by Natti Ronel
The further we advance on the way, the more abstract gratitude becomes, less dependent on a specific material object. Gratitude becomes an unconditioned experience, a feeling of completeness liberated from dependence on what others and the world have given us or not given us, and then there is no concrete object to which it turns. Gratitude to God is an unconditional feeling of gratitude, derived from the very fact of our existence, for the essential plenitude which is the grace of God. Even if this is only an intention, when we turn gratitude towards God, and gradually free ourselves from the connection between gratitude and the good things that we have earned or not, we shall attain an awareness of humility which goes beyond normal self-centeredness. In this way, gratitude exposes deep faith in us, a way of knowing God in our lives. When we live in this way, it’s a pure and wonderful gift which we give back to the world with joy, when we become the grace that we want to encounter. When we feel gratitude this way, it is sent from us to every person, so that anyone who seems to have done us a small act of kindness will receive from us a joyful “thank you,” which is part of the gratitude that we owe to God.
Let’s stop here, and take a moment of silence. Let’s raise our awareness of gratitude and see what comes up. Whatever comes up -- excellent. We have flown to the heights of the spirit, but life is complicated, and we’re still sometimes engrossed in the depths of self-centeredness. Gratitude, when it arises, is a way of moving out of these depths, escaping from them until they melt away into nothing. So, let’s focus on gratitude.
TOOL 5
Distinguishing Facts
When the finite seems infinite, suffering arises.
Let’s start with a moment of silence. Let’s allow everything we brought in with us to melt away and fade into the silence. ... A moment of separation between what was before and what is happening now. … Into the silence, let’s introduce a memory of intense pain that we suffered once. Preferably pain that belongs in the past, even the very recent past, and not pain that anyone is experiencing now. We’ll look at ourselves from the side, in pain, before the end of pain appears on the horizon. We’ll see ourselves being motivated by the pain, or succeeding in not being motivated by it, and see ourselves when the pain finally disperses. Relief. Let’s go further into the silence. … Thank you.
When we think of somebody’s mental health, and of the deterioration of the mental state in some people to the point of what is defined as insanity, one of the concepts that helps us to know what is going on there, is “reality testing” of the person. To what extent is the person connected with the facts of reality, and to what extent is he or she living as if in a movie, an amalgam of imagination, meaningless thoughts and even bogus voices and visions? Mental health is a situation where reality testing is accurate and reliable, when people succeed in distinguishing between facts and things that aren’t facts at all -- but imagination, interpretation, opinion, sensation, feeling, or response. In general, most of our situations are quite steady and stable, judged by the yardstick of reality testing. Apparently, most of us are securely anchored in the facts of the world around us, and we function accordingly.
Why only apparently? Because if we leave behind the formal psychological definition of reality testing, which serves as an assessment of sanity as opposed to mental sickness, and we attach ourselves to our perception of day-to-day reality and our subjective contribution to the construction of reality as perceived by us, things look rather different. When we test ourselves sincerely, especially in moments of distress which dominate our consciousness, but also in moments of emotional and sensual drift, we see that our perception of reality is influenced by the challenges that we encounter. We all tell ourselves some kind of story about the world and about ourselves, a story that reflects our self-centeredness and also our attempts to escape from it. The story is influenced by many factors, and often we “radiate” it and project it to the world, watching it, and we are sure that these are the facts of reality. At moments of distress or emotional drift, self-centeredness reaches a higher level of intensity, as does our story and its take on the reality in which we function. Our story also exacerbates distress and emotional or sensual drift, and as a result of the distress and the drift, self-centeredness tightens its grip on us. The tool, “Distinguishing Facts” shows us how to recognize our story, how to minimize distress and emotional and sensual drift, and also how to move a little further away from self-centeredness and create a courageous change.
Between pain and suffering
What is pain? We all know how to answer this question on the basis of close personal recognition: who has not been in pain at some time? Physical pain is a neurological sensation aroused by some stimulus, for example, a blow that we have received. Illness can cause physical pain too, as can a situation of physiological stress, such as thirst, which may bring on a headache. In all these cases there is a stimulus in our bodies, and the body sends out a neurological message which we interpret as pain. Usually the pain isn’t pleasant, unless it makes us forget another pain, something even less pleasant, or it gives us a feeling of control over it, as happens with people who are addicted to pain. Most of our experiences of pain are, by nature, transient sensations, either fast or slow-moving, except in the case of chronic pain caused by illness or injury, or some other unhealthy state (malnutrition, for example).
Pain can be emotional -- and sadly, most of us, if not all of us, recognize emotional pain out of personal experience. Emotional pain also comes in the wake of some negative stimulus, for example, bad news that we have heard. And this too passes, quickly or slowly, depending on various factors, and so on.
Pain is something that we all recognize, but what is suffering? We can understand suffering as a kind of prolonged reaction on our part to a stimulus which arouses or awakens pain, a reaction that interprets the pain and responds to it, and in fact, exacerbates and perpetuates it. Suffering is a situation in which it seems that pain is “bigger than us” or we can’t see any end to it. The leap in gradation between pain, however intense and chronic it may be, and suffering, is our interpretative response. Suffering is our interpretative and subjective response to facts that arouse pain. Sometimes it’s an interpretative response to facts which only seem to us to be causing pain, and sometimes it’s our interpretative response to facts which really don’t exist, but only seem to us to exist. In the interpretative response there is not only the original pain, if it exists, but also the fear of pain and the fear that pain will intensify and not end. All these things together turn into an even stronger experience of pain, which is suffering. In various states of pain, including cases of intense pain from a known source, suffering constitutes a response which somewhat blurs and colors the perception of reality; suffering is a situation in which pain, which is always finite and limited, seems to our consciousness to be infinite in terms of range, scope and duration. It seems to us that the color of suffering is the color of all reality.
When we talk about suffering, we have to mention Buddhism, where suffering constitutes a basic and central tenet. The four Noble Truths of the Buddha relate to the existence of suffering as something that people can’t avoid since it’s characteristic of the human substance, and to the way of escape from suffering that is suggested, the Noble Eightfold Path. The source of suffering, according to the Buddhism, is ignorance as expressed in our identification with the ego and with our bodies, shackling us to the world and to its provocations. The very existence of the ego is a kind of delusion according to Buddhism. In accordance with the language of the Graceway, we say that suffering results from our self-centeredness, which responds to pain and creates subjective interpretation, and a deceitful one at that, which perpetuates the suffering. As long as self-centeredness succeeds in interpreting reality for us, interpretations that restrict our ability to see freely, suffering is inevitable.
What is to be done with the suffering that interpret reality for us and restricts us in our experience of
it? Before we move on, let’s go back to the memory of pain that we felt before, at the beginning of the meeting. Let’s ask ourselves if suffering arose in us at the time when we experienced the pain, and what was the moment of transition between pain and suffering? We can see how much of this was pain and how much was suffering. What happened subsequently to the suffering? And to the pain?
In a situation of suffering and distress, because it’s mixed up with our interpretations which stand between us and the reality and intensify the negative experience, we have a range of possible actions at our disposal. It’s possible, for example, to change interpretations, in the spirit of the Serenity Prayer. In cases, which unfortunately are not uncommon, where it is impossible to stop the pain, it is at least possible to change the meaning of the reality that suffering indicates for us. Thus, we take the pain back to something else, a state of irritation, which is finite and limited, however intense and prolonged it may be. To ensure that the change in the interpretation of reality will happen, we need to exercise the faculty of knowing and distinguishing, as suggested by the Serenity Prayer. The tool, “Distinguishing Facts” helps us to improve our ability to distinguish, so that we can contend with interpretations that intensify the suffering, consciously or otherwise. When suffering arises in us -- not normal and transitory pain -- but suffering, emotional or physical, it is possible to look at ourselves as if from a lateral perspective, and to distinguish between the pain itself and the suffering. The distinction is between the first stimulus of pain, which is apparently unstoppable, and our immediate response to the pain itself and the interpretative response, which is suffering. The very distinction, seen from a lateral perspective, creates a difference. In the process of distinguishing, we can repeat to ourselves the statement, “Suffering isn’t a fact,” which reminds us of the distinguishing of facts, despite the pain. It is also advisable to add something more focused: “This will pass.” Telling ourselves this gives hope, and repeating it signals a change, at least in approach. The statement is only the beginning of distinction, to which we will soon be adding more components.
Colors of reality -- feelings aren’t facts
Let’s take another brief moment of silence. Let’s remember a strong feeling that affected us today, or yesterday, or any other day, a feeling that dominated the whole of our consciousness, to such an extent that even now we can feel what we felt then. It can be any feeling that we experienced as positive or negative. Let’s remember what went through our minds when the feeling was present, and how we interpreted the reality. Let’s remember how the feeling began, what was the first stimulus that initiated the process, and extend the memory to the point where the feeling ended. With the power of imagination, we’ll watch ourselves laterally, before, during, and after the feeling, and also remember our activities -- which of them derived directly from the feeling, and did the feeling color the activity? To what extent did feeling activate us? How much did our interpretation of reality change during the emotional change that we underwent? … Let’s go back to the silence. … Thank you.
Feeling is like color. It is customary to associate particular feelings with different colors. Feeling is the color of reality. The nature of the feeling and its intensity influence the color of reality. When we are angry, for example, reality is colored by our anger; we understand it and behave in it out of anger. We respond to the world according to the color of anger, but usually we’re not aware that our response is conditioned by this. From our point of view, this is reality. When we’re happy, reality is colored by our happiness, and when we’re sad, or alternatively, in love, our reality is colored by those feelings. Every feeling colors reality for us, but usually we don’t know, and we’re not aware that we’re functioning in a reality that’s colored by feeling. When we’re not aware, the color of feeling seems to us to be the color of the world itself, and we respond to this color. A certain escalation takes place: a certain stimulus arouses the feeling in us -- internal or external stimulus; the feeling has colored the world for us; we have responded according to the color of the world which we saw, which was influenced by the feeling that colored it; our response drew the world’s response to us, conforming to the color that the feeling created for us; we interpret and understand the world’s response according to the color of the feeling; the feeling is strengthened, our response is too, and so on.
I’m reminded of a living example, a rather sad one: a couple had come to me for counselling. The young wife said something which, to me, sounded innocent and even sympathetic and supportive. But not to her husband. For some reason, what she said sounded in his ears like aggression towards him, and this annoyed him. She tried to explain, and he just got angrier. It seemed he was hearing or understanding the opposite of what she said. I tried to present her words as I understood them; this made him even angrier and he walked out of the meeting in a rage. A week later, when he had calmed down and apologized, he explained that he had indeed heard the opposite of what she meant, and he hadn’t even managed to understand me, thinking I was “against” him too. In fact, it made no difference what she said, and it seemed it wasn’t only her. He was inside an emotional “movie,” and contradictory facts didn’t impair his movie, but he took from them what the feeling gave him, and the plot of the movie just became more complicated.
Does this sound familiar? We could examine any other emotion: fear, alarm, momentary elation, falling in love, grief, frustration, jealousy, even gratitude, and see how an emotional state influences our experience of reality. It is so influential, that what we see is in fact a projection of the feeling onto the world. The stronger the feeling, the more powerful the projection, and it distorts our perception of reality. Let’s think of two examples: in the first, a man who has lost his job comes home, and his children, who don’t know he’s been sacked, greet him joyfully; in the second case, a man has received some very positive feedback from his boss and a generous pay-raise as well, and he come home and his children, who don’t know about this, greet him joyfully. In these two cases, will the man behave in the same way? In the first, it’s very likely that he’ll feel that today he isn’t up to facing the children and he’ll think they’re nagging him; all he wants is to be left alone in his misery. In the second case, he will be enjoying their company and maybe he’ll want to treat them to a family outing. The same situation -- of a father returning home and being greeted by his children, but with different backgrounds which paint it in vivid colors, as if we are talking about a different case entirely. In the first picture, the children are noisy and annoying, and in the second, they are affectionate and delightful.
It’s a complex challenge, accepting that feelings distort our reality, especially when we are used to emphasizing our emotional state and attributing the validity of reality to it, as if feeling describes an objective situation. But feeling is a color of reality which usually distorts it. When the feeling is stronger, the distortion is correspondingly stronger.
When feeling dominates us, it’s almost impossible to know what the facts are, other than one prominent fact, that we feel. Feeling draws and colors reality for us and, in fact, hides the facts from us. During this process, we are sure that the feeling shows us reality as it is, and we’re not aware at all of the color of the feeling. Distortion of reality usually reflects the situation of our self-centeredness and also reinforces it. Self-centeredness radiates from within us and out into the world. By means of feelings, it can tighten its hold on us. Our response too, influenced by the distortion created by feeling, usually reflects self-centeredness and also reinforces it.
When we succeed in moving away from self-centeredness, the distortion of feeling disappears. Feeling turns into another resource at our disposal for feeling the world and understanding it. By means of feeling that doesn’t emanate from self-centeredness, we receive information about the world, information that doesn’t come from other sources. There’s a story about a Samurai who sat at ease in his secure
garden and drank tea calmly, while the gardener worked close by. Later in a conversation between them the Samurai told the gardener that previously he had felt a slight sense of danger, but apparently, he had been mistaken, because everything was peaceful. The gardener admitted that previously, when he was behind the Samurai and saw his back turned to him, he thought to himself that at such a moment even he, the gardener, could have assaulted the celebrated Samurai. When the Samurai, symbolizing for us someone of clean perceptions, moved away from self-centeredness and the noise that it creates in the mind, he felt the thoughts of the gardener. Just as the gardener was playing with the thought for only a split-second, so the sensation of the Samurai was faint and momentary, because it reflected reality.
Clear awareness in which feeling reflects reality may seem rare to us, but most of us can remember occasions when we sensed a certain atmosphere, took something in from other people without them saying anything. There have been times when we were relatively clear-minded, and feeling supplied us with certain knowledge, but unfortunately, because these are small moments and our control over them is also small, we are often mistaken and we should relate to the emotional knowledge appropriately. Until we attain clarity of mind like that of the Samurai, feelings hide more from us regarding reality than they teach us about it.
When feelings distort facts, they strengthen still further their ability to control our consciousness. Usually the control exerted by feelings is established with prodigious speed, even before we manage to understand what’s happening, and be aware of the process and know how to stop it. This is a ploy whereby self-centeredness can strengthen its hold on us or draw us even deeper under its control. In the Graceway, we want to minimize this control and move further and further away from it. Hence all emotional drifts, even the emotional drifts that we enjoy, because they are the response that controls consciousness and conceals the facts, are hindering us in our attempts to move away from our self-centeredness. Feeling that arises when the consciousness is clear presents itself to awareness in a manner somewhat reminiscent of something picked up by our senses, like seeing or hearing. Clear consciousness can feel as if it sees or hears, but as we have said, it’s a rare situation. Usually when a feeling arises in us, the issue is the possibility of emotional drift, mild or severe. So, what can be done to minimize the distortion, to improve our ability to distinguish facts?