Love, Pain, and Pigs!

In a world filled with suffering, it’s easy to only see pain and misery. It can sometimes take more effort to see love. Working in the professional field of psychotherapy individuals usually are being seen when they are in pain and suffering from any number of ailments that created the pain and suffering in the first place. With so much pain being confronted each day, in each session, we can lose our way and forget the Truth. The truth is Love. Love is always there in the background of pain. It’s through love that one may gain an attachment to a person, place, or thing, and from that attachment, along with our Ego’s storylines we experience the pain from having allowed ourselves to be vulnerable to love in the first place. We forget the joy of love in one’s life, the ebb and flow of the giving and receiving. We associate vulnerability and opening with weakness because of the pain we experienced, and buy into new beliefs that we shouldn’t open our hearts up again, or practice love. We get stuck in the pain. And our Ego loves to indulge itself in suffering. Logically and rationally we would never agree to being indulgent in suffering. Who wants to experience pain!?
 
And yet the evidence from our Ego showcases the mind-thoughts and mind-states that lead to actions and behaviors, which point us back again and again to our indulgent mind-states of suffering. For example, we may be getting over a cold and know that our body needs extra rest in order for it to shore up it’s resources through the immune system to fight off the infection, yet how many times has our Ego bought into a ‘doing’ mentality that rest becomes a far off thought and instead we buffer and fight the cold with various cold medicines trying to cut-short or short-cut the process of the cold without really slowing down and/or actually resting the body as it may need. It sounds like insanity when we’re reading about it, but I’m guilty of it too. Rest and Stillness can be considered Advanced Practices in today’s day. And many times it’s only through enough pain and suffering that we become sick and tired of being sick and tired – we become ready for a way out.

When we take the time to carve out a consistent sitting practice a tremendous amount of energy gets released and we are able to use that extra energy towards healing the body, tackling those challenging tasks, accomplishing a long-term goal, or changing our mind-states from misery to beauty. We are able to reset our battery power to 100% instead of running on a deficit, telling ourselves that we’ll make up the difference, “but first let me get this done, or accomplish this task, and just one more thing…” The ‘doing’ never ends. [Read more…]

Pause for a moment to check-in to see where you might be sabotaging your own efforts for healthy, beneficial change in your life. It easy to look outside of ourselves and blame others for our own personal self-sabotage, it’s much harder to look within and after taking an honest assessment to begin putting things into motion that would change our life into more brightness and joy.

Our Ego is quick to point out all the things that are wrong in our lives. Our Spirit asks us to slow down enough to recognize the flowers that we are passing by, to open to the pure joy that is. Despite an incessant Egoic view that seems to run rampant through our daily lives, constantly telling us all the reasons why we should shutdown, close up, and separate ourselves from others that cause us pain, this only furthers the suffering. Instead by cultivating the practice of meditation and mindfulness, opening our hearts and Spirit to something greater than what we can see with our physical eyes we gain access to an indescribable and indestructible joy and light, which creates more experiences of love and spins us up. 

So the next time something feels painful in your life, pause and remember that the pain that you are experiencing is coming from shutting down and that opening to the deeper part of your Self leads to greater love. Love is what dances in the background of our universe. Love is what lets us play and create ceaselessly in our lives. Love is you and I. Love is. Love.

As we come into the Year of the Earth Pig this Chinese New Year, I wish you prosperity and good fortune, taking a moment to review the completion of a 12-year cycle. Take a moment not to just think of what you’d like to accomplish for this new 2019, but also for the next 7 years, as this seems to be the cycle we are heading into. Earlier this year, I took a moment to write out goals I would like to work towards for the next 7 years and it was a fascinating process to see the theme that pervaded my goals that led into 2026. Time is a great teacher and can always gives us a greater perspective on things we cannot see right now.

If you are ready to dive deeper into your meditation practice you can register for our Begin Again Retreat, March 21 – 24. Registration is open now! We look forward to building a bright, happy practice with you that is in service of the world today.

Happy Chinese New Year!

Hathor (Hui)