Hi,
Everyone.
Welcome to Spiritual Sobriety.
I'm your host,
Chris McDuffie.
For today's discussion,
We will continue to look at how we cause our own suffering and how to free ourselves in order to create more joy and happiness.
I welcome all of our new listeners and followers from around the world.
It's great to hear your feedback each week.
People,
Places,
And things that we are grateful for having in our lives,
And that which sobriety affords us.
We also saw that for us in recovery,
Practicing acts of gratitude is a powerful coping skill for managing our emotions and a powerful relapse prevention skill.
Let's begin today's discussion with a new contemplative exercise.
You'll need some paper and pen.
You may wish to devote a notebook to spiritual sobriety each week so you can have your thoughts in one place.
You will want to find Andrew Alinsky's article entitled Pleasure and Pain in Tricycle,
The Buddhist Review,
And Judy Leaf's August 2016 article entitled The Middle Way of Stress,
Published in the Buddhist journal Lion's Roar.
Tricycle and Lion's Roar are two wonderful journals that you may wish to follow to enhance your learning of Buddhism.
When the Buddha was becoming enlightened,
He saw all of his lives,
And he saw all the 10,
000 joys and 10,
000 sorrows that became part of his enlightenment path.
Yep,
He enumerated each one,
And you will notice that they are equally balanced for every thought and feeling of joy.
For every feeling of joy,
There's an equal opposite of sorrow.
Buddha taught using dialectics and a means of instruction.
Dialectical contemplation may be defined as inquiry into metaphysical contradictions and their solutions.
I invite you to begin today's contemplative exercise by writing the following terms on each side of your page as opposites to one another.
Happiness vs.
Suffering,
Fame vs.
Insignificance,
Praise vs.
Blame,
And Gain vs.
Loss.
Again,
We're creating a dialectic for each pairing.
Again,
Happiness vs.
Suffering,
Fame vs.
Insignificance,
Praise vs.
Blame,
And Gain vs.
Loss.
On the same side of the paper,
You will now have happiness vs.
Suffering,
Fame vs.
Insignificance,
Praise vs.
Blame,
And gain vs.
Loss.
Next,
I invite you to read each term intently and contemplate on each for a few minutes,
Noticing and feeling the sense feelings that arise within you.
Please write down the feelings that arose under each term.
You may want to pause and rejoin us in about five minutes after taking some time to think.
When you're done,
You may have noticed that the left column probably felt more comfortable and pleasurable than the right column.
If that was the case,
Consider for a moment why this happened.
After all,
These are just words on a piece of paper.
It is our egoic thinking mind fed by our fear,
Our experiences,
And our trauma,
And many other factors that generate thousands and thousands of thoughts and then feelings as we perceive every situation.
You might say that every perception of every situation throughout each day will generate emotions that fall into any one of these categories.
Stories.
Buddha called this collection of the Eight Dialectics on Emotions,
Quote,
The Eight Worldly Preoccupations.
How might our addictions and our attachments and our unskillful reaction to these perceptions feed our suffering?
Did we think that we could or should avoid the uncomfortable and live only in the comfortable?
Do you clearly see Buddha's suggestions that our suffering is sourced from our attachments or grabbing and the dialectical opposite of aversions?
Buddha discussed the concept of suffering more in his Sutra on the Arrow.
I'd like to take you back to the paper for a few seconds and contemplate on another exercise.
And sense feelings that arise as you consider each feeling on a sheet of paper.
You may want to pause again and rejoin us in a couple of minutes.
If any very uncomfortable emotions should arise while you're contemplating,
Please seek immediate help and support from medical professionals.
Our practices and our exercises are not meant to feel punitive or life-threatening.
You may wish to pause yet again to contemplate some more.
Consider again the mind and the heart's desire to grab onto or push away certain feelings.
From today's exercise,
You are practicing how to make wise-minded,
Safe responses that are loving and kind to yourself and others.
You may wish to bring today's insight to your sponsors,
Your therapists,
Or your spiritual mentors.
Reflecting back again on the sutra or teaching called the arrow,
The Buddha described for us the self-inflicting wounds that cause our suffering.
Consider a client whose wife divorced him in early sobriety.
The first arrow is the pain and suffering that he may feel as a result of these attachments.
Those attachments might certainly be,
Boy,
I'll always have a loving,
Loyal wife.
She'll always be by my side.
Look at me,
I'm somebody special with this beautiful wife next to me.
Now imagine this client relapsing over the real suffering that he feels.
The Buddha suggests this would be the second arrow.
The Buddha would say that this gentleman now has two arrows in him,
Not just one.
In the 12-step program,
We are encouraged in steps three to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
I choose to see God as a loving,
Kind God or the God of love or simply love itself.
Step three reminds us not to harm ourselves with a second arrow after we already have turned away or been turned away from love and support from others.
Dr.
Jason Kim writes in his January 2015 article in PAXX Press entitled,
Releasing the Arrow,
Which he uses as an excerpt from Thich Nhat Hanh's book,
No Mud,
No Lotus,
The following.
Our own storyline,
Or our own anxiety,
All these things magnify the suffering.
So many times the ultimate disasters we're ruminating from don't even happen.
So how have you responded to situations that you deem painful from steps one through nine?
In 12 Steps in Buddhism,
They both help us form a non-judging,
Non-punitive lens to look at to see how we respond to situations with loving kindness to ourselves and others.
I hope that you found today's discussion on feelings and emotions very informative and helpful.
I look forward to reading your thoughts and comments and questions.
Thank you.
