It's been a tough week.
Oh my, has it been a tough week.
My boyfriend and I are moving house and with that comes the usual stress of packing, moving and arguing with unethical landlords - that last one might just be me though.
However, over and above the "standard" discomforts of packing up our lives, has come an overwhelming feeling of suffering. A suffering of loss. A suffering of attachment.
This attachment has risen up inside me only since making the unchangeable decision to move. Our move is filled only with grown-up, financial-saving, life-bettering outcomes and yet my rose-tinted 'Comfort-Goggles' are making all the stress and daily struggles that we've been enduring for months, seem like the most pleasant and tiny burdens that we joyfully and willingly bear, instead of what they truly are - pure chaos.
Each day I find a new layer of suffering to simmer in. My beautiful built-in book shelf with my ever expanding library that I have to leave behind. The stunning mirror in our bathroom that is not mine to take. The cracks in the roof and their (not so) fun leaks during torrential downpours. The lifting floorboards from incompetent plumbers that meant we squeezed in sideways through the front door - Oh how I will suddenly miss that.
And yet these things are inconsequential to my existence. I'm suffering to suffer because I'm attached to objects. Attached to how they make me feel. Attached to the memories associated with and around them. In short, my suffering is attachment and attachment is suffering.
I'm attached to our apartment as our first home. The memory of how we picked it together, moved in together, got a flat tire on moving day together. I'm attached to the fights and love that we shared in between those four walls. The takeout bags that littered our apartment that first week and many weeks since. The irritation of everything that was wrong with it but the knowledge that it was ours.
I'm suffering because I know that once the last box is packed and we step out over the threshold, it will never be ours again.
My attachment to our home is suffering because I fear the unknown. I'm happy in the suffering chaos that I know. It's a comfort to know that it's difficult because it's a difficult that I'm used to. It's a life I've come to know and it's an attachment to the person I am while I live it. Who will I be when we move? What new challenges await us? How will we cope?!! How else can I suffer unnecessarily?
The Buddhists believe that existence is suffering. That there is suffering in everything we do, everything we experience and everything we are. This suffering stems from our attachment to things, feelings, moments in time, desires and comforts. We suffer when we get stuck in traffic, our attachment to living in the future, always rushing to move forward, causes us suffering because we're attached to the concept of control. We suffer when we're faced with a challenge that rattles our world because we're attached to comfort. We suffer when we can't have what we want when we want it because we're attached to the feelings of desire and how empty or fulfilled it can make us feel.
Attachment is a human condition. In Western society, we've been indoctrinated with the need to accumulate. To fill the hole inside ourselves with things, people and feelings. That feeling of emptiness you have, sitting in the depths of your center should be filled with a brand new plasma 72" super sonic, ear bleed inducing surround sound TV or even something much more impactful - the perfect relationship! Why work on yourself when you can fill your life with the needs of another whether you want to, are ready to or can!
Then when our beloved TV breaks or gets stolen, we suffer. Our emptiness was momentarily filled by a source and now that source has let us down. Our attachment to its ability to make us happy has resulted in our suffering.
By masking over our own feelings with those of another, we're able to hide from ourselves and pretend that our suffering is happiness because our partner is happy. Our attachment to replacing ourselves with another is suffering. Suffering when they leave us. Suffering when we don't know who we are without them. Suffering through decisions and challenges because our attachment to another requires us to know what their solution is before we consider our own.
The answer to how do we alleviate our suffering is much as it always is with my existential crises:
Self-development.
However, it now expands to include mindful meditation.
It kind of sucks because yet again we're faced with the reality that all the answers lie within ourselves. That there's no magic pill or blog post with all the answers. Google can't help you with this one, son.
It also sucks because suffering cannot be eradicated. Existence is suffering. You cannot exist if you do not suffer. BUT. Suffering also makes room for happiness and without suffering we have nothing to compare the joy of happiness to.
This all sounds a bit doom and gloom. If suffering can't be eradicated, why bother at all? How about simply because, we can control our unnecessary suffering? That right on the other side of suffering is happiness? That we have the capacity to experience life in its fullest spectrum of emotion?
Okay, but what is unnecessary suffering? It's all that nonsense that we do to ourselves. The worrying over things we know we can't control. The what if's, the should's.
Being stuck in traffic happens to the best of us and honestly, it's a standard part of our every day life for most. Here we can choose to suffer and beat ourselves up because "We should've left earlier. We should've checked ahead. We should've been less stupid.
Just like we should be married with children by now, but we're not. We should own our own apartment but we can't. We should have savings in our account but we don't. I can't control these things enough to do anything actively about them this instant so why sit and suffer by beating myself up about it? And who says I need these things? Society? Family? The Bank Manager?
Let me tell you something that might be a bit harsh. All those people making you feel bad that you don't have children are not going to turn up at 2am when the baby is screaming and you haven't slept in 3 weeks. They want you to have kids to make themselves feel better about their decisions, their attachment to "fitting in" with societal norms and their suffering because of it.
Those that want you to own property and scoff down at you, are not spending or saving their money as you are. Their dreams are not your dreams. Their needs are not your needs. Their attachment to 'things' does not need to be your suffering too.
So, how is mindful meditation going to help any of this? And what is it? And can you stop with the elusive self-development? To answer that last question.. No.
Mindful Meditation is a branch of meditation that asks us to pay attention in a particular way, either on a purpose, a thought, or breath, to be fully immersed in the present moment and to do so without judgement.
The "without judgement" part is where a lot of us struggle in the beginning. Let me assure you that this is perfectly normal and that I wanted to give up so many times because my mind just simply wouldn't shut up.
The great thing about this practice is that you don't need to force the voices into silence. They can stay there, gabbering away to their hearts content but as your focus shifts from them and to something else, they lose interest. One such tool is your breath.
The How To:
Begin by finding a comfortable seat, preferably cross-legged or kneeling and close your eyes. From here rest your hands comfortably in your lap or on your thighs.
With your eyes still closed, bring your attention to your breath as it moves in and out of your nose. As thoughts pop up to distract you, acknowledge them, greet them and then send them on their way by returning your attention to your breath.
Start by committing to 10 minutes a day. Set a timer on your phone and remain soft and gentle in your seat until it times. Don't worry about how many times you fell out of the present. Just keep at it.
For some, closing your eyes can be difficult and off putting. Here you can soften your gaze upon one thing. Try a burning candle, or a single spot on the floor. Allow your gaze to soften and rest unmoving on this place. As your thoughts pop in and out, return your attention to your gaze.
By practising mindful meditation we learn to slowly quieten our minds without reproach. We refrain from considering ourselves failures at meditation and effectively life. This practice cultivates tolerance. Tolerance for ourselves. Tolerance for others. Tolerance for moments of stillness within the chaos. As it does this it cultivates new neural pathways that assist us in dealing and approaching situations. We learn to suffer unnecessarily less.
Say halfway into mediating your hip begins to niggle and call out to you because its uncomfortable. Unnecessary suffering is dwelling on the fact that your hip is sore but you're meditating and now everything sucks. Widening your tolerance is moving your attention from the discomfort and back into the present. When a challenge approaches you outside of your meditation, your brain has learnt to shift focus. To address it without additional, unhelpful suffering. It realises that it's more productive without dwelling. Without attachment to the situation.
Now as we pack up our home and our memories within it, we look at them fondly for what they were. For the happiness they brought us. For the laughter they bring us now as we recall an explosive fight that happened for no reason in that corner, or the sauce that dropped all over the kitchen floor over there.
And when it all gets too much and the darkness of suffering and the attachment that I have crawls back in, I know that I have a safe space within myself to retreat to. A place that renergises and restores my chaotic mind, that widens its ability to tolerate everyday. I know that home is not a place, its centered firmly in myself and will travel with me wherever I choose to plant myself for that moment in time.
Be Kind. Be Curious. Be You.
