The Door You Open Together
La puerta que abren juntos
A student asks how to practice when overwhelmed by the suffering of the world, feeling paralyzed and powerless in the face of so much pain.
The Door You Open Together
A student asks how to practice when overwhelmed by the suffering of the world, feeling paralyzed and powerless in the face of so much pain.
I'm having a hard time dealing with the suffering of the world. I find it paralyzing. I don't know how to contextualize the practice alongside what's happening in the world. I find myself overtaken by thought and emotion, and it's very hard to ground myself and not be taken into that whirlwind.
Nothing changes at the level of the practice. In fact, this energy can push you to deepen, because when there's more suffering in the world, it is our suffering. The way to be with that is to go through our own personal suffering. You take this energy, which you experience as the suffering of the world, and you let it come through you.
I'm definitely trying not to avoid it and consciously open myself to it.
Meeting halfway
Only half of it is your job. In a sense, you just have to meet something halfway. It's as if you come to a door and something comes to the door on the other side, and you open it together.
I feel like that door will completely annihilate me.
Yes, that's how it feels, because what we experience ourselves to be is just one part, just what's on this side of the door. When that door opens, that separation ends. Suffering is what brings us to that door, if we approach it consciously. There's no real distinction between our suffering and the world's suffering.
In a way that's even more painful, because to me that much is clear. But it's hard to see people fighting and not realizing it. It feels powerless. That's the word.
Powerlessness as part of the pain
Powerlessness is a form of pain. When you say you find it hard to deal with this, or hard to bring your practice to it, see that very experience of difficulty as part of the suffering and pain that is happening, instead of interpreting it as something you could do better. That will give you more room to feel more deeply, because it's not a doing. It's not a doing better. It's a letting. More of a letting.
Yes. A kind of surrender.
Surrender, not effort
Exactly. What we need to learn is to surrender into our feeling. Through that surrender, we can learn to commune with pain and trauma and hurt, and through that surrender our heart opens. But it's not a doing. Surrender happens when we stop controlling what we're feeling. Putting a lot of effort in is itself a form of control, sometimes disguised as trying to do something right.
I suggest you try moving with what you feel. Try dancing. Try music that might help you feel more deeply. Explore it creatively. There's a kind of approach that is focused and pointed, and another that is movement. My sense is that what you need now is more of the movement.