Ordinarily we tend to cruise along the surface of life. Skimming by on the surface, we are less apt to feel the pain that goes along with being human. But we also miss the mystery, beauty and sacredness that come from our depths. Most of us have so accustomed ourselves to a comfort zone on the surface of things that we suffer from chronic “depth deprivation.”
Depth both attracts and frightens us. The agonies as well as the ecstasies of life emerge from deep within. One way we can lean into a fuller life and practice deepening is by sustaining awareness.
Attending is a first step in opening the heart and learning to love. Attention reveals the essence of whatever we focus on — our breath, our lover or child, music, a rose . . . or suffering. With attention we enter another dimension, a qualitatively more interior aspect of people and things. We sense a beauty and meaning we miss on the surface.
At the edges of our comfort zone, however, we can only stand so much beauty and love. Love scares us and can activate our defenses tenfold. Because love flushes whatever stands in its way into awareness, deep diving reveals our underlying pain and suffering.
Much of our habitual depth aversion is simply an avoidance of the pain we have carried from childhood and beyond. When we feel the grief of buried pain, it frightens us and drives us back to the “safe” surface.
But how safe are we, really in our everyday state of mind?
Even in times of complacency and well-being, if we open to the inner world, we sense low-grade anxiety, compulsiveness, and restlessness under our usual busyness and distractions. Our chronic fear and avoidance of depth lead to a nagging sense of dissatisfaction and emptiness, to addictions, or to the pursuit of one distraction after another.
Crisis and Loss Take Us Down
Another way we deepen is through shock, crisis and loss. When suffering strikes, it washes away our habitual defenses. The shattering of defenses that follows trauma, betrayal, loss or other heartbreak mixes the devastation with a dark blessing. It temporarily relieves our depth deprivation.
The pain rivets your attention and takes you down. At least that is how it was for me coping with a traumatic betrayal. These are the times when the reality that “all is suffering,” the first noble truth of Buddhism, seeps into your bones. In our happiness-obsessed culture, feeling the extent of our underlying suffering is bad news indeed. Yet, this deep truth compels attention.
The most basic, existential questions rack your brain: “Could this possibly be a benevolent universe?” “Why am I here?” Crisis hands us the chance to confront our depth avoidance. But forces are strong when we are in pain that make us want to cling—like a drowning person to a life raft—more ferociously than ever, to the familiar surface.
Whether it is forty straight hours of “Gray’s Anatomy” reruns, getting to sleep every night with a bottle of wine or a quart of chocolate ice cream, falling in love with the first person you meet, going on a binge of intellectual analysis, or the more straightforward panic, rage and obsessing — the surface life beckons.
We need courage plus a major attitude adjustment if we want to mine our depths. Never more than when we face suffering. If we want the benefits of mystery, truth and compassion that depth can bring to our lives, we need to come to terms with the grief and pain we have spent our lives avoiding. The well-known spiritual prescription to embrace our suffering is easier said than done.
To be continued next time . . .
Warm greetings.
This article offers a major step towards transforming ones suffering and pain into love for others. Acceptance, as opposed to negation, can produce miracles.
Thank you.
Thank you for sharing your warmth and wisdom, Benjamin. It is always good (and edifying!) to hear from you.
Hi Sandy, your readers may appreciate knowing about a book called The Trauma Release Process: Transcend your Toughest Times by David Berceli, Ph.D. ( 5th reprinting in 2012). The power of this book is that is takes the trauma and gives specific body-centered ways to release it. In times of trauma, I did the “shaking” the book describes without understanding what I was doing. Turns out it is a way to address that hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis “fight or flight” that we get ourselves into and need a way out of…
Susie, hi, and thank you for mentioning this book. Berceli has done a great service in creating an approach to releasing trauma that can be taught to large groups. I have taken a couple of workshops by his trainers (TRE, Trauma Releasing Exercises) to encourage the ‘shaking’, which I too was doing a lot of involuntarily. The exercises are a start, and the more intensive work of Peter Levine’s Somatic Experiencing or EMDR takes the process further and deeper. I have been amazed at how much trauma we carry even without a current shock!
Or, makes us to meet ourselves, the other person who we once were. And we cry from sorrow, and embrace them with love, comforting them, saying, don’t worry, you were never alone, I’m with you and you are safe. The two
timelines meet. Does this make any sense to you? Or am I off my rocker?”
It so makes sense to me, Katherine. The dying, shattered self opens to such raw innocence, ancient grief and pain that needs our love. The shell is broken open and will be falling away. But who knew it was a shell, or at least a layer, protecting us from such deep old hurts and feelings from so long ago. Thank you for sharing this sensitive observation.
And in the process, we might discover how much pain we can feel, upon realizing how much pain we, at some time, inflicted on others. How many shattered selves we left behind us, who need that love of ours to help them to heal? Than we go back in time, fall on our knees and beg for forgivness, cry, comfort them with all the depth we can find in our hearts. As I can see it; this will be the beginning of compassion. I think, Christ had a lot to say about it too.
Your poignant image and thoughts express so much my experience, too, Katherine. The beautiful grief of remorse, the pain of not just understanding, but living the harm we have caused . . .seems to me a kind of purgatory; the sad heart, a kind of transforming cross.
And the sad heart which can see the pain around you, in the crying hearts of others. Suddenly, you see how beautiful they are….