When other people are suffering, how do you feel?
Noticing your own response can offer huge revelation to how you react to others….
….and where it might go wrong.
Wrong….meaning: they hurt, you hurt, and now, no one is at peace.
Let’s do The Work here.
So, someone you love is hurting.
They’re crying, or talking wildly fast with fear and anxiety, or sitting in despair after telling you “I just found out I have cancer.”
Maybe they’re opening up and telling about their road through hellish addiction, or confessing their truth about wrong-doing, or the torture they feel about their kids, spouses or financial situation.
Or one of the worst fears: a person you care about is so unhappy, they threaten suicide.
Whew.
A lot of us are trained or conditioned to worry immediately when someone else is troubled.
How DO you react when you believe its a bad, bad thing that someone is suffering?
Do you go ballistic trying to save them?
You call professionals, you check in with them daily, your energy moves out into wondering how they are constantly, or where they are, if they’re alive, are they OK.
Do you feel terror, sadness, panic or awful grief yourself?
Hand-wringing, hand-wringing.
Many years ago, I got a job working on an academic research project where I needed to go interview patients in their homes who were on hospice care (meaning, they were terminally ill) and ask them questions about their pain, their depression and their quality of life.
The first person I visited happened to be a woman only a few years older than I was, who was dying of breast cancer.
I was a perfect stranger with a laptop, coming over and asking her many personal questions about how she felt, how frightened she was, if she felt cared for from day to day.
She openly answered all of them.
When I left and went to my car, I sat a moment in the parking lot and wept.
Over the weeks, months, and years ahead, I got far more comfortable spending time with people on hospice. I learned of all kinds of diseases from hundreds of cancers to congenital heart failure to Lou Gehrig’s (ALS) disease and made friends with people who had them all, visiting them every week.
All those friends died.
Who would you really, really be without the belief that this other person’s suffering is scary, or difficult, or you need to quick do something to help them? Who would you be without the thought that their dying, or hurting (even emotionally) means anything about you?
I know it’s very weird to imagine this belief.
But it can be incredibly liberating to sit with someone in pain and not feel pain yourself.
Because let’s face it….you don’t.
“Hurt feelings or discomfort of any kind cannot be caused by another person. No one outside me can hurt me. That’s not a possibility. It’s only when I believe a stressful thought that I get hurt. And I’m the one who’s hurting me by believing what I think.” ~ Byron Katie
This includes in situations where someone else is in a state of great distress, emotionally or physically.
Without the belief that it means something personally about you, and it’s frightening….
….you might be more compassionate, more connecting, more close to those people.
You might have a very, very wide open mind that knows nothing about this person’s predicament, and you show up in service without avoiding, without giving advice, without trying to change them.
Including, not trying to keep them alive or fix all their troubles.
(I tried to do this as a parent. It doesn’t work.)
I don’t know about you, but when people have just sat with me and listened quietly, without being frightened, without panicking, without giving me any advice….
….it’s felt like heaven.
Turning the thoughts around: if someone is suffering, it is not scary, it isn’t bad, bad, bad, it’s not so dreadful, its the way of it right at that moment.
How could this be as true, or truer?
This isn’t to deny the reality of physical pain, sickness, decay or traumatic life experiences….
….just noticing how dang normal these are.
They happen everyday!
Where did we get the idea they shouldn’t? Who thought that up?
Turning the thoughts around again: if I am suffering, its not scary, it isn’t so bad, bad, bad, it’s not so dreadful, its the way of it at this moment.
Sorrow or grief wells up, I feel fear, but if I stay with it, I notice it changes, it morphs.
It crashes like a wave on the sand and recedes.
It falls back into silence….just like everything else, without thought.
“When you approach the edges you feel insecurity, jealousy, fear, or self-consciousness. You pull back, and if you are like most people, you stop trying. Spirituality begins when you decide that you’ll never stop trying. Spirituality is the commitment to go beyond, no matter what it takes.” ~ Michael Singer
Stay with those you love who are suffering.
Question you can’t handle it, or they can’t.
Notice how you both can.
“The further one goes, the less one knows.” ~ Tao Te Ching
Love, Grace