Q: You speak of the necessity to experience excruciating pain. Can an understanding of the unmasking process make it unnecessary to go through the pain?
I agree with the answer that was given. "Understanding does not mean that you actually do it; you just understand it." Just because you know the process of something doesn't mean you know exactly what it is. Experience is what life is. You have to experience things first hand rather than out of a book. Knowing something is different then experiencing it. As an RA I grew to learn that you should never say "I know what you mean." or " I know exactly how you feel." Because in reality you have no idea. You didn't experience the event that the person did you can only assume you understand it.
Experiencing somethings is the Hard Way. Many things are pleasurable and are hard to bare. But experiencing something is, in my opinion, the only way to become enlightened in a way. You can read thousands of books and listen to hundreds of stories, but if you don't experience anything, what's the point?
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I agree, especially with what you said about never telling people that you "know how they feel." Saying that, just causes the person to distrust you because they know that you don't know. Even if you went through the exact same situation, everyone experiences things differently. Everyone gleans a different type of knowledge/wisdom from something that is important to them. You may understand pain, but your perception of pain is probably different than your neighbor's. I guess it's important, as Trungpa said, to have a spiritual friend to bounce these feelings off of. The friend doesn't have to understand what you are feeling, but they can help you decipher it, help you experience it as you need to, and help you extract what is important to you to learn from.
ReplyDeleteLife is weird.
I agree there have been many times someone has come to talk to me about a problem and I have said to them I know how you feel when really how could I. It's not like I was there with them for the whole thing and even if I was there I can't feel how they feel because we are separate people and all we can do is our best to try and know where they are coming from by drawing on our past experiences and do our best to help them with what we know!
ReplyDeleteI agree with this as well. I too have had situations where I have said I know how you feel but it was more of an I can only guess becuase I had something similiar happen to me. Plus we all experience things differently so no one can ever truly know how someone else feels.
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