People free of suffering

[JustBe]

Originally Posted by Gem

TBH, my family upbringing wasn't great and it gradually got worse and worse over time, https://www.youtube.com/shorts/BzkMvhmP0Pk.

Your early life was very traumatic and difficult, hearing your story certainly makes me appreciate my life as my life was. I’m glad you found another life away from all that and things are now much better for you.

It can be extremely difficult to move on and past trauma embedded by our earliest memories, but if you can and do, change does bring respite.

The video looks interesting. I’ll save till I get back home. I’m currently on Lord Howe Island and data is limited here.

[JustBe]

You’re right about ‘sucking it up’ I did have to learn that it would in time, come from my centre, not through avoidance of not facing things truthfully in me. I think the inner guidance of ‘keep going’ keep moving through things, there is more, with the odd suck it up, was never not facing, but in fact dealing directly and truthfully even in the face of being told such things. I think the whole ‘man up’ ‘suck it up’ has infiltrated our feeling bodies in unhealthy ways, where as looking at your feeling body through the whole process of such things opens the door of self, through all feelings contained in such terms. I can suck it up now, because my centre is stronger than it was when told (more so modelled) to do such things as a child. ( my inner balance, and awareness allowing for this) The feelings contained through others avoidance, sending messages that certain ‘ feelings’ were not something to be acknowledged openly. Or even just the lack of tools to deal appropriately.

I’ve been around a lot men and woman who have sucked it up and neglected their bodies in unfavourable ways, causing more problems than necessary. Such is the way of many lives..

[Gem]

Originally Posted by JustBe

Hearing your story certainly makes me appreciate my life as my life was. It can be extremely difficult to move on and past trauma embedded by our earliest memories, but if you can and do, change does bring respite.

I'm thinking I went too far with that... but everything started off great and got worse over time, and then it started getting better again so it's OK. I really don't have any hard feelings, and there's no way of being a person who isn't their whole past, so I turned out like this with life issues you'd expect along with good character, but since I'm not deeply attached to the mental formation of my personality I don't feel like something needs to be other than it is and am generally OK with the way I am, but change is inevitable and I keep changing anyway, so the skill for me is being OK with what is happening, what has happened and what will happen in the future.

[JustBe]

Originally Posted by Gem

I'm thinking I went too far .

I understand where you’re at within the whole context of your post and openness of that sharing.

As you show and I’m sort of showing, we grow and change through our past, develop new strengths from hardships and struggles, build resilience in ways pain and suffering can’t entirely see and feel.

I think seeing your story and where you’ve reached now, how things are for you, would inspire others reading, who can’t see light in their own suffering.

[Gem]

Just to relate it back to freedom from suffering, which in Buddhism is the third and fourth Noble Truths, how can you be the neutral observer without becoming overwhelmed? How can you be the person you are now without desire for becoming anything else? How can you NOT be the person that you are given the truth as it is in this moment?

Isn't it true that your actual existence is not any self you remember from the past and not any self you imagine you'll be later on, but the self that is you now, just the way you are?

To me this implies two different things. One is 'already this' just as it is, and the other is a process of purification that is continuous over time. I don't know if liberation is 'you as you are now' or a progressive state that eventuates in complete purity, but meditation mainly pertains to purification or the removal of blocks and obstacles throughout the body and mind.

If you think it will be pleasant and not uncomfortable, that's unrealistic. No one ever lived a life that is always pleasant without any discomfort. Realistically, everything is a sensation that lasts for a little while and changes into something else, and cultivating the ability to stay still whilst everything is passing is pretty much the key to whole thing - but because of the tendency to be affected with craving and aversions, the impulse to resist and avoid and cling and grasp is 'normal' - and that habit is worth breaking.

That concept is very subtle because it sounds like you become stoic and inanimate, like become numb to what's going on mentally, emotionally and physically, but on the contrary, one practices to become more sensitive with honed and acute perception, and the greatest likelihood is, the hardship that comes from the ability to remain still is going to be greater than whatever you have faced in the past because with a better ability,you can now face the things you avoided facing. Despite the popular impressions created about meditation, it's actually very arduous - and as you get more established in stillness, you become capable of enduring greater extremes of pleasure/pain and keep being pushed to where limitations are tested.

If you resolve to sit upright and still and observe your breathing say for 45 minutes to an hour or so, you will notice some discomfort setting in and be impelled by your aversions to shift around to avoid that discomfort and get comfortable, which is all good, but you'll notice it takes some determination to stay still.

When you 'just watch' and simply feel yourself breathing, without adding anything else to that, you 'become the observer' who does nothing except pay attention to what is real (as you experience it). You look to see what is true in your experience and cease to try to make that experience 'as you want it to be'. Because you ceased to exert such will, habitual reactive volitions such as resistance, avoidance and grasping also cease. The activity of repression stops and that which is caught up inside starts coming loose and surfacing in conscious awareness where it can now be free to pass, never to arise again.

Since the habitual tendency is strong and you have never just stopped before, your ability for neutral equanimity will be shaky. You will notice when discomfort happens that you become disturbed with aversion and feel impelled to 'do something about it'. That is the avoidance which incites the will to take over 'what is' and make it 'as I want it to be'. When this occurs you realise, this aversion is how I generate my own unnecessary suffering, and this is what I tend to do.

It's not to be judged or fought or acted upon. It's just a simple fact you let be and give no importance to, but because you are aware, you don't have to be compelled by it like you always have been before, and instead, just remain still and continue to observe what your breathing feels like.

[Maisy]

Originally Posted by Gem

and there's no way of being a person who isn't their whole past,

I think that's true. I tend to think of the "person" as the ego. I think there's a way to not identify with ones content and past and in that way, perceive and experience and be for moments free of that "person."

I have a close relative I had some big conflicts with in the past. So a long time ago we stopping talking. The other day another relative said this person contacted them and they asked me if I wanted to see a current picture of them. One amazing thing to me is I literally had not thought about them for years. It's not that I "forgot" who they are. But since I had never thought of them, it was like they didn't exist as far as my reality was during the time they never entered my thoughts.

Any "memory" can be stored in our brains. The amazing thing is if we never access these memories consciously, it's like they don't exist. They are no longer a part of our daily life. One can expand this idea and see it must be possible to be completely free from our past and the identity we have built from it. To be right here and right now completely brand new. It's just a matter of not having our attention be on such things. But then I think most people do not know how to consciously direct their attention nor know it is possible. I know it is possible and do it in some degree, but I often fall back into "past content." It seems to be hard to sustain it completely for long periods. I think it takes a certain "energy" which we don't always have or that can be dissipated in other ways.

[Gem]

I don't think of a person as an ego, and I use 'ego' to generally mean the false sense of self, but 'the way you turned out' isn't false and it doesn't pertain to an 'ego' that is this way. Ego is more about judging and being adverse and craving something other. Understanding 'what led to this' is 'just how it is'. No one is free of the past in the sense that your life-path forms your personality. Freedom is being that way without strong attachments to the 'the way you are'. Of course if one hasn't come to peace with their past they're still bound to it in an egotistical sense, and healing and purification is the way forward.

The big idea of mindfulness is 'this is as it is', but people can feel 'incomplete', carry a burden, be blocked up, be overwhelmed etc. If you have that sort of thing, that's how you are, and doesn't have to be other than it is. It's just that if your acceptance is as such, change can happen without anyone getting in the way, and seeing the truth with complete neutrality is transformative in itself.

Discerning is a neutral form of judgment, like you realise, "When I do this I generate my own suffering. I don't have to do this". After that realisation you keep doing it because it's an ingrained tendency, but you're aware, it no longer happens unconsciously and blaming external circumstances no longer makes sense. You can be like, "I see you trying to do that thing again," and it can't become you unless you are distracted.

Meditation is realising you are distracted aka waking up to what's real. Because people are always distracted, but it's normal so they don't know how distracted they are, start with breath awareness meditation and you'll find out, and be surprised, how often you drift away, and for how long you remained away from the actuality of your real lived experience. Then you know, I'm not even present for my own life!

[JustBe]

https://m.youtube.com/shorts/BzkMvhmP0Pk

@gem

I found this just now. It fits your video..

The highest form of intimacy is truth-Lorin Krenn