The Difference Between Pain and Suffering

Pain is sensation in the body at a particular time, brought on by physical injury or disease or by an emotional shock. Suffering, on the other hand, is spread over time and must be accompanied by some story or narrative about the pain. The story can  have infinite strands and arrangements—who caused the pain, why, when, how, the metaphysics of it—but the particulars of the story only serve as a distraction from, or resistance to, or indulgence of the pain itself.

Most people aren’t willing to give up their investment in mental and emotional suffering. When there is the willingness to stop the suffering, which means to stop the story about the pain, the pain can be experienced just as it is. What has been previously thought of as unbearable can be experienced with an open mind, because the mind is no longer closed around some idea about the experience. The mind is open. It has dropped all definitions. When pain is met with an open mind, then pain, like every phenomenon, reveals truth at its core.

Suffering is the mental, emotional, and physical contraction around pain, and the history, justification, blame, sentimentalizing, and dramatization of the pain. In the willingness to simply and directly experience any kind of pain, just for an instant, you will discover that the essence of pain is actually intelligence, clarity, joy, and peace—the same essence as bliss! The truth of yourself is revealed even in the midst of pain, and pain is revealed to be another vehicle for truth. In following the story of the pain, this vehicle is overlooked, and the potential gift of pain is wasted.

Let me emphasize that wishing to alleviate pain is natural and appropriate. Medications, the embrace of a loved one, communion with nature, the rhapsody of music and art, are all used to alleviate pain. None of these is a problem. The problem is that the choice of meeting the pain, of stopping the resistance to pain, goes unrecognized.

That you have the freedom to stop and intimately face whatever is tormenting you, at any level, is generally unknown. The lack of recognition for such a choice keeps you bound as the victim of some tormentor. The surprise that awaits this choice is the discovery of what is alive and waiting in the heart of everything—spacious consciousness, love, that which heals all, even death.

Who can say what pain will come into your life? Certainly all of us have experienced pain of one kind or another. If you have had the experience of surrendering in the moment that pain arises, of actually opening your mind to pain, whether it is physical, emotional, personal, or worldly, then you have discovered a secret wisdom. In this discovery you are no longer preoccupied with personal pain. What a relief! When the story of personal pain no longer has prominence, then you might become aware of pain you had no idea existed—your neighbor’s pain, your parents’ pain, your children’s pain, the pain of the universe. In opening to a universal level of pain, you are no longer making war with what is painful or hiding from potential future pain. You are living a life open to meet whatever is here. Then pain, as any experience, is to be bowed to as none other than truth itself.

 

Suffering Is Not the Problem

Although it may sound surprising, I do not intend to help anyone get rid of their suffering. Suffering is not the problem. Rather than trying to get rid of suffering, it is more important to inquire into the suffering itself, to investigate the sufferer. Inquiry is the front door.

The inquiring mind is an open mind, willing to deeply explore. In that openness, it can allow the presence of suffering without rejecting it or trying to escape it. This can be just as powerful, just as terrifying, and just as profound as facing your own death. When you inquire into suffering, you meet suffering, and when you meet suffering, it is possible to discover that suffering is not what you thought it was. In a direct meeting between subject and object, sufferer and suffering, both disappear. Both are discovered, in reality, to be non-existent.

I will make an even more precise and outrageous statement. I recommend that you consciously suffer. What is wrong with suffering?

Willingness to suffer fully, even for an instant, without trying to escape or be saved, means that suffering is no longer an obstacle to full surrender into the mystery of existence. Relief from suffering stops being the goal.

I have heard it said that according to the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus said, “When you know how to suffer, you do not suffer.” The “how to” of suffering is to suffer all the way. It is to suffer with full consciousness. To consciously suffer is to consciously recognize the impulse to escape and instead face directly whatever is appearing, be it grief, horror, extreme loss, or sadness.

Suffering is a huge temptation that supports your belief that you are not whole, and the recurrence of suffering time and time again becomes the proof that you are not whole.

See if any of your mental, physical, or emotional energy is bound up in resistance to suffering. If you can tell the truth about that without analyzing it, you will recognize in an instant that you have the choice to drop every defense and actually meet the suffering. What is revealed is very good news, but it can only truly be known as good news when you discover it yourself. And it can only truly be discovered when it is discovered for the first time, each time. Otherwise, inquiry becomes just another technique of the mind to avoid suffering.

If you find that self-inquiry becomes just another subtle technique to build a barrier against suffering, then it is important, first of all, to tell the truth about that, and secondly, to broaden your notion of what true self-inquiry is.

When you meet suffering head on, you make the exquisite, paradoxical discovery that suffering holds the very jewel that was sought in the attempt to escape it. It doesn’t matter whether the particular suffering is individual, national, or planetary; that jewel is here now.

Whatever action may or may not follow that meeting is irrelevant. If you are a social activist, a health professional, a hospice worker, a parent, or any other person who helps alleviate suffering, you will be better at your work when you yourself have met fully what your clients and patients are struggling with.

Meeting suffering has to do with the willingness to be absolutely still, to tell the truth regardless of the intensity of the experience. In the core of suffering is revealed the jewel of what is real, what is true, who you are.

 

The Pearl Within Your Emotions: Part VI - The Skillful Use of Emotions

“When you fully experience any negative emotion, with no story, it instantaneously ceases to be there. When you truly experience any positive emotion, it is endless.”

The questions I am most frequently asked are related to emotions. Many people seek to be free from difficult emotions such as anger, fear, and grief, and want to attain more of the pleasant emotions such as joy, happiness, and bliss. The usual strategies for achieving happiness involve either repressing or expressing negative emotions in the hope that they will be pushed from sight or released. Unfortunately, neither way reflects the truth of one’s inherent self, which is an unmoving purity of being that exists deeper than any emotion and remains unaffected by any emotion.

There are certainly times when it is appropriate to repress or express an emotion. But there is also another possibility: to neither repress nor express. I call this “direct experience.”

To directly experience any emotion is to neither deny it nor wallow in it, and this means that there can be no story about it. There can be no storyline about who it is happening to, why it is happening, why it should not be happening, who is responsible, or who is to blame.

In the midst of any emotion, so-called negative or positive, it is possible to discover what is at the core. The truth is that when you really experience any negative emotion, it is not there. When you truly experience any positive emotion, it is endless.

Because there is not much in our culture that confirms this truth, we spend our lives chasing positive emotions and running from negative ones.

When you fully experience any negative emotion with no story, it instantaneously ceases to be there. If you think you are fully experiencing an emotion and it remains quite intense, then recognize that there is still some story being told about it—how big it is, how you will never be able to get rid of it, how it will always come back, how dangerous it is to experience it. Whatever the story of the moment may be, the possibilities of postponing direct experience are endless.

For instance, when irritation is experienced, the usual tendency is to do something to get rid of the irritation or to place blame as the cause of the irritation. Then the storylines around irritation begin to develop. It is possible to not do anything with the irritation, to not push it out of awareness or try to get rid of it, but to directly experience it. In the moment that irritation arises, it is possible to simply be completely, totally, and freely irritated, without expressing it and without repressing it.

Direct experience reveals something deeper. Irritation is perhaps just a ripple on the surface. Deeper than irritation, there may be rage or fear. Again, the goal is neither to get rid of the rage or the fear, nor to analyze it, but to directly experience it. If anger or fear is revealed to be under irritation, then let your awareness go deeper; let yourself be absolutely, completely angry or fearful without a narrative about the anger and fear..

Fear is often the biggest challenge because it is what most people habitually attempt to keep away. Of course, as they try to keep it away, it grows even larger, threatens even closer.

What I am suggesting is that you can actually open to fear, you can experience being afraid without any need to say you are afraid, and without following any thought of being afraid. You can just simply experience fear itself.

Participant: A couple of nights ago, I woke up in the middle of the night with more fear inside me than I have ever experienced in my life. At first, I got mentally involved with it, and I thought, Okay, where did this come from? How can I explain it? Finally, I just let myself be with the terror, and it just kept coming and coming. Gradually I had a sense of falling through it. I was just there, and it was moving through me.

Gangaji: And this morning, what is your experience?

That fear can come and go, and there is a part of me that is separate from fear.

What is that part?

It is what is here when fear is present and here when fear is not present.

So, there is a part of you that is independent of fear, that exists whether fear exists or not?

Yes! There is a wholeness that is whole whether fear is here or not.

Excellent!

There is a very useful Buddhist term, “skillful means.” Skillful means is the right use of emotion. The skillful use of fear or any difficult emotion is to meet it consciously, undefended. Then that emotion naturally reveals what is whole, what remains when that which passes has passed. These are natural insights. They are not learned, they are not theoretical, but are directly discovered.

Skillful means is the capacity to recognize and be fully aware of the emotions that underlie our behaviors and our beliefs about who we are. This is what you are reporting. To consciously meet whatever appears fully and completely is awakening, because meeting anything fully and completely reveals true Self, what is always here. Whatever is being met is revealed as something passing through that which is permanent. This meeting reveals stillness, and when stillness is met, it reveals itself to be infinitely present. The revelation, the insight, the realization that arises from this meeting is what all spiritual practices throughout time are pointing to.

When it comes to our emotions, most of us still live in superstitious times. We imagine ourselves to be sophisticated and realistic, relegating superstitions to another era, to a time when people would see a solar eclipse and, thinking that God had left them, would cry out, “What have we done? What do we need to do to get the darkness to move off the sun?” Then, after performing certain rituals, sure enough, the darkness would move off the sun, and there would be great rejoicing and release. Those rituals would then have to be performed over and over to keep the darkness from coming back. When the darkness eventually did come back, new rituals would have to be devised.

It is easy to see the superstitions of the past, but we are often blind to the superstitious practices of today. One of the superstitious practices is the relationship we have with our emotions. Often, they are clung to as if they were signs from God. Signs of either anointment or of being sent from the Garden. This superstitious relationship is the cause of much unnecessary suffering.

For example, when any difficult emotion arises such as fear or anger or sadness, we believe that then love is absent, and so a huge amount of energy is spent in the attempt to avoid or get rid of the difficult emotion. This is superstitious behavior. We want to be free of the so-called negative emotions and so we devise sophisticated psychological and meditative techniques, different escape hatches, for dealing with them. These are all built around the superstition that these emotions actually, inherently, mean something, rather than seeing them as simply weather. A storm comes, caused or causeless. It is most unpleasant, some things get battered, but the storm passes.

When anger or fear or despair arise, there is the opportunity to take a few seconds to simply stop, to not do anything in relationship to it, to not act it out, to not deny it, but to simply be still. Then a wonderful discovery is revealed.

The sun itself is never eclipsed! If a cloud or even the moon passes in front of the sun it appears as if the sun is eclipsed, but from the sun’s viewpoint, the light continues to shine.

When you discover that these emotions, these sensate phenomena, do not in reality exist as you have thought them to exist, then you discover what does always exist, what is existence itself. What a discovery this is! Then whatever emotion arises, you recognize that it does not have to be fought or denied or indulged but allowed to simply move through like passing weather.

 

The Pearl Within Your Emotions: Part V - Self-Worth and the Open Heart

"Finally, it’s all about heart opening. In its truest meaning, the concept of enlightenment is simply the open heart.”

Participant: Hi Gangaji, I am so grateful to be here and to bring this question forward. I would so much like to enjoy my life and to feel good about who I am. I want to really know that I love myself. How do I do that?

Gangaji: You know the quickest way to get there? Experience how unlovable you are. Stop fighting it and directly experience the self-hatred and the worthlessness, without telling a story about it. Don’t try to fix it, change it, dramatize it, or heal it. Just simply open to it. What do you experience?

Well, when I really look at it, it seems absurd to hate myself very much.

It may be absurd, and it may also be that you’re overlaying a concept of self-love on top of the self-hatred. If you are really willing to tell the truth about being haunted by feelings of worthlessness and unlovability, then let us bring them here to be met. Not by trying to change anything but by simply opening to whatever is here.

I can feel that you’re right about this, and at the same time I’m afraid of it.

Yes, I understand, of course there is fear, and that’s a good place to start. Let’s begin by opening to the feeling of fear. Just let yourself be afraid. It’s alright. You are safe here. As you allow yourself to drop into the feeling of fear, is there anything under the fear that is even deeper than the initial feeling?

A new fear comes up that everything may fall apart. All that I know… all that I’ve ever done… everything gone…

That’s right, everything is lost. In this moment, for the purposes of our investigation, are you willing to lose everything? Really willing? Not knowing where it will take you? What are you experiencing?

It’s as if I can’t think anymore. I can only feel something falling off.

And when you let it all fall, what is left?

Well, then I’m okay.

That’s right, that’s the truth! You are okay. That is so clear. All the rest is a struggle to get okay, to feel okay, to keep feeling okay, and to get everyone else to see that you are okay. All you did just now, in a split second, was to stop and let everything fall off. In allowing everything to fall, you discovered that you are actually okay.

When I was sitting down there, and you were giving these tips, I thought it was all nonsense. But now that I’m looking into your eyes, I know that you are speaking the truth.

I know it doesn’t make sense to the mind, especially the mind that is focused on how to protect yourself, or change yourself, or make yourself more or better. To let it all fall off is to lose everything, and there is so much support in the mind to never let that happen. But because you are an adventurer, you took this one moment to discover for yourself what is here when you lose everything.

Now, tell me, what is left?

Peace.

Peace! Yes, there is more and more peace, an endlessly deepening peace. Peace is your true nature, and your true nature is infinite. Now the opportunity to lose it all becomes even bigger. All you need do is to keep your eyes open and tell the truth: When you have nothing, you are everything, and when you are everything, you need nothing.

Thank you, this feels amazing! (laughing)

Most people suspect that who they really are is the worst thing imaginable. A creature of imperfection and lack and ugliness and stupidity. Even if it is covered with good thoughts or experiences of oneself, under that is the suspicion, the fear, that who you really are is a gnarled, ugly, irredeemably lost soul, floating in space, separate from God. Right? This is the deeply entrenched belief conditioned by most religions, East and West. And you have found that you can never work hard enough or be good enough to finally be reunited. The truth is that to be your truest, most fundamental self, which has never been and can never be separate from God, takes absolutely no effort.

If you will take an honest look, you will see that all the effort in your life, internally, is either about trying to escape yourself and then searching for yourself, or running away from who you think you are and toward who you think you should be. All of this activity is driven by the deeply conditioned belief that who you are is separate from God and your own essential goodness.

This is the dilemma. These are the conflicting forces. There is a deep conditioning and distrust of yourself, along with an enormous cosmic yearning to discover your true worthiness. The spiritual life often then becomes a life of self-torture, a battle between ego and super-ego, between a higher self and a lower self, All of that is simply a mistaken understanding. That is the supreme joke! In the core you already are what you have been searching for.

Finally, it’s all about heart opening. In its truest meaning the concept of enlightenment is simply the open heart, the open mind. The heart can bear it all because the heart is the living expression of consciousness, naturally imbued with the capacity to bear anything and everything that appears in consciousness, including every mistaken idea and definition that you are not that. Heart opening is wisdom and wisdom is mercy. It’s impossible to be merciful to anyone else if you are closed to yourself.

Feelings of ugliness and unlovability finally have to be met, because this is the unnecessary suffering and continuation of the horror of the human condition. Selfishness is present in all of us, and there is a hatred of that selfishness and a war with it and then a projection of that war onto whoever mirrors that.

We meet as sisters and brothers in the same boat, the Earth boat, and together we discover what is here to be met and embraced in each one of us, regardless of all else. That embrace is always deeper, always closer, always unexpected. What is revealed is an even deeper grace, I promise you that.

The Pearl Within Your Emotions: Part IV - The Gift of Grief

“We all share the experience of grief when something we love is lost. Grief is natural. It is human. But don’t stop there. In the core of your grief is a precious treasure, simply waiting for your willingness to discover it."

Participant: I have a number of dear friends and family who are close to death, and grief has been hitting fast and hard right now. I guess I’ll just cut to the chase: I am very angry at God. As a minister, I am surprised and embarrassed by this because I’ve never felt this way before. Yet in the face of this grief, I feel so angry that God would set it up like this.

Gangaji: Thank you for coming up and speaking about this, because anyone who has ever experienced enormous grief knows that it can seem like a bottomless pit. It is actually easier to feel anger than it is to feel grief, especially if you can find a target for that anger. Right now, that target is God, the God “who is in charge.”

Yes, because I am really going to miss these people.

Yes, this is beautiful. You love these people and you are going to miss them. This thought itself evokes grief, but you don’t have to stay with this thought, you can go deeper. You can let your consciousness be completely enveloped by grief without resistance to it. You can open to the grief. I promise you that your willingness to experience grief all the way through will lead you to more love. If you close down around those feelings, it will only lead to more anger and armoring of the heart.

You don’t waste time, do you?

Why would we waste time? We have known each other some time now, and I know that what you want is the deepest truth. So let us jump together right now into the fire of grief. All the way. No control. This is where there is choice. Even anger feels better than grief because there is some power in anger. “What is God thinking? First there is the promise of life, and then the beauty of life, and then it is over. How did we end up with a god like this?" It can seem almost malevolent at times that everything we love will die and that we will die. One day even the earth itself will die. As legitimate as the anger can feel, if you stay there, you will continue to live your life in avoidance of the reality of death. Death is not separate from life. To the extent that you are avoiding death you are also avoiding life.

The grief really does feel bottomless …

Yes, it does, and this is why we avoid it. But it is possible to let there be no separation between you and grief. If there is no hope for the grief to be over, then what?

(… sitting quietly, taking some deep breaths.)

What are you experiencing?

It doesn’t even feel bottomless; it just feels completely here.

And what is the experience of it just being here?

There is just a lot of sadness, and now I feel some fear coming up, fear of my own death.

This is just right. Now, just for this moment, let’s put the sadness aside, and let yourself drop directly into the fear. This is what we avoid the most, because even sadness is easier than fear.

… (sighing) It just feels so out of control.

Well, that’s the choice. You are choosing in this moment to not be in control. Without a story, without control, what is here?

I’m feeling different impulses come up, like the impulse to start crying dramatically or to go back to the rage.

That’s right, every impulse can seem like a legitimate justification for avoiding what must be met. Yet you know resistance is futile. Feelings of grief, anger, and fear are here, are they not? There’s nothing wrong with any of these feelings, but now you are being presented with the possibility of going even deeper by actually letting yourself be one with any feeling.  This is a very sobering inquiry. Right now, stay with the feeling of fear, and with your consciousness fall even deeper into it.

Now, what are you experiencing?

I feel completely hemmed in, and now there’s just this feeling of doom.

Yes, this is just right, doom is even deeper than fear. Doom is what is under fear. Fear is actually easier than feelings of doom. The despair of birth and death, barren of hope, and the realization that you have no control over any of it. Is it possible to not tell a story about that and just let yourself be one with that doom?

(shaking, crying…) It’s just that this sense of doom is reverberating throughout my whole body…

And what’s the experience of doom reverberating throughout your body?

Well, there’s a lot of trembling and like my body is falling apart.

And how does that feel? Because from here it looks great.

(laughing) … Well, actually, it feels like a release of pent-up energy.

Exactly.

The body feels like it follows the thoughts, you know? There is anger and the body wants to lash out. There is fear, and the body trembles. There is doom, and the body feels like it’s falling apart.

And how about you? Where are you in all this?

Well, I’m … Oh my gosh …Oh! (laughing uncontrollably)

(Gangaji turns to the audience, laughing). Can you see this? Because it’s not in the words, obviously.

Yes, there are no words for this! I have friends who are facing the same grief and loss as I am, and they’re not running circles around it as I have been. They seem to be at peace with it, and I have felt envious of that.

Is this what you see? (Gangaji holds a small mirror up to his face so that he can see himself.)

Yes! That is what I see. I see life. I see life in them. I see life in you. I feel such life in this room … I can’t explain it. I give up. (laughing) Thank you! I feel so dumb because I know I have seen this before.

All I did was point you deeper into your experience. It was your choice all along. I simply pointed you where Papaji pointed me. It’s not to say that there shouldn’t be grief and tears over the loss of the people you love. Of course there are! Grief is natural. It is human. But don’t stop there. In the very core of your grief is a precious treasure.

Thank you so much for sharing this moment with me.

Likewise, thank you. We’re here to share this moment, this brief moment of life that doesn’t exclude death. It’s always a fresh moment. A moment of real inquiry.

It may take lifetimes of screaming and wailing and cursing and shaking and cursing some more. It takes as long as it takes. If you recognize that you have support, just as Papaji supported me, and you are willing to be stopped in your tracks, just as Papaji stopped me in mine, there is a discovery that includes everything. It is the discovery of what is always here—in joy and in grief and sadness, anger and fear, despair and doom, power and powerlessness. You, as you truly are. You can wake up to yourself.

The Pearl Within Your Emotions: Part III - Chasing Fear

“In your willingness to investigate any emotion all the way through, you will find that you can actually open to whatever is here. You don’t have to change a thing. Whatever is appearing is fertile ground.”

Participant: Yesterday I was grateful for the conversation about being with the depths of one’s feelings. In my own journey the last couple years, I have started to be more aware of what I am feeling. In the past, I was a real drama queen internally, and now, stopping to inquire into my feelings has been quite amazing.

Gangaji: It’s quite a different experience, isn’t it? We think that when we are in the drama our feelings are deep, but there is a huge difference.

Yes, that’s what I’ve been finding out.

To really be in the depth of any feeling you first must leave the drama behind. That’s a relief, isn’t it?

Yes! Fear is still a feeling that is very strong for me and causes a lot of anxiety. I seem to have very old fears inside that have been with me for such a long time they feel like an automatic part of my existence. When I try to be with the fear, it doesn’t seem to change anything.

Are you trying to be with the fear so that it will go away?

Ahh … yes, I guess I am.

That is not being with fear. That is trying to manage fear, and now you have hope that you’ve found a new tool to manage it.

Yes, that’s true. There have been times when I’ve felt free of it, but then it doesn’t last long.

What if, in this moment, you simply let your fear be here? Is it possible to welcome fear without the hope that welcoming it will chang it, transform it, or drive it away?

Right now, it feels more like a fear of fear. It’s been such an inner demon, and there is a long-time habit of trying to keep it away.

Let’s say that it’s more than a habit. Let’s call it an addiction. But you’ve had the experience of getting clean, right? And now this is just a deeper way of recognizing how you indulge the addiction to escape feeling fearful. Please know that I am totally in support of escape when it’s appropriate. Fear is our survival emotion. It can be our friend. There are circumstances when it is quite intelligent to escape—to run, hide, be invisible, or dissociate—until it becomes a habit that sucks your life away.

Yes, that is exactly what it feels like.

Now you are recognizing that fear itself has become the master rather than a tool to serve you. You have tried to turn your back on this tyrant of a master, but still it keeps coming. It’s like a demon in a nightmare. You can choose to wake up in the nightmare by turning and actually facing what is chasing you. You can’t know what will happen when you do. You may even feel certain that you’ll be devoured by it, because that is what fear is always about, some form of attempting to escape death and rightly so.

Are you aware of the fear right now?

Yes.

Where is it in your body?

In here … (points to her upper chest).

Are you aware of any judgment, story, or narrative that you attach to that feeling?

Oh yes. The inner narrative is saying to resist the fear, that I shouldn’t be feeling it.

That’s excellent. Now that you’re aware of the narrative, you can choose to put it aside, at least for a moment, however legitimate the story may be.

What if you don’t even name it fear, because that’s a kind of story too, isn’t it? Naming it may be useful at times, but it’s not needed for this moment. What if you don’t put a name on this feeling in your chest?

Well, now it feels like there’s a bit more space in there.

How much more?

Quite a bit… it’s… oh my gosh! (laughing in surprise).

Yes, that’s exactly right. There is more space. Now, turn your attention back to the fear, wherever it is now, and go after it. Chase it. Go to meet it without any agenda, without any judgment about it, just as you and I are meeting one another right now. Without resisting the feeling of fear, without trying to fix it, what do you find?

Well… there’s a certain joy in meeting it.

Yes, it’s a surprise, isn’t it? Because fear is often uncomfortable, we have made it the enemy, an enemy in opposition to joy. But in your willingness to meet the fear without that narrative or any story about the it, you have discovered that, in reality, fear is not separate from joy. When fully met, nothing is separate from joy.

Oh, I thank you so much! This has been a long time coming.

I very much appreciate your coming up here to speak with me, because this is an emotion that many humans struggle with, maybe even all animals. Fear is a big deal, because in its purest intention, it is your friend. But when there is a habit and a preoccupation with resisting it—trying to run from it, telling ourselves elaborate stories about it—then we become enslaved to a feeling of fear that really has nothing to do with the present moment.

Fear arises out of a joy for life and wanting to keep our joy for life. Fear is our natural ally, but when it somehow gets twisted, dramatized, indulged, ignored, denied, or fought with, then we miss the essence of it, the beauty of it. Each emotion has this same purity of essence at its core.

It is possible to open to any emotion without our usual commentary about what it means, why it should or shouldn’t be here, or that it is somehow blocking our joy. When met and investigated all the way to the core, any emotion is discovered to be of the same substance—joy itself—and that substance is who you are. You are made of joy, and it is made of you.

You can check this out for yourself, right now. We have such strong spiritual ideas that fear, anger, sadness, and resistance must first be gotten rid of, and then we will be happy. Then we will have love, enlightenment, lasting freedom. Are you willing to meet any emotion as it appears, to be curious enough as a human being to investigate what is fear, really? What is anger, sadness, despair? What are emotions if you don’t name them? What is the experience of any emotion in its purity, as pure vibration?

That is the beauty and the secret of direct inquiry. Everything returns you to love. Everything is of that substance. It is your own love of life, your own joy of life. If you didn’t love life, there would be no reason for fear or feelings of grief for what has been lost.

In your willingness to investigate any emotion, to respect it, attend to it, and drop the story about it, however legitimate or true that story may be, you will find that you can actually open to whatever is here. You don’t have to change a thing. Whatever is appearing is fertile ground.

The Pearl Within Your Emotions: Part II - Self-Inquiry: A Way of Living

"Inquiry is not an abstract spiritual practice. It is living your life fully, consciously. Then your whole intelligence is available for discovering what is the right way for you to live."

This powerful inquiry is taken from a conversation with a war veteran. It took place in 2011.

Participant: Hi Gangaji, … I don’t really know where to begin, but I’ve got a lot of pain inside me. When I was eighteen, I was deployed to Iraq. I drove a tank, and I just saw a lot of difficult things, you know? I’m starting to see certain things about myself and to believe in myself again, and I just... well … I’m ready for it.

Gangaji: I’m really glad you’re here.

Thank you.

You got a strong dose of the horror of war, and in many ways War is a concentration of the smaller wars we have all around us—in our politics, our communities, our families, and in our own minds. When it comes to being human, there can be so much horror and pain, so much mess. Yet, in the midst of that, always the purity and innocence of your heart is still here, and that’s what I am seeing here in you.

When you are able to honestly say, “I have a lot of pain inside me,” you are already bringing that pain to the purity of your heart where pain is can find refuge. The part that your mind can play in this is to be consciously aware of the pain, and then to be aware if you are fighting the pain or telling yourself a story about the pain. Even if the story is true, you can stop the story, stop the fight, stop the war, and let the pain all the way into your heart.

In this moment, what is your experience? Do you feel the pain somewhere in your body? There is no right answer. Simply notice whatever is here in your experience.

I guess it’s not a physical pain, it’s an emotional pain, and there is a drive to get it to cease.

The drive to get it to cease is part of the inner battle, the inner war. What I am inviting you to in this moment, just as an experiment, is to stop making war with the pain and stop trying to get it to cease. Not because it is the right thing to do. In some instances, it may not be the right thing. In this moment, it is. You are safe here. You can let the pain be here fully. Is that possible in this moment?

Fighting the pain takes energy. We are afraid of the pain because it feels so big, and you don’t know where it is going to take you. But I have some very good news for you. When you stop fighting the pain, when you actually open to it and let it into your heart, the pain itself is healed. It may come back later for more healing, but in the instant when it is met in the core of yourself, the battle is over.

How can you tell when you’re meeting it right?

Well, what are you experiencing? Experience is different from thought. When you have the thought, “How can I tell if I’m meeting it right?” you can stop that thought and directly investigate, “What am I experiencing right now?”

There is physical pain, which is felt in the body, and there is emotional pain. But emotions are felt in the body too. We experience emotions through the body. Right now, are you aware of this pain that you mentioned when you first came up here?

Yes, it seems so.

Where is it right now? Let’s go after it with your attention.

I guess the place I feel it most is my heart (points to his chest).

Yes, that’s just right. Now tell me, what do you mean when you say, “my heart”? When I say to let the pain into your heart, I’m speaking of a heart that is deeper than the physical or emotional heart. There is the emotional heart that aches for the horror in the world. There is the physical heart that also joins in that ache sometimes. And then there is a heart underneath that. This is where I’m inviting you. It is the heart of hearts. It is the core of your being. It is the truth of existence itself.

So, when I —

— Wait, let’s stop right there, before you jump to “so, when….” Right now, as you put your attention on this pain that seems like it is in your heart, what do you experience

I feel lost.

Okay, that’s just right. Whatever you feel is just right. Can you let yourself be lost? In this moment, can you stop fighting?

I try, but I’m always looking and searching for that thing that will make the pain stop.

Right now, just for this one moment, stop searching. You can go back to the search, but for this moment you are simply here. Now, what are you experiencing? This is the question that will always bring you back to the present moment.

Right now, I feel a calmness… and a kind of emptiness.  

Okay, now, just like you were willing in an instant to experience the pain and the sadness, you can fully experience this calmness, this emptiness.

Inquiry is about really telling the truth. Not the “right” answer or the “spiritual” answer, but truthfully examining for yourself, “Is anything missing in this calmness, this emptiness?” Then you tell the truth about that and fully experience whatever that is.

Now, from here, is there anything missing in this emptiness, this calmness, this peace?

No. It doesn’t seem like it.

That’s just right. Seeming is all we have in terms of experience. And, as you know, seeming can change. Experiences can change. But the gift of inquiry is that you can always stop and see, “What is the experience under my experience?” In this case, under the emotional pain, under the sadness, and then finally under the calmness, there was emptiness. You can always inquire. You can reel your mind and your thoughts and your attention back to your experience and honestly inquire.

So then from there, do we just live?

Yes, you start freshly from just living, from just being, knowing what you know. It is not about erasing your mind or your experiences. It is about recognizing and discovering more deeply that the innocence of pure beingness is still here, regardless of experiences that come and go. In that recognition is a clarity of mind. Your intelligence is freed from searching so that the truth can actually be discovered.

You are a young man, and there is still much to discover. If you begin at the beginning, at zero in your discovery, what can be discovered is limitless. That’s how we all serve one another, we bring our individual discoveries to the whole of our collective discovery.

Your experiences of war were traumatic and generated pain. There are things you can do to help with that, like trauma work or other healing modalities, but what I am inviting you to here is the secret of direct inquiry. You can stop for a moment and inquire, “What is here? Well, pain is here. What is this pain? Where is this pain when it is experienced all the way through?”

I cannot stress enough that the truth that is discovered through inquiry only takes one instant of purely stopping and, with your conscious intention, opening to whatever is here.

In this case it was pain and sadness. It could be anger. It could be fear. It could be despair. It could be joy. What is it when you let it all the way in? The answer is good news because you will always discover that you are still here, and you are life. Life is animating itself through your particular life form. The source of life itself has been here with you through every experience, every trauma, every opening, every closing. You are life itself and you can know yourself as that. You cannot make yourself be life because you already are life. You can experience yourself as life. Without life, you could not be seeing through your eyes, blood could not be flowing through your body, oxygen could not be flowing through your lungs.

Then what do I do with my drive and determination to do right in the world?

What have you done with it up to this point?

I’ve tried to gain insight and to do the right thing.

This is beautiful. There is nothing wrong with it. You have a drive to serve, you have a drive to do right, and that is beautiful. Now, what you can also do is be willing to tell the truth freshly in each moment. You can be willing to tell the truth when you discover that what you thought was right is not actually right, or what you have thought was wrong is actually right in a certain circumstance. You are an endless, open, living organism of discovery. This is inquiry. Inquiry is not an abstract spiritual practice. It is living your life fully, consciously. Then your whole intelligence is available for discovering the right way to live.

Your drive is beautiful. It is the drive of a young man. It is energy. Like a young tree, it may be bent down but it snaps back up. You have been bent down, but you have snapped back up. You are still here. You are alive. You are free.

Thank you so much.

Thank you for your willingness.

The Pearl Within Your Emotions: Part I

“If your devotion is to the truth, you can bear anything, including any emotion. The more you are willing to bear and the more you do bear, the bigger your heart is revealed to be, and the more you are in love with life in all its forms.”

 

One of the greatest challenges we all share is how to be at peace with our difficult emotions. We spend entire lifetimes attempting to run from, manage, or control our experiences of fear, anger, sadness, despair, and even bliss rather than investigating what is driving these emotional responses to life.

One of Gangaji’s central teachings is an understanding of the “nesting” of emotions, how underneath any emotion can be found another emotion, and then another, until eventually what is discovered is the eternal peace that is the essence of your being. Direct self-inquiry is the key.

For over 30 years, Gangaji has been assisting others around the world to drop fearlessly and effortlessly into their most challenging emotions. This month will begin a series that features live interactions with Gangaji that demonstrate the freeing power of self-inquiry in relation to our emotions. Here the initial question is about addiction, and then the conversation quickly opens to an ever-deepening discovery of the underlying emotions that are driving the addiction. We hope you benefit from this conversational format.

 

Questioner: Hi Gangaji, I would like to talk to you about addictions. My addiction is to alcohol, and I recently had a relapse. It is something I have struggled with all my life.

Gangaji: First, tell me, what do you need to be happy?

Sobriety. Sobriety makes me happy because then I am more present with myself.

If sobriety makes you happy, then what is it about alcohol that attracts you?

Drinking numbs me out.

Ok, so you’ve had the experience of sobriety and what it is like to not follow the impulse to drink, and you know that sobriety brings you happiness, yet still there is this desire to numb out. In your experience, what is driving that impulse? I understand that there is a physical/neurological component to that, but what is the emotional component?

For me, it feels almost like I’m trying to run away from myself. It is a sort of hiding.

That is addiction, right there.

In AA we raise our hands and say, “I am an alcoholic,” but the more I got into your teachings, the more invulnerable I began to feel. I think that feeling of invulnerability is why I relapsed. Because, well, if “alcoholic” is not the truth of who I am, and if I am so spiritual now and so together, well …

… Then you can have a drink.

Yes, that is basically what happened.

What does it mean to you to be invulnerable? Does it mean that your body is invulnerable?

No, of course it doesn’t.

That’s right. The absolute truth of who you are needs nothing for its sustenance, and yet particular bodies have particular needs. Particular nervous systems have particular needs. Your body needs something. It needs sobriety. It needs abstinence from alcohol. That doesn’t mean “you” are an alcoholic. Let us say your body is alcoholic. Knowing that and then to stand up and say, “I am an alcoholic” can be very useful, because as you know one of the major supports for continuing the addiction is the denial of that addiction.

Yes, that is absolutely right.

The willingness to expose oneself and say, “Here I am, and I am an alcoholic,” is a kind of blade of fire that cuts through the habit of hiding, and there is a power that comes from that kind of truth-telling. That power comes from some source other than this body/mind/ego that is an alcoholic. That source, whatever we may name it, needs nothing to sustain itself because it is always eternally here.

There is a saying in AA, “We are as sick as our secrets,” and that has pretty much been my gig, trying to expose all my secrets. It’s been very difficult.

That’s a good one, yes, “We are as sick as our secrets.” What makes that difficult?

For me, I think fear is the biggest issue.

Fear of exposure?

Yes. So, when fear arises, do I just let myself feel it?

You begin by feeling it, but most importantly, when you turn your attention into the fear rather than trying to get away from it, you can begin to recognize that perhaps you are telling yourself some story about the fear. Either a story about what generated the fear in the first place, or a story about how to get away from fear. You may even be thinking now, “Well, If I experience the fear, then it will leave me alone,” but this is yet another story.

To really meet the fear, you have to drop the stories. It may begin by simply allowing yourself to feel it, but what you want to discover is the truth about fear, and this is deeper than feeling. Because under fear, deeper than fear, is an even deeper secret. Are you aware of that? We don’t want this to be just theoretical.

I don’t know how deeply I am aware of that.

Well, then let’s see. Are you aware of the fear now?

Yes, absolutely.

Great, so with your conscious attention, right now, drop into the fear. Quickly now, all the way in, and tell me what is under the fear.

It feels like a peace.

Peace?

Yes, there is peace.

Okay, excellent. Now with your consciousness, drop all the way into the peace. Is there anything under that?

Yes, I’m feeling a little fear again.

Yes, so maybe the peace was not a true unconditional peace. Maybe it was more like, “Okay, here is a little bit of peace, now fear will go away and leave me alone.”

That’s right, it was more of a mind peace.

Maybe you have learned in our meetings that if you drop into and underneath any emotion there is peace. But real self-inquiry is not about learning or remembering some insight from the past. Inquiry is a true and honest meeting of whatever is being avoided in this very moment. In this case, the meeting is with fear. Maybe a long time ago, it began with anger. Only you would know. Right now, the emotion you are aware of is fear. I promise you there is something under the fear, and something under that, and something under that. There are secrets to be exposed. Secret insights and secret revelations. Finally, you will arrive at the secret of who you really are, and this is the great exposure.

Yes! Every time I’ve heard you speak, I feel like I cannot argue with you. It sounds and feels like the truth, but at the same time I can also get angry at you because it breaks down the whole belief system I’ve trudged up. I can go through periods of what feels like rage.

I thought there might be anger in there somewhere. So now we see that underneath the fear is also rage.

Yes, I get angry, and I get angry that I’m angry. I feel afraid of exposing myself and also afraid of your unconditional love, so there is a mixture of fear and anger.

Yes, this is very clear.

It is great knowing all of this, but it also drives me bananas. The knowing is like being in an insane asylum because it doesn’t necessarily change my experience.

Yes, that is because there is still something deeper to be uncovered. This rage, too, must be fully experienced, just as with the fear. Not acted out and not repressed. Maybe the rage feels like a secret that must be kept because it is so huge and so fearful it must be suppressed. When I say to experience the rage, I’m talking about truly meeting this huge force without taking any action either against yourself or against someone else. I’m also saying not to deny the rage, because in your case the impulse for alcohol is part of the denial of both fear and rage. When fear and rage can be fully met and experienced, they are like ghosts that are set free. Really set free. Right now, they are caught in your body, and you want to numb yourself from the discomfort.

Yes, that is true.

Rage, too, desires to be free, and when it is fully met through inquiry, it is experienced simply as energy. Not as energy that needs to be discharged or acted out, but more like internal thunder or a lightning bolt. Once experienced, it’s like “PHEW,” and the energy is freed. Under the rage is yet another secret because always, whatever we are feeling, the emotions are layered, or nested. Whatever the initial emotion is, there is something underneath it. To discover what is deeper, or underneath it, all that is needed is curiosity and openness. Inquiry is opening the mind.

Now, each time fear or anger arises, you have another opportunity to experience it even more deeply. In truth, your emotions are not your enemies; they are your allies. Fear, anger, and sadness become vehicles to a source that is bigger than your body. Yet to discover this, you have to be willing to tell the truth and ride the emotion, internally, all the way home.

Diving into and under what are commonly considered forbidden emotions or negative states has not been a common journey. Mostly we have learned to avoid and repress our negative states until at some point they begin to leak out or explode. Mostly we just want to have a good time, or we want to escape, and eventually we bring those desires to the spiritual search where there is a hope that we won’t have to experience all this unpleasantness and negativity. But the truth is, you bring your emotions with you wherever you go.

What I am always inviting everyone to is the secret of stopping. To stop right here, right now, whatever the circumstances may be, and fully experience what is here. The invitation is to experience both what is here relatively, such as fear, anger, sadness, or despair, but mainly and essentially what is always here as the pure, unadulterated ground of your being. Peace Itself.

You get to see what you have been carrying through life. It is not always pleasant. It can feel uncomfortable or even very painful and threatening. But if your devotion is to the truth, you have full capability to allow yourself to experience whatever is revealed all the way through. This is freedom. This is what sobriety really is—the absolute truth.

Yes, I know this to be true.

If your devotion is to the truth, you can bear anything, including any emotion, including abstinence from alcohol or any other substance. The more you are willing to bear and the more you do bear, the bigger your heart is revealed to be and the more you are in love with life in all its forms. Love from and with another human being, spiritual love, love of God, love for nature, love for the earth, love for yourself, love even for this alcoholic body.

What a relief! Thank you so much.

I thank you, both for your honesty and for your willingness.

Why, How or Who? Which Question will Guide You Home?

In meeting with people these past 33 years, I have been asked many thousands of questions by seekers of truth from all walks of life. But really the questions can be boiled down to three: Why? as in, “I faced my fear, and it was revealed to be non-existent. Why did it come back again?” How? as in, “How can I stop suffering?” or “How is it that I betray myself?” And finally, Who? That is a question of a different order.

Why is a question made for mental activity. There is nothing wrong with that. Why is where the mind can run the fastest in all directions. When you ask why, you begin to search for answers, and you will find millions of years of accumulated theories, speculations, possibilities, and counter-possibilities. There is the Eastern understanding of why, the Western understanding of why, the atheist understanding of why, the rational, scientific understanding of why, the Gnostic understanding of why, the Christian understanding of why, and so on. And then there is the splintering of all those answers, over and over, into infinity.

The question How? deepens the mind's search so that the very structure of the mind begins to be revealed—its habits, its fixations, its tendencies, and its beliefs. When someone asks me, “How? How can I be free? How can I stop my mind? How do I suffer unnecessarily,” that is an opening into inquiry.

Finally, when you give the mind the question, Who? where can it go with that? How far can it get? This divine question, Who am I? that comes to us from Ramana Maharshi, is the invitation to face yourself directly. When you face the idea of who you are directly, with no story line about what will be gained or lost, you will see there is nobody there. The “I” that you think yourself to be is No Thing. It does not exist except as an evolved, brilliant survival strategy. It is made up.

I am not saying  it is “nothing,” because the mind will spin out of control with that— “Oh it’s nothing, that’s nihilistic, that’s horrible, that’s nobody, nothing, dead, blank.” Rather, the mind’s “I” is neither something nor nothing. It is no thing.

You are not your mind. You are what is revealed when who you think you are is realized to be non-existent. The burden of your personal story, the burden of your thoughts about who you are, the burden of your emotions about who you are—all are realized to be nothing.

I'm not denying the experience that they are something. There is no need to deny that. There is also no need to indulge the experience the story generates. The need is simply to meet the experience of “I” and see for yourself what is revealed. In truth, this imagined “I” cannot be faced directly, because when it is, it is revealed to be not there. Not present. Non-existent.

This is unbelievable because it is out of the realm of the mind's experience. It is realizable because it is totally within the realm of your direct experience. This that is revealed in direct meeting, in direct inquiry, is the radiant truth of your being. It is no thing at all, and that no thing is the radiant, endless, immeasurable depth of being. You are the living subject; not the object.

So let us forget the Why’s. They can be fun when you are sitting around a campfire making up ghost stories. They can certainly be instructional, psychologically. But for our purpose, which is the purpose of discovering the truth of who one is, let us forget why one is, or even how one is, and discover who. Then that which is already deeper than can be measured is experienced more deeply yet. It’s not made deeper. It doesn’t become deeper. It experiences itself as the infinite depth of pure being—no-thing at all.

 

 

No End to Opening

One of the dangers I have seen of the so-called “spiritual life” is the ego’s attempt to use it to escape heartbreak, difficulty, and continued patterns of hatred, revenge, and war – to escape the idea of a hell. The desire for transcendence becomes bigger than the willingness to let the heart open to it all—the totality of human beauty as well as the totality of human catastrophe. When you are willing to fully experience the hopelessness and the horror of being human, the eternal potential for living life in truth is freed.

The readiness to be free means to see that there is no escape from any aspect of life, and then to stop fantasizing about any future escape. Fantasies of escape can take myriad forms, including an infantile image of heaven or enlightenment. The willingness to be free is the willingness to discover what is already free right here in the midst of it all. The greater the willingness, the greater the capacity for being fully present. Finally, the realization that there is no need for escape is clear. Whatever appears here can be borne here, regardless of what the mind imagines it can or cannot bear. The madness that is feared in the prospect of meeting whatever is here is actually fostered by continually trying to escape it. In meeting whatever is here, fully and completely, the potential for the unspeakable, indefinable, un-teachable revelation of truth.is seen.

Most people spend most of their lives involved in personal suffering: “What happened to me, what may happen to me, what should be happening to me, what should not be happening to me.” Obviously, a much larger story of suffering is occurring in the world today. It calls for us to resolve our personal stories of suffering and be available to turn our attention to the world story. And that, too, is just a beginning.

Certainly, the patterns of war are familiar, whether from this century or any other, this culture or any other. There may be pain freshly experienced in the current horrors happening all over the world, and a desire may arise to want to know what to do. I invite you to meet these horrors, freshly, innocently, surrendering everything to that same force that calls you home.

The more you stop struggling to get out, the more pain you will experience, but also the more joy you will experience. This is the paradox that the mind cannot resolve. We have all learned great powers of mind. These powers include techniques of denial and indulgence revolving around the central technique of lying. But the power of mind is only needed for protection and attack. If you are willing to bear it all, you have no need of anything but surrender, telling the truth, and being yourself.

The invitation to stop is a radical invitation. It is the invitation to stop only in this moment. It is not the invitation to stop for the rest of your life, to never leave your house, to never tell a story, or to never think again. It is the invitation to stop everything and, just for this moment, be.

One of Papaji’s most profound teachings is to “wait and see.” To “wait” is active and open, and the seeing is the waiting. It is to see the impulses of mind, to see the ancient programming embedded in the cellular structure to know what to do, what action to take. Just wait and see. Rest nakedly in not knowing. True lasting discovery is not something you have heard or read about. It is your own direct experience.

Until now, we have opted for trusting our minds, language, images, and ideas, rather than trusting the spaciousness from which all arises. What an opportunity is now available to trust the unknown spaciousness of the heart. What a time.

Yes, there is beauty in these times. Opening and awakening are happening all over the world. All of the horror, grief, outrage, and anguish are not separate from that awakening. The more we accept the responsibility to open to whatever is appearing, the greater are the challenges. The more we see, the more the heart breaks. In our attempts to not feel the pain of the heart breaking, in our attempts to finally know what should be, there is bondage. In our surrender to the heart broken open – all the way – there is freedom.

The Truth Must be Desired for Itself, Regardless of what Follows

Over the last 32 years of speaking with people, I have seen that there is clearly a deep, strong, and true desire to wake up, whatever that means to any particular individual. There is a true desire to realize God, to realize truth, to stop the violence, to stop the hatred, to stop the suffering, and to wake up to what is possible in this lifetime. If awakening has priority over everything else, then immediately you are awake. That’s the truth. I stake my life on it. My life is a guarantee that if you want to awaken to your true nature, if you want that totally, you will awaken to your true nature.

The biggest obstacle to awakening is that awakening is actually wanted for something else. Awakening is wanted for feeling better, or so that you don’t have to be the same person you think you are now, or to get some recognition, or to forget all the bad things that you have done or that have been done to you. Awakening is wanted as a vehicle or a tool, and there is frustration that this tool is not given to you. This simply doesn't work. Truth must be desired for itself, regardless of any consequences that might follow. This is a shocking truth. We are so used to wanting something to make our personal lives better, and God knows, we have tried. Luckily, most of us have become deeply disillusioned with the possibility of getting rescued, of getting something else that will fulfill this true desire to awaken.

I am asking you to look inside, to be ruthlessly, relentlessly honest and truthful with yourself, to see why you want to awaken. What will awakening give you? If your answer is something beautiful or grandiose or altruistic, such as peace on Earth or harmony among all people, put that aside for just a moment and see if truth, this unknown state of awakening, is desired for itself, regardless of consequences. I am asking you to tell the truth. We spend most of our lives lying in both gross and subtle ways. The lying gets intricate, and the web gets tighter, and sooner or later you will know this.

There is an opportunity now, in this moment, to discover what is it you want for its own sake, without getting any comfort from it, without it taking care of anything. This is not a usual consideration. It’s very easy to play in the drama of awakening, saying, "Oh, I'll get it someday," or "He has it," or "She has it and I will just be in the aura of it, then I can keep my lies and my web."

You are an adult. It is time to tell the truth. I am asking you to tell me what it is you want truly for its own sake, and if you don’t have that, what do you imagine keeps you from it? Examine it and see: is that obstruction to truth real or is it part of the fabric of your imagination?

This is what I have come to say to you. This is what I will continue saying to you until this body drops. You have the opportunity to listen, to investigate, to discover for yourself, and to choose.

When I met Papaji, he stopped me in my tracks, and he sent me to stop you in your tracks. The rest is up to you. Since you are freedom itself, since you are the Self, you have the freedom to let this lifetime be used as you choose. Maybe no one has ever told you you are free. Maybe you have believed all kinds of ideas about destiny or free will or no free will.

In this meeting, you have a second chance. You can investigate to see if what is being offered is true or not. You may have thrown away the first twenty, thirty, fifty, sixty, or eighty years of your life, but now you have a second chance. It is up to you. This is precious time, this whole lifetime. It is a lifetime where you can at least hear the call of freedom. What a precious lifetime! How will this preciousness be used?