Pleasure, Pain & Surrender

Over the last few weeks as I’ve been in my morning and evening meditations, the topic of pain/pleasure cycle has come to my consciousness.  For then, the relevancy was to break the pain/pleasure cycle and to sit with and appreciate things as they are and not as I want them to be.  

Today, as I over heard a teaching my mom was listening to about Palm Sunday, it all began to click.  

I often talk about the duality of life.  You can’t know darkness without experiencing light, you cannot know and appreciate pure joy without experiencing sadness, and you cannot know pleasure without having experienced pain at some point in life.  

Today is Palm Sunday, and as we reflect on the life of Jesus, I believe that he showed us that the pain, the sadness, the hurt, the heartbreak, the deceit of his peers, and physical death magnified the goodness of love, grace and all that was good... it made his victories more victorious, and miracles more miraculous.  Being the great example of how there will always be times of sorrow and times for celebration— but, who’s to say they can’t both exist simultaneously? 

Because they can, AND they do. 

For every person who deceived or hated Him, hundreds even thousands more loved him.  He had his feet lovingly washed and anointed with precious perfumes by a woman, by contrast he was also beaten and nailed on the cross.  Only two examples of many.

The other part of his life that I love and appreciate so much is that no matter the situation, he was present in it.  He wasn’t caught up with the “OMG” and the “what if’s” and worse case scenarios, he, with power, surrendered to the present moment.  In times of turmoil, He gave thanks and asked for guidance.  It’s so beautiful to reflect on. 

His resurrection showed that no matter how much we get beaten down, no matter how much pain we endure, not even death is too big for God to overcome within us.  

But it’s all part of the process.  We can’t skip over having experienced pain, we cannot skip having experienced love, we cannot skip over learning the art of surrendering just to see the power and love of God.  He is part of all of these things, and so to fully know and experience God in our lives, we have to fully embrace all parts.

But, that doesn’t mean we hold on to our fears, pain and addictions to experience all of the goodness.  The beauty and power comes from the surrender, and pursuit of the truth and light— knowing it’s taken all of eternity to get to this point in our lives and in the world.  And instead of trying to stop something from happening, lean into it to create something beautiful for the rest of the world. 

My morning and evening meditations will still be rooted in breaking the pain/pleasure rollercoaster to achieve a greater place of surrender, presence and understanding, though now with a much greater sense of gratitude and appreciation.

Your Experience

“Comparison is the thief of joy” - Theodore Roosevelt

I was initially writing about presence.  Not necessarily about presence itself, but what it looks like when we aren’t mentally present.  The reality is we all are physically present all of the time (are we, though?),  but we aren’t always mentally present.  But I think comparison has more to do with presence than we think. 

When we aren’t mentally present, our entire experience is living either in the past  (the majority of the time) or the future.  What happens when you are here presently comparing your past or future to your current experience or an expectation of what you think “should be”?  Fear. Depression.  Anxiety.  Worry.

I often look at things on a continuum.  And most of the time people would think that depression is on one end and anxiety at the other.  I don’t believe that’s the case.  

The opposite of depression is elation.  The opposite of anxiety is apathy, and when we don’t mentally live in the present moment, we ride this exhaustive rollercoaster of emotions over and over and over again.  

When we live mentally present, we can see things and can begin to acknowledge things as they are and we can see and acknowledge that every experience is a little bit of every emotion, and that’s okay.  What’s not okay is not integrating the experience, hanging on to the emotion, and thus allowing it to stain your perceptive system.  Because what happens here is 5 years from now when you experience that emotion, your perceptive system is looking for an experience to match it up with.  So to protect you, it will replay the experience over and over and over and over again.  Recruiting all of the same neurochemistry, stress hormones, behaviors, etc. from the past to protect you.  

Integrating a scary, fearful, or emotionally charged experience like we are all experiencing today, is not the same as stuffing it down, distracting yourself from it, not acknowledging it and “compartmentalizing” it.  Integrating an experience is looking at all sides of the experience, finding the gratitude and grace in the uncertainty, and choosing to live somewhere in the middle.  Neither elated or depressed, neither anxious or apathetic.  Choosing love, and understanding, appreciation. 

Because the reality is, we are all human beings.  We are all going to experience every emotion imaginable.  It’s how we choose to live our current experience... are we comparing it to the past, future, or a made up expectation of how things “should be”?  Or are we choosing to see them just as they are from a place of understanding, love and appreciation?  How is this time serving you?