How do you suffer less without going numb? Not by getting rid of the pain. By stopping the bypass.

I wanted the pain gone. Something stepped in and stopped me, and I am glad. Then a book taught me I am not my thoughts and things opened up, and suddenly a news story on the other side of the world could floor me. Empathy feels what they feel. Compassion says that must be tough and stays standing. Spiritual bypassing is the trap: love and light, deny the dark end, and you flatten the good end with it. The path is a bouncing ball, not a straight line, and it bounces less each time.

One thing to try: Next time somebody tells you something hard, do not match it with your own story. Say that must be tough and stay there.

In this episode

• (2:40) I am not religious, and what I do lean on
• (5:15) I wanted the pain gone. Something stopped me
• (6:16) The email that made me cry
• (7:48) Reading each paragraph thirty times, and falling asleep on it
• (8:56) Suddenly feeling the whole world's news
• (11:34) Empathy feels it. Compassion holds it
• (14:00) You are not there to fix their broken leg
• (18:00) Love and light, and what it denies
• (19:00) The spiritual path as a bouncing ball

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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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Welcome to episode 94 of Stillness in the Storms. I'm Steven Webb, your host, and it's the podcast that helps

you to find a little inner peace when you need it most. And on today's episode, we're talking about how

to suffer less.

Embracing change, especially on the spiritual journey. And I think the spiritual journey sometimes gets a bad rep,

and I think is misunderstood. So I'm going to explain it from what the spiritual journey meant to me, what

it means to me when I say we're gonna suffer less, but we might feel more pain. And we'll just

And talk a little bit about spiritual bypassing, what that is and why it's not a good idea.

So just before that, I want to give you a little bit of news. 100 episode is coming up and

I've got something quite nicely planned for that episode.

But I want to say thank you to everyone that gives me a virtual hug, which is effectively treating me

to a coffee, donating and helping with the podcast. Thank you guys. It's really deeply appreciated. Now then this week

I did something a little bit different. There

was a homeless guy that I've known for quite a while, and he's finding it difficult to see his screen

on his little phone, so, With your money I bought him a tablet, which is going to be

delivered in the morning, and I'm going to take it down to him. So that's what I've done with your

money this week. So I haven't been on social media. I'm not going to take a picture. I'm not interested

in any of those things. I just simply wanted to say to you, that's what I've done with your money

this week. So thank you, you know. It really does make a difference when you donate to this podcast. Not

only does it help me, not only does it help me, I'm trying to save up for my camera thing,

but it also, I want to reduce suffering, and if I can reduce suffering in some way, helping the guy

see his iPlayer or watch BBC, things like that, instead of just squinting on his phone you Know that's reducing

suffering. You can reduce suffering in all kinds of ways. It doesn't have to be deep and powerful and meaningful.

It can be a little way, you know, any old way. But let's get on with today's show. Let's talk

about how to suffer less embracing change on the spiritual journey. Now then, first of all, I'm going to share

a bit of my story. And the reason why I say that we can suffer less, but we feel more,

when I started on a spiritual journey, I did not know it was a spiritual journey. I'm not religious. I

don't believe in a deity up there, a God. I don't really, I don't know what I really believe in.

I just, I'm very much a science-based person. Just because I don't know it, just because I cannot prove it,

doesn't mean it's not real. So I'm not going to argue with you, but I do like to have some

kind of tangible reason for believing something And but if I feel something deeply, then I'm not

gonna deny it. I'm not gonna run away from it. So my whole practice really turned out to be Zen

and Buddhism, and that's because I just like mindfulness. I like to stop and smell the roses. So to use

a phrase that's probably well overused, but that is really, really important. When I'm driving down the hill, I look

at a leaf, I look at the colour and go, wow, look at the colour. How did that leaf fall

there? How did it get that journey? How did, and it just reduces my suffering because in the current moment

we're very likely not to be suffering. Right now you're listening to this podcast you're not really suffering.

You know, if you are really suffering and you're burning or something's really going wrong in your life right now

and you're taking time out to listen to the podcast, something's not quite right, but we feel like we're suffering

all the time, and we want to get rid of that suffering now. Then when I set off on my

spiritual journey, I wanted to get rid of pain, and there's a difference between pain and suffering. You know, just

to get rid of all the pain. I didn't want to feel anything anymore. I was, I went for a

particularly, I'm gonna say nasty, split up, but it wasn't a nasty split up. The split up was clean. They

didn't cheat or anything. There wasn't any kind of bad thing like this. It was just unexpected. And it boy

did it hurt really, really badly. And because they didn't prolong it, they didn't keep coming back to me and

things like that. They basically cut off all ties and I could not contact them. It was really painful and

I didn't want to think about it. I didn't want to think about what they were up to, what they

were doing, and that was my pain I literally couldn't sleep. I started drinking alcohol. I just,

I was doing anything to avoid pain. To the point that yes, I did contemplate suicide,

I contemplated not so much taking my life, but I contemplated

reducing my suffering to a point. I wanted to get rid of the pain.

Luckily, something stepped in and stopped me and gone, you know, maybe the pain won't be there tomorrow or the

next day or next year. Maybe. The wisdom I had for my teenage years and feeling a lot of heartache

brain, I kind of knew down the road that it wasn't permanent. But it feels like it's permanent when we're

in it. Right? Really does feel like it's permanent. So I, all I wanted to do was reduce my pain

and I ended up reading a book that was on my iPad, which is really unusual because I don't read.

I was diagnosed dyslexic when I was about nine years old by wonderful, wonderful teacher, Mrs. Hoban.

And. Incidentally, I've met up with her since when I become mayor. She contacted me and said, and when I

got that email through, in the email said, I think I to teach you. And I, and I went straight

to the teacher name at the bottom. Of course you do because you want to know who is just emailed

you they said, Mrs. Hoban. I was like, oh my God. Yes you did. You were the one that made

such a massive difference in my life and I just pulled my eyes out. I couldn't even read the email.

I'm wondering whether to share the story, but basically I just got to a new school. I was pretty much

bullied in that school. I didn't fit in. I used to sit at the back, very quiet. And the teacher

did something new that wasn't happening in my other school, and they would write on the board and when they

got to the bottom, they would scrub out the top and I could never keep up. So I was writing

it word for word. I could never keep up. And I was writing not what she was writing on the

board and. Having just been away in London or something. She told me the story when we met up just

last year. She was having been away in London or she knew a friend from London or something. They talked

about this dyslexia and she said, I think you're dyslexic And of course I am. I can read. So

when someone says, read that out to me, I can read it to you, but I don't know what I

just read. My brain cannot read it and understand it. So I can literally read a page and it might

mention the character and they might be going on a canoeing trip down the river and someone said, well, what's

the character's name and what were they doing? I'd be like, I don't know. It took all my focus just

to read it. So I tell you this story because I found a book on my ipad called As a

Man Thinker it's only about, I don't know 40 50 pages, but it was all about.

You're not what you think and you have control over what you do with your thoughts. So this book gave

me a profound, deep insight while me having to read each paragraph 20, 30 times, which was

brilliant because I fell asleep. So not only did I need to hear this about 20 or 30 times, I

needed something to fall asleep better than whiskey or alcohol that I was drinking at the time. Southern Comfort, it

was the whiskey Who drinks that? Okay. If you drink whiskey, I'm fine with you drinking whiskey. I just don't

like it. It's a bit strong for me. Southern Comfort and Coke, that's mine. Nice and sweet. You know, I

don't drink anymore. I don't drink anything anyway. You know me. I keep going off. So that was the start

of my spiritual journey. I didn't know it was a spiritual journey. All I wanted to do was reduce my

suffering and while reducing my suffering. It gave rise to my seven-year-old self to be able to care more about

others, to open my heart, to just have more compassion and empathy for others. Suddenly I was starting

to feel the pain of everything in the world, you know, a news story across the other side of the

world was really debilitating me. It's like, how can we live in a world like this that these kind of

things are happening? And then the spiritual journey went on to be less empathy and more compassion. So,

Compassion is about what's happening with them as opposed to us. Empathy, very much, and I speak about this on

a few other podcasts, if you search through my podcast,

empathy is about us. It's like what I'm feeling for you, it's about me. Ironically, we think it's about them,

but it's not. It's really about us, what we're feeling for them. So empathy is someone comes over to you

and says, do you know I'm really tired today. I cannot cope anymore. I need, and they look up and

go, yeah, I'm the same. So immediately flip it around. It's about them. What they think they're doing

is giving you like comfort. They think they're matching your feelings and all that and they

think they're giving you empathy. But they're feeling what you're feeling but they're not actually having compassion for what you're

feeling. It's kind of complicated and I probably don't explain it very well. Let me know if I do in

any of the comments. Email me, let me know. If I do go to StevenWebb.com and there's a contact me

if this makes sense or do I need to elaborate on it a little bit more. But anyway, going back

to the compassion thing, suddenly I had more compassion for people. I had a lot of deep empathy, but I

wasn't being pushed around by the empathy. It wasn't affecting my life quite so much. So if someone said to

me, and I'm not always like this, don't get me wrong. If someone kind of said I'm tired, and I'm

tired as well, sometimes I go yeah, I'm tired too. So I'm not always this saint with compassion all that.

In actual fact, very rarely I am this is why I'm working on it. You know, you may see me

as my life is all sorted, I'm all calm and think, no, it's, this work is ongoing. It's, you know,

it'll never be done. You never get there. But that's a whole different show. So I try to have a

little more compassion with it without the empathy pushing me around it Doesn't always work, but that's the genuine spiritual

journey it's having compassion without having to make it about ourselves. So what does compassion look like? And this is

where Brené Brown sums it up brilliantly in one of her books. You know, if you have empathy, you sit

back, sit down with them and go, yeah, I'm feeling the same. Compassion is, yeah. That must be tough

notice the difference. Just

imagine if you came over to me and said to me, oh, I broke my leg. And I, and I

come here yeah I broke my leg once. It's like, how does that feel but if you come over to

me and say I broke my leg. It's really painful. And I went, yeah, that must be rough. How are

you coping?

Boom. The difference is huge. One's empathy, one's compassion. And this is where the genuine spiritual journey has to

drive us more towards compassion and understanding for others as opposed to the first part of the spiritual journey,

which is about ourselves. And you have to go through these levels. You cannot just jump to one, and you'll

fluctuate, you'll do all this. But my spiritual journey, I wanted to reduce my suffering, but in reducing my suffering,

I felt things deeper, way deeper. So I just misunderstood the spiritual journey. And

that's my explanation. That's where I am suffering a whole lot less. I do suffer sometimes, but I suffer less

do I feel pain? Yeah. I feel huge amount of pain when I hear about terrible things that are going

on that boat that sunk with what? 300 people? How horrible. Imagine that. Imagine being one of them.

You're setting off on the most, one of these exciting but treacherous journeys. And then suddenly you're seeing everybody

around you dying and you go in the water. How horrible. And the people in the submarine, all of these

things and the people in Ukraine we feel for it all. But

do we let it debilitate us? Do we let it paralyze us in what we can do? No, there's nothing

I can do about that thing right now. And it's not a fight that I'm choosing to take on. I

cannot take on every fight. You cannot take on every fight. So you choose what fight to take on. That's

the genuine spiritual journey, and take on your own first, reduce your suffering, and then you won't put your suffering

onto others. Does

that, that's really important actually. I never thought about that. That wasn't even my notes. So deal with your pain,

deal with your suffering, and then you'll still deal with pain. You'll feel it so much deeper, but you're able

to help others you're able to hold space forever it's not a matter of fixing their pain. Someone comes to

me with a broken leg, I'm not a doctor. I'm like, yeah, okay, I'll fix that. No, they just want

someone probably to go, yeah, that sucks. How are you coping? That's healing itself I

Hope that makes sense. So the spiritual journey is about deeping your emotional spectrum. You feel things on

the other side much better. You feel more joy, you feel more excitement. The enlightenment, the heart.

Orgasms. It was called One Day to Me, you know, have you ever had a heart orgasm? I was like,

no, that's interesting. What's that they said, it's when you're sitting or you're driving somewhere, you're doing something and you

feel that amazing, and you feel this radiant light coming from within and you feel warm and you feel comfortable,

and it's just, everything's in place and you're in tune with the universe, and the energy is just perfect. I

was like, yeah, normally when I'm out in the car or listening to my favourite music and reminiscing and you

see a butterfly and you just feel absolutely great.

Yes. So apparently it's called a heart orgasm. Who knew? But yeah. Have you ever had a heart orgasm?

That's one way of like actually starting up a conversation. You just go to someone. Oh, by the wait how's

your spiritual journey going? Have you ever had a heart orgasm? That'd be funny, wouldn't it? If you ever bummed

into me in person, ask me that. That'd be so funny. A, I'd know you listen to my podcast, and

B, my face would probably just like, Okay. You know, our

chimp in our minds always go to that place doesn't it You know? Always does. Well, mine does. I'm projecting

now. But anyway, so what else is about the spiritual journey? So we deepen our emotion. We build a spectrum

of more joy, more pain, but we don't stay there very often. So we also build resilience. And the

resilience is, we know things will change, so we're okay with it because we know we've already got it. We

know we've already dealt with it. We know down the line things will be okay and it's not permanent. You

know, I'm paralysed just below my neck. And one of the things we're paralysed is your body functions don't always

work. And one of the most difficult things I go through probably once or twice a month is when my.

Now then, I'm sorry to give you this image, but when my bowels don't work properly and the worst case

scenario, and I'm lying on my bed and the carers have had to clean me up several times and it

is an absolute bloody nightmare. And I'm lying down I'm in pain. I got massive headache like It's just the

worst case scenario. And if my life was that, I don't know if I'd like to live, but I

know. I have the wisdom because of the spiritual journey, because of all these things that my life isn't that,

that's parts of my life. I that's an experience in my life. It's not my life. So I know by

lunchtime or by tea time, I'll be up in the chair and things will not be that bad, and it's

that simple. Okay? I don't know if it's that simple, but certainly more difficult for my carers. But yeah,

sometimes when I'm in pain, sometimes when life is really, really tough, I've got to remember that this isn't permanent

and that's that emotional resilience. So what is spiritual bypassing? Spiritual

bypassing is a concept by John Wellwood, and what John says is but basically it's denying

their emotions. Denying these deep emotions. I don't want to feel them because I want to feel joy all the

time. So I'm going to get rid of my pain. And I often come across these people that will hug

trees and I'm love and I'm this spiritual person that just feels happy. And how long does it last

you think to yourself, how many times have you done it that you're in a good place and you think

that's it, and then suddenly, boom rock bottom again? Because it will always, it will always come up, you know

you sure as hell as taxes and government will do dumb things. You're going to hit rock bottom again and

again, and it may not be bang on rock bottom. The spiritual journey just makes us bounce a little higher

and a little quicker, you know, instead of tumbling along the bottom. That's a good analogy for the suffering. So

suffering is when you hit the bomb and you bumble along, scraping and hurting. The spiritual journey is you bounce

off the bottom and you come back. I love it. That works, doesn't it? You know, I feel like I

need to change the title of the podcast now. You know, the bouncing ball of the spiritual journey.

I just love it. It's brilliant. It works. But yeah, you can see what I mean so The spiritual journey

is not about less suffering, and if you're trying to deny those feelings and you're trying to deny these feelings

of deepness, you won't get the feelings of joy. It's like taking antidepressants and I've, I took an

antidepressants twice in my life. I am not against them. I, I think they're right. With a doctor. If a

doctor offers them, I think you should take them. I think it's part of getting over a

moment in your life. I think I'm not against them when I hit rock bottom with

my bankruptcy.

I took antidepressants for a year and it really helped me out. But what they do is they, they dull

your feelings, they dull your pain, and they dull your joy You know, you ain't gonna have those heart orgasms

if you're on antidepressants because you don't get there. You don't have that rush and vice versa. You don't think

So it keeps you in that spectrum in the middle. So the spiritual journey is about opening up and experiencing

all these, and the problem is the

bypassing, the spiritual journey will mean you either fall into it deeply. And you'll find it really hard to get

out because you haven't built the resilience, you haven't felt it properly. It will come up. Or you go into

that joy part and you try to cling on to it so hard that you cannot you're so fearful of

letting go because you're in this wonderful moment of joy you know I know friends that literally find it really

difficult to go in amongst the most difficult times because they haven't built the resilience to be able to be

there then if you can be with your family, if you can be with the most difficult people in your

life, I'm not saying my carers the most difficult people, they're not. But I've got people that are around me

nearly all the time that I wouldn't overly choose to be around that much. You know, I love them to

bits, but they're not my partners that they're not people that you overly choose. They're paid to look after me

and be around me. So they're my buddhist at first They're people that teach me constantly that you know

that life is in that middle of not always sunshine and roses a little bit of friction they're Teaching

me it's not always perfect, and what it gives me is that ability to be with them and still be

in a place of happiness with that happiness line in the middle. And the happiness line is not above where

it's all joy and happy. It's not. It's in the mundane, it's in the doing the hoovering It's in the

conversations that are not that exciting. It's in the normalness of every day. That's where the

happiness is because, If you're there and then you suddenly have a bad day and you go below it, you'll

suddenly realise, oh, I just want to get back to the mundane. I long for the day when I can

just pick up the Hoover and Hoover my house. Think about it. How many times have you just wanted to

get back to doing the dishes when something goes badly wrong? Yeah, and that's what it's about. It's realising that

happiness is in the mundane, that you'll feel things deeply both ends and you'll suffer a whole lot less because

you won't be scraping along a bottom like that bouncing ball. I

hope that helps. If this podcast helps you in any way, please subscribe. Please leave a review. Let

me know. That makes what I'm doing well, what I'm not doing well, and. Yeah, I've got another podcast, inner

Peace Meditations, and just search for it on your favourite podcasting platform, apple or Spotify. And if you want to

support me in what I do bringing less suffering to the world, more joy, more deeper feelings, then you can

always head over to thankyousteven.com and all my links are there and you can treat me to a virtual hug.

You are awesome. Thank you. And.

Talking about the feeling things deeply I love you