Yes, suffering is indeed an artform. Like any great artist, we can start with a very basic skill level (ie. all the ingredients we need for suffering). Then with practise and more practise and even more practise, we can become a master at it.
Whilst pain is inevitable in this experience of being human, suffering is optional.
Five years ago, I was given the opportunity to directly experience this lesson. To give some context, at the time I was in touch with one of my fears. I was living alone, and had spent the 3 years since my marriage separation in a space of inner reflection with very little social contact). I was quite the hermit.
Whilst this was what my Soul needed and craved at that time, it left me feeling that this is what my future held – a rather solitary existence, with a small inner circle of friends who lived afar.
I wasn’t sure (and still am not) whether I will have a life partner again. So a fear had begun to surface. What would I do if something happened to me? I didn’t have a local support network, and that left me feeling quite vulnerable.
Sure, that was a fear. It was a projection of a possible future, nothing to do with the present that I was living in.
Nevertheless, Spirit decided that a lesson around this was in order.
This particular day, I’d made a 6 hour round trip to Brisbane and back. I’d lifted something heavy the “wrong way” that night, and my back was niggling. I went to bed anointed with Panaway oil blend, and I’d rubbed the Cool Azul Pain Relief cream into my lower back as well.
I was inwardly affirming that I would wake up in the morning and my back would be perfect again. But what happened was quite the opposite.
I woke up in the middle of the night needing to use the bathroom. There was nothing unusual about that, but the problem was that I couldn’t move.
My back was in such excruciating pain, that every movement was like a knife into my spine. That wasn’t good.
The needs of a full bladder finally drove me to inching my way off the mattress, canter levering myself into a vertical position, and walking to the bathroom like an invalid. I went to sit on the toilet, but bending was an impossibility. The pain was already well over 10/10.
They say that necessity is the mother of invention. She’s also the mother of humility.
Without the option of bending, I improvised and stepped into the shower and peed standing up. I saw no other option, and the dignified part of me was grateful that no one was watching.
Then I dialled 000, and the ambulance was on its way.
It turns out I’d bulged L3/L4 and L5/L6. As I lay on a hospital trolly in emergency, even the Valium they gave me didn’t dint the pain. It was off the Richter scale.
With the staff at a loss for how to manage my pain, they gave me a hospital bed, and I spent the next 2 days and 2 nights in hospital. I didn’t take any more Valium, or in fact any more pharmaceutical pain killers. I turned to my natural treasure chest, and it worked better than any of the pharmaceutical meds.
This was my worst fear, and I was living it.
But what intrigued me about this experience, and what made it the most valuable lesson, was my state of mind.
I could have created a whole story around my fear, and how alone I was, and how scary it was to be unable to move in the middle of the night, and how lucky I was to have made it to my phone to call the ambulance….because if I hadn’t made it off the bed, who knows how many days it would have taken for someone to find me?
I could have created a magnificent avalanche of attention and suffering from that story, enrolling others in the drama of it, and feeding off the attention in the way that a dog just loves to scratch that itchy wound and make it ooze even more.
But I didn’t. I simply took what happened in my stride, and was completely unemotional about it.
I didn’t create a story around it. I didn’t use it for attention. I didn’t dramatize it in any way.
I simply accepted that I was in hospital, and went about life as if I was at home (except that, of course, I was in a hospital bed being fed hospital food).
The nurses and doctors would come in to check on me, and there I was sitting bolt upright on the side of the bed (the only comfortable position for my back). I was typing away on my computer, responding to emails, conducting interviews for a new personal assistant, and sorting out the care for my animals at home.
I accepted my circumstances and where I was, and gave it no unnecessary energy. I got on with my life, acknowledging that I was in pain, but not suffering over it, or dwelling on it more than it needed.
A lower back injury metaphysically is related to feelings of being unsupported. Well, that made perfect sense, given my perception and associated fear around being “all on my own”.
And you know what? I recovered much faster than anyone expected me to. Isn’t that interesting. By not suffering, I wasn’t pinning myself in any way to the event, and I healed faster as a result.
Animals are our greatest teachers in this arena.
When a dog has a leg amputated, it doesn’t come up to its owner all forlorn, bemoaning its missing leg. It doesn’t complain, saying “I’m not whole anymore, my life is ruined, I can’t play and run. This world is awful – I don’t want to live here anymore. Poor me.”
Instead, as soon as the front door opens, it’s bounding up to its owner with its 3 legs, tail wagging, mouth grinning from ear to ear.
You see, animals don’t suffer over their pain. They just accept it, and get on with living. Suffering is a very human thing to do.
It’s the same with a dying animal. In my work as a wildlife carer, I’ve had the opportunity to be a death doula to many an animal as it leaves its body. No matter how tortured its body is, no matter how much pain it’s in, there is no added suffering.
It deals with what is, but doesn’t create story or karma from the experience. It just is. It dies with ease.
Humans in general are very different to this. We use suffering to cling to the present moment, holding time hostage. Our suffering helps to reinforce all of our worst fears and judgments about ourselves and the world, and to feel a sense of validation and “rightness” in those self-imposed viewpoints….and that’s why we choose to suffer.
In some very warped way this gives us peace on one level, while robbing us of peace on another.
But in the process, we extend our suffering simply by our attachment to suffering, and the stories that we create around the circumstances we find ourselves in. This in turn slows down our healing process and makes it more difficult to pivot.
One of the best ways to live life is with a light footstep.
When we suffer, we tread heavily along our path.
When we give no suffering and no unnecessary story to our challenges, we have a light footstep and those challenges can dissolve as quickly as they arose.
I’ve seen this so many times where a challenge raises its head. Once I work on my own emotions around it and release any tension or emotional charge, that challenge will often pivot before my eyes, and disappear just as quickly as it arose.
This doesn’t mean we should be blind to our challenges, or put blinkers on. Self-enquiry to understand why we’ve attracted it to ourselves can be very helpful. But that’s very different to suffering. Suffering is the “woe is me, this horrible thing has happened to me” point of view, rather than seeing every obstacle as an opportunity for growth and change, and something that our Soul has called in to bless our life.
Many years ago, some friends told me about a movie. In it, an Angel had come down to Earth and was in a physical body. The Angel’s arm got broken. Instead of jumping into the drama of its broken arm and whether it would heal, the Angel was pure excitement.
“Wow!” it said, “I have a broken arm!!! How exciting!!!”
What would our life be like if we embraced every challenging situation as an exciting opportunity, and not as a “negative”? It’s entirely possible. It just takes self-awareness, and the mindfulness to catch ourselves in any negative thinking or story.
If we remove the meaning that we put on the situation, we automatically remove the suffering. And when there’s no suffering attached to the events in our life, that’s when we embrace true freedom.
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