The Faces & Attitudes of Suffering

I have finally internalized that when I encounter people who act angry and arrogant or who treat me poorly, it is a reflection of their own desire to be happy. When I’m being compassionate I see that they must have suffered terribly in order to put up such a barrier between themselves and others. I used to think that such people were reacting to me. I thought if I was different or acted differently, then they wouldn’t treat me that way. Unfortunately, that’s just the way they treat all people. Some people carry their joy and freedom with them; others carry their anger and fear.

Overcame a Trigger

This weekend I had an experience that causes my blood to boil and is normally followed by a explosion of anger. However, for the first time in my life the anger didn't erupt. The incident happened, my blood boiled, then I had an awareness that the incident is over and it's best to let it go. I was aware that I had a choice: I could erupt in anger, prolonging the incident, or not, thus continuing on with a good day. There was a split-second of clarity that I never experienced before. I always wondered if it would ever be possible to simply not react so quickly and now I know that there is a way that makes it possible. That way is meditation. Three and a half months of daily meditation has given me gifts I didn't even know were possible.

Spirituality and Medicine/Health

I’ve discussed in previous posts how quantum physics gives us a basis for understanding how spirituality can affect outcomes. In short, quantum physics (specifically Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle) enables us to see that there is actually a cause and effect relationship to what we define as coincidences, meaning we can increase the chances of coincidences happening by the energy (thoughts, prayers, meditation, action, etc.) we put into the world.

This obviously has medical implications. A number of studies published in such peer-reviewed journals as Annals of Internal Medicine, Journal of Reproductive Medicine, Evidence-Based Medicine and more look at the use of prayer for improving health outcomes. Further the prayer is done by people in distant locations for people they have never met. The people doing the praying are only given the first names of the patients. The results show positive outcomes for the patients who received prayers, even though they didn’t know they were being prayed for. To many scientists these results are not undeniable proof of the power of prayer, but many of the studies are showing that there is enough of an impact that further study is warranted. The challenge is that conducting such studies is difficult. For example, in the control group that is not receiving prayers from the people doing the praying for the study, it is impossible to keep their family and friends from possibly praying for them. And if a loved one is in a critical care unit for heart problems, can you really tell the family to make sure no one prays for the patient because they’re involved in a study?

Any way, here is the most compelling of the results, found in a study in the Journal for Reproductive Health:

OBJECTIVE: To assess the potential effect of intercessory prayer (IP) on pregnancy rates in women being treated with in vitro fertilization-embryo transfer (IVF-ET).

RESULTS: After clinical pregnancies were known, the data were unmasked to assess the effects of Intercessory Prayer (prayer for others) after assessment of multiple comparisons in a log-linear model. The IP group had a higher pregnancy rate as compared to the no-IP rate (50% vs. 26%, P = .0013). The IP group showed a higher implantation rate (16.3% vs. 8%, P = .0005). Observed effects were independent of clinical or laboratory providers and clinical variables.

(Source: Cha, KY, Wirth, DP, Lobo, RA (2001). “Does Prayer Influence the Success of In Vitro Fertilization-Embryo Transfer? Report of a Masked, Randomized Trial.” J Reprod Med. 49(11):944-5)

Expectations of Spirituality

Practicing spirituality without expectations of greater peace, prosperity, or insights is also called living detached from the outcome. The irony is that when we’re attached to the outcome, we actually put up barriers to its manifestation. The reason is because the outcome usually manifests in a way that isn’t what we had in mind and it is usually better than what we intended. So, the attachment keeps us locked in our pre-established ideas of what we think the outcome should be. The problem is that we’re “thinking” about how the outcome should look---we’re not relying on the creative power of the universe to create it for us. We’re trying to control things.

This also brings in the spiritual aspect of spirituality because to live without attachment, striving, or expectation requires faith in the universe. Without faith we’re living in fear that we won’t get what we want—that we won’t be okay. Instead we need to be trusting that we may not get what we envisioned, but we’ll get something related, though different and far better. This is what’s been happening to me lately. I had intentions for what I hoped to get out of meditation, but I didn’t obsess on those intentions. Now as I am living each day I’m having awakenings that things are remarkably different from what they were when I started meditation in April. There was no light switch that changed things from one state to another, rather it was like waking in the darkness before sun up and imperceptibly night turns to day and we wonder how the transformation was missed.