A Link to an Article About Pain

A friend of who reads this blog pointed out a recent article about pain in the New York Times:

How To Talk About Pain

Let me know what you think!

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You can leave a comment below, through Google+, or email me at carold.marsh@gmail.com.

The Selfsame Well

I ended my previous post with this quote from Kahlil Gibran:

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was
oftentimes filled with your tears.
And how else can it be?
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.

I first read this verse in Gibran's The Prophet when I was a teenager. It has stayed with me these forty-some years, sustaining me through life's difficult times. During the past nine years, while I've learned to live well with chronic pain, it has taken on new meaning.

I have stated before, in other posts, that for the purposes of writing about chronic pain, I define "pain" as something quite different from "suffering." I see pain as physical, mental or spiritual pain that we do not choose but that happens as a part of life. Suffering is a choice we make -- quite often unconsciously -- to layer other emotions over our pain For example, I'm in pain when I have a migraine. I suffer when I let myself get worried, upset, or angry about having the migraine.

I've learned that pain and peace offer the same opportunities for deepening and holding:

The deeper that pain carves into your being, the more peace you can contain.

Suffering (as I define it above) doesn't carve into my being at all. On the contrary, it keeps me skittering around on the surface like the waterbug I wrote about in my previous post.

But pain carves. I wrote once, "being in pain like that [a particularly bad migraine] changes you."  Then I meant something negative, something I'd rather not have experienced. Seen through Gibran's eyes, though, terrible pain -- whether emotional, spiritual or physical -- digs out a space into which peace can pour. 

None of us would ever choose that kind of pain. Yet if it has come to us, there is consolation and wisdom in accepting its whittling away at a space that one day will be flooded with peace.


Thank you for reading this post. Please leave a comment below, through Google+, or email me at carold.marsh@gmail.com.

Joy that is Peace; Peace that is Joy

Since my previous post, I've been thinking a lot about joy and Martha Beck's description of true joy as lacking "the wild ups and downs of an excitement-based life."

My metaphor for my old habit of making excitement a necessary component of life is the water bugs I saw skittering on the surface of the creek I used to play in as a girl. (For my more nerdy readers, here is a link for the explanation of how they manage this.)

I used excitement to give me a sort of high, the adrenaline-rush through my veins and muscles and emotions making me think I was experiencing joy. I used the anticipation of excitement or some happy event (I can get through this day if I just think about going to that party on Saturday) to deny that day's emotional pain or discomfort. At the anticipated or 'joy'-producing event, I'd skitter around, adrenaline holding me aloft like water's surface tension does a waterbug's hairy little feet, acting like the adrenaline rush and forced happiness were joy.

I thought they were.

But true joy cannot happen on the surface. True joy is below, where calm reigns and the current is slow, where emotions are free to plumb the depths despite the wind and waves and turmoil above.

Isn't that why Jesus talks about "the peace of God that passes all understanding"? (Phil 4:7). And why Darlene Cohen at Shambhala Sun says "we can experience joy in life by opening up fully to our experience"? The Etz Chaim Center says that joyful living is about forging a deeper connection to the soul and creating an on-going opportunity to share our joy with others." (italics mine) On the blog Baha'i Thought, Phillipe Copeland writes that "happiness and joy are more than just ephemeral emotions ... they spring organically from the soul's response to the Word of God."

One final quote, and I'll pursue the topic further in future posts. This is my favorite from Khalil Gibran:

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.

And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was

oftentimes filled with your tears.

And how else can it be?

The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.

You can leave comments through Google+, or email me at carold.marsh@gmail.com. Thank you.

What Does 'Finding Joy' Mean?

When I think about the phrase, "finding joy," it occurs to me that it's a complicated idea. 'Finding' implies 'searching', and I often think of 'searching' as something I do in the world around me. Then I have to remind myself: searching for joy happens internally.

Martha Beck, sociologist and life coach, writes in her article, "How to Find the Kind of Joy That Lasts", that what we think of as joy is often excitement with an added component that's almost crazed, or at least super intense. Many of us have come to expect that excitement as a definer of joy.

This is where I, as a person who lives with chronic pain, have learned to better understand the search for joy. Like Beck, I have let go of the need for excitement, though for a different reason: when I get excited, I tend to spike a migraine. I've had to learn to allow and express joy without excitement.

Says Beck:
True joy lacks the wild ups and downs of an excitement-based life. It's a peaceful landscape, filled with peaceful thoughts and peaceful emotions. Indeed, it's so peaceful that, to our adrenaline-soaked culture, it looks rather plain. In fact, I like to think of it as the plains of peace.

As I have learned to experience joy without excitement or adrenaline-punched energy, I've found what Beck describes, that true joy is peaceful, internal, and calming rather than exciting. That's not to say there's no place for excitement in the lives of people whose health allows it. Its release of energy and emotion can be positive and even cathartic.

The point is not to conflate excitement with joy. Searching for joy always shot through with excitement is a recipe for addiction.

In recent posts, I've been writing about Buddhism's Eightfold Path. The Path encourages the internal work -- reforming how we think, speak and act -- that sets the stage for joy. This is a search humans have been on since we became conscious beings. All forms of spirituality, religion and therapy and  have their own ways of setting the stage for joy. That will be the topic of my next post.

I welcome comments below through GooglePlus, or at carold.marsh@gmail.com.

Attachment To Desire

At the end of my previous post, I said I'd write about opening the doorway to joy. The idea that we can find joy in lives that are restricted by illness, pain, grief, unemployment, a broken heart, poor mental health, or addiction can seem ridiculous. Essentially, though, finding joy in life is at the heart of religion and most of the self-help books you can find these days. We're all on that search and have been since we became conscious beings. I find different titles and ways to say it, but finding joy is really the underlying topic of all the posts on this blog.

For now I'm focusing in Buddhism's Eightfold Path, and how walking that path can help set our spirits free to experience joy even as we live life's pain.

The second step on the Eightfold Path is called Right Intention, and is composed of three intentions:
1. The intention of renunciation, which means that we intend to resist the pull of desire;
2. The intention of good will, which means that we intend to resist our feelings of anger and aversion;
3. The intention of harmlessness, which means that we intend not to think or act cruelly, violently or aggressively, and to develop compassion.

I like the way the first intention -- renunciation -- follows logically from the first step on the Eightfold Path, The Four Noble Truths. The Truths are all about understanding how our attachment to desire causes us suffering. Notice the Buddhists are careful to say, the attachment to desire. It's not desire itself that is the problem. Desire for food and water makes us survive. Desire for sex ensures the human species goes on generation after generation. Desires to become a better person or more learned or more comfortable have ensured all of the change and growth since we lived in caves. I write this blog because I desire to find joyful freedom within a life greatly restricted by chronic migraine pain. These desires are essential to who we are.

This second step not only reinforces what we've learned from the Truths, it drives home the lesson by using the verb intend. For renunciation, it's not I will resist the pull of desire, but I intend to resist the pull of desire. Built right into the phrase is an acknowledgement of how even our noble desires are subject to attachment. We can become attached to desiring to resist the pull of desire, causing our own suffering by castigating ourselves or getting depressed when we don't resist. 

Saying we intend to resist desire's attraction signals to and reminds us of  the danger of attaching to the desire to detach from desire. We humans make life pretty complicated.
 
ACCEPT THE DESIRE
When you're in chronic pain, you want it to stop. When you're unemployed, you want a job. If a loved one has died, you want them back or want to have not said, or said, or not done, or done something. If you're growing older, you wish you had the strength and energy and looks of the younger you. If you're disabled, you wish for your full capabilities.

You're human. It's natural. Accept that you have desires. Let them be what they are, sit with them. (Meditation and prayer are, I think, essential to this kind of acceptance. You can click on an item in the Labels column to the right of this post if you'd like to read more on the subject.) 

INTEND TO RESIST ITS PULL
I intend to stop complaining so much about having to stay on the bed in a dark room so often. When I realize I've been complaining, I simply remind myself of my intention, which is a lot more positive and much better for my self-esteem than wondering why I'm such a narcissistic whiner.

Basically, I wrote this post to remind myself of my intention.


You can contact me by leaving a comment below via GooglePlus, or at carold.marsh@gmail.com.