I hung up the phone, shaking, tears streaming down my face, anger pulsing through me, its unfamiliar flames burning my insides. I felt lost, I felt helpless. I sobbed, convulsing, being consumed by painful emotions. Being consumed by pain. I had been fighting it, I had been hurriedly putting up walls and building a dam to block the tidal wave of pain. The levys broke and I was drowning. As the pain ate away at my body, the love sprang into action. Love rushed out of my deepest inside to rage against the pain. The two forces wrestled within me, fighting for survival, each determined to destroy the other. I writhed as they battled each other until both were exhausted. And then the three of us, myself, love and pain, collapsed in utter exhaustion. Neither was winning, neither was losing. After such ferocious combat the two were now entirely intertwined. I could not separate them. I could attempt to destroy them both, but I couldn't bring myself to try to destroy love. I had no other choice then, but to come to terms with the fact that they would both be here, inside me, love and pain, and that fueling the fire of war between them, did nothing but drain me of energy.
I took a few deep breaths, tried to calm the waves which made me tremble from the inside out. My breath was shaky as I lay back with my eyes closed. I had to accept it. There was no way to separate the two, I had been using all my energy to fight off Pain and try to protect Love and now I realized, it was impossible. I had to accept it. There was no strategy which would ward off Pain. And there was no battle worth fighting if love was destroyed. There was no end to the fighting, the two powers have and always will be one entity, forever attached to the other.
Life is Suffering. Suffering comes from desire. Let go, there is no control.
These buddhists tenets floated into my mind.
I had read about these and had trouble understanding them. Not until now, in this moment, where I had no choice but to accept the suffering caused by my desire and attachment, did I understand them. "tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worth than the suffering itself" The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho. and also "pain is inevitable, suffering is optional". Those quotes helped me to make sense of this overwhelming sensation. I had spun out of control fallen off of my raft and found myself floating along in a river.
A friend of mine who is familiar with Buddhism was very excited to hear from me because I had found the river. He explained that life is a ever flowing constantly moving river. and I had been trying to swim the other way or swim to the edge or build a boat, to do anything but just relax and float along. Now that I had hit rock bottom, lost all sense of control, and was simply forced to sit with my pain, it became evident to me that I was indeed in this river and it would be a lot less energy sapping to just lay back and enjoy the flow of it.
I realized that I had been trying so hard to control everyone and everything to protect myself from pain. It was my fear of pain that was motivating me so hard in debating what I should or shouldnt do. I had been passing judgement on myself and others for my behavior and choices. Another friend of mine called and explained that all you can do is be aware and observe what you are doing, and know that you are always trying to make the best choice at that time. That you shouldnt blame yourself when things dont turn out well or if you get hurt, because you made a choice that had that risk and thats not a bad thing, thats just being human. Because the situation I was trying to "fix" couldn't really be improved by anything but the passage of time, I felt stuck. I felt stuck because I didnt know what I should do next, in order to most protect myself. I realized then that the Buddhist advice of living in This moment of being Truly Present, and accepting all of the forces which are in motion in this exact moment, thats all that I have to go on. And if I feel that I want to do X, even though I might get hurt, I should still do it, knowing that I might get hurt, but realizing also that I will learn.
This was a very revolutionary experience, I'm not sure if I've explained it appropriately this is just a stream of consciousness draft. But this experience of losing all control and realizing that I could do nothing which would guarantee that I would not get hurt, was so powerful. It helped me to come to terms with the fact that yes, I may feel pain, because where there is love, attachment, desire, there is also pain and suffering. But that my options were to just sit with pain trying to control everything causing myself yet more pain and pushing away love, or allowing the option of love to come out stronger than the pain, but knowing that I too would still be hurt.
It was at once terrifying and liberating. To "relinquish"control, which was really to accept that I had none, to recognize and be aware of what I was doing, to come to terms with the reality that yes, my fear of pain was only serving to cause me more pain, and to accept that well, I will feel pain, and I accept that, and I am not afraid anymore.
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