I had a good day yesterday. I felt\u00a0strong and calm. I had an enjoyable writing session and a wonderful dinner in a\u00a0restaurant with an old friend. When I hugged her good-bye, I was happy and\u00a0fulfilled \u2013 until I got about half way home. I could feel my mind pulling me
into a negative loop of \u201cwhat ifs.\u201d I didn\u2019t wear a mask at the post office\u00a0today. What if I get Covid? I was editing a book. What if I did a bad job and\u00a0she didn\u2019t like it? What if my political candidate doesn\u2019t win? How will we all\u00a0survive?<\/p>\n
The closer I got to home, the worse\u00a0it became until I was as unhappy as I had been happy a short time ago. I walked\u00a0into my house and checked my phone. A politician \u00a0had sent me a text designed to scare me into donating money to her because she could change the world. She could make me safe in an unsafe world and no one else could do the job.<\/p>\n
I deleted it and sat there,\u00a0frightened and insecure. The fact was that nothing on the outside had changed\u00a0since I had dinner. What was true an hour ago was still true. But on the\u00a0inside, everything had changed. I had taken a dive and I was suffering because\u00a0of the stories I was telling myself.<\/p>\n
I attended a lecture by spiritual\u00a0leader, Baba Ram Dass some years ago. This is the story he told. I paraphrase:<\/p>\n
\u201cI checked the stock market\u00a0yesterday and all my numbers were up. I felt wealthy and I praised myself for\u00a0investing so wisely. I loved a particular kind of muffin they sold at a bakery\u00a0near my house. It was expensive for a muffin but why not get one? I had plenty\u00a0of money. I walked to the bakery feeling light as air and I could already taste
the treat I was about to give myself. When I stepped inside, the aroma of\u00a0freshly baked bread filled the air. Before I headed to the counter, I glanced\u00a0at a pile of newspapers to my right and read the headline. \u201cStock Market\u00a0Crash.\u201d I become paralyzed. I felt like a loser. I left the bakery without the\u00a0muffin. It was too expensive and I walked back home feeling defeated and\u00a0depressed.\u201d<\/p>\n
I remembered reading a Buddhist lecture.\u00a0The speaker said something like, \u201cThe things that are happening are not the\u00a0cause of our suffering. It\u2019s the things that we say to ourselves. The stories
that we tell ourselves. The work is to stay present. Even if we don\u2019t like\u00a0what\u2019s here and now, if we try to run away from it, we get caught in a cycle of\u00a0suffering and unhappiness. Unless we stay awake to what\u2019s really going on, unless\u00a0we acknowledge that we\u2019re feeling shitty, we\u2019re stuck in a dizzying loop of pain.\u00a0It feels like something is wrong and we better change what it is and who we are\u00a0or we\u2019ll be sorry.<\/p>\n
If you do the hard work of allowing\u00a0yourself to stay awake to what\u2019s really going on, even if you\u2019re suffering,\u00a0you\u2019ll see that nothing is wrong. You don\u2019t have to change yourself. It\u2019s\u00a0simply the human condition and whatever is going on, you need to stay with it\u00a0if you want anything to change. And it will. That\u2019s the only thing we be sure
of \u2013 everything changes whether we want it to or not.<\/p>\n
If you spend your time trying to\u00a0fix yourself and trying to change the things you can\u2019t change, your suffering\u00a0will escalate until you\u2019re a miserable puddle of pain and sorrow. In the Harry\u00a0Potter books, there is a prison called Azkaban. There are no bars or locked\u00a0doors. They don\u2019t need them. Wraith-like creatures called Dementors float above\u00a0the prison, feeding on people\u2019s happiness, causing them depression and despair,\u00a0rendering them unwilling to find a way to escape.<\/p>\n
This is what our negative thoughts\u00a0do to us. They keep us imprisoned and they suck the joy out of us and out of\u00a0every moment. We make ourselves suffer when we try to cut and run. We step onto
the roller coaster, searching for answers that we can\u2019t find. It\u2019s a painful\u00a0way to live.<\/p>\n
Of the four Noble truths that live\u00a0at the foundation of Buddhism, the first is:<\/p>\n
There is suffering in the world.<\/p>\n
That isn\u2019t an invitation to suffer\u00a0because we have no choice. While we can\u2019t change the fact that suffering\u00a0exists, we can change our reactions to it. We can decide to feel it instead of\u00a0going numb in any number of ways. If we decide not to feel pain, we\u2019ve also\u00a0decided not to feel joy. If we decide not to feel anger, we\u2019ve also decided not
to feel forgiveness. If we decide not to feel fear, we\u2019ve also decided not to\u00a0feel courage.<\/p>\n
We already have almost everything\u00a0we need. What we don\u2019t have is permission from ourselves to feel what\u2019s right\u00a0here, right now. If we want to find a compassionate way to go through life, we\u00a0need to give ourselves a break and and stop trying to fix what isn\u2019t broken. We
are not so special. We all feel pain and we\u2019re all searching for a way to relax\u00a0and accept who we are. I remember the powerful adage: the only way out is in.\u00a0When we stop feeling superior or inferior, when we actually feel curious about\u00a0how we are without trying to change ourselves, we have a chance to suffer less\u00a0and accept more. That\u2019s the path to inner peace.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I had a good day yesterday. I felt\u00a0strong and calm. I had an enjoyable writing session and a wonderful dinner in a\u00a0restaurant with an old friend. When I hugged her good-bye, I was happy and\u00a0fulfilled \u2013 until I got about half way home. I could feel my mind pulling meinto a negative loop of \u201cwhat […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2516,"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-2517","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\/2517","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\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2517"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2517\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2518,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2517\/revisions\/2518"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}