Suffering to Love

a radical path of peace and transformation

Yesterday my car was stolen.

I felt shocked, angry and sad, but rather than making space to breathe and feel, I did what most of us usually do. I added calling the police and insurance company to my already too full to-do list. In the spaces between busyness, I found people to mirror back my shock so we could be outraged together. And as a result, I was less able to creatively engage with the things I needed or wanted to do. Meanwhile, the wider challenges of the world pushed against me feeling even more overwhelming and insurmountable.

This all happened within the space of a few hours. From the outside it would have been barely perceptible: I was simply in a bad mood because my car had been stolen, which was normal. But it was also really uncomfortable. Not because I was feeling shock, anger or grief, but because I was feeling so heavy and stuck.

It was only when I said to a close friend, I’m feeling heavy today because… that I stopped in my tracks.

Oh! This is suffering!

Suffering is different from the inevitable pain, inconvenience and imperfection of life. Things happen that we don’t want. We lose everything and everyone we love. We feel challenging emotions. These things happen. But when we remain inside ourselves while life swings between joy and sorrow, when we remain connected to our breathing, attending with kindness and curiosity to all that is arising, we don’t suffer. Life hurts, but we don’t suffer.

Suffering is the particular experience of heaviness and tension which comes when we collapse and contract around life. It is the added layer of resistance that we add to whatever is here which actually removes us from the creative aliveness which sustains us. We suffer when we forget to feel this moment with love, first, before we respond. Before we get busy with fussing, fixing and freaking out. Before we deny or drown in our experience. When we meet what is here with love, first, we feel love’s presence resting beside it, and the actions we take arise from love.

When I remembered this, everything became much more simple. I paused to bring kind, curious attention into my body. I breathed deeply into my belly, noticing its tightness and how shallow my breathing had become. I consciously released the stories skipping around my head, choosing not to surf them, staying with my breathing body. And then I remembered that I’m not alone. Not only surrounded by beautiful family and friends, but also deeply supported by life itself. I connected to the steady pulsing presence of the Earth beneath me, to the nourishment and pull of the sun, moon and planets above me, to the subtle presence of ancestors and guides around me. No longer spinning along in imagined separation, I was able to feel with courage and trust. Shock like ice melting. Anger a fire in the belly. Grief a river flowing to the sea.

Feeling life with love, nothing had changed, yet everything changed. There were simply things to be done and things to be felt. The heaviness dispersed. Lightness, breath and perspective returned. This moment opened into one of possibility alongside the challenge. Perhaps we can manage without a car? Perhaps there are car sharing potentials? What else is possible right now?

This practice feels especially important to me right now because of the accelerating sense of living on a planet spinning towards self-destruction. Overwhelm is my default when I see us all shrink further from care and inclusiveness, the more we are impacted by centuries of lack of care and inclusiveness. When we respond to systems of consumption and individualism breaking apart at the seams with a rise in consumption and individualism, it’s hard to remain hopeful. But I have found that each time I recognise the presence of suffering, I can at least relax its contraction and collapse. Pausing to arrive in the breathing body, releasing, receiving and feeling, I find I am more empowered to creatively respond. What else is possible right now?

What would the world look and feel like if each one of us knew that everything we experienced could be embraced with love, first, before we responded?

Each one of us has unique gifts to offer this world. Gifts whose impacts are absolutely necessary, whether visible or barely perceptible to our limited vision. Each one of us is here to offer, sometimes without even knowing, the screw, the bolt, the cog and the wheel, of something so much larger which is waiting to be born.

It must begin with love if it is to result in love.

If each one of us knew that everything we experienced could be embraced with love, first, before we responded, the world would look and feel very different. There would be space to become curious, a willingness to discover solutions which benefit most beings, the understanding that wellbeing isn’t an isolated experience. In love’s ongoing embrace, we would feel more whole and complete, no longer needing to consume to fill a hollow void within. By listening inwardly and outwardly, we would find and express what truly matters to us, bringing our unique gifts to creatively engage with the challenges we face. And perhaps most importantly, we would begin right now, holding the overwhelm tenderly as we walked that tenderness out into the street and into our lives. Curious as to what might happen if we took what matters most to us into our own hands, to breathe it into life with our own breath.

We can do this. And the one place we can begin is here and now.

Giving Birth to the Earth, painting by Helena Arturaleza

My small offering to you is this practice of presence. I trust that this will help more of us spread our wings and fly with the fullness of love’s power. I believe in us.

Let’s meditate together this week

We will be exploring the journey from suffering to love every morning this week from February 3rd-7th, online on Sangha Live. Pausing, breathing, releasing, receiving and feeling, together, in safety and support. Strengthening the pathway of loving presence so that we are more able to return there when life triggers us into reactivity. So that we might respond to life from love this time (and next time and the time after that).

These meditations are offered freely from 7-8am UK time. The recordings are available immediately afterwards if you register in advance (or later in the day/week if you don’t). The hour includes teachings on the theme, half an hour guided meditation, and q&a afterwards to deepen the practice.

More info here and register here.

Join me for a day of yoga, meditation, wild swimming and sauna

Last Saturday, we were blessed by a day of sunshine and blue skies amidst the wild storms which buffeted either side of that moment of stillness. It was a joyous day of coming alive to life: aligning and enlivening the body, feeling and liberating the breathing, releasing stories, feeling emotions and opening to receive the vibrant beauty of life. After a morning yoga and meditation practice, we walked in silence through ancient woodland, swam in gloriously cold water and relaxed in the deliciously hot sauna. We shared lunch around an open fire before resting deeply into restorative yoga and enquiring together: what brings me alive?

The next daylong retreat with yoga, meditation, wild swimming and sauna is on March 1st - it would be wonderful to have you join us.

Other upcoming events

March 16th: Sunday Sangha on Sangha Live from 7-8.30pm.

Beginning April/May: a new weekly level 2 yoga and meditation class at HOME studio in Primrose Hill from 10.30am-12.30pm every Friday.

April 2nd-6th: residential yoga, meditation and nature immersion retreat in Devon (this is now fully booked, but there is often movement closer to the time so please contact me to join the waiting list).

September 29th - October 5th: residential yoga, meditation and embodied dharma retreat in France (bookings are now open).