On Staying with Discomfort

In the practice of meditation and mindfulness, there is an invitation to stay with whatever arises.  Recently, I have had an opportunity to apply this to my life in a profound and impactful way.  When I had an interaction with a friend that left me feeling hurt and triggered, I decided to apply this muscle I have been developing through my meditation practice of simply staying with the feelings.  I tend to default to processing things mentally, so I had to remind myself again and again to steer clear of "thinking" and replaying the events.  This practice was profound in a few different ways.  One was that I had an opportunity to observe my own mind and how it works to manage discomfort.  Judgment and evaluation kept arising as an attempt to find grounding.  Although these were tools that, in the past, may have given me a sense of security, it became clear to me that any story I came up with was simply "grasping" and did not offer ease or relief.  I simply had to stay with the discomfort.  

Each time I noticed the feeling in my body without the story attached to it, I began to notice the familiar essence of the sensation.  It was OLD.  This was the second gift of staying with the discomfort: intimacy with an old wound.  Without fear or judgment, I became open and curious to this old feeling.  Images of myself at various ages would emerge and I could see that I had been carrying this around for a long time.  That recognition was profound for me.  In seeing the sensation out of a sense of time and place, I had the opportunity to have an almost pure connection with it.  This intimacy was deeply healing.  It was like I was able to "have my own back", to deeply show up for myself in the simplest of ways.  That showing up, which is so easy to do for others, was all this feeling needed to begin to shift.

I will say that this experience, although on the outside appeared to be painful and difficult, has been a gift of transformation.  Opening up, welcoming, embracing pain and discomfort goes against everything we have been taught.  We are a culture of problem-solvers.  When we truly understand that everything is okay, that there are no problems to solve, this new opportunity for growth and transformation, deep transformation becomes available.  This is the practice of true meditation.