Have you ever noticed that one minute you're feeling fine, and then all at once you think of something and descend into feelings of misery? Have the facts and circumstances of your life changed in that moment? Of course not. What's changed is the color of life, and the change, more than anything else, resulted from the thought that came into your mind. Our confusion is that we perceive the misery to be caused by the recognition of certain facts or circumstances, whereas in reality, the misery is caused by the miserable thought, and by the way it has colored our perception of reality.
You can think about facts, circumstances and situations in many different ways and from different perspectives. Why is the one perspective that makes you suffer more "real" than any of the others? Sometimes when I'm suffering over something, I think, "Would this matter if I were dead?" The answer is always obviously, "No," because there would be no "I" to feel suffering any longer. (That might set you off feeling depressed about death, but then you can ask the same question, and again the answer is self-evidently, "No.")
I have a profound realization in such moments that the suffering is a kind of drama that I have staged in my mind. I've created this little stage in my head filled with characters and situations, and I'm in the middle of it, feeling tragic and alone. But the emotions are SO powerful and gripping ... how do you get out of it?
One way is to imagine yourself as a spectator. As a spectator, you may realize that this is the same old tired script performed over and over again. Or it may seem melodramatic and comical. Or you may notice from this different vantage point that the star of the show is missing key points of the story and exaggerating all the negatives.
You may not be able to walk out of the theater right away, but if you practice this over time, eventually you are able to get up and leave that musty dark place and come out into the freshness of REAL life. To me this is not necessarily feeling triumphantly happy and cheerful, but simply being alert and present to real things outside of yourself and not causing undue suffering in yourself or others.
"Everything is honored, but nothing matters."
Photo: At the Theater (The Melodrama) (c. 1860-64) - Honoré Daumier.
