On the Darkness, and Suffering

Left hand, right hand... wtf is he talking about?

Hey. It's been a while. (again).

I've traveled across the great realms of duality in my mind over the last several months (scratch that… nearly 40 years). For a while there, I was plummeting into the familiar depths of depression and self-loathing. Anytime I tried to write, all the details of that realm and mindset burst out of me like Grandma's diarrhea after she ate exclusively from the spicy table at the carnival chili cook-off.

I opted to post some short Buddhist poetry instead.

Then for a while, I seemed to come out of it and everything was fine again. I felt great, alive, at peace, and was enjoying life. I wanted to start writing again, but, the darkness transported me back to the deep, dark, endless realms of nothingness and hopelessness that I've existed in for the majority of my life. I call it home.

But thinking on it more, instead of shunning that space, I think I need to try to work from it, in whatever way I can. I didn’t necessarily want this little writing space to become a beacon for that kind of writing. But, as I think on it, there’s value in it - value for myself, and potentially for others, too. So in the future, I think I’ll use this space to write more like a personal journal, no matter how deep and dark and weird.

In truth, I don't think the darkness ever leaves. I think it's always there. When I have those moments where I feel that I’m coming back alive again, it's not that it leaves me. Maybe it just goes to the other side of the room and watches from there, with a shitty little smirk on it's face, keeping some distance, but never losing sight of me. But then out of nowhere, at any random point, even in the middle of a joyous moment, in the middle of me laughing, it will walk over and tap me on the shoulder to remind me that the two of us - the faceless and me - we are one, and always will be.

We're old friends, the darkness and me. We have been for a very long time. And I dare say that we'll be friends for life. For a lot of years I worked to get away from it, to remove it from my life, making it seem like this great battle, something I had to fight against. But a few years ago I decided to stop running, and invite it to sit with me, have some tea, and talk. I sat with my demons, so to speak. Everything changed after that. I've since become an advocate of the darkness and the beauty that it offers. It's a weird dichotomy, but it works.

Humans have lied to me, betrayed me, used me, manipulated me, cast me out, stolen my possessions and money, crawled into my soul and set fire to everything pure and beautiful and full of light. People have driven me to immense depths of severe anguish, destroying vast inner temples of joy, happiness, trust, normalcy, self-love, and stomped on the ashes of my soul.

The darkness has never once done anything like that.

It's never wished me harm. It's never lit my soul on fire. It's never caused horrific disasters. It hasn't interfered, really. It has only shown me truth. I believe that's what the darkness does, for all of us. It presents the greatest treasure we could ever know: the ultimate gift of real, raw, blunt truth, as it is, without any fluff or colorful sprinkles of illusions on top.

The darkness doesn't care if you like it or not. It just points and says, "Look, bitch, Truth." And when you really sit back and think about it, and get honest with yourself, you realize that the darkness is your greatest asset, your greatest friend, and it endlessly provides you with more light and love than you could ever imagine.

More on that later, maybe.

But here's the thing: our minds don't want to come face to face with truth. We avoid it at all costs and go to great lengths to protect and defend our many illusions. Oh, how we love our illusions. We don't want to be talked out of them, and we never want to give them up. And so, we suffer. And how it all comes to be is through something I call "the gap" or "the suffering space." (still working on the name part).

Should we sidetrack from my planned self-loathing and depressive writing to talk about the silly metaphor of suffering that I made up in my twenties as a young and dumb punk-rocker trying to figure shit out? Sure, why not.

Enter: The Gap/Suffering Space

Take your left hand, hold it up, and look at it. This represents how you think life should be. It's how you want everything to go, how you think other people should be, and overall, it's the way that you expect and prefer reality to be.

Now, hold your right hand up and look at it. This represents the way life is, as it is. No fluff. No bullshit. Just hardcore, blunt, raw, real, filter-free, reality, as-is.

On the left, the way you want things to be. On the right, the way things are. Pretty simple.

Now take both hands and slowly bring them closer together, like you are going to hold your own hand, or do a prayer pose, or give yourself a high-five, or whatever the hell. When your hands are closer together, you'll have less suffering. This means that your demands/expectations/preferences of reality, nearly align with the way that things really are. You don't have a separation. Meaning, reality/life/situations/conditions/other people are showing up and performing how you expect them to. This is the conditional state of mind that people call 'happiness'.

Side rant: happiness is completely unstable as it's based entirely on conditions of the mind projected towards reality. Simply put: when shit goes our way, we feel happy. When shit doesn't go our way, we feel unhappy. Everyone is chasing happiness, but the chasing is the greatest contributor towards our unhappiness. The other major problem is, that everyone assigns their self-worth towards the conditions of the mind and the ability to manifest and maintain those conditions in reality. Their worth is tied up in their success, acquisition of possessions, titles, people, levels of power and control, and the ability to continuously expand and increase those trophies. It's all subjective and entirely fluid. The real secret to happiness is through the abolishment of happiness all together, and welcoming in contentment. Contentment is when you create your own self-worth from within, realizing you are complete and have been all along, and are free of any attachment towards the situations and conditions of the mind, or reality. When shit hits the fan for people that are seeking traditional happiness, their life is uprooted and becomes miserable because their self-worth and identity is intertwined so tightly with the conditions of the mind and the external world. But someone that's found contentment can literally lose everything, and they'll shrug it off. Sure, they still have worldly situations and dramas to deal with, but it never affects their own inner peace and self-worth because it's not based on the fulfillment or conditions of the external world. Ok, side vent over.

Now, take your hands and slowly pull them apart from each other as though you are reaching out directly on both sides. On the left, how you think things are, or should be. On the right, the way things actually are. The metaphorical space between your hands is the space where suffering goes. This means that your demands/expectations/preferences of reality, are distant from how reality actually is.

The larger the gap, the more suffering. Not only that, the speed or intensity of the gap revealing itself can affect things too. In a split second, you can open your arms all the way and reach out as far as you can, putting max distance between your hands. This kind of event occurs when someone we love suddenly dies, or we're smacked with divorce papers out of nowhere, or we find out our partner was cheating, or you're suddenly fired from your dream job, or some similar shocking event. The right-hand might as well slap us across the face when we are least expecting it, because in truth, that's what it feels like is happening. Out of nowhere, all the dreams, expectations, and perceptions of how we thought life was, and how we wanted it to be, are instantly destroyed.

It's not only the speed of the gap's creation that rules all. The method of the gap's creation, the intensity of it, the process of it occurring, and the conditions for its immediate creation can be impactful too. For example, the situation/method/timing/conditions of the death process can change the experience of that gap. Your grandma slowly dying of old age verse your teenage daughter committing suicide without warning can offer different levels of intensities of that gap's surprise creation, which can create entirely different experiences.

Here's what makes life interesting and crazy. We don't always know where our metaphorical hands are. Sometimes it's hard to gauge where you are with things, and if you're aligned or not. Meaning, we could have no clue if we are existing in a gap. You don't know if that gap is slightly off, or miles off, or if you've been in one for a few days, or decades. Plus, a lot of our life depends on trust with other humans. Sadly though, anytime humans are involved in things, shit usually goes bad. We can trust someone with our life, but they can use that against us, even if unintentionally, and create vast disasters within our mental and emotional landscape.

You could think that everything is fine and dandy in life, enjoying day to day bliss and happiness, not realizing that your husband is secretly banging some red-headed stripper named Roxie Red Lipz, and he’s going into further debt from a gambling addiction, and has been spoon-feeding you lie after lie for years. Until one day, it all comes crashing down. And BAM! Instantly, you are kicked in the family jewels by life, and forced to realize that your assumptions and expectations with reality were way off. Your left hand was here, in front of you, all nice and pretty and perfect and full of joy and happiness with pancake breakfasts every Sunday. And you assumed that was your reality. You assumed your left and right hands were unified, and everything was great. But in truth, your right hand was off in some other realm entirely, living a whole other life, in a whole other reality, nowhere even close to what you thought life truly was.

That’s when we literally get slapped in the face with how life actually turns out to be. This can be at any moment, out of nowhere, and most often it will take us by surprise. The sudden jolt from this will instantly create a larger gap within us, and that space will flood with suffering of some kind, in some way, like when a dam breaks and all the water behind it comes rushing down the river, destroying everything in its path. This path of sudden destruction is called trauma. It takes a while to rebuild the villages that were destroyed, and usually, it's never the same as it was before. Not exactly, anyway.

It doesn’t have to be huge, dramatic examples, either. Maybe you studied hard for a test and had the expectation of passing and doing wonderful, only to find out you got a C and didn’t do so well. Oof. Doesn’t feel so good. Or maybe you were excited about a specific recipe and decided to make it for dinner, waiting all day to experience the flavors, only for it to be a total bust and not tasty at all. Such a waste of money and time and anticipation. Bummer. Pick whatever scenario you want on all ranges and spectrums. Our lives are full of them.

Kids are the easiest way to see this take shape. Little Jimmy wanted a Transformer toy for Christmas, but instead, you got him a water gun that you thought he'd love. Here comes Christmas morning, and BAM! All hell breaks loose. Little Fucktard Jimmy goes on an angry rampage for weeks, joins a gang of other pissed-off 6-year-olds, collects a few felonies, tags your house walls with sharpies, literally shits all over your new couches, starts an illegal casino/tattoo parlor in the treehouse, and makes your life a living hell. Little Jimmy's expectations were so set on getting what he wanted, but then reality hit, and the shock hits hard as he realizes things were way off.

Not only is his gap created at this time, but yours as well. Your expectations were that Little Jimmy was going to love his new toy and be happy having water fights with you. You thought he'd love it, maybe even rehearsing his loving, happy, excited reaction in your mind over and over. During the moment that he opens his present, both yours and his expectations were shattered. Surprise! Now no one is happy and everything sucks. He's raging through the house, and you're drinking bottle after bottle of scotch and haven't showered in a week. The cycle then starts over with setting new expectations for reality to appear how you want it to be, setting yourself up for the next round of disappointment. Therapists around the world hear the sound of cash being stuffed into their bank accounts as they are being put on retainer to help work through this endless back and forth.

Side note: anger is the emotion that we feel that makes us want to force reality to be what we expect it to be, and fast. It all stems from pain, but it’s actionized pain, saying “this better be fixed according to how I expect it to be, and it better be fixed now.” Anger isn’t always a negative thing, it’s just energy. It can be useful if used productively. Sometimes we think we need to shape reality differently, and that form of energy is helpful at times to boost our creativity and influence change, and fast. Everything is all in how it’s utilized. But sometimes our greatest attempts to shape and manipulate reality will never work.

Ok, back to the gap... expectation on one side, reality on the other. The greater the distance between the two, the potential for greater suffering. Bam! Now you get it. Good luck.

The other thing to note is that both sides can influence the other. The left hand can influence the right, and vise versa. Most of us are entirely focused on our left hands in life - the preferences, demands, illusions, and such - that we hope life is, or will be. But that’s not always a bad thing. That’s how we create change in our reality, to some degree. I just think that when we lose sight of reality, or abandon it all together, in favor of getting lost in our illusions, that’s when the darkness will tap us on our shoulder and say, “look over there... truth.” The worst thing we can do is to attach our self-worth towards the manifestation of these expectations. Sometimes our greatest attempts to shape and manipulate reality will never work. That doesn't mean we don't try. It just means we approach more cautiously, without holding on to expectations, or becoming attached to specific results as a foundation for our self-worth.

So, what do we do?

So how do we alleviate the suffering? How do we see the gap and know our position within it?

This is where meditation comes in. While I was studying Zen for a few years, I came across many teachings that said to accept reality, as is, at all times, as though you had chosen it yourself. Meaning, accept all the bullshit that happens as though you were the one preferring, and wanting it to happen. If you remove the expectation for reality to be anything other than what it is, in every moment, you remove the possibility of suffering, or at least lessen its potential.

Sure, makes sense. But is it really possible? Does that mean to expect your husband to cheat on you, or to expect your job to fire you? No, not necessarily. That's still an expectation. The trick is to not really set expectations in the first place. Or, if you do have them, to release the attachment you have to them, and to certainly release your self-worth and identity to the fulfillment of any expectations.

But can one really live their life that way? Well... yeah, I think so. If you want to understand this process in immense depth, read the ancient book, The Tao Te Ching. Read it over and over and over, for the rest of your life. I recommend the version translated by Stephen Mitchell, or Wayne Dyer (even though Wayne Dyer used a lot of the translation from Stephen Mitchell in his books). It's the ultimate handbook and guide towards allowing, accepting, flowing, seeing, being, and more. It applies to every area of life, not only with yourself and your own personal life, but in government, leadership roles, family, facing challenges, your impacts on the self, others, the environment, etc. It's such a small book, but so hugely impactful, and so essential. If there was only one book I could recommend, it would be that.

You can also read a verse a day by going here: DailyTao.org.

Using meditation, compassion, and self-love, you bring your left-hand closer to your right hand. And through loving acceptance and allowance, you can embrace reality and see it for what it is, and slowly lessen your reigns on the left hand that wants to pull away towards the illusions of safety that you spent years creating.

Through going inward you can see where you are, and come face to face with your expectations of others, life overall, and even yourself. Then you can see the gap between those, and reality as it is. It's not an easy process. Sometimes it takes a lot of courage and work.

But overall, don't overthink it. Sometimes shit just happens. Even when you do everything right, everything can go wrong. And that’s ok too. You don’t need to live in a state of anxiety or panic and stress about “the gap”, constantly trying to one-up the universe in an attempt to stay ahead of the endless flow of discontentment. When shit happens, you clean it up the best you can and move on. Simple. But also not so simple. I get it. But the non-simplicity of things is really your own creation. It's mostly a by-product of the human mind in response to problems that were created by the human mind. So really, the pain you experience is really your own creation. Sorry.

Sometimes it feels like the mess and dramas of life spread out everywhere, and the nasty smell can linger for a while, triggering your gag reflex. But, you can get through it. You can do hard things. And being human is the hardest thing of all. There’s no way to avoid the darkness and pain. And honestly, you need it. You need the darkness.

Get clear and accept the jolt of reality. Then, plan your next steps. Try your best to not simmer in the gap, sulking, playing the victim, pointing out the differences and the space between. That does no good at all. Recognize what happened, feel the burn, but then start your plan towards how you want to respond. You can't control what happens to you - not always. But you can control what you do next and what you make of it. You do this by controlling what you're focusing on and the meaning that you're assigning it, followed with the actions that you take in response to the meaning you assigned to what you're focusing on. That is how you shape your experiences, and ultimately, your life. Focus, Meaning, Action.

Don’t like the results you’re getting? Change what you’re focusing on, or the perspective you’re using. Change the meaning you’re assigning it. And then take different actions. Rinse and repeat if necessary.

Said in a different way that might piss you off: the bad things that happen might not be your fault, but they are your responsibility. Your husband being a dickhead and cheating on you may not be your fault, but it’s now your responsibility to respond and deal with. Yeah, not fair, I know. But it is what it is. Someone just smashed my girlfriend’s car window and stole her computer, phone, credit cards, ID’s, etc. Not her fault, but she had to deal with it. No one magically came out of the sky to take care of everything and make it easier or make it go away. It sucks, but you just have to move on. Avoiding taking action is just as dangerous as holding on to the illusions and not accepting reality. It’s keeping that gap wide open. You’ll feel every second of it. Yeah, it’s scary, and yeah it sucks. But you have to decide how you are taking action. Not taking action is also a decision though, and produces its own results.

Sometimes we desperately work to bring life back to the illusions, in an attempt to make them what they were again. Please, we beg, let’s go back to how things were before. Let's play house, and pretend our life is ok again and our relationship was fine. Please go back to being like the avatar I created of you in my mind. Be like how I expect you to be.

But it never will be that way again. This is tough for people to accept. Sometimes people will get stuck in an idle state between letting go of their illusions and expectations and jumping full into reality/truth. It’s too scary. It’s too overwhelming. Holding on to a small portion of the illusion seems like it’s easier and smarter and the right thing to do, but it’s only causing more pain. It's hard to let go of the illusions we invested years into developing and protecting. Instead, you need to realize the huge favor the darkness just did in shattering the illusions and bringing you back to reality.

Embrace reality, instead of trying to resurrect the illusions. One path will take you towards the light. One will push you away from it. Your feelings will be your guide as to which is which. And honestly, you know. You’ve always known. Sometimes we spend days, weeks, months and years trying to talk ourselves into one choice over the other, when we knew after 2 seconds what we wanted.

Your feelings are your guidance system - not a punishment or trap. Listen and utilize them as guides in your life. Think of them as warning lights and gauges going off in the control deck of your huge yacht of life. When a warning light goes off and says “hey, there’s something ahead that you’re going to run into”. You don’t just crumble down and pout and feel sorry for yourself because something came into your path that you didn't want. Put on your pirate hat, move your immense yacht left 5 fucking degrees and go around it.

Maybe you have speed warnings saying you’re going too fast. Maybe there are warnings for the weather. Maybe there’s a fuel gauge showing your energy status. Whatever. Figure it out for yourself. But pay attention. You can turn a huge boat around and go the complete opposite direction if needed, but it will take some time and effort to make that happen. Sometimes people start to turn their giant ship, but then quit halfway because of the effort involved, or because they believe the results aren't coming fast enough. Then they find themselves in some weird unknown territory, in a direction they never meant to be in the first place. You were going east, and now want to go west. But you gave up and called it quits when you were facing south, and now you're going to cruise in that direction. Blame life or others all you want, but it was you at the control panel making the decisions. Indecision is also a decision, and produces a result. Hesitation and ignorance are also choices, and produce results. You are the one that experiences all of it.

You don't want pain in your life? Sorry, not going to happen. Nor would you want it to happen, honestly. Because everything beautiful in your life is fueled by and supported by some level of pain.

Behind everything beautiful is some kind of pain.

After all, the storms come and go, so the beautiful flowers can grow.

Go within.

Give yourself love, and do your best.

Everything will be ok.