Suffering Sucks! How to Make it Stop.

You Don't Have to Suffer. You Can Make it Stop!

So, we were talking about how suffering is type of thinking; how suffering isn't real, how suffering is a thought we think when we experience painful sensations. Sensations like pain rise up when something painful is actually, physically present. Pain is unpleasant but always, always passes. If we experience pain as a sensation, then the exact moment pain passes, it is forever gone and we feel it no more.

If we turn pain into suffering by dwelling on it, by thinking about it, by giving attention to it, by telling ourselves and others stories about it -- then when the sensation of pain runs its natural course and is gone -- our suffering might still go on for hours, or days, or years. Suffering will continue forever if we keep feeding it attention. Suffering cannot end -- ever, as long as we keep turning the pages on our inner story of wrong doing or hurt or anger, or any other thought or emotion that feeds the beast of suffering.

Okay, so it is easy to suggest that suffering can cease the exact moment we stop feeding it with our attention, or pumping life into it with the thoughts we think and the emotions we won't let go of. But where the rubber hits the road is the obvious next question:


"Fine! But how do we stop thinking about the painful or the unpleasant things in our life? How do we stop recreating one real moment of unavoidable present unpleasantness? How do we stop rehashing the past, over and over in our minds? How do we avoid endless streams of imagined future pain (or embarrassment, etc.)?" After all, imagining future pain creates unpleasant feelings right now. It takes one possible outcome, which may not even occur, and turns it into 10,000 moments of unpleasantness that floods our mind and leaks out into our bodies. Talk about needless suffering!

These are very good questions.

My only answer is self-awareness.

The only thing that has ever worked for me,

is learning to watch my thoughts and monitor my emotions. This is a type of self-awareness devoted full time to the task of witnessing every thing that happens in my mind. It observes my life as I live it. It is like a Go Pro camera attached to the top of my mind, recording everything -- with real time feedback whispering in my ear. "Holman," it says with a poke, "You're doing it again!."

"Oh yeah," I respond, suddenly noticing that my thoughts had turned sour and negative, or that I'd allowed myself to get triggered by something or other. Or I might notice that whatever had upset me was over, but I was still replaying it over and over again, and by doing so, turning a painful moment that was past into present and ongoing suffering.

Oh man, I hate it when I do that!

The witnessing part of myself helps me to pass through moments of hurt or anger or embarrassment so very, very much quicker.

These moments arise like a flash flood or a raging wild fire, but when I remember to watch myself, before the waters can wash away my well being, before the fires can burn up my mind, I can step aside and redirect the surging waters to put out the devouring flames.

In other words, I can get over my own bad self the exact moment I side-step my negative thoughts.

A watched thought, just like watched pot, cannot boil -- but unlike the pot, the thought vaporizes into steam. A thought can only live as long as we keep thinking it.

It takes a lot of practice to develop this kind of self-awareness. However, given that the alternative is endless suffering -- which just plain sucks -- it's work the effort.