Conscious suffering: my recent experience with authentic acceptance
I wanted to share something that happened recently. One day, I realized I had forgotten to do something important, and it needed to be done. I didn’t know how to solve this problem, and I started getting very anxious. Thoughts began flooding in, various scenarios unfolded in my mind, and my body felt itchy and ready for fight or flight. I couldn’t focus on anything else but the problem.
Having a decent amount of experience with anxiety, I knew I needed to let that feeling be, so I started applying the principles I learned from my insomnia recovery process.
But the feeling remained sticky. It bothered me that I couldn’t find peace with the current situation or become comfortable with the uncertainty.
This sticky feeling lingered with me throughout the weekend and continued into the next week. I was not only concerned with the problem but also preoccupied with “working” on how I felt about it.
While walking in the park the other day, I kept trying to find peace and acceptance, looking into my fears to understand what I was truly afraid of, all while that nagging feeling persisted.
Running out of patience, I asked myself, “What do you really want?” (sometimes I talk to myself in a second person) and internally, the answer surfaced: “I want to freak out. I want to suffer. I don’t want peace right now.”
That was my aha moment. All this time I thought that I wanted overarching peace, but it appeared that I didn’t! It didn’t want to “work” through my emotions and find ease. My being craved suffering in that moment, so why was I standing in the way of it? Why couldn’t I just let myself suffer if that’s what I truly wanted?
So, I decided: if I want to suffer, I’m going to do it consciously! I didn’t need to pretend like I wanted peace. I was really upset about that situation. And I decided that I’m gonna do it for as long as I want.
On my way home from the park, I let my worry go wild. It wasn’t visible to the outside world, but internally, there was a storm of thoughts, feelings, and sensations in my stomach. But zero resistance or agenda this time.
Interestingly, even before that aha moment, I was allowing my feelings to be, but if I’m being perfectly honest, I had a hidden agenda. It was hard to see. But when I stopped fooling myself and admitted that I wanted to feel anxious, the pressure lifted, and pure, conscious suffering began to unfold. By the time I got home, 80% of that suffering was gone – it simply didn’t last long and kept fading away later on. How weird is that!
When suffering was my intention, an act of free will, it felt strangely liberating. It was uncomfortable on the surface but felt right on a deeper level. It’s hard to explain. A thought came to me: “Maybe I was feeling anxious because I believed, or knew, that I had to be anxious in that moment.” In a sense it was my desire to feel that way and not the other and I chose to honor it.
When my – unobstructed – drive for suffering started to run out, peace as an option became more apparent and more available. It felt like I could finally choose: to keep suffering or do something else – but both options felt totally valid and allowed.
I’m not sure what the bottom line exactly is here and whether it made sense to anyone else except me, but it’s great to be able to learn about the depths of acceptance even from some of the most unpleasant situations.
Wishing you a great day!
Ali