Podcast: How to Suffer Less Embracing Change on the Spiritual Journey

Support: Thankyousteven.com

Episode Summary:

In this episode, Steven Webb shares his personal experiences and insights on the spiritual journey. He discusses the difference between pain and suffering, and how mindfulness and compassion can help alleviate the latter. Webb shares his own experiences with heartache, contemplating suicide, and dealing with physical pain due to paralysis. He also explores the concept of a "heart orgasm," a moment of intense joy and connection with the universe. Webb emphasizes that the spiritual journey deepens our emotional spectrum, allowing us to experience more joy and pain, but also equipping us with resilience. He concludes by stating that happiness is found in the mundane aspects of life, and that through the spiritual journey, one can suffer less and feel more deeply.

Timestamps:

• [0:00] - Introduction
• [2:58] - Steven Webb's spiritual journey and the difference between pain and suffering
• [11:21] - The importance of compassion in the spiritual journey
• [20:07] - The impact of antidepressants on emotional depth
• [22:49] - Conclusion and closing thoughts

Key Points:

• The difference between pain and suffering and how to alleviate the latter.
• The concept of a "heart orgasm" and its role in the spiritual journey.
• The importance of compassion in the spiritual journey.
• The impact of antidepressants on emotional depth.
• The role of resilience in the spiritual journey.

Quotes:

1. "The spiritual journey is about deepening your emotional spectrum. You feel things on the other side much better. You feel more joy, you feel more excitement." - Steven Webb
2. "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." - Steven Webb

Links and References:

• Inner Peace Meditations Podcast
• Steven Webb Blog

Call to Action:

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And remember you can always donate and support my show by sending me a virtual hug at thankyousteven.com

Podcast and Host Info:

Welcome to "Stillness in the Storms," a beacon of tranquility amidst life's turbulence, hosted by your guide, Steven Webb.

Steven is not just an average meditation and mindfulness coach. Having faced severe adversity - becoming paralyzed in a diving accident - he has transformed his life into an inspiring journey of resilience and self-discovery. Now serving as the Mayor of Truro, Steven's teachings resonate

with the wisdom of Zen Buddhism and practical Stoicism, helping you find inner peace right in the midst of your daily life.

In each episode, Steven's soothing voice guides you towards a deeper understanding of life and self, turning each storm we face into an opportunity for stillness and growth. This podcast is your sanctuary, your weekly retreat, where the noise of life subsides, and profound understanding takes its place.

For more of Steven's teachings and updates on the podcast, subscribe to the weekly newsletter on our Website, and consider supporting Steven's work at thankyousteven.com.

Embark on this transformative journey with us, every Friday at 4 PM. Remember, at "Stillness in the Storms," serenity is not a destination, but a journey.

Welcome to episode 94.

I can't believe 94 episodes.

It only feels like I've done 20.

Anyway.

Welcome to episode 94 of Stillness in the Storms.

I'm Steven Weour host, and it's the podcast that helps

you to find the little inner piece 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 it's 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 look at about building resilience and, and we'll also go.

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 wanna 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 gonna 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 gonna 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, I want to reduce suffering, and if

I can reduce suffering in some way, helping the guy see as I player or

watch bbc, things like that, instead of just squinting on his phone.

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 other 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 gonna 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 to say it's not real.

So I'm not gonna argue with you, but I do like to have some kind of tangible

reason for believing something so, 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 color

and go, wow, look at the color.

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 are very likely not to be suffering.

Right now you are listening to this podcast.

You are not really suffering.

You know, if you are really suffering and you are burning, or something's

really going wrong in your life right now and you are 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 wanna 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 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 wanna 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, 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 used to teach you.

And I, and I went straight to the teacher name at the bottom.

Of course you do.

Cause you wanna know who it is.

It's just emailed you.

And 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 bald my eyes out.

I couldn't even read the email.

I'm wondering whether it shed 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 this story when we met up just last year.

She said 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 are 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 dunno 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'd tell you this story because I found a book on my

iPad called As a Man Thinker.

It was only about, I dunno, 40, 50 pages, but it was all about.

You're not what you think and you have control over

what you do or 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.

Ugh, 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, I was starting to feel the

pain of everything in the world, you know, a new story.

It cost 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 are feeling for them.

So empathy is someone comes over to you and says, do

not, 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, they think they're matching your feelings and all of that, and

they think they're giving you empathy.

But they're feeling what you are 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 steven webb.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

add 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 come and said, I'm tired, and I'm tired as well, sometimes

I'd go, yeah, I'm tired too.

So I'm not always this saint with compassion and all that.

In actual fact, very rarely I am.

And 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.

Doesn't always work, but that's the genuine spiritual journey,

is having compassion without having to make it about ourselves.

So what does compassion look like?

And this is where Brene 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.

No, there's the difference.

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

And I, and I look at and go, yeah, I broke my leg once.

It's like, how does that feel if you come over to me

and said, 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 a 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, 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 in 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 are able to help others.

You are able to hold space forever.

Others, 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.

Hope that makes sense.

So the spiritual journey is about deepening 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?

And they said, it's when you are 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 favorite 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 up to someone.

Oh, by the way, how's your spiritual journey going?

Have you ever had a heart orgasm?

That'd be funny, wouldn't it?

If you ever bum into me in person, ask me that.

That'd be so funny.

A, I'd know you listening to my podcast, and B, my face

would probably just like, Okay.

You know, our chimp in our minds always go to that place, don'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 paralyzed just below my neck.

And one of the things we're paralyzed 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 Well, my bowels and all

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 and I'm in pain.

I got massive headache.

It's just the worst case scenario.

And if my life was that, I, I dunno 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 ex, 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 dunno 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 gotta 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 ba, basically it's denying their emotions.

Denying these deep emotions.

I don't wanna feel them because I wanna feel joy all the time.

So I'm gonna 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 are in a good place and you think that's it, and then

suddenly, boom, what bottom again?

Because it will always, it will always come up, you know,

sure as hell as taxes and government will do dumb things.

You're gonna 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 bottom 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 though.

The spiritual journey is not about less suffering, and if you're

trying to deny those feelings and you are trying to deny

these feelings of deepness, you won't get the feelings of joy.

It's like taking antidepressants and I've, I taken

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, 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 dule your feelings, they dull

your pain, and they dule your joy.

So, You know, you ain't gonna have those heart orgasms if

you are on antidepressants because you don't get there.

You don't have that rush and vice versa.

You don't have to 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 sp, 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 onto it so hard

that you cannot you're so fearful of letting go because you're in

this wonderful moment of joy.

Yeah, 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.

Now, if you can be with your family, if you can be with the

most difficult people in your life, I'm not saying my carer's 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 bodhisattvas . They're people that teach me constantly that

you know that life is in that middle of not always sunshine and roses.

That little bit of friction.

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 who ring.

It's in the conversations that I'm not that exciting.

It's in the normalness of every day.

That's where the happiness is because, If you are there and then you suddenly

have a bad day and you go below it, you'll suddenly realize, oh, I

just wanna 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 realizing 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 favorite podcasting platform, apple or Spotify.

And if you wanna support me in what I do, bring in 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.