FALLING INTO GRACE :PART 2 Unraveling Our Suffering

Unraveling Our Suffering

Human beings have always been compelled to reflect on their own lives, and one of the things that almost all human beings have noticed is that suffering is one of the most common components to being human. Throughout human history, many have tried to understand or explain suffering. All of our world religions are unique methods to address human suffering and the sense that so many feel of being alienated and cut off in some way. So many of us feel separate from one another, which further breeds a sense of fear and isolation. So there has always been this deep and abiding question, “Why is it that we suffer?”

It’s not the only question that human beings have asked through the ages, but in some way it’s the most intimate, because we’re in fact biologically hardwired not to suffer. In other words, when we feel conflict, when we feel some sort of anxiety, our bodies get tense. When we suffer, our bodies respond directly—our breathing changes, our heart rate changes; our bodies send signals that something’s not quite right. In many ways, we’re biologically impelled to find a way not to suffer. So strangely, even though we seem biologically designed not to suffer, we still do.
It’s as if we’re actually wired to be happy; when we feel happy, even our bodies operate at their optimum level. When we feel good, we are open and we tend to be healthier and more energetic. Everything about our being, about this entire mechanism that evolution has created, seems to be hooked up to be happy, to be at peace, to be loving, and to be open. And yet one of the most common experiences human beings have, at a very deep place inside that we often try to hide or deny, is this ongoing element of human suffering.
So let us look even more deeply at the whole notion of suffering, of why we suffer, and explore whether there is a way to get out of suffering in any given moment, not necessarily getting out of future suffering, because the future will always remain something that’s unknown.
When we begin to look at the cause of suffering, it reveals itself to be very simple. We often think that the source of the hurt lies somewhere outside of ourselves—that it’s raining today, or it’s too windy and we’re cold, or someone said something that was harmful to us, or a family member treated us harshly when we were young, and on and on and on go all of the various reasons that we think we suffer. But where is the place from which suffering arises? Is there an essential point from which suffering ensues? When we really begin to look at suffering, what suffers is me and you. It’s our sense of self that suffers, that feelsstrain, anxiety, alienation, and loneliness. Of course, it’s the same self that feels happiness, joy, love, and peace, but what is it about this “self” that makes it so prone to suffering?
On closer examination, we see that one of the predominant qualities of self- consciousness is that we feel separate, that we feel “different than.” I am a self here, and you are a self there. It’s something that naturally and spontaneously comes upon us at birth. When we’re born, we begin the process of becoming individuated, or, in other words, separate. If you’ve ever watched an infant, they can stare at themselves in the mirror for quite some time, fascinated. When they’re very young, they’ll stare at themselves in this way with no recognition. But as the months go on, even before they have language, you can see the moment when infants start to recognize that what they’re seeing in the mirror is themselves. Then they get quite interested, quite fascinated as they look at this bundle of mystery in the mirror and have some rudimentary recognition that “that’s me!”
As life goes on, the child will learn his or her name and a whole host of human values, mores, and systems of thought: what’s right, what’s wrong, what should be, what shouldn’t be, who should have done what, who shouldn’t have done what, and so on. As I mentioned earlier, as we grow up, we learn this whole conceptual world, this whole way of thinking. We’re brought up and initiated into the way that human beings think—the way they conceptualize life, the way they look at life—and bit by bit, as we grow up, we take on our culture’s way of seeing life, of seeing ourselves, seeing each other, and also seeing the world at large. In terms of how suffering originates, we can start to see that it originates with the creation of a “you” and a “me”—with this separate sense of self.

OPENING THE DOORWAY TO SUFFERING

What is it about a sense of self that gives rise to suffering? When there’s no sense of self, we can still feel pain, and we can feel even a certain type of anguish. An infant can be angry, it can cry, it can scream, but this is essentially a different type of suffering than we encounter when we become adults, conscious of who we are. There’s something about the perception of being a self, a someone, a something different and independent from everything else, that gives rise to suffering. As we grow older, we start to develop what’s called an ego. Our ego is, in its most generic sense, our sense of who we are. An egoic sense of who we are means we essentially see ourselves as separate, as other from the world around us.Initially, this sense of otherness isn’t really a problem. In fact, as we’ve seen, it’s actually a great discovery when children begin to discover their otherness. It’s when they start to say, “This is mine, not yours. That’s mine! Gimme this! I want this! I want that!” that things begin to shift. At the beginning, learning this way of seeing the world feels quite empowering to children. That’s why they use it so much. When they discover their rudimentary sense of self, it helps them find a certain equilibrium in the world. It helps them locate “Here I am, as opposed to you.” This seems to be something that’s necessary. I say it seems to be necessary, because it happens for almost every human being. Every human being will develop a sense of a separate self, an ego structure. So it wouldn’t really make any sense to say that it’s wrong or that it shouldn’t happen, because it does happen, and it happens almost all the time, for almost all human beings.
But there’s a shadow side to our sense of self: When we see ourself as separate, as something other than the life around us, it breeds a sense of alienation and a sense of fear. Because when we see life as other, when we see each other as “other,” then these “others” are seen as potential threats. Of course, life itself is one of the biggest threats that an ego can perceive. Life is an immense happening. You can go on a trip, you can go on vacation, you can go to the other side of the earth, but still you can’t escape life. You can go to the moon, but still you can’t escape life. You can’t escape existence. As long as we see existence as something that’s essentially other than what we are, we’ll view existence as a potential threat. Seeing existence as a potential threat breeds fear, which in turn breeds conflict and suffering. When we see ourselves as essentially separate, then we start to think that I have to take care of “me,” that my needs and my wants are of utmost importance, and so we have to make sure that we get what we want, irrespective of what someone else may want or need. So one of the first deep insights that can come to you is that all suffering is based on a misperception of self. As soon as we conclude that we exist as a separate self, then we’ve opened the doorway to suffering.
To be clear, I’m not suggesting that anyone should try to get rid of their sense of self. Everyone needs a sense of self. Just imagine if you had no sense of self whatsoever. If you were hungry, you literally wouldn’t know where to put the food. Do you put it in your mouth, or do you put it in a mouth over there? Which mouth does it go in? If you had no sense of self, you literally wouldn’t know how to operate in the world. If you were thirsty, you wouldn’t know where to put the water. It seems quite strange, but it’s actually possible to get into very, very deep meditative states where all sense of self is obliterated, where the self disappears temporarily. The problem with this is you become completely nonfunctional. You really can’t do anything at all. So to have a sense of self, afeeling of “Here I am!” is very important. In fact, it’s biologically hardwired into our system.
But that’s where the potential misperception begins, because when we’re given a name, we intuitively put it right onto that sense of self, and now our sense of self has a name; and then it has an age, and as life goes on, it has a thing called a history. The older we get, the more dense the sense of a separate self gets. Our sense of self becomes more and more contracted, and more and more solidified and, in a sense, real. And the more real it feels, the more we feel that it needs to be protected, that it needs to get its way. The more real our sense of separateness feels, the more we’ll feel an equal desire to control our environment and to control others so that we make sure we get what we want.
Often I am asked the question, “How can there be a sense of self without there being a self in actuality?” The example I like to use to explore this is that the sense of self is like a perfume. It’s a feeling that you have in your being that permeates who and what you are. As I’ve said, it helps orient you to the world, and it helps you function. It’s like a perfume in the sense that when you feel into the sense of self, what you find is that it’s more of a feeling than a thing. In that sense, it’s like a scent that is distributed throughout your entire being. There’s just a sense of it being here, a sense of its “existencing.”
The mind then starts adding onto this rudimentary sense of self. The first thing it adds on is a thought, and it’s called “I” or “me.” Even with that first thought, you can feel the sense of self becoming more dense, more contracted, more stable—no longer so flowy or perfume-like. Rather, it starts to take on the quality of something that has its own place, something that is different than the world around it. And on and on the mind will go, creating a more and more elaborate self, and it will use this sense of self as proof that there must actually be a self.