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This Monday, June 14, Andy will facilitate.
Last week I was moved by the dharma sharing provided by our guest Barbara Newell. It led me to thinking of similar moments in our lives when a low point is reached and we feel in some way empty with nothing more to give.
This could have to do with a relationship, a job, or some other life situation. I am very grateful that I have not found myself in such situations very often and when I have, I have had the resources and support to make it through. In almost all cases, the calamitous scenarios I had running through my head never came to pass. If something bad did occur, I was able to get through it, and it was less bad than I had imagined.
Before I moved to the US, I did some work with an academic whose work focused on trying to value different states of health. For example, is it more difficult to live with a chronic condition such as diabetes or to suffer from an acute illness? Is it harder to be blind than to be unable to walk?
It was fascinating research. The method they used to gather this data was to ask people to imagine these different health states and how bad they might feel. The researchers then independently went and spoke to people living with such conditions and asked them about their lives, including how happy they were and how hard it was to live with their condition.
I remember this included a broad range of people who had everything from congenital blindness to paraplegia. In almost all cases, the thought of living with such a condition was rated worse than the reality of living with the condition. It seems that the anxiety people have about something happening may create more suffering than the actual event itself. Typically, researchers found that those living with conditions impacting their physical health had a serious impact on their personal happiness and wellbeing which was recovered after a period of adjustment.
The one area where this was not the case was mental health. Mental health was found to be much harder to adapt to than physical conditions because it attracts so much of our attention from moment to moment.
There are many ways in which we may find support to tackle periods in our lives when we are facing personal challenges. For me, my own meditation practice pulls me down out of my head and back into my body. When my mind does float off again, it almost always goes into the future. It seems to be attracted like a bee to honey around things which might happen, could happen and would be anxiety inducing.
"In the practice of Buddhism, we see that all mental formations - such as compassion, love, fear, sorrow, and despair - are organic in nature. We don't need to be afraid of them, because transformation is possible. Just by having this deep insight into the organic nature of mental formations, you become a lot more solid, a lot calmer and more peaceful. With just a smile, and mindful breathing you can start to transform them."
— From Thich Nhat Hanh, Your True Home
On Monday, I thought it might be interesting to share how our practice can help us manage our anxieties and how it can help us better manage our own happiness and wellbeing.
- Andy