#95: How To Ease Your Suffering When You’re Out Of Touch

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#95 – 08 Mar 2024

Welcome!

I couldn’t sleep.

Something felt off.

I couldn’t pinpoint what it was. But something was nagging me from deep within.

You know that feeling, right?

In a desperate attempt to make sense of my situation, I looked across at my bedside bookshelf.

“Hmmm…. What’s it gonna be?”

My wandering hand gravitated to Awareness by Anthony De Mello.

“Yeah, this might help. Let’s see what he can deliver.”

Without hesitation, I shuffled my right thumb down the side of the book, flicking through the pages until I knew it was time to stop.

I opened the page, ready to greet what wisdom Anthony had to offer:

“LABELS”

That was the chapter header, which opened with:

“The important thing is not to know who “I” is or what “I” is. You’ll never succeed. There are no words for it. The important thing is to drop the labels.”

Deep.

Spiritual.

But what does he mean by “labels”?

Every label you can think of except human being.

“I am a human being. Fair enough; doesn’t say very much.

But when you say. “I am successful,” that’s crazy.

Success is not part of the “I”.

Success is something that comes and goes; it could be here today and gone tomorrow.

That’s not “I”.

— Anthony De Mello

It dawned on me how we do so easily attach ourselves to those labels that come and go:

I am a CEO
I am a leader
I am a doctor
I am a creative
I am successful
I am a marketer
I am an accountant

“When you said, “I am a success,” you were in error, you were plunged into darkness.

You identified yourself with success. The same thing when you said, “I am a failure, a lawyer, a businessman.”

You know what’s going to happen if you identify yourself with these things. You’re going to cling to them, you’re going to be worried that they may fall apart, and that’s where your suffering comes in.”

— Anthony De Mello

Let’s repeat that last part again, let it sink in:

“You’re going to cling to them, you’re going to be worried that they may fall apart, and that’s where your suffering comes in.”

Do you see the trap there?

The labels end up having a hold on you. You’ll cling to them. You’ll worry about losing them, and you’ll start to suffer.

This suffering reminds me of Frodo Baggins holding the weight of the Ring of Power in The Lord of the Rings. It takes hold of him and starts to corrupt his mind.

I’m also reminded of the cliche devoted employee who gives their life to a company but at the expense of the rest of their life. They grind and grind, working their way up and becoming the gloried CEO. But along the way, they sacrifice everything else — family, friendships, health and hobbies.

Then, when the time comes, and they receive their golden handshake and retire, it doesn’t feel so “golden”.

They drift into darkness and despair as they realise the identity they clung to for so long, the label of “CEO” is gone, and who are they without that?

Tragic, isn’t it?

So what happened in my moment of late-night suffering? Where I felt called to reach for a spiritual book?

Well, funnily enough, I actually got an answer, as Anthony De Mello continued:

“You’re suffering. Suffering is a sign that you’re out of touch with the truth.

Suffering is given to you that you might open your eyes to the truth, that you understand that there’s falsehood somewhere.

Just as physical pain is given to you so you will understand that there is disease or illness somewhere.

Suffering points out that there is falsehood somewhere.”

My suffering was a sign that I was out of integrity with myself. It was a subtle indicator that something in my life is not quite right and needs my attention, or else there may be greater consequences.

Don’t ignore the subtle clues life is sending you. You have inner wisdom trying to direct you back onto your true path.

Anthony De Mello wrapped it up:

“Suffering occurs when you clash with reality.

When your illusions clash with reality, when your falsehoods clash with truth, then you have suffering.

Otherwise there is no suffering.”

I invite you to reflect on your version of suffering at this moment:

In what ways are you suffering?
What are your “illusions”, and how are they clashing with reality?
What falsehoods are you believing? Is there something you are lying to yourself about?
How can you start to get back in alignment?

The path of integrity

I started to question if I was out of integrity.

Now, integrity can be one of those wishy-washy words that people like to throw around to sound grounded and in control of their lives, but what does it actually mean?

“Integrity: the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles that you refuse to change.”

— Cambridge Dictionary

We feel it when we are dishonest with ourselves or ignore our moral principles.

It eats us up.

Something is not quite right. You don’t feel whole.

I like the idea of tying integrity to wholeness. I first heard this from Gay Hendricks in The Big Leap. He highlights how breaching your integrity is one of the quickest ways to bring yourself down.

You know how these breaches sneak in: you tell a little lie, withhold some of the truth, and don’t follow through on something you agreed upon.

It’s a slippery slope; before you know it, you can lose yourself in the maze of avoidance, dishonesty, inconsistency, and disrespect.

“If you think of integrity as a physics issue instead of a moral one, you’ll see that it belongs alongside unarguable forces such as gravity.

Long before morality came into play, the original definition of integrity had to do with wholeness and completeness.

To be in integrity meant you were whole and complete.

To be out of integrity meant a breach in your wholeness had occurred; there was a gap in your completeness.”

— Gay Hendricks

Maybe you are out of integrity.

Do you feel that gap in your completeness?

Gay Hendricks shares a few questions to help you identify and resolve those breaches in your integrity. I invite you to journal on them:

“Where do I feel out of integrity with myself?

What is keeping me from feeling complete and whole?

What important feelings am I not letting into my awareness?

Where in my life am I not telling the full truth?

Where in my life have I not kept my promises?

In my relationship with _____, what do I need to say or do to feel complete and whole?”

What is true?

One of the ways we feel these integrity conflicts arise is when we do something “we have to do”, but it doesn’t feel right.

You think you have to do it.

But do you?

It’s hard to say no, as you often encounter tremendous fear and self-doubt. So you succumb to what the culture wants and sacrifice your true self.

Martha Beck wrote a book, The Way of Integrity. Here, I am reminded of her reflection that not all social conventions are bad and that living with integrity doesn’t mean fully rejecting the culture. However, we should be aware of the difference between the behaviours of our true self and our false self and how they impact our feelings of joy and struggle.

Martha’s second step on the path to integrity is:

“It requires nothing of you expect to recognise when you’re doing something because it’s prescribed by culture, and when an action arises from your true nature.”

But what is “true”?

This can be hard to know. Does anyone really know for sure?

So your best bet is to trust your intuition — your inner feelings about what is true for you.

Martha Beck has a series of questions to help you get radically honest about where you are hustling up the wrong path. Again, I invite you to journal on these. Martha adds a caveat, “Pause until you can feel the real answer”:

“Do you ever hang out with people who you don’t truly enjoy? Who are they?

Do you consistently make yourself do anything (or many things) you don’t really want to do? Make a list.

Are there things you do solely out of fear that not doing them will upset someone, or lower your value in someone else’s eyes? What are they?

Are there any times in your daily life where you’re consistently pretending to be happier or more interested than you really are? In what areas (relationships, job activities, places) do you tend to do this?

Do you ever say things you know aren’t true, or things you don’t really, truly mean? What are they?”

This exercise certainly puts the spotlight on areas where you’re hustling out of integrity, which brings on that sense of suffering.

And no wonder:

“Whenever you go against your true nature to serve your culture, you freaking hate it.”

— Martha Beck

And so there is nothing wrong with these hustles. It’s part of life, having to do things we don’t want to do. Here, we are admitting where we are out of alignment.

“The only change to make at this point on your way of integrity is to admit - just to yourself - that some of your actions are designed to impress or fit in with other people.”

— Martha Beck

Okay, that’s it.

We’ve covered a bunch of ground here around that niggling sense of suffering and how it’s often tied to being out of integrity. The reflection questions will serve you well.

Please reach out if you’d like some help exploring these topics more deeply.

Cheers,

Matt

P.S.

I also revisited Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet last night. This paragraph caught my attention:

“Finally I want to add just one more bit of advice:

To keep growing, silently and earnestly, through your whole development; you couldn’t disturb it any more violently than by looking outside and waiting for outside answers to questions that only your innermost feeling, in your quietest hour, can perhaps answer.”

How does that land for you?

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The Meaning Path