Best Of

I'd agree there are far more lives destroyed than those who overcome, and extreme suffering is certainly not necessary but it can be a means to an end. In a sense the Buddha, first given all his greatest desires, went and nearly starved himself to death and suffered a great deal. The result of that attempt was being able to cross off that pathway as a potential pathway and earnestly try a new way without having to wonder, because he experienced it and knew. He'd experienced and knew, both the attaining of great desires and the near-death suffering. Knowing doesn't solve much on its own. Something has to be done with that knowledge. It has to be applied somehow, examined in such a way it leads to the striving and flourishing.

When I'm stuck, if I examine my behaviors, I usually have toxic waste running through my mind. Replaying bad memories, imagining bad people getting theirs, wishing it would be different, wondering if I deserved it and so on. It's a big enthralling mental/emotional horror story. This spills into behaviors and actions when left to proliferate. Eventually seeking some form of self-soothing or being jolted aware when someone far less deserving receives my unfortunate misdirection of frustration. It stems from what I'm entertaining in the mind which I'm not always aware of.

So maybe after knowing the experience, the next component could be being aware of what the mind and feelings are doing with that knowledge. Being an observer to the mind and feelings rather than enthralled participant. If so, how does one practice being an observer to themselves and their behaviors?

What I did initially that I found helpful was to start by practicing 3rd-person-view observing. Having come from a gaming background, many games you play your character with 3rd person perspective. The camera sort of hovers behind them as they run around the world and do stuff. This provided me a jumping off point to view myself in my mind as if in 3rd person mode. So maybe for me the question of how to practice is to experiment and explore using things I'm already familiar with.

@SuraShine said:
After a particularly horrendous two weeks where I’ve berated myself for leaving Pathology and seriously considering going back, I’m joining this quest late.

Yesterday and today so far, have consisted of me getting so upset to the point of tears, that I have had to constantly remind myself of my Bodhisattva vows and calm down. Currently on my third headache in two days so I need to refocus and meditate my arse off.

This is just my personal experience, but I have found that I either cannot make decisions or make lousy decisions when in the thick of emotional 'attacks'. For me, it takes a patch of clearer emotional 'weather' to see things a bit more clearly and see the - often then obvious - best course of action. I find that for me the best way to access this calmer state is physical exercise. It has at least two benefits: I get a respite from my mind for the duration of the exercise and also feel calmer and better the rest of the day. I sometimes think of myself as the 'sports guru' since I find so many benefits 😊

I personally know someone who suffered abuse at the hands of a priest when he was young, then joined the Green Berets in Vietnam and suffered tons of trauma there. He's the only one left out of his 100 some group that hasn't either died over there or killed themselves after coming back. He's had many struggles with his PTSD and continues to suffer to this day. But he is probably the kindest, gentlest person I know.

My curiosity isn't merely an intellectual pursuit. I think knowing the answer to what makes people resilient and capable of rising above will help give us tools that can help others live better lives.

I think over the years I've also increasingly embraced the idea of anti fragility. That humans need some level of stress and struggle to really grow and flourish. Or the Japanese notion of kintsugi, or what Ajahn Brahm says about the bent and crooked trees seem more beautiful to him than the straight trees. A line from a show I've been watching expressed gratitude for the pain and stress of life rather than regret or aversion, "I'm grateful for my pain, its what's brought me to where I am today."

To be clear, I'm not saying pain is a good in and of itself. Only in conjunction with the repair does it provide a benefit.

I have experienced great hardship - mostly in the realm of mental health troubles.
I know what happens if you do nothing, do not struggle to better your situation and yourself. Nothing happens, it even gets worse. I did this for (far too many) years.
I know too firsthand what happens if you do struggle to better your situation and yourself. Slow progress at first, uneven progress, but longterm benefits that you could not even dream of.
So, for me, the possibility of bettering our situation and ourselves is not in question, I know it can be done. Even if 'authorities' say that it cannot be done, it still can be done.
What to me is an open question is why some people start struggling and why some make moderate and some massive efforts.
All of the great success stories of overcoming hardship that I have read - and I love and seek them out - have apparently included great effort over a long period of time, starting with one small step, and then another, and another... until it snowballs into a beautiful life.

From another thread. I wanted to explore without taking away from the original topic.

@person said:

@Kotishka said:
Pd: one case I can share is the following family. Missing father (fighter for Frente Polisario) and a mother that could not take care of them. Environment of war, horror, and poverty in Western Sahara. They tried their luck emigrating to Spain. One stayed. The others returned.
1. Became a soldier at the Frente Polisario.
2. Became a drug addict and homeless.
3. Studied in Rabat and ended up becoming a university philosophy professor.

This last example surprised me. He managed to defy all odds and predictions. He managed to break what seemed to be his determined path. Not everything is as fixed as it seems, but the power that those "structural configurations" might have upon humans is a possible and, unfortunately, common reality.

My sister is really into those stories by people who have had horrific childhoods only to escape and break the patterns, like in your last example. This has raised the question in me that I've never really gotten an answer to. What makes these people so different, that they're able to do this with their lives? I think this is kind of what positive psychology is trying to answer, not just what our pathologies and traumas are that cause us misery and stress. But what are the positive qualities that bring people striving and flourishing.

If only looking for just the positive qualities its easy to miss the neutral or hide from the negative ones. I think its those regular neither positive nor negative qualities that lead to the striving and flourishing. Mainly the qualities of knowing and of heart release.

Two aspects of knowing come to mind that can help lead to positive change.

One aspect could be the knowing of one who's suffered one of the worst things imaginable. When you've experienced it, you know. You know when you've felt the worst thing possible, that you've felt it. You know it. That comes with a sort of power of knowing the experience of the thing. Others who've never experienced it can only know it intellectually. They have to imagine the experience and most are dearly afraid of actually experiencing it. People think about their greatest fears often. But the ones who've gone through it don't have to be afraid of the imaginations like others. They know. I think there's a relief that comes with that knowing where others feel anxiety. Its in that relief the heart has an opportunity to open. Because it already took the wound and knows it. It doesn't have to be afraid like others.

Another aspect could be the knowing of one who's experienced their greatest desires. Imagining and achieving greater and greater desires are what drive a lot of people. People have desires for different things but the infatuation and imagination is similar. Some people get their greatest desires. In getting their greatest desire there often isn't much else left to do but go for it again. Why settle for a lesser desire when your greatest one is accessible? So again and again and again until that greatest desire becomes meaningless. And then again. They know the experience of having their greatest desire in abundance and all the details of what that really means. People who haven't experienced it can only know it intellectually. They have to imagine the experience and many can't do much else but imagine the experience of achieving their greatest desires.

In both cases the neutral quality of knowing allows for a freedom from some of the mind's greatest fixations. Greatest fears and greatest desires. And when you free up that many resources, you can do a lot with em. Like focusing on striving, or flourishing, or just on the breath.