Day Shift — Learning To Stay

"Once you lean into the discomfort, life doesn't have much more to throw at you."

I'll start with a quote from Pema Chödrön and her recording Getting Unstuck:

"If [the need to be present and not caught up with your thinking] resonates with you and you start practicing with it in your meditation and in your daily life, and your willingness grows to learn to stay — which takes courage — then what really starts to happen is you start asking the right questions.

How to learn to stay is basically your question. How to learn to see. How to be gentle. How to find space. How to find warmth. How to find things that will allow you to stay when it’s really jumpy. How long should I stay? It’s a good question. And it’s different every time. But you keep coming back and you keep doing it over and over and over and you train in learning to stay; and that is a good use of the rest of your life. "

One of the greatest problems in the Western world is the idea of suffering—that life is suffering, that suffering can't be avoided, that - what good is spiritual work when suffering exists? In the Veda, as well as in the Buddhist teachings, a distinction is made between suffering and discomfort—even extreme discomfort. Discomfort is the nature of the experience of being in a nervous system. It's uncomfortable to be in a body, it's uncomfortable to be sensitive to our surroundings, to be sensitive to the feelings that arise in our interactions with each other, in our interactions with ourselves.

And when we add into the equation that we are constantly evolving, constantly growing, constantly expanding into more and more and more awareness, more and more consciousness, it’s easy to see that every time we grow, we step into feeling even more. Every time we expand into an experience of more consciousness, we’re more conscious of the way it feels to be in a body, and by definition, it’s uncomfortable. Like if you've had a cast on your arm for six weeks and it comes off, the air against your skin hurts—but after a day or so, it becomes normalized. Like this, every time I grow, it hurts. It's uncomfortable. That's a given.

The problem arises, and suffering arises, when I fall into the story of “Why?” — Why me? Why now? Whose fault is it? Is it their fault? Is it my fault? I should have done this. I shouldn't have done that. They should have done this. They shouldn’t have done that. I need to do this next time… — We call that speculation. Speculation is the intellect and the ego concocting a story that —it thinks — if it just gets it right, the discomfort will cease, the pain will go away. It’s not possible.

What ends up happening is suffering. I end up telling myself a story about things that can’t be changed, and staying out of the only place where things can be changed—which is in this moment, and in the discomfort of this body, of this nervous system, leaning into the discomfort, and taking it as a given, and stepping out of the suffering mode of consciousness. Because this really amazing thing happens when you lean into the suffering. This really amazing thing happens when you lean into the discomfort of being alive, the discomfort of sorrow, the discomfort of loss, the discomfort of anger, fear, shame, guilt, sadness.

Once you lean into the discomfort, life really has not much more to throw at you. It's like, "What are you going to do—make me hurt? It already hurts. What now?" Then we begin to be able to step into life without the fear of what it’s going to do to us. And that sensitivity that a moment before felt like extreme discomfort or pain actually becomes the capacity for the joy of living.

I have to be sensitive to the way it feels to be alive in order to step into life and experience the joy of living that’s available to me here, that is just waiting for me to engage with it. I can tell myself a story later. I can tell it to my grandkids years or decades from now. I don’t need a story as to how to step into this next moment. I just need to step.

Today, I will set an aspiration to be present in the sensations of the moment: to be alive in my own skin rather than in my thinking, to be with you rather than my thoughts about you, to be in this present moment rather than in my thoughts of how this present moment should be going.

Have a great day. Thanks for being here.

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Jeff Kober is an accomplished actor, photographer and vedic meditation teacher. He has had regular roles in notable series like The Walking Dead, Sons of Anarchy, and NCIS: Los Angeles, and has appeared in numerous films including Sully and Beauty Mark. Kober is also a writer and artist, and has previously penned screenplays and co-authored the book Art That Pays.