point, when it turned from suffering into grace? Did that change your relationship with suffering? Do you trust more? Why or why not?
Love,
Peter
[post_title] => From Suffering to Grace
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[post_content] => Happy Summer Solstice!
Today the earth’s tilt toward the sun is at a maximum in the Northern Hemisphere (happy winter solstice to our friends in the Southern Hemisphere), giving us the longest day and shortest night of the year.
Do you know why the summer solstice isn’t also the hottest time of year? This is because the water and land are still holding onto a lot of cold from the winter. As the water and land heat up – and sun-reflecting snow disappears, and spring clouds give way to more sun – the days continue to get hotter even though they’re also getting shorter.
Speaking of which, I find it interesting that although this feels like the beginning of the long days of summer, the days will actually be getting shorter starting tomorrow. Since today is the peak of day length, it’s also the start of the decline of light that will culminate in the winter solstice, the year’s darkest day.
How did you feel when you read the last paragraph? Were you disappointed to read about the days getting shorter? I know some of you thrive in the darkness and the winter, but many of us – even the winter-lovers – have a hard time with the idea of the sunshine diminishing (especially when it feels like winter just ended).
But the summer solstice is an ideal time to learn nonattachment and how to choose our internal orientation.
The ancient text, Yi Jing (or The Book of Changes), discusses the fundamental states of nature and how they represent all the phenomena and dynamics of human life. This moment is well described in the chapter called Zenith (hexagram 55). The book explains that while the zenith of any cycle is a time of abundance, achievement, and excitement, by definition it doesn’t last.
Whether it’s the solstice, the orgasm, or the moment when you blow out your birthday candles and everyone’s loving attention is directed at you, there’s nothing we can do to hoard or protect our peak experiences. The best way to retain the essence of these luminous moments is to be totally present in them: releasing any agenda; being fully engaged in the here-and-now; letting the energy flow freely through us and sharing the warmth and brightness with others. Conducting ourselves this way also ensures less of a comedown afterwards.
If you tend to feel attached to life’s peak moments and are reluctant for them to end, how would you describe the virtuous quality of the experience you have in these moments (which you may believe is otherwise lacking in the “normal” times after the peak subsides)? Abundance? Connection? Love? Peace? Unity?
Whatever the quality, I want to suggest that this quality is always within you. It just gets “turned on” when you feel the circumstances are magical enough to warrant it. But you are the one who chooses it. You turn it on.
It’s possible to change your orientation to this virtue so that you consciously operate from this virtue (for example, operating from an internal orientation of abundance) rather than treating it as something the world does to you when you’re lucky. Or something you can manipulate yourself, others, and the external world into delivering to you.
Believe it. Believe that change is possible – because it is.
Choose it.
Keep choosing it.
Over and over and over and over.
Keep choosing it.
Did I mention that this is something you need to choose and re-choose and re-choose?
Remember, you’re a creator and this is your central creative power.
And choose your orientation again.
As you notice a change, really notice the change. Tell yourself, “It’s working.” Journal about it.
Stay committed to it.
Keeping choosing.
And when your ego suggests, “Ok, great, we can stop now,” tell it, “No thanks. I’m going to be this way forever. I’ve been waiting for this, and now it’s my new M.O.”
I’m happy for you.
Love,
Peter
[post_title] => Stop Waiting for Life to Give You What You Can Choose for Yourself
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[post_content] => I have a cousin who’s a brilliant dog trainer. Years ago he used to train dogs to sniff out drugs and weapons, and he’s shared stories of some of his ride-alongs with cops. A recurring theme was pulling people over who were trying to hide something by wrapping it up in something scented – for instance, marijuana wrapped in coffee. The dogs were never fooled.
“What these people don’t understand,” he told me, “is that one smell doesn’t block another smell for a dog. Their sense of smell is like seeing a whole landscape. Adding something else to the picture – like a balloon – doesn’t change the rest of the landscape. With people, if the coffee smell is stronger than the pot smell, that’s the one we notice. But with dogs it’s like those two smells are side by side.”
I love dogs and I find it fascinating to imagine what it would be like to smell in so many dimensions. Beyond crime applications, research has shown that dogs can be trained to accurately detect certain forms of cancer and even whether or not someone has COVID.
The coffee and cannabis phenomenon popped into my head recently while some negative thoughts and feelings were dominating my awareness. I marveled at how these stressful feelings could effectively eclipse everything else, like the mostly awesome circumstances of my life, the power to choose my perspective, the beautiful world I live in, the gift of being alive and healthy, etc. It was as if the incredible truth were wrapped up with something smelly, and all I could notice was the smelly part.
Becoming free of the pain and limitations of a narrow mind is a lot like learning to smell like a dog. Rather than giving ourselves over to the stink that stands out, we have to stretch our consciousness to perceive the broader landscape of our total experience.
Besides the things that seem to be going wrong, this landscape is full of things that are going right. Beauty. Grace. Kindness. Peace. Friendship. If we include the spiritual dimension in this landscape, it’s a vastly expanded state in which the stinky parts are much less significant. And it becomes clear that, just as coffee doesn’t negate the smell of marijuana, neither do our unpleasant thoughts and feelings negate the truth of being a boundless spirit in the material world.
Meanwhile, dog-like perception can also help us observe the resisted aspects of life with greater depth and detail. When we “widen the aperture” in this way, what we perceive and resist as simply bad can be sensed more holistically. It’s like leaning in to a bad feeling for a better sniff. A variety of olfactory notes are revealed and we learn more. We experience that attraction and repulsion are two sides of the same coin. The intensity dissipates. And the feeling ceases to dominate our awareness.
The two most powerful exercises for developing this landscape-view of life are meditation and mindfulness. In meditation we practice not engaging with the thoughts and feelings that arise. As we watch them come and go, we learn how our attachment and resistance to them is what gives them power. We develop a broader, less reactive awareness. Initially it may feel hard to continuously choose to be the space rather than following our thoughts, but it soon becomes a deliciously restful break from the habit of incessant mentalizing.
In mindfulness practice, much like my description of widening the aperture above, we choose to be with whatever is happening in the present moment. We don’t try to change it, judge it, hold onto it, or get rid of it. Nor do we depart from the here and now into thoughts about anything else. It takes work but yields an incredible return: true peace. The “strong smells” (negative thoughts and feelings) cease to overwhelm us as they take their proper place in the broader landscape of reality.
I encourage you to give it a try for this coming week.
Be well,
Peter
[post_title] => How to Be Happy Like a Dog
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[post_content] => Early in my practice, people told me I should choose one area of medicine to specialize in, but I was resistant to it because of the lack of variety. Also, it seemed that the natural specialization for me would be pain since I have a knack for treating it, and that sounded, well, kind of boring.
But I gradually began focusing in that direction, and over the years my understanding of pain broadened. I became interested in the whole human experience of suffering, which was like finding a loophole because it’s a pretty vast spectrum.
Suffering is fascinating.
As much as humans hate suffering, we have a curiously complicated relationship with it. We watch movies and read books about it for entertainment. We ache when we see others suffer, but we kind of like the ache. We try it out intentionally (ghost peppers anyone?) and we’re compelled to learn the graphic details of a tragedy just so we can feel it more richly. Often we simultaneously generate it and resist it. And sometimes, we turn it into an incredible, life-changing blessing.
To an extent, it seems that when good outcomes happen after a period of suffering, it's evidence of healthy adaptive mechanisms that help us make the best of a bad situation. But occasionally the suffering appears to be a kind of magic ingredient that provokes an evolution (or a revolution) that wouldn’t have otherwise occurred.
Few people would ask to suffer, but studies show that when they look back on how suffering ultimately facilitated a great favorable change, most say they wouldn’t change anything.
Well, maybe one thing.
If only they could have trusted, they reflect, it could have been a different experience.
On top of the discomfort of suffering we often add an additional dimension of discomfort in the form of resistance (which is often triggered by fear). When the resistance stops – because we just can’t keep it up any longer, or through a conscious choice to trust and relinquish the resistance – this is when something else enters the equation. What do you call it? Grace? Clarity? Insight? And the suffering becomes a portal to a new way of being.
Today, when you encounter some suffering – maybe it will just be a little micro-suffering – what happens if you don’t resist it? What happens when you say, “I choose to trust” and dive into it?
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this (in the comments section below). Have you had experience where suffering facilitated something good? What was the pivotal point, when it turned from suffering into grace? Did that change your relationship with suffering? Do you trust more? Why or why not?
Love,
Peter
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Great article, thank you 🙂
You’re welcome!
Compels me to examine my focus, thank you
You’re very welcome.
You are so right about what is most important, and that is loving life. I have been teaching that for years, as the foundation of what I call an Enchanted Life. To have a world of people who love life, would bring about tremendous change quickly. When we love life, we want to tend to, nurture, protect and enjoy that life. Since I am a teacher of the Sacred Feminine, the message she brings is exactly this, love LIFE herself. The more you love life, the more she will love you back. So many people blame “life” for their woes. They say, life sucks, life is hard, etc. But I say, Life is extraordinary, life is incredibly beautiful, life is a magical mysterious creative play. It is the way that we conduct our lives that might suck or be hard. And the good news is that, we have a choice in this, we can refashion our lives, with the energy of life as our guide.
You are a wise man
with love
Rhianne Teija NewLahnd
Thanks for sharing, Rhianne. You are doing such important work in the world! The sacred feminine is the medicine for this time!
Be well,
Peter