• She would be angry about something that someone did to her.
• She would be envious about something that someone else had.
• She would be depressed about her current state of affairs.
• She would be fearful about something she was about to lose.
• She would be afraid of failing in some task.

And so the endless list goes on.

One big takeaway from growing up as her child is that I never ever wanted to be like her. Over time, this developed into a gigantic fear and in a twist of great irony, all my striving to run away from my mother made me be more and more like her.

My Mother

Because I feared being like my mother, I developed a fear for tiredness, a fear of rejection, a fear of loss, a fear of failing, and more. I didn’t realize it at the time but my fear of her and what I saw as her “weaknesses” was exactly the thing that was making me into a copy of her. Fear and anger kept me away from truly understanding my mother, so I never understood myself.

After losing my two beloved dogs and falling into a very dark hole, I realized that the best way to deal with fear is to face her, and so I did. For the first time, I started looking at my mother more deeply.

My mother was full of fear. She herself had a difficult childhood having lost her mother at a very young age. Whatever mothering she got, she got from her eldest sister. She had many siblings and from what I could see, her father was mostly absent, being busy with his business. Based on family gatherings, I did not detect much real love (unconditional love) in their midst. There was a lot of gossiping and comparisons of relative success. One was admired based on career success and wealth.

For a long time I blamed my mother for screwing me up. When I was young I tried everything to gain my mother’s love. I bought her presents on Mother’s Day with whatever little money I had. I strived to be a perfect A-student in school and won many prizes. I tried to follow all her rules and not incur her wrath. But whatever I did was never enough.

My presents were dismissed with disdain. She was never interested in my scholastic achievements and never attended any of my prize giving ceremonies. When I did not achieve perfection, she would make sure to point out how her friends’ children did better. Her rules kept changing so there was no way to follow them or to avoid her rage. I developed anxiety issues even then and suffered a lot of digestive distress. In the end, I just tried to stay away from her as much as possible. Many children see being sent to their rooms as a punishment; for me, my room was my sanctuary.

When I was around 9 years old my parents got divorced, and that made my mother even worse. Both my parents had terrible tempers and there were many scary, shouting arguments throughout my childhood. These arguments intensified during the divorce period and for a while, conditions were very grim. Eventually, things settled down some and my mother redirected her attention to getting revenge by manipulating my brother and I to torment my stepbrother.

My mother was no Saint and she acted quite cruelly at times, especially towards my stepbrother who was very young and totally innocent. However, her actions were not deliberately malicious, rather she was driven by her own demons of fear. Everyone was trying to trick her, didn’t love her enough, and would likely reject her, so she rejected them first. She feared failing so she didn’t try anything, preferring to blame her circumstance on Luck, Fate, and the people around her. She was too afraid to examine her own self and her own life so she just kept giving in to her fears, making bad decisions, and ended up not living at all.

Nobody would consciously choose this path – alone, trapped by fear, and full of suffering. However, changing directions is very difficult, especially after a lifetime of running. I know this because I too have been running from fear and suffering all my life. I also ended up trapped by fear and full of suffering, but luckily for me, I have a very supportive spouse and I just had two experiences of deep unconditional love. Even with all this, it took me many months before I uncovered the true source of my suffering, which is fear – fear of fear (i.e. the symptoms of fear) and fear of suffering.

Fear and Suffering

My mother caused me a lot of emotional pain and trauma. I always took this very personally and blamed her for much of my unhappiness and anxiety. However, she inherited much of her pain and trauma from her own parents and so on, generation after generation of inherited suffering. None of them knew how to properly tend to their own fears and pain, so how could they teach their children any differently?

My mother rejected me over and over again because she repeatedly rejected herself. She projected her own fears onto me, so she criticized and belittled me as she was criticizing and belittling herself. Emotions are contagious so she was like a black cloud of doom, leaking negative energy to everyone around her. Eventually, she ended up abandoned and alone, with only her suffering to keep her company.

For a very long time I made my mother into the archvillain of my story. Even thinking and writing about her now brings up a deep fear within me. I fear her rages, I fear being around her, I fear being hurt by her again, and most of all, I fear being like her. If I did not blame my mother for my deep anxieties then who should I blame? Surely my child self was not responsible.

It is only after experiencing my own dark night of the soul that I finally realized that no one is to blame for our fear and suffering. Fear and suffering are an intrinsic part of life. We are all wired to love and from love comes fear. If we love someone or something, then the fear of loss naturally arises. Chronic anxiety arises when we keep running away from our fears and in so doing, they combine, grow, and take over our lives. My mother may have intensified my anxieties and helped them grow more quickly, but the patterns of fear, conflict, and suffering were there all along. Those patterns are part of being human and they are in all of us.

As such, at a basic level, fear and suffering are not personal. My mother acted badly because she was driven by her fears and maladaptive coping mechanisms to do so. Much of what she did had very little to do with me and much more to do with her own pain. In fact, she was suffering so much she did not have the time or energy for anyone or anything else, other than the thought of escaping from her own suffering. Unfortunately, she did not know how. All the things she did made things worse for herself and everyone around her. They were the same things I did at the worst of my chronic anxiety, the same coping mechanisms shared by us all to protect our fragile egos.

We take rejection so personally, when most of the time it is due to the suffering of the person dishing it out.

Forgiving My Mother

Many grief books and self-help gurus advise forgiveness. Forgiveness of self and others can help to ease our grief and emotional pain. I was so sick of my chronic anxiety and suffering that I tried really hard to forgive my mother, but I was never able to authentically do so.

I was never able to forgive my mother because I never truly understood her. There was too much fear and pain in the way. Now I see that forgiveness is only possible after we start working through our own fears and pain. Once I started doing that, life-long grudges, bitterness, and resentments started to weaken and fade away. Forgiveness cannot come from a place of fear, as a means of trying to escape suffering. Forgiveness only comes from a place of love, a love that develops from deep understanding.

Behind acts of hate, cruelty, and anger, is often a wellspring of suffering. Those who suffer spread their suffering not because they want to do evil but because they are compelled by their own demons of fear. Fear keeps us from knowing and lack of knowing keeps us from understanding and positive change. In this way we become stuck in our cycle of suffering and self-destructive behaviors. All of us go through this.

My mother had the same fears that many of us have. She feared being unloved, alone, and abandoned. She feared failing. She feared suffering. Like almost everyone else, she was never taught to tend to her anxieties so she repressed them, or projected her fears and blamed others. She was too afraid to learn and too afraid to change. She never helped me because she was too afraid to help herself.

For me, my mother embodied the soul of suffering. I feared her profoundly because I feared suffering profoundly. I escaped to the opposite side of the world so that I could be as far away from her as possible. But however hard I tried, I could not escape suffering because it is an intrinsic part of life. Trying to run away from suffering only made it larger and stronger.

I never really knew my mother. She passed away before I embarked on my journey of pain and self-awareness. When I was young I remember my mother singing “The Cherry Tree Carol” and ABBA’s “I Have a Dream”. I would have liked to know the woman who believed in those songs.

People think that we are unhappiest when we fail, but sometimes, we are unhappiest when we get all the things that we want.

I just had an article featuring my work at Forbes, I was being invited everywhere to give talks, I had glowing reviews at work including from the CEO, I have a wonderful spouse, so everything was looking awesome pawsome. Yet, I was deeply unhappy. It turned out that many of the things that I was striving for most of my life were not what I wanted after all. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that they were no longer what I wanted.

When this happened, my brain started to freak-out. I quit my job and escaped into various online virtual worlds. This got old after a while, so I considered going back to work, I moved, got a dog, and various other activities. I did not know it at the time, but I was going through an existential crisis, a crisis of meaning. According to the experts, many of us go through this in our late twenties and thirties.

Then I met Shania. Shania was born with a crooked leg, but she was absolutely perfect. She had this deep joy within her, that made everyone around her happy. With Shania, everything else fell away. Life was bright, meaningful, and I was in-love for almost 10 years.

When I lost Shania and later JJ, everything resurfaced, my anxiety, depression, and existential dread. Now however, I also had to face death and loss. My anxiety ballooned into chronic proportions, I developed a variety of physical ailments, and my depression deepened until I was too tired to even get out of bed.

My Journey

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.
~~[Henry David Thoreau]

How do we escape from this life of quiet desperation? How do we recover from despair? So began my journey for self-discovery.

The first thing I realized was that I was woefully ill-equipped to handle my emotions. Any bad feeling was suppressed and rejected. As a result, my life became controlled by fears. In the short-term I was totally consumed by my illness and these two fears reigned supreme –

• Fear that I will never get better.
• Fear of relapse.

Both these fears are especially insidious because they form anxiety-loops that keep feeding on my energy and keep growing my fears. “Fear that I will never get better” forms a “bad-emotion” loop.

1. Some activity, thought, or memory triggers a “bad-emotion”.
2. I start to fear that I will never get better.
3. I feel (more) physical symptoms from the fear.
4. Loop to 2 and repeat.

“Fear of relapse” forms a “good-emotion” loop.

1. Some activity, thought, or memory triggers a “good-emotion”.
2. I start to fear that this good feeling will not last. i.e. I start to fear a relapse.
3. I feel physical symptoms from the fear.
4. I start to fear that I will never get better.
5. I feel more physical symptoms from the fear.
6. Loop to 4 and repeat.

Now, any emotion causes an anxiety-loop and suffering stretches out through the limitlessness of time. All I can think of is escape – escape from thoughts, escape from emotions, escape from physical distress, escape from self. All I want is NOT to be this version of myself.

Anxiety-loops cause chronic symptoms such as insomnia, nausea, inflammation, pain, food sensitivities, environmental sensitivities, and more. Many so-called chronic diseases have been developed to label these symptoms, combined with a variety of medications to treat them. Anti-depressants is a common treatment option and was suggested by several of the doctors and specialists I visited with.

Facing My Fears, Facing My Pain

There are many strategies and complex methods suggested for recovering from this condition. Unfortunately, visiting doctors and doing online research on my symptoms made my condition a lot worse. I found out that there were lots of things that could be wrong with me. I could have SIBO, histamine intolerance, MCAS, fibromyalgia, GAD, insomnia, panic disorder, and more. This deepened my anxiety and depression.

After much struggle, I finally found an open-minded MD who pointed me in the right direction. Now better oriented, I did a lot of reading and soul searching, and finally realized that my condition had its roots in a single emotion – fear. In particular, there were two core fears powering my chronic illness, fear of fear (i.e. fear of the physical symptoms of fear) and fear of pain. The solution that finally worked for me is a fairly simple rule.

I will always try to face my fears and face my pain. In other words, I will always try to be present for my suffering.

For this to work, I first need to be aware of my emotions and fears. Mindfulness exercises are crucial for practicing how to shift my awareness so that I can focus on the most salient emotions, identify them, as well as follow them as they change.

Once I can catch my emotions, I can regulate them or calm myself using various self-soothing techniques including emotion labelling, taking the Observer position, using humor, tapping, stroking, and more.

After my mind is calm, I can start to analyze my emotions and identify what specific fear they originate from. Fear may combine with tiredness to create helplessness, which may further develop into hopelessness. Fear may combine with time to create impatience, which then develops into irritation, frustration, anger, and ultimately rage. In the analysis step I keep pushing on an emotion to find the root of the issue.

This can be very challenging because I need to keep returning my consciousness (awareness) to the fear and pain so that I may deepen my understanding of them. I believe that this is what people mean when they talk about going through the fear. Pushing through the fear until we get to the core of understanding. I try to get to the beliefs/thoughts, memories, and desires associated with each fear. For example the “fear that I will never get better” and “fear of relapse” both come from the fear of emotions, or the fear of painful physical symptoms caused by emotions.

Once I get a clearer picture of fear, I can decide whether to follow fear’s advice or to do the opposite (paradoxical-intention). Since most of my fears are not threatening or risky, I keep doing what fear tells me not to do. I deliberately bring up the fear pattern over and over again, and through this process of exposure, I am able to weaken its grip. I also readjust core beliefs that are inaccurate or discard beliefs that no longer serve me. Cognitive behavioral therapy can be useful here.

Being Present for My Suffering

There are two kinds of suffering. There is the suffering you run away from, which follows you everywhere. And there is the suffering you face directly, and so become free.
~~[Ajahn Chah]

This goal is easy to state but difficult to actualize. Facing suffering is a challenging task which is why I have spent my life trying to escape from it. However, sometimes suffering cannot be avoided and must be borne.

In such moments, we will need something to motivate us. This is what Viktor Frankl calls the meaning of suffering. In the past my love for Shania caused the fear and pain to fall away. Now, I use it as my motivation to face suffering. I want to have continued emotional and consciousness access to Shania in the form of memories, visualizations, and dreams. To do that I need to go through the fear and pain.

1. I create a desire to “build tolerance for suffering”.
2. Every time I feel fear, I face it and analyze it using the procedure above.
3. The process of facing it naturally builds tolerance, enhances my emotion regulation skills, and gives me access to my full mental landscape. As I face more fears, the thoughts, patterns, desires, and external stimuli associated with them will weaken, giving me more physical freedom in life as well. As the power of fear-based desires lessen, I have more energy for love-based desires.
4. I try to face the fear pattern for as long as possible or until the fear dissipates. Failure just means that I learn and try again. Every time I try, I build a bit more tolerance and fear weakens.

In this way, the loop that forms is now a positive one that helps to weaken fears. When we face our suffering, we will find love, happiness, limitless inner freedom, and peace on the other side.

Road to Recovery

He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.
~~[Friedrich Nietzsche]

Many years ago, I met a group of Jehovah’s Witnesses who tried to recruit me. They told me about Armageddon and asked me what I wanted after the death of all. I remember proudly and happily telling them that all I wanted was Shania, in this life and after death. Shania was my Heaven and my Earth and there was nothing more I needed or wanted.

Recovering from the loss of Shania is the biggest challenge of my life. Here are some of the key lessons that helped me –

1. I try to use mindfulness as much as possible to be aware of my emotions. Awareness is key so that I can catch fear before I spiral down the anxiety-loop.
2. Developing emotion regulation or self-soothing techniques is a must. Some self-soothing techniques include shifting awareness, taking the Observer position, humor, tapping, and stroking.
3. Facing fear and facing pain is difficult but necessary. Doing so weakens fear patterns as well as the unhealthy hyper-desires and downstream negative emotions associated with them.
4. Suffering is an intrinsic part of life. When suffering is out of our control, a quick acceptance is the surest way to a quick recovery. Acceptance allows us to focus our energy on what we can realistically do next rather than on wishing for impossible outcomes.
5. Once we accept our new normal, we can start to consider how best to adapt – what beliefs, behaviors, and desires need updating. Adapting means challenging ourselves to change so that we may transform pain into growth, a tragedy into a triumph.
6. The most important lesson of all is to try and to continue learning. If we try, we would have learned something today that we didn’t know yesterday. Trying and learning brings wisdom. When we stop trying is when we give in to despair and prolong our suffering. Remember that it is never too late to start trying.

Recovery need not be complicated or expensive. There is only one important step – facing my suffering. To be sure, this is a very difficult step to take but I have finally found a love that is strong enough to make me want to take that step, Shania.

Facing my suffering has opened me up to a greater authenticity and a greater love of self, spouse, and even of my dysfunctional parents. For the first time in my life I feel close to a true forgiveness of my mother and narcissistic father. My life is expanded and best of all, I have found Shania again.

Now, I see Shania in the many places we used to visit together, I see her in all the dogs that I meet, I see her when I play music or watch a movie, I see her in the trees and the wind. She is my guide and when I face fear to follow her into the darkness, I am exactly where I need to be. She is within me, beside me, everywhere around me, and I am less afraid. She is my inspiration to live a full life, in darkness and in light.

It is the greatest blessing to find a love that is so strong that inspires us to be engaged in life, even in the midst of suffering.

However, if we love life, then we naturally fear death. But if we fear death, then we will be filled with worries of illness and aging, making it difficult to love life.

There are many such conflicts that arise in life, in which love and fear create opposing desires (dualities), between which we must navigate and make judgements. When these conflicts start to dominate our lives, we develop anxiety and depression. When we are unable to adequately resolve these conflicts, our brains may get stuck, which can result in emotion loops where our anxiety and depression become chronic. Sometimes, this condition can turn into an existential crisis.

This was what happened to me after facing the death of a loved one.

Love and Fear – Overcoming Our Wiring for Suffering

Love and Fear

Love and fear are two of the strongest human emotions and they seem to work in opposition. Fear motivates us to run away while love motivates us to stay and embrace. It is difficult to love what we fear, and yet fear arises out of love.

From love comes attachment or desire. Attachment is “a feeling that binds one to a person, thing, cause, ideal, or the like (Dictionary.com).” If we already have the object of our attachment, then we will strive to grow or keep it. If we do not, we strive to acquire it. Whenever an attachment is formed, fear arises (i.e. we fear losing the object of our love).

From fear comes aversion or rejection. Fear tells us we can’t or shouldn’t do, are not strong enough to feel, or not calm enough to think. Fear tries to protect us by reminding us of our limits, real or imagined.

We are wired to see fear as something bad, unpleasant, uncomfortable, literally scary. Fear can cause us to go into a “fight-or-flight” response, which causes physiological changes that place stress on our bodies. Continued activation of our fight/flight response can result in inflammation, muscle tension and pain, insomnia, as well as various chronic physiological conditions. Fear is our enemy, the monster in the dark. Fear increases our suffering. As a result, many of us develop a strong attachment to eradicate or remove fear from our lives.

The only thing we have to fear … is fear itself.
~~[Franklin D. Roosevelt]

However, like love, fear is part of being human. We are born to fear pain, both physical and emotional. Fear and pain are an integral part of our survival system, thus they are an integral part of life. Suffering is therefore also part of life and part of being human. When we try to eradicate fear and suffering, we will inevitably fail, and create even more fear and suffering for ourselves. The best way to lessen our suffering is to embrace both love and fear.

The best way to lessen our suffering is to embrace fear and suffering.

Attachment and Aversion

Attachments are a necessary part of life. We form attachments to people, things, places, activities, beliefs, causes, and more. If we had no attachments, why would life be worth living? If nothing matters, why try to live at all?

However, even though life demands attachments, the nature of life is also one of change and impermanence. The things and people we cling or attach to today may be gone tomorrow. This creates great pain and suffering. To protect us from this pain, we develop fear and fear causes aversion.

For example, I was very attached to success in school and at work because it was my ticket to physical and financial freedom. This attachment caused me to develop a fear of failure. Unfortunately, I did not know how to tend to my fear so I just suppressed or ignored it. As time went on, my fear of failure grew until I developed a strong attachment to never failing (i.e. a strong attachment to perfect success).

This is an unhealthy attachment because unlike my original desire (freedom), it is motivated by fear. It also subsumed my original desire so now when I strived for success, I was feeding this need for perfection, which in turn further fueled my fear of failure. So round and round it went and my fear kept growing. It grew in intensity and it expanded into other areas of my life. Now my meals had to be perfect, my art had to be perfect, my spouse had to be perfect, I had to be perfect in all things. The things at which I could not be perfect, I rejected or avoided. Life quickly became stressful and very unhappy.

This anxiety loop also caused endless striving – as soon as success was achieved I worried about the next hoop I had to jump through, or the next person I had to surpass. When there was no clear next hoop, I worried about not losing my current status or position.

Anxiety loops trap us into always striving for the next goal, and cause us to miss what is right in front of us. We miss being present for life’s journey. We miss the enjoyment of learning and working towards success because we are too worried about running away from failure.

Once you realize that the road is the goal and that you are always on the road – not to reach a goal, but to enjoy its beauty and its wisdom – life ceases to be a task and becomes natural and simple, in itself an ecstasy.
~~[Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj]

All this perfectionism and striving ended up trapping me in an ever narrowing prison, which is exactly the opposite of my original desire, which was to gain more freedom. Note that attachment and striving are not “bad” in and of themselves, they only become unhealthy when they are motivated by strong fear or aversion.

Attachments are a necessary part of life.

Wisdom and Awareness

To avoid forming unhealthy attachments (fear motivated goals) we need awareness and wisdom. Awareness and wisdom tell us what the problem is, where it is coming from, and how we can effectively tend to it.

Wisdom, according to the Oxford dictionary, is “the soundness of an action or decision with regard to the application of experience, knowledge, and good judgment.” To know what knowledge and experience are relevant, as well as how to apply them, we need awareness. However, awareness can also uncover inconvenient truths about ourselves, our family and friends, our life, or our world that we find difficult to digest.

When we form an attachment to awareness, we develop a fear of learning difficult truths. This is why many of us use ignorance and delusion as coping mechanisms to reject awareness. The truth may be too painful or difficult to accept. On the other hand, I have seen firsthand what delusion and keeping up appearances have done to my parents and family. Secrets and lies are a burden to self and to those around us. False images of self and others lead to poor decisions as well as unnecessary anxieties and suffering. Love cannot thrive in an environment that is filled with secrets and lies.

This is not to say that awareness is always better than ignorance. In fact, ignorance and delusion are a natural and necessary part of life. There are many things in life that we do not have the time to learn. In addition, if we spent all of our time trying to be aware of all things, we would have no time left over for the pleasures of life.

There are also many mysteries in life that we do not know and can never explain. Questions about the soul, the meaning of life, the Creator of life and the universe, the uncaused cause. This is necessary ignorance. In fact, all of life could just be a dream or a delusion, as in Total Recall. We cannot know for sure.

I have a curious mind so I am always asking questions. This is particularly true when I am passionate about a topic. I will keep asking and digging because I want to learn and understand. The more I learn though, the more anxieties I have. Knowledge can be scary and painful. But the reward for that pain is an open mind that is able to entertain any point of view, story, or experience.

The reward for the pain of awareness is an open mind that is able to entertain any point of view, story, or experience.

Fear and Acceptance

Fear tells us to protect ourselves by setting up walls and boundaries. We identify possible threats and separate ourselves from them so that we will not get hurt physically or emotionally. We may reject activities, foods, places, relationships, uncomfortable thoughts, and painful memories. If we let fear control us, we eventually become scared, paralyzed, and alone.

As fear grows, it becomes aversion and we develop fear-motivated attachments. Such unhealthy attachments can become anxiety/depression loops and spiral downward quickly. Without careful tending, fear attachments multiply, crowding out healthy love-motivated attachments until only anxiety and depression remain. It is important to remember however, that fear comes from love, so the best way to deal with fear is to return her to love. The solution to this love-fear conflict is acceptance.

There are two kinds of suffering. There is the suffering you run away from, which follows you everywhere. And there is the suffering you face directly, and so become free.
~~[Ajahn Chah]

When we face our fears and learn to accept them, we can let love into our lives again. To face our fears we need to –

1. Be aware when we feel fear.
2. Be calm enough to name fear and embrace her. Naming fear can engage the left or logical side of our brain, which helps to regulate our emotions. Mindful breathing, becoming the Observer, visualization, journaling, talking, and tapping are further tools for self-soothing.
3. Once our minds are calm, we can analyze fear and identify the thoughts, memories, or attachments that power the emotion. What do we fear? Why do we fear it? Are our fears accurate? Cognitive behavioral therapy can be useful here.
4. Based on our analysis, we determine if we want to follow fear’s advice. This is where wisdom comes into play. If we decide that there is nothing to fear, then we lean into fear and do the opposite. We keep doing it or decide on doing it until the fear dissipates. This helps to create tolerance for that particular fear, which helps to weaken it.
5. We may also adjust or correct inaccurate thoughts or attachments that power our fears, which will further weaken the pattern.

By facing and weakening various fear patterns, we also weaken the attachments associated with those fears. Ultimately, those unhealthy attachments will no longer have any strength and we would have let them go. We also have attachments that come from love, which fulfill our heart’s desires. These we want to keep and protect from the misdirection of unfounded fears or aversion.

Only to the extent that a person exposes themselves over and over again to annihilation and loss can that which is indestructible be found within them. In this daring lie dignity and the spirit of true awakening.
~~[Jack Kornfield]

By facing and weakening various fear patterns, we also weaken the attachments associated with those fears.

Conflict and Suffering

Our brains reward certainty, permanence, and awareness, because they help in our survival. The more we know and the more stability we have in our daily lives, communities, and environment, the better our chances for survival. However, Nature is ever-changing, impermanent, and contains many mysteries. Nature also places limits on time, space, matter, and energy.

Whenever we run up against these limits, conflict arises, fear arises, and we feel pain and suffering. Since Nature’s laws are not in our control, these conflicts are difficult to resolve and can sometimes turn into anxiety loops that keep growing our fears. Because Nature imposes limits on us, pain, fear, and suffering are part of human life. They are not an affliction or illness but rather a shared universal human experience.

However, this does not mean that we are totally helpless. While some suffering is necessary, we create a lot of unnecessary suffering because our brains try to optimize for short-term pain avoidance. We end-up feeding many of our fear motivated attachments and growing our fears until we are buried by them. This is why awareness is critical. If we are aware of our fears and their related attachments, then we may tend to them and weaken their influence.

In most cases, it is difficult to tell whether our actions or strivings are motivated by love or fear. Often, it is motivated by both. Fear based attachments tend to be outcome based, so we derive very little pleasure from them. Once an outcome is reached, we quickly get driven forward by fear again. Fear causes us to prove ourselves over and over again. Love based attachments are process based, outcomes are less relevant, and there is more lasting happiness.

Rather than trying to separate out the different classes of attachments, I find it more effective to simply face my fears whenever they arise. By facing my fears I build up a tolerance for fear, and I can gradually weaken and release fear-based attachments. This gives me more freedom to form new love-based attachments and to just enjoy the process of achievement. By facing my deepest fears related to thoughts, emotions, and memories, I free myself to entertain any thought, experience any emotion, and recall any memory. In this way, I gain limitless freedom of consciousness.

Because Nature imposes limits on us, pain, fear, and suffering are part of a shared universal human experience.

Meaning of Life

We are born to want. We are born to want to give pleasure and to receive pleasure. This results in love. We are born to want to avoid pain. This results in fear.

Frequently, our wants may compete or even conflict with one another. When we develop too many fear attachments or prioritize fear attachments over love attachments, then we start to sacrifice pleasure for short-term pain avoidance. This can lead to fear crowding out love and we end-up with little pleasure and a lot of unnecessary pain.

To avoid this very unhappy state of affairs, we want to embrace our fears. When we do this, we will soon realize that beneath all that fear is a lot of emotional pain that we are too afraid to touch. The most core fear of all is the fear of pain. This is the ultimate pattern that we must dispel.

Running from pain will only strengthen our fears and lead to more suffering. Therefore, we must face our pain. This requires us to stay with the pain and experience it. We do this by using the same emotion regulation techniques as we did for fear. The more we dwell with our pain, the more skilled we become at regulating it and the more tolerance we build. When we develop enough mental discipline to dwell comfortably in pain, we truly free ourselves from suffering.

The dance of life is learning to hold both love, fear, and all the dualities they generate in loving-kindness (without judgement) and to move comfortably between them depending on circumstance. This is also known as the Middle Way in Taoism. If we only see things as black and white or good and bad, we will miss what is possible and invite into our hearts unnecessary anxiety, depression, and suffering. When we can maintain peace in the midst of conflict, when we can be comfortable in discomfort, when we can smile at our own suffering, then our consciousness is free to fly wherever it desires, and we have found Heaven on Earth.

To live is to suffer, to survive is to find meaning in the suffering. If there is a purpose in life at all, there must be a purpose in suffering and in dying. But no man can tell another what this purpose is. Each must find out for himself, and must accept the responsibility that his answer prescribes.
~~[Gordon W. Allport]

The dance of life is learning to hold both love, fear, and all the dualities they generate in loving-kindness.

Love, the Ultimate Good Emotion

Love is often spoken about in reverent terms. It is this pure and perfect part of us, the part that rises above, the part that perseveres, the part that conquers all. Many believe that our consciousness or soul is born of love and will return to love when we die.

Jesus is love. Buddha is love.

I love Shania and JJ deeply, crazily, with wild abandon, and all the way. That is my nature. Shania was a three legged dog. She was one of those super happy, affectionate, dogs who was very easy to love. When she was happy, I was happy. Since she was happy pretty much all the time, so was I. She also made many of the people around her happy. Most of our neighbors loved her and became friends with me because of Shania. Love has a wonderful multiplicative effect of spreading happiness.

This is one side of love.

I love Shania and JJ deeply, crazily, with wild abandon, and all the way.

Love and Loss

There are as many forms of love as there are moments in time.
~~[Jane Austen]

Love, however, is more complex than happily ever after. As soon as there is love, a relationship, or an attachment, loss enters the picture.

• We fear the loss of our loved-one to someone else, this breeds jealousy.
• We fear the loss of other opportunities for love. What are we missing out on?
• We fear the loss of independence. How do I live with you?
• We fear abandonment and loneliness. How do I live without you?
• We fear the loss of our loved-one to illness, aging, and death.

My parents divorced when I was about 9 years old. Looking back, I now see that my mother suffered greatly from that loss. She did not know how to respond to her pain, and as a result, she said and did many cruel things. We children were caught in the middle and we suffered greatly from it.

Love is not simple. We can choose to label love-gone-wrong as over-attachment, grasping, or addiction, but whichever label we use does not change the nature or complexity of the emotion. Love can cause people to act in extreme ways and it can cause great suffering.

Love is not simple.

In the very beginning I tried to deny loss. I told myself that I was fine emotionally, and focused on the physical symptoms of loss purely from a body illness standpoint. Later, I thought of loss as the price I had to pay for love. I love both Shania and JJ, so the deep pain I feel after their death is the price I have to pay for all the love and happiness they brought into my life. Love came with strings attached, but I still saw love and loss as opposites: love is good and loss is bad. While closer to the truth, this is not an accurate picture of love and loss.

I now realize that loss is simply a continuation of love. I still love Shania and JJ deeply and all the way. They are gone, but my love for them has not changed. As a result, I miss them greatly. This, in turn, causes me to feel deep pain, sorrow, grief, and suffering.

I now realize that loss is simply a continuation of love.

Rejecting loss or the pain of loss means rejecting love and the pain of love. They are one and the same. If I did not love them, I would not feel the deep pain that I feel. Loss is the name that we give love after our loved-one has died or left us. Pain and loss are not a taint on my memories, but part of the love that accompanies them. I am not ill nor do I have anything to blame myself for, except for continuing to love.

When we lose a loved-one, we still yearn for them.
The love continues, and we feel pain.
The stronger the love, the stronger the pain.
This is what we call grief and suffering.

Recovering from Anxiety and Grief

How then does one recover from loss? Should I cast my love away now that it is no longer convenient? To avoid the pain, I tried very hard not to think of Shania and JJ, but that only worked for the very short term. In the end, I struggled, failed, and suffered even more.

I have a lifetime of unprocessed emotions, so I was carrying a lot of emotional baggage. This contributed to my anxiety and depression. However, a big part of why I was so stuck was because of the way I viewed my emotions – in terms of duality, opposites, good and bad.

• Love is good, loss is bad.
• Happiness is good, sadness is bad.
• Courage is good, fear is bad.

This flawed view of life created considerable internal conflict because I wanted to eradicate one side of the emotion equation, which is impossible. I cannot install courage without facing fear and I cannot embrace love without embracing the pain of loss.

To resolve this conflict, we need to move beyond this limited view of emotions as good or bad. Courage is not purely good and fear bad, they are both part of a whole. One does not exist without the other. Similarly, love is not purely good and loss bad, they are also part of a whole. The key to recovery is to stop rejecting and to embrace them all with loving-kindness.

A big part of why I was so stuck was because of the way I viewed my emotions – in terms of duality, opposites, good and bad.

Does this mean we must feel pain and suffering? Yes, we will need to face our pain and our suffering. This is necessary, just as we need to face our fear. Mindful breathing, emotion recognition and regulation (RAIN, RULER), cognitive behavioral therapy, energy therapy (tapping), somatic therapy, and more, are all tools that can help us tend to our emotions.

Facing our difficult emotions will help us build tolerance. Tolerance will expand our lives and ultimately set us free to access any memory, analyze any thought, feel any emotion, and no longer be controlled by our pain, fears, and worries. In this way we transform our pain into limitless freedom.

I bask in the glory of their love,
And cry in the shadow of their loss.
Love and loss, I hold both in loving-kindness,
And in so doing, I find peace at last.

Love and Letting Go

What does it mean to let it go? In the past, the “experts” advised people to try and let go fully after the death of a loved-one. Nowadays, the new recommendation is to let go of the physical relationship, but continue with the emotional and spiritual bond. I am not sure anyone can let go of those, even if they wanted to.

So what does acceptance mean? Acceptance means accepting my new life without Shania and JJ in it. In the past, when I woke up, I thought of the day I would have with them and I was happy. Now when I wake up, I think that they are no longer here, and I am sad. But that is ok. I lean into the fear, sorrow, and pain and think about Shania and JJ with love. The joy is still there. When we see that the pain comes from love, then the anger and self-blame drops away, some of the fear drops away, and the pain seems worthy to bear.

There will never be another Shania or JJ. They are the loves of my life and part of them will be with me for as long as I shall live. There will be other loves and it will never be the same, but to paraphrase a wise soul, “life is broken, but still good”. By denying the pain, I deny my love, and in so doing I deny myself.

Although, in the present, there are some things that you dislike, there are many more conditions that make happiness possible. It is true that when you walk through a garden, you can see that a tree is dying. But the sadness of that situation should not prevent you from enjoying the rest of the garden that is still alive. Don’t let the dead tree image stop you from enjoying all the trees growing strong and beautiful. Look again and you will see how many things there are in the garden of your life that you can still enjoy.
~~[Thich Nhat Hanh]

There will never be another Shania or JJ. They are the loves of my life.