Human instinct is to run from the pain. I
get it - who wants to "feel" the pain, but part of healing and
spiritual growth is being ok with going deep inside and confronting these
feelings. In order to change and evolve, we have to challenge what is
familiar to us and this change often creates a painful experience. As
Michael Singer points out in his book, The Untethered Soul - "This
pain is so uncomfortable, so challenging, and so destructive to the individual
self, that your entire life is spent avoiding it." We begin to
identify with this pain so deeply that our whole way of living becomes about
ways to avoid the pain. Hence, why people do whatever they can to avoid their
pain and coping skills are developed such as drinking, drugs, co-dependence,
addictions to gambling, shopping, sex, whatever it takes to avoid dealing with
the issues at hand. But the avoidance of this pain actually invites the
pain to become more enhanced in our lives. One of the things I used to do
instead of "feeling" my pain, was to keep myself so busy I could
never stop long enough to "feel." I never realized this is what
I was doing, it became a part of who I was. I kept going until my body decided
to get my attention by creating illness which, in turn, caused me to stop and
be still. Meditation is the best tool for being still. People think they
have to be perfect at meditation for it to be "right." The
common thought is that meditation is about feeling good. Not necessarily
true! A common meditation session can elicit the feelings of boredom,
restlessness, a hurting back and pain. But, as author and Buddhist nun,
Pema Chodron expresses, "meditation is about a loving compassionate openness
and the ability to be with oneself and one's situation through all kinds of
experiences." This is about awakening fully to our life.
Meditation isn't just for Buddhists and Hippies. According to Time
Magazine's edition of Your Body: The Science of Keeping it
Healthy, meditation has even gone corporate with classes to teach
CEO's and employees alike the practice of meditation in order to "stop,
breath, notice, reflect and respond." The same article goes on to
state that at the beginning of 2013, the U.S. Marines (yes, I did say Marines)
started a pilot program at Camp Pendleton called M-Fit (Mindfulness-Based Mind
Fitness Training) which was designed to help veterans to use meditation
effectively to deal with post-traumatic stress disorder as well as to calm
themselves in the middle of maneuvers. The biggest advantage of
meditation, however, is to our health. A study by Herbert Benson,
professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, found that meditators used 17%
less oxygen, lowered their heart rates by three beats a minute and increased
their theta waves, the ones that appear right before sleep, proving that they
reached a different state than either normal consciousness or sleeping.
Dr. Benson argued that meditators counteracted the stress-induced fight
or flight response and achieved a calmer, happier state. This practice
has also been used to help people manage their pain and get off of medication
by teaching people to focus on what pain feels like and accept it. This
gives us power over our own bodies. Even our immune system benefits - how
great is that! So, experiment and be open with playing with the
possibility of noticing what you feel in the moment. Don't get
frustrated, your mind WILL wander. Just notice it and come back to the
present. Listen, if a bunch of tough Marines can get in touch with their
inner-selves, then hang up the sissiness and just go for it!
At the
end of the day, I can end up just totally wacky, because I've made mountains
out of molehills. With meditation, I can keep them as molehills.
- Ringo Starr
