Can you detach from pain without going numb to everything else? No, and that is the catch. Deny the hard feelings and the good ones go with them.

There is the small mind that has problems and the big mind where nothing needs fixing. Trying to deny it all is like keeping a garden and never taking your shoes off. You never find out what the grass feels like. It is not nice watching somebody suffer, and if you have a big heart it is harder. I get lonely because I am wanting something I have not got, and solving it made it worse.

One thing to try: Let one uncomfortable feeling stay a while without trying to solve it.

In this episode

• (0:01) Small mind and big mind on this episode
• (2:28) The vast one where nothing needs fixing at all
• (4:45) A garden, and never taking your shoes off in it
• (7:24) It is hard watching somebody suffer when you care
• (9:58) And what about detaching from happiness and desire?
• (11:52) Feeling lonely because I want something I have not got

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Thank you for listening.

Steven

Links to Steven Webb's podcast and how you can support his work.

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Hey, welcome to Stillness in the Storms, the podcast that helps you through the most difficult times in life. I'm

Steven Webb. You're a host. And on this episode, I want to talk about feeling things deeply and becoming whole.

It's a subject that I visit quite often on my podcast because I think it's one of the main reasons

why the people that feel things deeply suffer a lot less. And it seems

counterintuitive. The people that cry deeply, the people that have a lot of empathy, a lot of compassion about them

and what seem like a weakness, they often suffer a lot less. And it's one of those things that if

you feel everything and experience everything, but don't stay there. And I think that's the whole point of it.

And Richard Rohr always talks about um both and rather than either or. And

I sometimes feel sad and I sometimes feel lonely, and I sometimes feel, you know, include them rather than.

No, I just want to be happy all the time. I just want to be joyful and happy and, you

know, just want to be love. I want to be all these wonderful things. No, you

know, although I wouldn't want anybody to grow up feeling a whole lot of pain, a whole lot of hurt,

but

by feeling all this whole lot of pain and a whole lot of hurt, you end up a more whole

person. You imagine growing up and getting to the end of your life and you've only listened to one side

of the album of your favourite band and someone comes up and turns it over 10 minutes before you die

and goes, hey, there's a whole new side there. There's loads of other things you could have experienced. It's like

the artist only airing four colours and someone coming along. You could have mixed them. Oh, wow. I've lived my

whole life and I did not know that. So you don't want to do that. You want to experience all

these emotions. And this is where the balance. I did a meditation and I released it on inner peace meditations.

And it was about balance between the small mind, like the ego, the fixer, the seven year old self that

wants and desires, the person in me that gets angry and all those things and identifies with Steven who I

am. And then the big mind that's vast and it's open and there's no issues and there's no problem and

it includes everything. Nothing needs fixing. Everything's fine but not everything's fine. Everything just is what it is.

Because there's no fine, because there's no broken, because there's no.

You get my point. It's Difficult to articulate it, it's easier to sit in it. But

you're balancing between those two things all the time. And David Hawkins has an emotional

scale, like starting at 20 it's like shame. And then moving through guilt and fear and anger. And then

you slowly move to courage, which is like a transformational point courage, the first thing where you start to be

brave and you start to look outwards. And then you've got other emotions where you start to feel happiness and

joy and enlightenment and desires and all those things and they flow, you move between them. And the problem

is the one thing you don't want to do is stay at one of them too long. So an enlightened

being moves between them, fills them deeply, but doesn't stay there. They almost

not revel in it, because that's the opposite. So when I released the podcast a couple of days ago, someone

got to me and said I I hear sadness in your voice. And they were right what My voice was

feeling sad because the meditation was reminding me of the seven-year-old self that cannot fix and heal the world.

I'm still working on that. I still think that it's possible. But do I think does does big mind think

it's possible to heal the world? No, because it doesn't think. It doesn't. It has no concept of that. But

the small mind does, the ego does. You know, the ego wants mint chocolate chip ice cream. It wants to

fix things. It wants everybody to be happy. It wants to be happy, it wants to be joyful because we're

promised all these things. So it doesn't want to be sad. But you know, there's nothing wrong with being lonely

or sad. You know, it's much like if you're going to try to deny all those things, it's much like

having a garden and always wearing shoes. You'll never know what it's like to walk barefoot in the sand or

barefoot in the um cold grass. And

being human is just to experience. So you don't want to not experience sadness and grief, you know

what why would you not want to experience grief? Grief is just that beautiful emotion that reminds

you of love. I

don't think you can have grief without love. Can you have joy without sadness? Can

you have happiness without content? Can you have enlightenment without ignorance? You first need to be

ignorant to have wisdom. To

understand what it means to be warm you got to feel cold. And

I could go on all day with these things. So the idea is to feel these things and be okay

with these things, but don't stay There, experience them all. That's what it means to be human. When

you look at animals and when you look at other things, trees and nature, they don't get to experience everything

that we do. You

know, a tree is a whole tree. Many

humans are not whole humans because we deny our human side. We deny that moving

through emotions.

And I'm I reframe from saying I am sad or I am lonely or I am happy I

I mess up sometimes, but I try to say I'm feeling sad. I'm currently experiencing

sadness.

You know, I'll sit here and listen to a song and I'll cry. And sometimes it's sadness, sometimes it's happiness,

sometimes it's just overwhelming emotions. I wouldn't want to not do that. I wouldn't want to live in a world

that that I suppose as a child my parents said to me, you know, stop crying. You

know, it's because they felt awkward when they were seeing a child upset and sad. That made them feel sad

and they didn't want to feel sad. So stop crying. Pick your chin up, you'll be okay. And it's not

nice seeing someone else feeling sadness. It's not nice seeing someone else lonely. It's not nice seeing someone else suffer

because it makes us suffer. And if you do care and you have a big heart, it's really, really difficult.

And I'm a firm believer and I don't always get it right, I get it far from right. But I'm

a firm believer in trying not to cause any more suffering if you can help it. And sometimes I make

mistakes and sometimes I there is suffering at some of my actions and decisions. But

then I

realised that I'm only responsible for mine. I'm only responsible for what I do.

And being human is all part of that experience and

finding that balance between oh because it will come and go, but

almost. We grew up in a world that wanted to deny all the sad feelings and replace them with all

the good feelings. When I grow up, I'll be happy. When I have this, I'll be happy. That's almost saying

that that's the only time in that state of happiness, in that state of experience is the only time that

life is worth living. It's not.

How can you know happiness if you haven't known sadness? And I know this is living

in the duality of things. And many people say, don't live in the duality, you know, go to a non-dual

state and all that. Well, you know, then you get hungry or you get cold,

You know, to live in a non-dual state you'll be in a state of limbo all the time, just sat

on your meditation cushion and you never eat and you never do anything. You never experience anything. But the whole,

whole idea is to hold everything loosely in

a way that you can experience it, but you don't become it. And

very often when we have feelings, when we're not very mature with those feelings, we become so and

enrolled in it, we become the emotion

and we try to get out of it. We try to deny it like some sticky treacle that we're trying

to. I don't like this. Well, if you don't like it If you think you are sadness and you

don't like to be sadness, that's to say I don't like to be human because I don't like to experience

anything. And that would have to equally go with happiness,

joy and desires and how do we detach from these. Okay, great question, great

question well That's where meditation and mindfulness comes in. It's. It's sitting back and just recognising a

thought when it comes in the head and go ah there's a thought. It's recognising an emotion when it comes

up. Ah, there's an emotion. What's under the emotion? Why am I feeling sad? Why am I feeling joy? Why

am I feeling desires? Why am I feeling grief? And be okay with it?

Play in the story.

Because that's what it wants. Sadness wants you to recognise that

emotion that comes up and the ego recognizes it. It wants to be seen and heard.

It wants to be seen and heard. The soul wants to have some kind of rigidity

or some kind of system that it can express itself to. The world wants to leave a legacy. It wants

to be something. It

wants to be seen. But that's small mind. And you know, there's nothing wrong with that. It's just if you

just identify with that and that is your whole um and you look at it as something to solve, you

know, I need to solve my sadness, I need to solve my loneliness. And

very often, like, loneliness is a big one for me in my life and loneliness is relative because someone could

come back and say, well, I'm more lonely or less lonely. It doesn't matter It's relative to the person. It's

relative to you. And I have family around me, I have friends, but I can still feel incredibly

lonely. And I have done at times. And I feel lonely because I'm desiring something I haven't got. And

when I used to try to solve that, it just made it worse. So

I Do a meditation. Now that I sit in, the loneliness. Ah, lonely. What's that look like? Well, it looks

like no one's here what's that look like? If I go totally alone and I go away from the planet

and somewhere else in the solar system and there's no one here right now. What if I take away the

planets and it's just me?

What if I take away everything? It's just me.

Oh, wow there's just nothing not even Not even dried up

old trees. And then after a while, the ego goes, okay, I'm done with this now get back and let's

go it will say I'm hungry or I'm cold or it'll move on. But it's okay to feel it's

becoming whole. And that's what Big mind is, that's what enlightenment is and all those things it's It's when you're

ultimately whole with everything else and you're not attached to any of it. And there's a paradox with it,

because when you're whole with it, you are it, but you're not it it is what it is, because

you cannot be it. It's, you know, the English language is really difficult with this

level of understanding. Either that or I don't understand it um And that's okay, that's okay

what I do know is that the more I don't identify and the less I get attached to my feelings

and emotions and what's happening out there and within, the less suffering I have, the less time I stay there.

Because I can guarantee you, whether it's sadness or happiness, it will

go, it will disappear. Something will come along and knock yourself out of it. I think tick down

that said a brilliant quote. He said, to be totally awake and conscious is to always be thrown out of

the nest constantly. Wow,

that cuts through done it

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StevenWebb.uk to see that. Apart from that,

experience everything. Use all the colours. You know, it's a great meme. Use all the crayons in the box.

Yes. And that goes with emotions as well.

Take care. And I love you.