The local minima - Living with suffering, learning from suffering

 There would have been moments in our lives when we feel absolutely crushed. Moments where we feel "How can I just escape from all this discomfort ?", "Why is this happening to me ?". 

If you are human, mostly you would have felt such discomfort. If not, then you are a bot reading this or would face them for sure in this human life very often. 

I have felt this moment. And it feels like that is most lowest point of one's life. It would feel like I cannot sunk more deeper in loss. I cannot sunk more at the failure of whatever I am experiencing. 

In mathematics, we call this point - a point of minima. Life is a curve or a function with many ups and downs. And feeling this way means, we have hit a local minimum. 

As long as we are alive we can never achieve global minima, because, I guess that would mean simply death and the fun fact is there always exists a global minimum for sure. 

And the beauty of local minima is that the mere existence of minima would mean there could exist always exist maxima somewhere.

But to go to that state of stability or maximums, we need to spend some energy. And as humans, we never want to stay in minima and make it global. 

But the first point in the change of state is that, understanding the truth that we have hit a minima. And there is something that led to this minima and to achieve maxima I need to learn something from here. 

When I hit minima in life, I tend to do few things

1. I somehow lie to myself, that I have not yet hit minima. I somehow tell myself that I cannot see this as a phase of suffering in life. I find it difficult to accept the suffering at the very instant it happens. I have those moments in my memory where I feel the shock mentally and for few moments, I cant even process what is happening.

2. I somehow try to get out of the minima as quickly as possible. I try to find ways that will quickly get out of the suffering I go through. I just panic. 

3. I try to blame someone else. Most of the time, we inflict hurt on fellow humans, either knowingly and unknowingly. And I feel I am not the one to blame. Or someone else should fix this ASAP. 

If you also tend to do this, then I would like to tell us all....

Its completely natural to panic. To not accept suffering. To not take the responsibility. But not forever.

We are humans and the spirit of flight or fight is ingraved in our brains through millions of years. It is nature's design to help us survive. 

But this feeling of flight or fight response was engineered for the cruel and animalistic world. 

Mindfulness does not mean preventing accidents or letting human lives end in front of our life due to violence. 

Being mindful about our suffering means, we know that this moment is a moment of pain. We know that this moment brings us discomfort. We choose to learn from this moment or feeling and make peace with it to move on.

Acceptance of something, both victory or defeat, is the first step to process that emotion. 

And the more important thing is we accept the uncertainity and endlessness that can come with it.

Mere acceptance cannot help us move on. But when we accept suffering, it means we are mindful of the fact that this suffering can be uncertain and endless, even for a long time. And there is a more deeper hidden meaning in this moment that we have to face and embrace to move on mentally. 

I hope it does not scare you much. However, it does to me a little. 

Even though I write this way, I know I have not fully embraced all my sufferings. A little fear may always lurk even when we feel we mentally accepted it fully.

But thats the first step - to stay with it and learn from it as deeper as one can.  And then to make peace with those lurking fears as much as we can.

I often read talks and books by many spiritual thought leaders. Mostly I find few good buddhist leaders talk about suffering and liberation without any dogma to religion, but just mere truth of reality.

And the important thing I tell to myself during those moments of suffering is

What makes me suffer makes me realize, how weak I am. There is some external event that disturbs my peace and strength and I must see this feeling for what it is and look at the bigger picture in life. 

There maybe some events - like the loss of a person either through death or separation, that feels irreversible.

It makes one feel that a huge part of me has died. I get into deeper chambers of suffering whenever that happens. 

But I tell to myself and realize one again that

Every moment of suffering is an oppurtunity to get more stronger by accepting whatever has happened.