People often write to tell me they're hurting. Quite a few, actually.
They’re overwhelmed by depression, failure, anger. They're despairing of ever being different, and often suicidal. They feel stuck and hopeless.
Some have had awakening experiences, which you might think would mean they’d be peaced out and happy. But no. Interestingly, often, many feel worse. Because for them, everything is not only painful, it’s also meaningless.
No matter what the specifics of these personal stories, all are convinced they’re particularly messed up, screwed up and hopeless.
Ouch.
And then I go and tell them what they’re experiencing is… common.
Not because I’m unsympathetic.
But because when you hear from as many folks as I do, you begin to see the repetitive pattern of mind at work.
Comments become… predictable.
Almost like I’m psychic or something.
Which of course I’m not. I’ve just heard all this before. Many times.
Because it turns out…
Suffering has a script.
A repeated word-for-word, all-over-the-world-people-say-the-same-things, script.
The specific external circumstances are not at all the same of course.
But the conclusions and self referencing… oh yes.
Predictable down to the word.
All these very unique sufferers are saying...
All the same very not-unique things.
It becomes obvious how unoriginal the mind is.
All while insisting how original and unique we are.
You’d think people who feel painfully isolated might be thrilled to learn that they’re not alone, and not unique.
But actually no. They are not pleased.
They argue for their special messed-upness.
They are disbelieving. Skeptical.
Almost annoyed.
“No way!” they all say. “My case is different. Other people don’t suffer like this. Other people aren’t this messed up. It’s me. I’m different.”
Of the 7 billion people on this rock, they know that they are especially pained, especially hopeless, especially broken.
An especially alone-in-the-world loser.
Ok honey, sure.
What’s up with that insistence on individuality and special-ness?
Oh we humans do love this uniqueness thing, don’t we?
We love the idea of poor-me-the-special-failure-in-the-universe.
We love the constant refrain of “I’m me, I’m a person, I’m unique, I’m real, I’m bad, I am I am I am.”
We love the, “I am not like the others over there, I’m this loser over here,” song.
And we sing it all the time.
Oh yes it hurts like a sum’bitch.
Painful stuff, being a person.
But judging by how hard folks insist that they are a special problem,
It is clear that pain, miserable as it is...
Is preferred to the possibility that we’re not the least bit special, not unique, and…
Not even individual at all.
Yeah, no thanks. Shut the hell up about person-hood,
And pass the tissues and the anti-depressants.
But….
If we can think for a moment about our own painful situations in life-
not enough success or love or enlightenment or friends or health or whatever-
If it was possible to look at these life situations without thinking this means something about us… or has anything to do with us,
Notice what happens to the pain?
It hurts less.
Often a lot less.
Huh.
Same exact situations.
Without the meaning about one’s self- the self-referencing, the self-monitoring, the self-recrimination, it’s…
Easier.
So it’s not the situations that are causing all this pain.
It’s the individuality.
The self-ness. The unique person-ness of it.
That’s what hurts.
Because is any one a distinct individual?
A unique, separate person?
It certainly looks like that’s the case, of course.
And many of us do go with what it looks like and answer "Yes!"
But is that accurate?
Because a wave on the ocean looks like it is a distinct thing too, but is it indeed actually separate from the ocean?
No.
Think people are different from waves?
What if all the pain of everyday life, all the suffering, all the despair that everyone experiences...
Is entirely about the insistence that we are a Me, a person, a unique individual?
When what we really are, actually, is part of a crowd?
Ordinary.
Indistinguishable from others.
So blended in and the same and alike that we’re literally…
The same stuff.
Could it be that we’re all…no more than a wave?
A perceived-to-be-separate-but-not-actually-separate-from-the-sea-of-humanity wave?
We might watch what happens to suffering if that’s the case.
And what happens to “I’m all alone in the world” isolation, if we’re just a small part of something… bigger.
Then we’re not alone.
We’re huge.
Connected.
Vast.
Unlimited.
Never-ending.
Failure becomes a meaningless concept.
Because how can vastness be a failure?
Only an individual can be a failure.
We might notice how that possibility feels.
We might see that when we peel away all the ideas of separateness, all the ideas that a Me is what does things and messes up and blows it…
Then fault falls away too. As does blame. And shame. And regret.
All that pain that comes with the delusion of the person, falls away.
It’s….
Calmer.
So yes, individuals hurt.
But thankfully an individual is not what we are.
No matter how much it appears so.
And though we may never come to know our own connectedness, our own ocean-ness,
Still... known or not... there it is.
Not apart, not separate, not bordered, not contained.
So the next time feelings of despair overtake us,
Maybe we can ride out that wave.
Knowing it isn’t…
Person-al.
