What IS It?

Weekly Reading Topic for September 21, 2019: What IS it?

Well, good morning, love!

I just opened a Reading for you, my newsletter subscribers and here’s what I heard in answer to the following:

What do my readers most need to hear this weekend? What is the most important message to send to my beloved readers?

The answer was: “What IS it?”

What follows is your Weekly Reading.

Weekly Reading │ What IS it?

Q: What do you mean, “What IS it?”

A: Sometimes we get a jangly feeling in our limbs, a jitter in our mind, a buzz in our ears or an ache in our gut. And we think “uh oh, something’s wrong.”

And there usually is something wrong. Our physical bodies are noting a problem of some sort. But … what is it?

As one of my mentors used to say, “It Is Where It Ain’t.”

In other words, the “cause” of the anxiety, the fear, the feeling of something off, is usually NOT whatever we think it is. It’s something — somewhere — some time — else.

Depending upon your own personal history and predilections, your assumption could be that you feel bad because:

• You ate something that doesn’t agree with you.
• You spoke to someone difficult.
• You hit a lot of traffic on the way home.
• You have an illness that is showing up.
• You had a tough experience once upon a time that is recycling your thought patterns.
• You hate your job.
• You hate your spouse.
• You weigh too much.
• You don’t get enough exercise.
• You haven’t had a vacation in years.
• Your mother/father/sister/brother/best friend/cousin/grandmother and you had a falling out.
• Your living space is too small.
• You don’t make enough money.
• You don’t have enough friends.
• You are injured, hurt, broken, fed up, tired, diseased, and permanently DONE.
• You never lived up to your potential, or fear you will never do so.

All of these might, in fact, be true (hopefully not all at the same time). And yet, none of them are truly the cause of your anxiety, fear, or feeling something is off.

None of those things logically, invariably, inevitably lead to a “something wrong.” There are many people walking around on this planet who have these problems and worse.

None of those are What It Is.

What Is It, then?

If the presenting “problems” aren’t the cause of the wrongness … what is?

Your response.

Buddha said pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional. If you break your leg, there is NO DOUBT that you will feel pain. You will be severely limited in your movements and you will require a lengthy healing process. All of these are true.

Want Your Weekly Reading Delivered to Your Inbox Every Saturday Morning? Click Here to Subscribe

And yet, the experience of suffering? That’s entirely optional. Here’s what suffering is in this scenario: experiencing the broken leg and all the associated pain, limitation and healing … AND ALSO resisting its reality. Wishing it away, regretting it happened. Thinking “why me.” Casting about to blame yourself or others, hoping that by assigning blame your pain will somehow diminish.

But pain doesn’t diminish when you add suffering into the mix. Pain can actually become MORE painful when you top it off with suffering. And suffering can beget pain, beget more suffering, more pain, and on and on and on. Why, some people are still suffering over skinned knees from their eighth summer!

They’ve destroyed many happinesses because they never really let go of that suffering! It cycles and cycles and cycles, piling up and increasing.

My mentor would have called that the “pain-spasm-pain” cycle. You’ve got to interrupt that pattern, or the pain and suffering only build and build.

So … the “what is it” … that you must interrupt … is the suffering.

One of the most important discernments to practice in our daily lives is noting the distinction between pain and suffering.

PAIN:

Someone we love dies, and we mourn, hard, and long. We wallow in our grief, tossed by the waves of sadness. We find ourselves going under, so tired of treading water in these heavy seas. We sink and let go of struggle, fearing that this is the end, that this grief is going to kill us.

And when we finally float to the bottom of our sea of pain, we rest, face-up in the dark, our hair floating like kelp in the currents. We let the fish nibble and the crabs scuttle under our shape. We sleep, hard and deep.

And then we find ourselves rising, slowly, floating up, without much effort, just a little toe pushing off the sand, a little lazy flap of the fingers to flutter us up a little. And as we rise, we find ourselves able to move to an upright position, and we have the strength, surprisingly, to give a strong push with our feet, and we rocket up into the sunlight, the water streaming down our faces, our eyes blinking and mouth gaping, as we drink in the air, smell the salt, greet our friends who have been picnicking in the canoe, waiting for us to feel better and rejoin the living.

That’s pain, without suffering.

PAIN AND SUFFERING:

Someone we love dies, and we mourn, hard and long, and we wallow and get tossed about, and we stay at the top of those heaving seas, screaming at the wind and rain that this isn’t fair, that this is not supposed to happen, that we didn’t have enough time or do enough or say enough, that this must not have happened, that someone must pay, that we must be punished or they must be punished, or it’s all a waste, and as we fight and gasp we realize that we are tired, that we can barely tread water, and the waves seem to be pushing us around ever harder, and harder, and finally one wallop and we go under, strangling ourselves with our anger and screaming denials and as we struggle it feels like someone is pulling us, like strong hands are reaching up and grabbing our ankles, like we are being dragged and now we have to fight harder, and we’re even more tired, but we keep it up and keep going, finding no way to breathe, losing strength, refusing, refusing, refusing the downward motion.

And life feels like it has trapped us under this sea, and we hate the dark and the fish and the crabs and we stir up the ocean bottom, creating a great sand storm that scrapes our skin and fills our mouth and eyes with grit, and all is roaring silence as the grief crashes about our mind, trapped, unable to find a way out. We never sleep, we never ever sleep. We force our eyes awake, our mind growing more and more disoriented and twisted. We think our dark thoughts over and over, and get no rest. And we stay down there, for as long as it takes for our tantrum to run its course.

If it ever does. Some of us die down there, shaking our fist at the darkness, without once looking up to see that there is sun above us, that our loved ones are waiting for us to rise, healed.

That’s pain, with tremendous suffering.

Healing Takes Time, but It’s Nearly Impossible to Stop

Our minds and bodies are made to heal. Every night while we sleep, our immune system repairs every tissue, every cell in our body. Well, it WOULD, if we would rest deep and long enough for it to get the job done. As it is, we often interrupt its work.

Sleep well this weekend, and let the repair happen. Stop the suffering. Realize that What It Is Is What It Ain’t.

It ain’t the pain, it’s the suffering.

Allow yourself to float down into the Dark Deep. Your life will be waiting for you when you return, and you will be that much more ready to address whatever needs to be addressed.

Enjoy your float!

I am always here to serve in any way I can.

Much Love to You,

Molly

PS: Thank you for sharing this with anyone who could use it!

Want Your Weekly Reading Delivered to Your Inbox Every Saturday Morning? Click Here to Subscribe