Sometimes people who encourage meditation and mindfulness will say that much of your suffering will decrease when you switch off the mental chatter and embrace more silence. This is true to a degree. If you’re constantly worrying about the future, less what-ifs will lessen the suffering. But silence can also be challenging. Silence can make one more aware of your suffering, especially discomforts in your body.
There came a time in my own life where I was in too much emotional discomfort to meditate. It was easier to go into doing mode than to sit still with all the intense emotions inside me. Meditation, which had always been a safe space for me, became the thing I wanted to avoid because of what I felt. But not meditating also made me more reactive and scattered. At one point I had to ask myself, Why are things so difficult? Why am I exhausted all the time? Why do I feel like I’m weighed down by bags of garbage—energetically speaking? The truth was that many of my problems stemmed from my neglected emotional body. Old emotions were weighing me down and causing me discomfort in the present moment.
I knew things had to change. I had to find a different approach. I essentially had to face my emotional body. This has been a long and difficult path, but one that I had to walk. But a key piece was understanding and accepting that meditation and mindfulness is not always about feeling good. Sometimes the silence brings awareness of something that we would actually rather not look at. Sometimes we don’t feel good, and that’s okay. Being present with that then becomes the work. We then have to slowly but surely build up the capacity and strength to sit with the difficult emotions. We should not always expect mindfulness to release us from suffering.
One thought on “Emotional Work: Part IV – Silence and Suffering”