Do you have chronic pain?
I’ve gone through various phases with it.
During childhood, I had daily migraines.
(Turns out that’s because I have PTSD from early childhood trauma!)
I’ve had some pretty deep healing phases, including an 18 month ACL replacement that took two surgeries to figure out.
I don’t know if I know what your pain is like, but here’s what my pain was like:
Exhausting
Sharp
Aching
Distracting
Isolating
This meditation is not going to cure your chronic pain.
But it will change your relationship to it.
Pain is a message, not a punishment.
Pain is your nervous system telling your brain, “Something’s off. We need to do something different.”
In your wisdom, you get to decide what that something different is.
Maybe it’s paying the close attention to the pain that seems unbearable, that we will do anything to escape.
Give it a try.
Let me know how it goes.
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Do you have chronic pain?
I’ve gone through various phases with it.
During childhood, I had daily migraines.
(Turns out that’s because I have PTSD from early childhood trauma!)
I’ve had some pretty deep healing phases, including an 18 month ACL replacement that took two surgeries to figure out.
I don’t know if I know what your pain is like, but here’s what my pain was like:
Exhausting
Sharp
Aching
Distracting
Isolating
This meditation is not going to cure your chronic pain.
But it will change your relationship to it.
Pain is a message, not a punishment.
Pain is your nervous system telling your brain, “Something’s off. We need to do something different.”
In your wisdom, you get to decide what that something different is.
Maybe it’s paying the close attention to the pain that seems unbearable, that we will do anything to escape.
Give it a try.
Let me know how it goes.
Asteya means non-stealing. Basically, we’re all kleptomaniacs.
“Stealing is to take or use other people’s property without their permission, which includes sneaking phone calls at work; dirtying up the city that we all pay for with our taxes; or ruining the earth for the coming generations.”
— The Essential Yoga Sutra: Ancient Wisdom for Your Yoga by Geshe Michael Roach, Lama Christie McNally
Wanting what you don’t have, the desire of which will lead to stealing, is rooted in attachment.
You define yourself by what you perceive to own.
But you don’t own anything.
The clothes, the car, the home you’ve purchased with money: you don’t own any of them any more than you would own the clothes, the car, the home in a video game. You’re just borrowing them for your ultimate purpose.
I remodeled my bathroom last year. I knew it would be an expensive project that would take way longer to finish that I could imagine. Still, I suffered greatly.
After a mighty whinge-fest, a friend told me, “You’re really defining yourself by your home.”
It hit me hard, the reason I was having such a difficult time, the reason I was suffering so hard: it wasn’t because of the bureaucratic nightmare caused by my HOA or the stress of couchsurfing for three months.
It was because I thought I needed my home to be myself.
I don’t need it.
I want it.
Life feels safer with it.
But I know that I am myself with or without that home.
That’s when I knew I had to move.
I was scared to move. I still am. But I’m doing it anyway.
I was super attached to the idea of a homeowner, of having my own space.
I was stealing from myself.
I was stealing the joy the next journey would bring me.
I was robbing myself of the gratitude for all the sweet memories and friends I made living in that home.
What really clinched it for me was, I was stealing from someone else the opportunity to live in a sacred home with kind neighbors.
We steal from each other all day long.
It’s painful, when you realize how much energy it takes to take what you don’t need from someone who does need it.
It makes life harder.
Here’s how to make life softer.
Splendid Yoga
Do you have chronic pain?
I’ve gone through various phases with it.
During childhood, I had daily migraines.
(Turns out that’s because I have PTSD from early childhood trauma!)
I’ve had some pretty deep healing phases, including an 18 month ACL replacement that took two surgeries to figure out.
I don’t know if I know what your pain is like, but here’s what my pain was like:
Exhausting
Sharp
Aching
Distracting
Isolating
This meditation is not going to cure your chronic pain.
But it will change your relationship to it.
Pain is a message, not a punishment.
Pain is your nervous system telling your brain, “Something’s off. We need to do something different.”
In your wisdom, you get to decide what that something different is.
Maybe it’s paying the close attention to the pain that seems unbearable, that we will do anything to escape.
Give it a try.
Let me know how it goes.
