Robert Augustus Masters Q&A Part Eighteen
April 16, 2006
(The first question is taken from the acceptance of what is thread.)
A. jimtzu asks:
as some of you may know through various posts this last year i have a friend whose husband has progressive MS, which is a steady decline resulting in loss of functions and inevitably death. the external symptoms are being treated (not always satisfactorily by the medical industrial complex) as best they know how at this point.
the reason i'm posting this is to get some ideas and insight on how he can deal with the internal (psychological and spiritual) aspects of coming to terms with his disease and the acceptance of where he is at this moment.
perhaps some wisdom of a personal nature or some sources and/or examples from the psychological/spiritual fields.
not only does he deal with pain and the side effects of medications, he is struggling with accepting his condition and the different role it has put him in... the loss of his manhood (virility, no longer being the bread winner, not being able to take care of his children, etc) and his "human hood" ( feeling helpless, worthless etc)
finding a way for him (or anybody) to accept his disease and where he is now and the possible future will do wonders for his psychological health and those around him. and a good lesson for us all....
any ideas?
Robert answers:
A difficult, very challenging situation, asking for an opening of heart and self that is far from easy...Though I don’t know much about MS, I do have a twofold response that I hope will be of some use: First of all, considering what might be done to make his psychosocial/spiritual environment a more healing setting; and second, considering what he might do to take better care of himself.
I think it’s crucial that those around your friend’s husband see and feel him as more than just a man with progressive MS. This means not getting caught up in the drama of his situation, without in any way distancing themselves from his pain, so that they are not obstructing their capacity to connect with him. Also, if they have not developed some intimacy with their own deep pain, they will not be able to respond very well to his; they may feel bad for him, they may feel upset about his condition, but they will not be able to meet him the way he really needs to be met.
Those around him need to recognize that his situation, his condition, is asking not only for a being-centered response from him, but also from them. Such recognition -- which is far more than just an intellectual undertaking -- would shift the scene from that of an ill person surrounded by those who are, for the moment, less ill, to that of a group of kindred beings all together facing a painful situation with awakened compassion and a shared commitment to making the best possible use of that situation.
And what can your friend’s husband do to take better care of himself? First of all, clearly differentiate between cure and healing (Stephen Levine’s book Healing Into Life and Death clarifies this difference in a very real and readable way); cure is all about fixing things, whereas healing concerns in-the-flesh integration and making whole what was previously fragmented. Whatever in your friend’s husband lies unresolved, stuck, ostracized, or otherwise disowned needs to be allowed to surface, so that it can be directly worked with (as through skillful, bodywork-including, emotionally literate psychotherapy) and integrated.
Emotional release work, however light, will more than likely be necessary; this may be messy at first, but the expressive, contextually sensitive emergence of previously contracted emotionality will speed his return to a more being-centered selfhood. My guess is that before this can happen, he’ll need to recognize his shame (over his emasculation, loss of functionality, and so on) for what it is, or it will likely mutate into guilt and the kind of depressiveness that keeps a heavy lid on emotional openness. (I’ve seen many men who could only access their fully feeling self when their shame was allowed to show up as itself and flush through their system.) If he is open to doing some emotionally expressive, in-depth psychotherapy (which can be as subtle as it’s cathartic), I’d also have him learn some basic meditative practices at roughly the same time. He’d likely find these easier as he opened more.
Instead of judging himself, he would become more aware of the very process of self-judging, without judging himself for judging. Along the way, he could be taught to deepen his compassion for himself and his situation (and for all those in a similar circumstance). All of this makes possible a true acceptance of his situation, not a resigned or submissive acceptance, but a dynamic acceptance, an opening to the deepest dimensions of Life. Dying to live.
Learning to bear the unbearable is a journey that, however hellish its terrain, can break open our heart enough to allow us to embrace what really matters. May your friend’s husband choose and complete that passage, and may he be supported as much as possible in doing so.
Some suggested reading for him (which could also be read to him):
Tuesdays With Morrie (Mitch Albom)
A Year To Live (Stephen Levine)
One more thing: The more clearly suffering and pain are differentiated, the better...
Suffering Versus Pain
If you want to end your suffering, enter your pain.
Though pain and suffering are often thought of as being much the same, they differ greatly from each other.
Pain is fundamentally just unpleasant sensation. Suffering, on the other hand, is something we are doing with our pain.
Pain comes, often inescapably so, with Life. It often also is, especially in its alerting (and awakening) capacity, necessary. Suffering, however, is far less necessary than we might think and is, in fact, a choice.
When we cannot sufficiently distract or distance ourselves from our pain, we generally turn it into suffering. How? By dramatizing our pain. We make an unpleasantly gripping story out of it, a tale in which our hurt “I” all but automatically assumes the throne of self. I hurt, therefore I am — this is suffering’s core credo.
In so doing, we are simply identifying with our pain, overpersonalizing it.
Where pain is consciously felt hurt, suffering is the manipulation of that hurt into drama, a drama in which we’re likely so busy acting out —and being literally occupied by — our hurt role that we’ve little or no motivation to stand apart from it.
In the myopic theatrics of suffering, pain itself mostly just stagnates, like an unwanted exhibit in an art gallery. It is not really seen, not really touched. We may feel close to our pain when we are busy suffering, but it is not the kind of closeness that heals. It is, in fact, an unwelcome proximity, through which we generally just reinforce our suffering, if only because of our sheer desperation to be elsewhere.
The degree to which we turn our pain into suffering is the degree to which we obstruct our own healing.
When we’re busy suffering, we are all but bereft of healthy detachment. We’re then removed from the naked reality of our pain — our attention being more on our storyline than on the nonconceptual rawness of our pain — but not removed in a way that permits us to focus more clearly on what is actually going on.
As such, suffering is unhealthy separation from our pain. Suffering is pain that’s gone to mind, pain that’s doing time in mental cells, mental hells.
The good news is that the more intimate we are with our pain, the less we suffer.
To work effectively with our suffering, we need both to stand apart from its script and to cease distancing ourselves from our pain.
Suffering may seem to keep us near to our pain, but it actually keeps us from getting as close to our pain as we need to, if we are live a more liberated life.
Suffering houses pain, but keeps it in the dark.
When we turn on the lights, the dramatics of suffering become transparent. Then the uncensored reality of our pain gets our full attention, particularly at the level where it is but unpleasant sensation. Then we can enter our pain with care, clarity, and precision, getting to know it from the inside — its fluxing weave and interplay of shape, color, texture, intensity, pressure, location, layering, and so on.
Often when we say that we’re in pain, we’re not really in our pain, but rather are only closer to it than we’d like. But in fact, we’re still outside it.
It is in the conscious and compassionate entry into our pain that we begin to find some real freedom from it. Our hurt may remain, but our relationship to it will have changed to the point where it’s no longer such a problem to us, and in fact may even become a doorway into What-Really-Matters.
The healing of pain is found in pain itself.
As we become more intimate with our pain, we find that we are less and less troubled by it. Suffering is, among other things, a refusal to develop any intimacy with our pain. In fact, suffering only jails our pain.
But the cage door is open, already open, as we’ll see if we just turn around, away from the screens upon which our suffering projects its stories. Then we begin to awaken, to exit from our entrapping dreams. Awareness upstages suffering, dissolving its grip on us, taking us to the heart, the core, the epicenter, of our pain.
And there, in that place of hurt, we meet not more hurt, but more us. More healing, more peace, more welcome.
May we all free ourselves from suffering.
B. integralschism/Bryan asks:
Are the Men's Group workshops all being held in Vancouver? Do you plan to do anything in the Bay Area (aka the best place on earth)?
Robert answers:
Yes, the Men’s Group workshops are all being held in the Vancouver area. And the Bay area? I’ve no plans to do such groups there, but would be open to doing so if there was enough of a demand for it.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
(The first question is taken from the acceptance of what is thread.)
A. jimtzu asks:
as some of you may know through various posts this last year i have a friend whose husband has progressive MS, which is a steady decline resulting in loss of functions and inevitably death. the external symptoms are being treated (not always satisfactorily by the medical industrial complex) as best they know how at this point.
the reason i'm posting this is to get some ideas and insight on how he can deal with the internal (psychological and spiritual) aspects of coming to terms with his disease and the acceptance of where he is at this moment.
perhaps some wisdom of a personal nature or some sources and/or examples from the psychological/spiritual fields.
not only does he deal with pain and the side effects of medications, he is struggling with accepting his condition and the different role it has put him in... the loss of his manhood (virility, no longer being the bread winner, not being able to take care of his children, etc) and his "human hood" ( feeling helpless, worthless etc)
finding a way for him (or anybody) to accept his disease and where he is now and the possible future will do wonders for his psychological health and those around him. and a good lesson for us all....
any ideas?
Robert answers:
A difficult, very challenging situation, asking for an opening of heart and self that is far from easy...Though I don’t know much about MS, I do have a twofold response that I hope will be of some use: First of all, considering what might be done to make his psychosocial/spiritual environment a more healing setting; and second, considering what he might do to take better care of himself.
I think it’s crucial that those around your friend’s husband see and feel him as more than just a man with progressive MS. This means not getting caught up in the drama of his situation, without in any way distancing themselves from his pain, so that they are not obstructing their capacity to connect with him. Also, if they have not developed some intimacy with their own deep pain, they will not be able to respond very well to his; they may feel bad for him, they may feel upset about his condition, but they will not be able to meet him the way he really needs to be met.
Those around him need to recognize that his situation, his condition, is asking not only for a being-centered response from him, but also from them. Such recognition -- which is far more than just an intellectual undertaking -- would shift the scene from that of an ill person surrounded by those who are, for the moment, less ill, to that of a group of kindred beings all together facing a painful situation with awakened compassion and a shared commitment to making the best possible use of that situation.
And what can your friend’s husband do to take better care of himself? First of all, clearly differentiate between cure and healing (Stephen Levine’s book Healing Into Life and Death clarifies this difference in a very real and readable way); cure is all about fixing things, whereas healing concerns in-the-flesh integration and making whole what was previously fragmented. Whatever in your friend’s husband lies unresolved, stuck, ostracized, or otherwise disowned needs to be allowed to surface, so that it can be directly worked with (as through skillful, bodywork-including, emotionally literate psychotherapy) and integrated.
Emotional release work, however light, will more than likely be necessary; this may be messy at first, but the expressive, contextually sensitive emergence of previously contracted emotionality will speed his return to a more being-centered selfhood. My guess is that before this can happen, he’ll need to recognize his shame (over his emasculation, loss of functionality, and so on) for what it is, or it will likely mutate into guilt and the kind of depressiveness that keeps a heavy lid on emotional openness. (I’ve seen many men who could only access their fully feeling self when their shame was allowed to show up as itself and flush through their system.) If he is open to doing some emotionally expressive, in-depth psychotherapy (which can be as subtle as it’s cathartic), I’d also have him learn some basic meditative practices at roughly the same time. He’d likely find these easier as he opened more.
Instead of judging himself, he would become more aware of the very process of self-judging, without judging himself for judging. Along the way, he could be taught to deepen his compassion for himself and his situation (and for all those in a similar circumstance). All of this makes possible a true acceptance of his situation, not a resigned or submissive acceptance, but a dynamic acceptance, an opening to the deepest dimensions of Life. Dying to live.
Learning to bear the unbearable is a journey that, however hellish its terrain, can break open our heart enough to allow us to embrace what really matters. May your friend’s husband choose and complete that passage, and may he be supported as much as possible in doing so.
Some suggested reading for him (which could also be read to him):
Tuesdays With Morrie (Mitch Albom)
A Year To Live (Stephen Levine)
One more thing: The more clearly suffering and pain are differentiated, the better...
Suffering Versus Pain
If you want to end your suffering, enter your pain.
Though pain and suffering are often thought of as being much the same, they differ greatly from each other.
Pain is fundamentally just unpleasant sensation. Suffering, on the other hand, is something we are doing with our pain.
Pain comes, often inescapably so, with Life. It often also is, especially in its alerting (and awakening) capacity, necessary. Suffering, however, is far less necessary than we might think and is, in fact, a choice.
When we cannot sufficiently distract or distance ourselves from our pain, we generally turn it into suffering. How? By dramatizing our pain. We make an unpleasantly gripping story out of it, a tale in which our hurt “I” all but automatically assumes the throne of self. I hurt, therefore I am — this is suffering’s core credo.
In so doing, we are simply identifying with our pain, overpersonalizing it.
Where pain is consciously felt hurt, suffering is the manipulation of that hurt into drama, a drama in which we’re likely so busy acting out —and being literally occupied by — our hurt role that we’ve little or no motivation to stand apart from it.
In the myopic theatrics of suffering, pain itself mostly just stagnates, like an unwanted exhibit in an art gallery. It is not really seen, not really touched. We may feel close to our pain when we are busy suffering, but it is not the kind of closeness that heals. It is, in fact, an unwelcome proximity, through which we generally just reinforce our suffering, if only because of our sheer desperation to be elsewhere.
The degree to which we turn our pain into suffering is the degree to which we obstruct our own healing.
When we’re busy suffering, we are all but bereft of healthy detachment. We’re then removed from the naked reality of our pain — our attention being more on our storyline than on the nonconceptual rawness of our pain — but not removed in a way that permits us to focus more clearly on what is actually going on.
As such, suffering is unhealthy separation from our pain. Suffering is pain that’s gone to mind, pain that’s doing time in mental cells, mental hells.
The good news is that the more intimate we are with our pain, the less we suffer.
To work effectively with our suffering, we need both to stand apart from its script and to cease distancing ourselves from our pain.
Suffering may seem to keep us near to our pain, but it actually keeps us from getting as close to our pain as we need to, if we are live a more liberated life.
Suffering houses pain, but keeps it in the dark.
When we turn on the lights, the dramatics of suffering become transparent. Then the uncensored reality of our pain gets our full attention, particularly at the level where it is but unpleasant sensation. Then we can enter our pain with care, clarity, and precision, getting to know it from the inside — its fluxing weave and interplay of shape, color, texture, intensity, pressure, location, layering, and so on.
Often when we say that we’re in pain, we’re not really in our pain, but rather are only closer to it than we’d like. But in fact, we’re still outside it.
It is in the conscious and compassionate entry into our pain that we begin to find some real freedom from it. Our hurt may remain, but our relationship to it will have changed to the point where it’s no longer such a problem to us, and in fact may even become a doorway into What-Really-Matters.
The healing of pain is found in pain itself.
As we become more intimate with our pain, we find that we are less and less troubled by it. Suffering is, among other things, a refusal to develop any intimacy with our pain. In fact, suffering only jails our pain.
But the cage door is open, already open, as we’ll see if we just turn around, away from the screens upon which our suffering projects its stories. Then we begin to awaken, to exit from our entrapping dreams. Awareness upstages suffering, dissolving its grip on us, taking us to the heart, the core, the epicenter, of our pain.
And there, in that place of hurt, we meet not more hurt, but more us. More healing, more peace, more welcome.
May we all free ourselves from suffering.
B. integralschism/Bryan asks:
Are the Men's Group workshops all being held in Vancouver? Do you plan to do anything in the Bay Area (aka the best place on earth)?
Robert answers:
Yes, the Men’s Group workshops are all being held in the Vancouver area. And the Bay area? I’ve no plans to do such groups there, but would be open to doing so if there was enough of a demand for it.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
posted by adastra at 6:47 AM
