The Safety Inside Fear
La Seguridad Dentro del Miedo
A student shares how a sustained practice of sitting with pain and difficult emotions has revealed spaciousness and clarity beneath what the mind labels as unbearable.
The Safety Inside Fear
A student shares how a sustained practice of sitting with pain and difficult emotions has revealed spaciousness and clarity beneath what the mind labels as unbearable.
I wanted to share some of my experience lately. I've been doing quite a bit of pain meditation, just sitting with emotion and trying to be with it without changing it. Something big shifted after a couple of times doing this throughout the week. Every time I come out of the meditation feeling like it wasn't as big as my mind made it out to be. Most of what I label as pain is just sensations in my body that I've learned to reject, learned to paint a negative picture around.
When something heavy comes up or something triggers me, I'll try to sit with it, and after twenty or thirty minutes of just being with it, something shifts. I can be with the experience, and it isn't as painful anymore. The pain is there, but a clarity comes with it. There's a sort of emptiness together with that pain. The pain is there and I'm not pushing it away, and alongside it there is also space to feel more than just the pain.
Finding safety in difficult experience
I've found that even in regular day-to-day situations I would normally be terrified of, like being here and sharing, which brings up a lot of fear and anxiety, I know from my pain meditation that there's a sort of safety in that fear. Even if I don't fully sense it, it's there enough that I can trust it. This world is not just painful but also spacious, also welcoming, also loving. I wanted to share this with the group because it's a very intimate space for me to come here and speak openly. Thank you.
Everything you're describing sounds really beautiful and really good. Thank you for inviting such open-heartedness.
It's my pleasure.