it's a matching game

In response to my last post, a reader asked: "Is 'turning away' from pervasive feelings or thoughts of lack the same as non-resistance to 'what is'? It feels as though acceptance or non-resistance might work easier for me than trying to trick this mind into thinking that there is no lack or no suffering."

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Yes. This is kind of a key point and although it is utterly simple, it seems to be a difficult one for us to see, in love as we are with complexity. It's actually almost too simple. Once you see it, it seems nearly hilarious, how simple it is. But we have eons of complex thought-habits in place, so the simple is not easy to see.

To communicate simply is not easy either, so bear with me!

Let's use the hot stove analogy. You put your hand on a hot stove, and it's burning. In terms of our ordinary lives this can be a situation in which, for whatever reason, there is pain and the temporary appearance of lack.

Here's the thing: we understand what it means, physically, to take our burning hand off a hot stove. That happens automatically unless there is some kind of paralysis occurring.

In our minds, however, there is such atrophy of the power of attention, that there actually is a kind of paralysis occurring. The paralysis has to do with what we think we are, as opposed to what life is. We are not different from what we are experiencing as life. Life is not outside of us. There is nothing, actually, outside of us. What we are experiencing as form is an accurate projection of our own mental states. It's not necessary, or even possible to "get" this, but it can be known by the effects this understanding produces in relation to the amount of suffering we experience.

When we are in pain or experiencing lack we focus immediately upon the pain or lack and we begin an internal litany of complaint and fear in relation to it. This litany produces an illusory yet strong sense of self that is dependent upon suffering as its source. This is our habitual response. This is the mental equivalent of keeping your hand on the hot stove. Continued burning happens.

As A Course in Miracles and just about everyone else out there says, "There are no idle thoughts. All thinking produces form at some level. T-2.VI.9.13-14 

The simplest way to put it is this: As you focus your attention upon lack or suffering, you create more lack and suffering. So it is not necessary to pretend that your hand doesn't hurt when you place it on a hot stove—the pain automatically does its job and the hand flies off the stove. That's the purpose of pain.

But it is necessary, if you would like to stop suffering, to take your mind, your attention, off the hot stove of your life when it is burning you. The grievance, the complaint, the thought of judgment, the resentment, the resistance, IS the suffering. There is no other suffering.

Be willing to let go of the sense of self you are getting from the pain. Be willing to stop. You can do this by becoming aware. Become aware. See the grievance, the complaint, the pain and just feel it. Just be with it. Watch it. See that you can watch it without having to identify with it.

We think that unless we focus on and identify with what seems to be lacking, we'll never experience completion. This idea has tremendous momentum. It is the main stream of human thought. The truth is exactly the opposite. 

It isn't even necessary to replace what seems to be a negative thought with what seems to be a positive one. What is necessary is that you take your attention off the hot stove if you want to stop burning. Just stop. Drop the storyline of lack and suffering right now, again and again.

Stand there in the nothing. The blessed, sacred nothing. Feel that refreshing vulnerability. Drop it. Whatever you pick up, just drop it. The rest happens on its own. The help that has been there all along can now find you, as the fog of your thought-clinging disperses. It is in this gesture that the heart awakens.

Comments

[Leslie]

Thank you so much Marin for saying it again...and again. So beautifully. Even if I was free I'd still read this.
If the suffering is pervasive, and the only way out is to change on those thoughts, then that is one heck of an opportunity.
It seems the ever available Help is the thing that is all pervasive.
XOXO
-Leslie

[Aileen]

Nice post, Marian. I think I'll copy this sentence and paste it on my refrigerator :o) "Be willing to let go of the sense of self you are getting from the pain."