SUNDAY 24 OCTOBER 2021 – BEING OK WITH BEING UNCOMFORTABLE

Hello, everyone, good morning. Please let me know if you can hear me okay, give me a thumbs-up, good. Nice to see so many familiar faces and new faces as well. I’m really glad to be back doing these sessions. I think it’s been four weeks now actually because of the different retreats we’ve been doing since we were last here so yeah, I’m really delighted that we are back doing these classes. 

We’ll follow the same format as always. If you’re not familiar, we first do a guided meditation then I’ll share a topic for the week and we’ll go into open group discussion so please find a comfortable posture. For this one, you’re welcome to be either seated or lying down in the savasana. The main thing is that your back’s straight in whichever posture you choose and that you’re comfortable as well so don’t be afraid to use a wall for support for your back, get cushions under your knees, whatever you need to do to just be comfortable. You’re also welcome, if you want to, to turn your camera off for the meditation. 

(Bell rings)

We can begin our meditation by allowing our awareness to descend into the body, first of all right down to the ground, where we’re in contact with the cushion, the chair, the floor, right down to these tactile sensations of firmness and solidity. It’s what we call the earth element. As we settle here just noticing that contact with the ground, we can take a few slow deep breaths, relaxing on the exhale, releasing any worries or concerns of the week. You can let your breathing return to natural. Like turning a light on in a dark room, let your awareness fill the entire space of the body, from the soles of the feet to the top of the head. This is not a matter of visualising the body or thinking about anything we find but simply witnessing whatever tactile sensations you find within the space of the body. As you do attend to the body, set the body at ease, relaxing any areas that feel tight or tense, especially in the shoulders, the lower back. Allow the shoulders to drop and check on the face as well, see that you’re not tight round the eyebrows or the forehead. That’s all open and relaxed. Likewise, moving down the face, checking that you’re not tightening your jaw. Just give yourself full permission to ease into this posture. Give your body the gift of stillness, setting an intention to remain as still as possible for this meditation. That will help maintain the continuity of your attention. 

Then allowing the breath to flow in and out, without constriction, without effort and allowing yourself to relax more and more with every out-breath. Also with the out-breath, release any thoughts that are bubbling around in the mind, allowing them to dissolve back into the mind. As you relax with the exhale and release any thoughts with the exhale, see if at the end of that out-breath, if your conceptual mind can be quiet, even just briefly. Give yourself permission to let go of any concerns or worries for now. Let the past remain in the past and let the future remain unknown and come to rest right here, in the only moment you can ever experience, mindfully aware of the space of the body from moment to moment. While we rest here in stillness attending to the space of the body, you’ll notice that that gentle rhythm of the breathing just rises up to meet you. There’s no need to go looking for it, no need to let your awareness wander around. By just resting here in stillness, you notice the various movements in the body, that gentle ebb and flow. 

Just for a moment, while paying attention to the whole body and the various sensations in the whole body, what do you notice changes every time you breathe in? With the in-breath you can let yourself sit a little bit taller, if that feels comfortable. Then start noticing what changes every time you breathe out. What do you notice in the body on the exhalation? You might allow your body to soften a little bit with the exhalation. For the remainder of this meditation, just allow your awareness to be consumed by this gentle rise and fall, these changes in the body as you breathe in and breathe out. There’s nothing to do right now, nowhere to go, nothing to organise. Just like watching waves on the shore, you can rest here watching that rhythmic ebb and flow of the body. If you notice that you’ve been caught, lost in wandering, it’s ok, we don’t need to become frustrated. Distraction, anxiety, restlessness, it’s all a sign of excitation. The antidote to that is to relax more. So when you notice you get caught up in rumination, invite yourself to relax just that little bit more. Release that thought and bring yourself back. If you notice that your focus is a little bit dull, you’re becoming a little bit sleepy, then perhaps we’ve become too lax so we need to bring more effort, refresh our interest, pay closer attention. 

If it’s helpful for you to help maintain continuity, you can introduce counting the breaths. So very succinctly, very quickly, at the end of inhalation, so at the end of the in-breath, just count 1. At the end of the next inhalation, you count 2. So you count one whole cycle of inhalation and exhalation and as best you can, allow any other distractions to dissolve. And you can count 1 to 7, 1 to 7. An alternative with the counting is to count 1 on the in-breath, 1 on the out-breath, 2 on the in-breath, 2 on the out-breath and continue like that. You can try and set yourself a challenge. Can I remain focussed for just one inhalation and one exhalation? If you can do one, you can do two. 

Just before we finish our meditation, take a moment to bring gratitude to the mind, feeling grateful for this gift of quiet stillness, grateful for this day, for the relationships we cherish, for the things we can enjoy and for the gift that is this body itself with the breath flowing, the heart beating. Then you can relax your concentration and bring your meditation to a close. 

(Bell rings)

Feel free to bring your camera back on, if you’re able to. So the topic that I wanted to share or talk about this morning is a theme that came up regularly during these retreats that we just did and it was this theme of being okay with being uncomfortable or being comfortable with being uncomfortable. I think it’s an important thing for us to contemplate, especially for those of us who meditate, for those of us who like to work on the mind or consider ourselves to be spiritual or Buddhist or whatever, you know. We’re all here, right, doing something to work on our mind, to ease our stresses and sometimes along that journey, we can start to hold ourselves to a higher standard, you know, because we’ve learned some tools that help us with our mental distress, we’ve learned that the true causes of mental unhappiness and mental happiness are actually internal, that external things are triggers but it’s more about how we react. And then we can start to make ourselves feel bad for still experiencing sadness sometimes or worry instead of just feeling it, instead of allowing the emotion to be or allowing that uncomfortable experience to happen, you know, instead of just being present with it, facing it. So instead we sort of, we seem to grasp onto it, don’t we, and really immerse our whole being into, you know, ‘I am sad and I don’t know why and I shouldn’t be and maybe I should go meditate, maybe I should go do this or do that’ but we feel like we can’t so we, you know, we just feel a little bit stuck in and immersed in that emotion but that is part of the cyclic existence, isn’t it? It’s part of being human. Life is filled with pleasure and pain, enjoyment and dissatisfaction, delight and difficulty. It’s, it’s, you know, it comes and it goes and naturally we’re uncomfortable with discomfort, of course, so we run away from uncertainty and change and we run away from our own unhappy feelings.

But this is all part of what the Buddha was teaching us, that in this world, you can’t run away from change, everything is in a constant state of flux. Skin changes, the earth changes, the seasons, our possessions, people change, change is everywhere, moment to moment basis. So I think one of the first is to accept that, you know, and accept that at times uncertainty and discomfort is the reality of the present moment and instead of blaming ourselves for having that experience, you know, blaming ourselves for feeling unhappy sometimes, wanting it to be different, thinking, you know, ‘I should be better, I shouldn’t feel like this,’ sometimes we just need to get comfortable with it, get comfortable with being uncomfortable. If we look at acceptance, this mind, it’s this wholeheartedly welcoming each moment, having given up the idea that it’s going to be or that it should be other than what it is. So if it’s good, enjoy it, of course, why not? Be with the present experience, enjoy whatever connection you have, whatever joy you’re experiencing. Be in it. Enjoy it but don’t sort of grasp onto it, hoping, you know, it won’t, that’s it’s going to change, worried that it’s going to change or it’s going to go but just enjoy it and if it’s bad, also don’t grasp onto it, wishing that it should be different, just welcome it wholeheartedly, ‘ok, this is my present moment experience,’ as the present moment is the only one we ever have, isn’t it? 

So instead we can feel into it, observe the emotion, observe any physical sensations, observe the discomfort, observe the discomfort with being uncomfortable. Make friends with it because actually, it’s ok to be uncomfortable. We think it’ll be unbearable, we think that we can’t cope with it but we survive, don’t we? We’re here now, we’ve gotten through every uncomfortable moment we’ve ever experienced, every sad feeling we’ve had and we start to recognise that these things are fleeting, they are changing and this too shall pass. So we have within us that capacity to get through anything that life throws at us. So these are my thoughts. It’s just came up again and again in this retreat, people experiencing some sort of unhappiness or discomfort and beating themselves up for it, whether in daily life or with, we, during the second retreat, we did silent mornings and silent mornings are very interesting because you can see people’s sort of discomfort with being quiet so it’s just, sort of, getting used to it, getting to know ourselves, getting to be ok with being uncomfortable, giving ourselves permission to feel uncomfortable. It’s ok and if you don’t have, if you don’t yet have the strength to transform that situation or to meditate and help yourself, that’s okay. It’s not another stick to beat ourselves with. Also, another comment is don’t let another person, don’t let someone else say to you, ‘well, I thought you were supposed to be all zen?’ Or ‘I thought you were supposed to be a Buddhist?’ Or ‘I thought you went to that retreat to learn how to not be stressed?’ You know? Don’t let anybody else beat you with that stick either, even if it’s just a passing comment. 

Transcript by: Laura Maisey