By Extreme Z7,
I've been meditating consistently for 1 hour everyday for almost an entire year. The more I do it, the deeper I feel I go into exploring the nature of my human experience. Today I want to share just another epiphany I had while I was having an unpleasant experience.
Just a few hours ago, I washed my clothes by hand which is a chore I always found to be very unpleasant. I hate how tedious it feels, I hate the feeling of having water splash on my arms and my feet. As I finished and started to pick up the clothes to hang outside the house, I started to notice very subtly how my body tries to avoid these certain feelings, I noticed that when I walk barefoot on the wet ground, that the soles of my feet where slightly lifted up to prevent my feet from feeling the water around the dirty ground. My body was trying to avoid a pleasant experience. I decided to instead release my feet to feel the wetness of the ground. I suddenly felt a release from suffering. I could actually see that the entire time, the experience was not the thing causing my suffering at all, I was creating it out of my own resistance! The suffering was artificially created, all I had to do was to let go and accept and. . . . there was no more suffering.
It made me think about all the other times I've "suffered" in life. Of course, the story above involved a very small and petty kind of suffering but what if the more significant problems we see in our lives are actually just combinations of numerous small, petty, self-created problems combined into huge messes of complicated suffering? Furthermore, if it is the case that it's always been created by the self, then that kind of means we don't really have to expend any effort to get rid of suffering (besides the consciousness work required to see this, of course). All we need to do is recognize that we are creating our own suffering and . . . that's about it, actually.
The question that comes to my mind now is, "Where does it come from?". Do we, as human beings, have good reasons to create suffering in our lives. Our do we really just create it out of freaking nowhere?!! I'd love to know what you think about this.
Just a few hours ago, I washed my clothes by hand which is a chore I always found to be very unpleasant. I hate how tedious it feels, I hate the feeling of having water splash on my arms and my feet. As I finished and started to pick up the clothes to hang outside the house, I started to notice very subtly how my body tries to avoid these certain feelings, I noticed that when I walk barefoot on the wet ground, that the soles of my feet where slightly lifted up to prevent my feet from feeling the water around the dirty ground. My body was trying to avoid a pleasant experience. I decided to instead release my feet to feel the wetness of the ground. I suddenly felt a release from suffering. I could actually see that the entire time, the experience was not the thing causing my suffering at all, I was creating it out of my own resistance! The suffering was artificially created, all I had to do was to let go and accept and. . . . there was no more suffering.
It made me think about all the other times I've "suffered" in life. Of course, the story above involved a very small and petty kind of suffering but what if the more significant problems we see in our lives are actually just combinations of numerous small, petty, self-created problems combined into huge messes of complicated suffering? Furthermore, if it is the case that it's always been created by the self, then that kind of means we don't really have to expend any effort to get rid of suffering (besides the consciousness work required to see this, of course). All we need to do is recognize that we are creating our own suffering and . . . that's about it, actually.
The question that comes to my mind now is, "Where does it come from?". Do we, as human beings, have good reasons to create suffering in our lives. Our do we really just create it out of freaking nowhere?!! I'd love to know what you think about this.