MY WEEKLY BLOG<\/p>\n
What if the Present Moment Sucks?<\/p>\n
There is a consensus opinion that \u201cbeing in the present\u00a0moment\u201d is an effective way to deal with anxiety and depression. I agree with
that. It’s about mindfulness. It’s about looking at life as it is, being in the\u00a0present moment and accepting what we see and feel as much as possible. It\u2019s\u00a0about surrendering to the situations in our lives and being gentle and\u00a0compassionate with ourselves.<\/p>\n
Projecting into the past or the future doesn\u2019t\u00a0end well. Focusing on the past can bring up regrets and focusing on the future\u00a0can bring up fear and stories that aren\u2019t true. I can’t count the times that stopping
to breathe and bringing my focus to the present moment have soothed me.<\/p>\n
But what if the present moment sucks? What if\u00a0we\u2019re in pain or grief or loss or we have a broken heart? I was in a Buddhist\u00a0workshop years ago when the leader began to speak about the difference between\u00a0pain and suffering. I\u2019m paraphrasing what he said: \u201cPain is inevitable. It\u2019s\u00a0part of being human and so is suffering. But when we face our pain instead of resisting\u00a0it, we\u2019re giving ourselves a chance to let go a little bit and transform\u00a0suffering into acceptance.\u201d<\/p>\n
What I took away from that teaching is that pain\u00a0in its purest form is tolerable. Suffering, resisting pain, on the other hand, is\u00a0not. It’s about staying with the pain and facing it. Buddhism is fertile ground
on this topic. Thich Nhat Hanh, the late Vietnamese Buddhist monk defined\u00a0mindfulness as being fully present in body and mind. The Dalai Lama says we are\u00a0so anxious about the future, we don’t enjoy the present moment. Buddhist nun\u00a0Pema Chodron, says, \u201cWhen you want to run away from pain, remind yourself to\u00a0stay. When resistance is gone, so are the demons. Even in the toughest times,
we can learn how to be more gentle, how to relax and how to surrender to the\u00a0situations and people in our lives.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the eighties, I visited a friend in County\u00a0Hospital who was in a ward, dying from AIDS. He was suffering physically and\u00a0mentally, and I asked him if he wanted to try something.
\u201cAnything,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He had neuropathy in his legs, he was hurting\u00a0pretty badly, and I asked him to meditate with me. I synched my inhales and\u00a0exhales with his and I asked him what would happen if he stopped resisting. I\u00a0suggested that he find the center point of his pain and breathe into it. I\u00a0described it as moving into the eye of the storm and resting in the stillness.<\/p>\n
He tried it and after a few minutes, I noticed that his breathing had changed. So I asked him if he wanted to do the same thing with his emotional pain. He agreed. He was feuding with his mother, it seemed like all she did was complain, he told me, and whenever she was there, he felt agitated. He felt like she was blaming him. I asked him to picture her in his mind, and instead of pushing her away and resisting her, he could try breathing from his heart to hers. He had trouble at first but pretty soon, he was inhaling gently and tears were rolling down his cheeks. He opened his eyes, he looked over at me and said, \u201cMy mother is in so much grief that I\u2019m dying, she\u2019s acting angry and upset. Making peace with her is the last thing I have to do here before I leave.\u201d He had found compassion, his body relaxed so did the upset.<\/p>\n
From my own practice, I\u2019ve learned that the only\u00a0way to transform suffering into acceptance is facing it head on. I remind\u00a0myself to stay instead of run. I feel my feelings instead of going numb. I\u00a0exhale instead of holding my breath and I say \u201cYes\u201d when I want to say no. None\u00a0of it is easy, pulling away and resisting pain is human and habitual, but if I\u00a0can find the courage to go against my own grain, when I don’t run away, I can\u00a0find clarity about where I\u2019m stuck and learn how to work with it.<\/p>\n
Acknowledging pain and sticking with it is not\u00a0for sissies. To stay with disappointment, betrayal, illness or a broken heart\u00a0is a hero\u2019s journey. The goal is to move into the unknown with no stories or
excuses and seeing what\u2019s there. When we face conflict and adversity with an\u00a0unwavering focus, we triumph over suffering and we come back home transformed.<\/p>\n
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MY WEEKLY BLOG What if the Present Moment Sucks? There is a consensus opinion that \u201cbeing in the present\u00a0moment\u201d is an effective way to deal with anxiety and depression. I agree withthat. It’s about mindfulness. It’s about looking at life as it is, being in the\u00a0present moment and accepting what we see and feel as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":2103,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2104"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2104\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2105,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2104\/revisions\/2105"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}