230706 - Alongside pain - (Morning)

Suffering is a mental construct. No, really. Take a moment. I’m sure you’ve heard it before. But take a moment. Not to think, not to conceptualize. Try to feel it. Try to feel your aversion, your desire, everything inside of you that wants to move. We think that pain has an inherently aversive quality. But there’s no reason, inside of the pain, that we should move. We can be alongside it. Whatever it is. Jealousy, shame, anger. Just be alongside it. Look at the habitual movement that follows, that makes you suppress, avoid. It just feeds the fire. Thoughts especially. Realize that they are Okay. Aversion to thoughts in the desire for stillness is an interesting conundrum. It’s quite absurd. We’ve again moved the goal to somewhere else. The thought “I shouldn’t suffer” while suffering just brings on more suffering. Realize you can be alongsidewhat is, whatever it is. When you feel pain, instead of resisting, really try to feel it, to look at it, to investigate. What is this pain? How does it affect my mind? What happens if we co-exist? Realize that avoiding the pain only creates mental anguish, and in fact this is by far the biggest part of the disagreeable feeling. Yes. The mental anguish of trying to be somewhere else is the suffering, and it’s far more “painful” than the pain that causes it.