I’ve just completed a year of study — and any deep learning requires a forensic kind of unlearning. Whenever I’ve embarked on study, which has been a constant throughout my adult life, it’s always been met with an unpacking and recalibration of the life I thought I knew. This year-long study, however, has been a full initiation of dissolution — an undoing of my life and of myself. Honestly, the last fifty years have felt like a steady initiation into surrender.
I feel like a stone blasted with water so forcefully that I’m raw and dissolved, reduced to tiny grains of sand. Yet I suspect that, with time, I will see that I wasn’t blasted apart; I was simply polished. The guck of self-importance and arrogance has dissolved enough that, perhaps in the future, I can share my wisdom without it being masked by the sheen of ego.
My life has unfolded in interesting ways — probably similar to yours — with many unexpected twists and turns I could never have fathomed. It’s been governed by a downpour of struggles. Many times I’ve felt ashamed of them because of how people around me responded. Often they pulled away, leaving my shame in their absence, a feeling that something is innately wrong with me. That the challenging events in my life mean I’m constantly repeating the same mistakes, and there’s an annoyance in bearing witness to that pattern.
Yet the hollowness of betrayal from others has its root in an earlier betrayal of my own making: not heeding the cautions I felt deep in my body. The residue of not seeing myself and not knowing how to be there for myself contributed to disasters that leveled aspects of my life. The paradox is this: without those destructive experiences I would not be who I am today, and I prefer the me now to the one who was so deeply laced with ignorance in my younger years.
After a year of this particular study, something similar has occurred — a new level of dismantling — and the shame I carried from the past has washed away.
I understand that seeing something painful in others involves fear, because witnessing means some part of us has touched that experience and understands it. That is scary and often makes us yearn to turn away.
Most of the time we’re trying to avoid suffering; we enact elaborate spirals of avoidance. That was a useful skill when our lives were at risk, but most of the time we’re not in life-ending danger. It’s possible that we need to protect ourselves at times to limit how much struggle we take on. Yet we’ve become so skillful at prevention that our entire modern system depends on avoidance to function.
When suffering comes for us, it’s often unexpected — sudden as a natural disaster. For many years my struggles would initiate drama, an uncomfortable sidecar riding shotgun in my experience. The dramatic responses my unregulated self craved drew others into the same vibration; in longing for connection, I created discomfort.
What I learned was that I needed to be slower and more compassionate with myself. I required time underground to let the cool earth soothe my pain and calm my soul.
Once I could heal and regulate my system, I began to understand the important teachings that come from suffering. If life has provided you with events and suffering that are uncommon in your social circle, this can be an omen of great order. Those who have suffered and learned from it become compassionate workers in the world. In a world where judgment and condemnation flow as easily as water, it takes someone who knows how to listen for the sweet song — a salve for healing. Someone who knows pain and has been taught by sorrow listens deeply, has patience for the uncomfortable, and understands that the fear of the unknown will pass.
Suffering is the only way to create resilience.
The deep struggle that arises when we face difficulty — the kind that feels insurmountable, lonely, chaotic, and physically uncomfortable — is like an infection under the skin. When that infection starts to heal it becomes uncomfortably itchy; that’s the kind of discomfort we endure when going through hard things. The friction makes it difficult to stay; it feels like the minutes trickle out slowly, when life feels impossible. That restlessness is the stone being formed into a diamond.
A syncopated, lonely darkness can feel ripe with shame and self-loathing after another big learning. Then I’m reminded that repetitive friction is the teacher, which leads to the spark and then the flame that burns down who we thought we were, turning to ashes the places within us that felt certain. Does our life contain friction, or do we do everything in our power to avoid it?
Now, at the passing of this year, I’m standing here — the storm has passed — soaking wet, hair plastered to my face, clothing barely covering my frame, wondering who I am now. What subtle magic has been performed? Will I be able to put words to the wonders of this past year and do them justice, or will I stumble in simplicity and keep the complex language lingering with the fairies and winds of the deep forest?
If anything, my inquiries have grown and my unknowing remains constant. This whole year felt like every way I needed cleaning out was elevated to the surface. As life does to me, it burns me down until I rise again.
Suffering is a portal to the divine. Don’t shy away from it — know that it has come as a great teacher, an initiator of change, a gift from beyond, here to shapeshift you into a more awakened version of yourself: one with new capacity to hold peace. For most people, when struggle occurs, they immediately seek the fire escape. Try to hold yourself. Don’t run or quit as your first response. Hold softly, watch what arises, and allow these immense teachings to trickle through. See if you can receive what is being offered.
One caveat: if you’ve been in prolonged struggle with the same person or situation and all your efforts aren’t resolving the conflict, that is a good time to leave. Wisdom lies in knowing the difference between leaving too quickly and staying beyond usefulness.
This human life is the wildest space I’ve ever had the privilege of exploring.
with love, Noelle