https://awakin.org/read/ iJourney passages are a weekly email service that delivers a little bit of wisdom. It all started with couple folks getting together on Wednesdays in the Silicon Valley. en Tue, 26 May 2026 19:16:33 -0700 ServiceSpace iJourney passages are a weekly email service that delivers a little bit of wisdom. It all started with couple folks getting together on Wednesdays in the Silicon Valley. ServiceSpace tow@charityfocus.org no tow@charityfocus.org (ServiceSpace) https://awakin.org/read/view.php?tid=2785 Radical honesty, a form of authenticity that begins inside you, is a warm recognition that you gently apply to your conscious life. This view of radical honesty is not about telling everyone what you think. Instead, it is the root from which self-awareness grows. Thoughts and emotions that were once discarded or ignored are now embraced. Where you once felt the urge to run away, you now challenge yourself to face whatever is there. More than anything, any lie that you formerly told yourself is examined so that the truth may come forward. The key to radical honesty is that this is not about you and other people, but about how you relate to yourself in all situations, whether you are alone or with others. Radical honesty is not about punishing yourself or harsh self-talk. Rather, it is about calmly being in constant contact with your truth. Practicing this balance is critical. In the beginning, radical honesty may feel hard to manage, but it is truly a long-term project. If you want to see great results, you need to wholeheartedly commit to the process, especially when it gets difficult, so you can reject the temptation to fall back into unconsciously motivated behavior. If you continue to tread down the path of lies, fear and its two primary manifestations—anxiety and anger—will continue to grow. First, you fear truth and then you lie to be rid of your fear, unwittingly falling into a loop where you actually continue empowering your fear because every lie breeds further anxiety. The only way to put an end to the burning fire of fear is by thoroughly extinguishing it with truth. Dishonesty is the fear of truth. Dishonesty with yourself creates distance. The more lies you build up over time, the more you become a stranger to yourself. When you cannot accept your own truth, you are moving in the opposite direction of self-awareness. When lies suffuse your mind, life becomes opaque and the right actions you need to take to ease your inner tension become difficult to decipher. The lies you tell yourself will also manifest as a lack of depth in your relationships. A deep connection with another being is not possible if you are deeply disconnected from yourself. As you practice radical honesty, this distance decreases and your mind starts to become calmer. Telling yourself the truth is the beginning of inner harmony. This harmony immediately makes your relationships more vibrant. In examining your past and uncovering the truth that you previously re- fused to own, you actually make the power of your honesty stronger. This higher degree of presence allows your self- awareness to flourish. Eventually, your radical honesty matures to the point where it becomes non-negotiable—you carry it wherever you go and in every situation it becomes an asset that informs your decisions. Where you once coaxed yourself into thinking nothing was wrong, you now admit to yourself that turbulence or hurt was actually there. Where you once forced yourself into thinking you liked something, you admit that you did find it disagreeable. Where you once denied old pain, you admit that there is a wound within you that needs tending. tow-2785 Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 -0700 Radical honesty, a form of authenticity that begins inside you, is a warm recognition that you gently apply to your conscious life. This view of radical honesty is not about telling everyone what you think. Instead, it is the root from which self-awareness grows. Thoughts and emotions that were once discarded or ignored are now embraced. Where you once felt the urge to run away, you now challenge yourself to face whatever is there. More than anything, any lie that you formerly told yourself is examined so that the truth may come forward. The key to radical honesty is that this is not about you and other people, but about how you relate to yourself in all situations, whether you are alone or with others. Radical honesty is not about punishing yourself or harsh self-talk. Rather, it is about calmly being in constant contact with your truth. Practicing this balance is critical. In the beginning, radical honesty may feel hard to manage, but it is truly a long-term project. If you want to see great results, you need to wholeheartedly commit to the process, especially when it gets difficult, so you can reject the temptation to fall back into unconsciously motivated behavior. If you continue to tread down the path of lies, fear and its two primary manifestations—anxiety and anger—will continue to grow. First, you fear truth and then you lie to be rid of your fear, unwittingly falling into a loop where you actually continue empowering your fear because every lie breeds further anxiety. The only way to put an end to the burning fire of fear is by thoroughly extinguishing it with truth. Dishonesty is the fear of truth. Dishonesty with yourself creates distance. The more lies you build up over time, the more you become a stranger to yourself. When you cannot accept your own truth, you are moving in the opposite direction of self-awareness. When lies suffuse your mind, life becomes opaque and the right actions you need to take to ease your inner tension become difficult to decipher. The lies you tell yourself will also manifest as a lack of depth in your relationships. A deep connection with another being is not possible if you are deeply disconnected from yourself. As you practice radical honesty, this distance decreases and your mind starts to become calmer. Telling yourself the truth is the beginning of inner harmony. This harmony immediately makes your relationships more vibrant. In examining your past and uncovering the truth that you previously re- fused to own, you actually make the power of your honesty stronger. This higher degree of presence allows your self- awareness to flourish. Eventually, your radical honesty matures to the point where it becomes non-negotiable—you carry it wherever you go and in every situation it becomes an asset that informs your decisions. Where you once coaxed yourself into thinking nothing was wrong, you now admit to yourself that turbulence or hurt was actually there. Where you once forced yourself into thinking you liked something, you admit that you did find it disagreeable. Where you once denied old pain, you admit that there is a wound within you that needs tending. https://awakin.org/read/view.php?tid=2730 What would I like? I would like to live a life of wisdom and compassion, like the sunflower, turning toward what deeply nourishes it. I would like to be at the edge of my knowing and becoming, present with joy and wonder, to the beauty of life's emergence. I would like to live without fear for myself or my loved ones, extending to all beings, and without causing fear to any living being. I would like to live with a radical tenderness and the confidence that everything is workable. I would like to engage with others with an attunement to their greatest gifts, and mine, and with an attunement to what wants to emerge. I would like to engage in my work with a sense of privilege and possibility. I would like to be be a hub for interconnection, letting flows flow through, without needing to hold on to anything. I would like to welcome and play with what arises in the moment, in any situation. I would like to live, to love, as an invitation to infinite things. What would you like? tow-2730 Mon, 18 May 2026 00:00:00 -0700 What would I like? I would like to live a life of wisdom and compassion, like the sunflower, turning toward what deeply nourishes it. I would like to be at the edge of my knowing and becoming, present with joy and wonder, to the beauty of life's emergence. I would like to live without fear for myself or my loved ones, extending to all beings, and without causing fear to any living being. I would like to live with a radical tenderness and the confidence that everything is workable. I would like to engage with others with an attunement to their greatest gifts, and mine, and with an attunement to what wants to emerge. I would like to engage in my work with a sense of privilege and possibility. I would like to be be a hub for interconnection, letting flows flow through, without needing to hold on to anything. I would like to welcome and play with what arises in the moment, in any situation. I would like to live, to love, as an invitation to infinite things. What would you like? https://awakin.org/read/view.php?tid=2609 Truly accepting pain is not at all like passive resignation. Rather, it is active engagement with life in its most intimate sense. It is meeting, dancing with, raging at, turning toward. To accept your pain on this level you must cultivate particular skills. Then After you have developed some proficiency in these skills, dealing with pain feels much more like an embrace, or the bond that forms between sparring partners, than it feels like resignation. Resignation is too passive. So What are the skills necessary for dealing with catastrophe, pain, anguish that you have day in and day out and probably will have for a long time? If you're in this difficult situation, your job is to (1)acknowledge that stuff and what its costing you, and (2) to enrich your life exponentially. [...] Acknowledging your suffering, just exactly what it is costing you to live with the painful situation you have, is the first step on the path of penetration into the wellspring of energy we often tie up in efforts we make to get away from our despair. I work with people who have degenerative diseases like arthritis, MS, stroke. Many of them have constant, unremitting pain. They say to me, "Why would I want to acknowledge my suffering? To live in the present moment with all my agony? I'd rather distract myself." Why indeed? Maybe the bottom line is that if you develop a strategy to deal with suffering that rests on merely distracting yourself, it won't work in the long run. Maybe you can deny it or distract yourself for a short time -- hours or days. Denial is great for the short term -- it can allow you to meet a deadline despite a crisis or it can help you gradually accept an overwhelming circumstance -- but longterm it carries a pretty high price. If you deny your pain or your suffering for a long time, you begin to exist on a bleak tundra of nonfeeling. In order to stay in denial, you have to turn away from all incoming information about your situation: other people's feedback, your own feelings coming up from your gut. So your consciousness gets very narrow and your life continues on one level of your being with no variation or richness or feeling. [..]  Earlier I mentioned that one of the skills it's useful to cultivate is enriching your life exponentially. What I mean by that is If at any given moment you are aware of ten different elements -- for instance, the sound of my voice, your bottom on the chair, the sound of cars passing outside, the thought of the laundry you have to do, the hum of the air-conditioner, the sliding of your glasses down your nose, an unpleasant stab of sharp back pain, cool air going into your nostrils, warm air going out -- that's too much pain, one out of ten; that's unbearable pain that will dominate your life. But if at this moment you are aware of a hundred elements, not only the ten things you noticed before but more subtle things, like the animal presence of other people sitting quietly in the room, the shadow of the lamp against the wall, the brush of your hair against your ear, the pull of your clothes against your skin, for instance, and you have pain along with all those other things you are noticing, then your pain is one of a hundred elements of your consciousness at that moment, and that is pain you can live with. It's merely one of the multitude of sensations in your life. As a person with a chronic illness who works with other people who have longterm physical difficulties and the despair/bitterness that accompany such difficulties, I'm very interested in what people do that has some influence on their healing process. Over the years I've noticed that among the most important healing experiences that people can have are experiences of deep pleasure. This is true of both physical and spiritual healing. When your suffering is chronic or intense, you cannot let your pleasures come randomly. You need to take the perception of pleasure very seriously and learn how to build the occurrence of such feelings into your life. If you are overwhelmed by emotional stress or physical pain, I advise you to cultivate the ability to recognize pleasure wherever the potential for its existence may lie. -- Excerpted from a talk given by Darlene Cohen to the Multiple Sclerosis Society in March, 2000 tow-2609 Mon, 11 May 2026 00:00:00 -0700 Truly accepting pain is not at all like passive resignation. Rather, it is active engagement with life in its most intimate sense. It is meeting, dancing with, raging at, turning toward. To accept your pain on this level you must cultivate particular skills. Then After you have developed some proficiency in these skills, dealing with pain feels much more like an embrace, or the bond that forms between sparring partners, than it feels like resignation. Resignation is too passive. So What are the skills necessary for dealing with catastrophe, pain, anguish that you have day in and day out and probably will have for a long time? If you're in this difficult situation, your job is to (1)acknowledge that stuff and what its costing you, and (2) to enrich your life exponentially. [...] Acknowledging your suffering, just exactly what it is costing you to live with the painful situation you have, is the first step on the path of penetration into the wellspring of energy we often tie up in efforts we make to get away from our despair. I work with people who have degenerative diseases like arthritis, MS, stroke. Many of them have constant, unremitting pain. They say to me, "Why would I want to acknowledge my suffering? To live in the present moment with all my agony? I'd rather distract myself." Why indeed? Maybe the bottom line is that if you develop a strategy to deal with suffering that rests on merely distracting yourself, it won't work in the long run. Maybe you can deny it or distract yourself for a short time -- hours or days. Denial is great for the short term -- it can allow you to meet a deadline despite a crisis or it can help you gradually accept an overwhelming circumstance -- but longterm it carries a pretty high price. If you deny your pain or your suffering for a long time, you begin to exist on a bleak tundra of nonfeeling. In order to stay in denial, you have to turn away from all incoming information about your situation: other people's feedback, your own feelings coming up from your gut. So your consciousness gets very narrow and your life continues on one level of your being with no variation or richness or feeling. [..]  Earlier I mentioned that one of the skills it's useful to cultivate is enriching your life exponentially. What I mean by that is If at any given moment you are aware of ten different elements -- for instance, the sound of my voice, your bottom on the chair, the sound of cars passing outside, the thought of the laundry you have to do, the hum of the air-conditioner, the sliding of your glasses down your nose, an unpleasant stab of sharp back pain, cool air going into your nostrils, warm air going out -- that's too much pain, one out of ten; that's unbearable pain that will dominate your life. But if at this moment you are aware of a hundred elements, not only the ten things you noticed before but more subtle things, like the animal presence of other people sitting quietly in the room, the shadow of the lamp against the wall, the brush of your hair against your ear, the pull of your clothes against your skin, for instance, and you have pain along with all those other things you are noticing, then your pain is one of a hundred elements of your consciousness at that moment, and that is pain you can live with. It's merely one of the multitude of sensations in your life. As a person with a chronic illness who works with other people who have longterm physical difficulties and the despair/bitterness that accompany such difficulties, I'm very interested in what people do that has some influence on their healing process. Over the years I've noticed that among the most important healing experiences that people can have are experiences of deep pleasure. This is true of both physical and spiritual healing. When your suffering is chronic or intense, you cannot let your pleasures come randomly. You need to take the perception of pleasure very seriously and learn how to build the occurrence of such feelings into your life. If you are overwhelmed by emotional stress or physical pain, I advise you to cultivate the ability to recognize pleasure wherever the potential for its existence may lie. -- Excerpted from a talk given by Darlene Cohen to the Multiple Sclerosis Society in March, 2000 https://awakin.org/read/view.php?tid=2783 A friend and I often greet each other with the Arabic words, “Ishq Allah.” Ishq is passionate love for God. Crazy love for spirit in matter and matter in spirit. The Sufi-dervish-wonder that whirls and says, Ishq Allah ma’būd lillāh, God is love, lover, and beloved ... Our pointer-dogs, Sara and Bartie hike with me in the mountains where Sara brings a special brand of Ishq. Whenever she senses a bird, she freezes in a perfect point. Time stops as she leans forward, her front leg bent, her stubby tail extended. It’s dog yoga, downward pointing God, as she claims union with her ordained purpose. I hold my breath. The earth holds its breath. Then Sara hears a sacred starting gun, discernible only in dog-land. She barrels into the underbrush. Twenty grey quail fling themselves up out of the bushes, no chirping, only the sound of insistent wings that say, “I Am.” I inhale the sound of wings and say, “So Am I, beloved quail—I Am.” Sara barks at the quail then races back down the mountain to share her excitement with Bartie and me. “You are the beloved, too, sweet dogs,” I say. Together, we continue our ishq-intoxicated hike. What did I do to deserve this microcosm of audacious grace? Who created a dog that points so clearly and dearly? What offers a flock of quail the adventure of a shared get-away? How do air, feathers, and flight conspire to break one’s heart into beauty with sounds only love can hear? Who submits us to this drunken recklessness? Ishq allāh ma’būd lillāh, God as love, lover, and beloved ... What a privilege it is to listen to the three in one. No definitions, no reasoning required. Simply wonder in the wordless wings. Love, lover, and beloved sing to us constantly. But will we listen? Will we hear? With love’s help, I’ll try and listen better. I’ll start with the high school band that rehearses every day, inches from my house. I’ll fall in love with their raucous On Wisconsin. I’ll shimmy to the salsa version of Beethoven’s Für Elise. I’ll dance to the drum line. I’ll trust love to transform out-of-tune band music to the sound of teenagers pointing their clarinets and saxophones toward the intangible angle of grace. I’ll know the music hasn’t changed. The beloved changes me. The lover tempts my ears to hear differently. And the alchemy of love transforms annoyance into amazement. With practice, we can learn everything is love, lover, and beloved. Dissonance and grace; the New York Philharmonic and the Santa Paula High School band—It’s all the sound of wings. It’s all Ishq Allāh ma’būd lillāh. Everything is intoxicated rapture calling us home—home to heaven on earth, precisely, where we belong. tow-2783 Mon, 04 May 2026 00:00:00 -0700 A friend and I often greet each other with the Arabic words, “Ishq Allah.” Ishq is passionate love for God. Crazy love for spirit in matter and matter in spirit. The Sufi-dervish-wonder that whirls and says, Ishq Allah ma’būd lillāh, God is love, lover, and beloved ... Our pointer-dogs, Sara and Bartie hike with me in the mountains where Sara brings a special brand of Ishq. Whenever she senses a bird, she freezes in a perfect point. Time stops as she leans forward, her front leg bent, her stubby tail extended. It’s dog yoga, downward pointing God, as she claims union with her ordained purpose. I hold my breath. The earth holds its breath. Then Sara hears a sacred starting gun, discernible only in dog-land. She barrels into the underbrush. Twenty grey quail fling themselves up out of the bushes, no chirping, only the sound of insistent wings that say, “I Am.” I inhale the sound of wings and say, “So Am I, beloved quail—I Am.” Sara barks at the quail then races back down the mountain to share her excitement with Bartie and me. “You are the beloved, too, sweet dogs,” I say. Together, we continue our ishq-intoxicated hike. What did I do to deserve this microcosm of audacious grace? Who created a dog that points so clearly and dearly? What offers a flock of quail the adventure of a shared get-away? How do air, feathers, and flight conspire to break one’s heart into beauty with sounds only love can hear? Who submits us to this drunken recklessness? Ishq allāh ma’būd lillāh, God as love, lover, and beloved ... What a privilege it is to listen to the three in one. No definitions, no reasoning required. Simply wonder in the wordless wings. Love, lover, and beloved sing to us constantly. But will we listen? Will we hear? With love’s help, I’ll try and listen better. I’ll start with the high school band that rehearses every day, inches from my house. I’ll fall in love with their raucous On Wisconsin. I’ll shimmy to the salsa version of Beethoven’s Für Elise. I’ll dance to the drum line. I’ll trust love to transform out-of-tune band music to the sound of teenagers pointing their clarinets and saxophones toward the intangible angle of grace. I’ll know the music hasn’t changed. The beloved changes me. The lover tempts my ears to hear differently. And the alchemy of love transforms annoyance into amazement. With practice, we can learn everything is love, lover, and beloved. Dissonance and grace; the New York Philharmonic and the Santa Paula High School band—It’s all the sound of wings. It’s all Ishq Allāh ma’būd lillāh. Everything is intoxicated rapture calling us home—home to heaven on earth, precisely, where we belong. https://awakin.org/read/view.php?tid=2782 Believe me when I say I wish I could offer you something like an instant parting of the clouds, a single sentence or practice that would return you immediately to peace. Something simple and universal. A one-size-fits-all path back to center. But the truth is, being human doesn’t work that way. There isn’t one doorway that fits everyone. There isn’t one instruction that lands the same for every nervous system, every history, every heart. And I don’t want to add more noise to the pile. Because lately it feels like everywhere you turn there’s someone telling you how you should be navigating. How you should feel, respond or act. The “shoulds” are endless. Open any news feed or social platform and there’s another voice prescribing the correct spiritual posture, the right emotional response, the proper way to be awake or aware or evolved. Of course, it is exhausting. So instead of offering something new or clever, I find myself returning to a couple of very old, very quiet phrases that have stayed with me for years. One of them is this from my practitioner teaching days:Even in the apparent absence of…Even in the apparent absence of peace, there is peace.Even in the apparent absence of order, there is order.Even in the apparent absence of God, there is God. If that’s true - if peace or order or presence hasn’t actually disappeared - then the question becomes personal. Not: What must they do?  But: What must I do to sense it again? How do I soften enough to notice what hasn’t left? How do I untangle myself from the noise long enough to reconnect? Another phrase that has steadied me lately is even simpler:Everywhere I look, I see what I’m looking for. If I’m scanning the world for proof that everything is broken, I’ll find it instantly. If I’m looking for outrage, there it is. If I’m looking for fear, it’s everywhere. But if the only thing I choose to look for is God - or love, or harmony, or intelligence, or care - then that is what begins to appear. So the only real choice I seem to have is this: What am I looking for? And if I can’t see it? Then maybe I’m being asked to be it. To be the calm, the listener, the steadiness. To be the hands and feet of the very thing I say I believe in. Not as a performance or some conceptual strategy, just quietly, in the way I move through the day. I’m not grabbing for followers or outcomes or trying to win arguments. And I’m not pushing anyone away either. I’m practicing being present in the doing. No chasing. No clinging. No retaliation. Just trusting that what is mine to do will reveal itself when it’s time, and that the right people will find their way here, and others won’t, and that’s okay. It has to be okay. Because maybe peace was never something we manufacture. Maybe it’s something we remember. tow-2782 Mon, 27 Apr 2026 00:00:00 -0700 Believe me when I say I wish I could offer you something like an instant parting of the clouds, a single sentence or practice that would return you immediately to peace. Something simple and universal. A one-size-fits-all path back to center. But the truth is, being human doesn’t work that way. There isn’t one doorway that fits everyone. There isn’t one instruction that lands the same for every nervous system, every history, every heart. And I don’t want to add more noise to the pile. Because lately it feels like everywhere you turn there’s someone telling you how you should be navigating. How you should feel, respond or act. The “shoulds” are endless. Open any news feed or social platform and there’s another voice prescribing the correct spiritual posture, the right emotional response, the proper way to be awake or aware or evolved. Of course, it is exhausting. So instead of offering something new or clever, I find myself returning to a couple of very old, very quiet phrases that have stayed with me for years. One of them is this from my practitioner teaching days:Even in the apparent absence of…Even in the apparent absence of peace, there is peace.Even in the apparent absence of order, there is order.Even in the apparent absence of God, there is God. If that’s true - if peace or order or presence hasn’t actually disappeared - then the question becomes personal. Not: What must they do?  But: What must I do to sense it again? How do I soften enough to notice what hasn’t left? How do I untangle myself from the noise long enough to reconnect? Another phrase that has steadied me lately is even simpler:Everywhere I look, I see what I’m looking for. If I’m scanning the world for proof that everything is broken, I’ll find it instantly. If I’m looking for outrage, there it is. If I’m looking for fear, it’s everywhere. But if the only thing I choose to look for is God - or love, or harmony, or intelligence, or care - then that is what begins to appear. So the only real choice I seem to have is this: What am I looking for? And if I can’t see it? Then maybe I’m being asked to be it. To be the calm, the listener, the steadiness. To be the hands and feet of the very thing I say I believe in. Not as a performance or some conceptual strategy, just quietly, in the way I move through the day. I’m not grabbing for followers or outcomes or trying to win arguments. And I’m not pushing anyone away either. I’m practicing being present in the doing. No chasing. No clinging. No retaliation. Just trusting that what is mine to do will reveal itself when it’s time, and that the right people will find their way here, and others won’t, and that’s okay. It has to be okay. Because maybe peace was never something we manufacture. Maybe it’s something we remember. https://awakin.org/read/view.php?tid=2649 What became clear for me is that we cannot control the volatile tides that life brings, but maybe we can learn to build better boats. I needed a better vessel -- a sacred vessel. I would do this for myself and for my people -- my daughters, my mother, and my extended community -- so that we could navigate the harsh conditions of life without being torn asunder. And so I went in search. What I discovered is this: Suffering comes with the experience of being human, and one’s perspective can determine how one experiences and works with it. Suffering is psycho-somatic pain, meaning that it impacts the mind, body, and spirit of a person. Sometimes suffering is multigenerational, genetically coded, or situational. It sometimes hides out in the subconscious realms of our psyche and muscle memory, like a kid’s game of hide-and-seek. Life experiences, painful encounters, and anxiety can trigger and awaken moments of trauma or suffering. I have come to realize that there is no logic when it comes to suffering. Because it is a type of pain, we try to make sense of the pain. We ask: Is there a reason for the pain? What does the pain mean? Is there a cause for my suffering? Is it the result of a choice I have made? While there may be answers for simple forms of temporary suffering, when it comes to more complex forms, adequate answers are more elusive. In these instances, a person and loved ones must come to terms with suffering as a permanent resident in their lives. In these instances, suffering persistently nudges the sufferer and/or loved ones to ask heart-wrenching questions about the meaning and purpose of life. While not all do so, some choose to wrestle with suffering rather than retreat into denial or bitterness. These sojourners follow a rabbit hole into the dark tunnels of life’s mystery, where only questions illuminate the path in front of them. It is a lonely and isolating inward journey, because only they alone can fully experience their suffering. Encounters with the ultimate source of suffering, however, can lead to transformation, new insights, wisdom, and healing to share with those who might face similar encounters. For me this journey was intimate and private, but at the same time I found wise guides, teachers, and counselors to accompany me as I descended into the luminous darkness of my own emotional memories. Howard Thurman was one of those guides: The individual enters a fellowship of suffering and the community of sufferers. The only point to be held steadily in mind is that, despite the personal character of suffering, the sufferer can work his way through to community. This does not make his pain less, but it can make it inclusive of many other people. Sometimes he discovers through the ministry of his own burden a larger comprehension of his fellows, of whose presence he becomes aware of in his darkness. They are companions along the way. Wrestling with my suffering was necessary in order for me to reckon with the gut-wrenching pain of my own experience in hopes of discovering an illumined path of healing and transformation to share with others. Again, Thurman’s words resonate: This is why we very often see people as profoundly changed by their suffering. Into their faces has come a subtle radiance and a settled serenity; into their relationships [comes] a vital generosity that opens the sealed doors of the heart in all who are encountered along the way. Such people look out upon life with quiet eyes. Openings are made in a life by suffering that are not made in any other way. Serious questions are raised and primary answers come forth. Insights are reached concerning aspects of life that are hidden and obscure before the assault. I discovered an ancient, underground river of truth that rises up in all of these traditions. I discovered that faith and certainty are not the same. Too much certainty about what, why, and how God works gets in God’s way. tow-2649 Mon, 20 Apr 2026 00:00:00 -0700 What became clear for me is that we cannot control the volatile tides that life brings, but maybe we can learn to build better boats. I needed a better vessel -- a sacred vessel. I would do this for myself and for my people -- my daughters, my mother, and my extended community -- so that we could navigate the harsh conditions of life without being torn asunder. And so I went in search. What I discovered is this: Suffering comes with the experience of being human, and one’s perspective can determine how one experiences and works with it. Suffering is psycho-somatic pain, meaning that it impacts the mind, body, and spirit of a person. Sometimes suffering is multigenerational, genetically coded, or situational. It sometimes hides out in the subconscious realms of our psyche and muscle memory, like a kid’s game of hide-and-seek. Life experiences, painful encounters, and anxiety can trigger and awaken moments of trauma or suffering. I have come to realize that there is no logic when it comes to suffering. Because it is a type of pain, we try to make sense of the pain. We ask: Is there a reason for the pain? What does the pain mean? Is there a cause for my suffering? Is it the result of a choice I have made? While there may be answers for simple forms of temporary suffering, when it comes to more complex forms, adequate answers are more elusive. In these instances, a person and loved ones must come to terms with suffering as a permanent resident in their lives. In these instances, suffering persistently nudges the sufferer and/or loved ones to ask heart-wrenching questions about the meaning and purpose of life. While not all do so, some choose to wrestle with suffering rather than retreat into denial or bitterness. These sojourners follow a rabbit hole into the dark tunnels of life’s mystery, where only questions illuminate the path in front of them. It is a lonely and isolating inward journey, because only they alone can fully experience their suffering. Encounters with the ultimate source of suffering, however, can lead to transformation, new insights, wisdom, and healing to share with those who might face similar encounters. For me this journey was intimate and private, but at the same time I found wise guides, teachers, and counselors to accompany me as I descended into the luminous darkness of my own emotional memories. Howard Thurman was one of those guides: The individual enters a fellowship of suffering and the community of sufferers. The only point to be held steadily in mind is that, despite the personal character of suffering, the sufferer can work his way through to community. This does not make his pain less, but it can make it inclusive of many other people. Sometimes he discovers through the ministry of his own burden a larger comprehension of his fellows, of whose presence he becomes aware of in his darkness. They are companions along the way. Wrestling with my suffering was necessary in order for me to reckon with the gut-wrenching pain of my own experience in hopes of discovering an illumined path of healing and transformation to share with others. Again, Thurman’s words resonate: This is why we very often see people as profoundly changed by their suffering. Into their faces has come a subtle radiance and a settled serenity; into their relationships [comes] a vital generosity that opens the sealed doors of the heart in all who are encountered along the way. Such people look out upon life with quiet eyes. Openings are made in a life by suffering that are not made in any other way. Serious questions are raised and primary answers come forth. Insights are reached concerning aspects of life that are hidden and obscure before the assault. I discovered an ancient, underground river of truth that rises up in all of these traditions. I discovered that faith and certainty are not the same. Too much certainty about what, why, and how God works gets in God’s way. https://awakin.org/read/view.php?tid=2576 I’ve been a graduate student in physics for almost three years, but I only recently figured out why. I had to tackle a simple question do so: Why does this matter?  I avoided asking myself this question because I knew the answer would be painful. I ended up in physics through stubbornness, and an unusual willingness to suffer for the sake of grades. As an undergraduate, I was not particularly passionate about quarks, quasars, or quantum mechanics, but I was academically very competitive, and once I’d settled on physics as my major I determined to place myself at the top of my class. I did so by throwing myself into the hardest classes and putting in the hours required to ace the tests. This was, to put it mildly, a bad idea. I got a sort of grim pleasure from vanquishing my classmates in these academic slogs, but I was basically miserable. So why’d I keep it up? When multiple people are striving towards a shared goal, they often rank themselves by progress within their peer group. This was my mistake — I swapped an absolute goal (figuring out how bits of nature work) with a relative one (scoring higher on tests than my classmates). Later, when I found myself unhappy, I couldn’t leave without feeling like I’d lost something. That social capital sunk cost was the first part of the trap I found myself in. The second was a positive feedback loop that encouraged me to spend ever-increasing amounts of time on my work. Humans inherit convictions mimetically from each other — we learn what to value by imitating our peers. As my desire to excel academically grew, I spent greater amounts of time in and around the physics department. The more time I spent there, the greater my desire to excel. I’d never given physics much thought at all before my senior year in high school — but once I was surrounded by other physics students, competing for the same pool of grades and research positions, I could think of little else. This inherited desire was unchecked because I had no life outside of academics — no fixed reference point. Although quitting would have made me happier, I felt like I had nowhere to quit to. My tunnel vision left me with few concrete notions of alternative pursuits, and without a destination, I could not seriously contemplate leaving.  Plans are never plausible until they contain specifics, and implausible plans tend to be discarded. Many of my peers in physics only added incredulity, consciously or otherwise. The result was a reality distortion field — quitting was not just painful, but unimaginable, unthinkable. I ended up in graduate school not because I wanted to toe the bleeding edge of natural science, but because I simply couldn’t imagine doing anything else. That’s the mimetic trap in a nutshell: it hurts to leave, and there’s nowhere to go. It decouples the social reward signal from the rest of objective reality — you can spend years ascending ranks in a hierarchy without producing anything that the rest of humanity finds valuable. If you value the process itself, that’s fine. I didn’t. Cowardice kept me from acting on this, and after a while I came to believe I had to succeed in this field I’d fallen into essentially by chance. “Why does this matter?” is an excellent way to gauge if you’ve drifted into a mimetic trap. If you find this question impossible to answer honestly, you’re probably wasting your time. Getting out is the hard part — that requires courage and diligent planning. It’s much easier to avoid falling in. But in either case, you’ll benefit from building a system that steers you towards productive, meaningful activity in the long run. tow-2576 Mon, 13 Apr 2026 00:00:00 -0700 I’ve been a graduate student in physics for almost three years, but I only recently figured out why. I had to tackle a simple question do so: Why does this matter?  I avoided asking myself this question because I knew the answer would be painful. I ended up in physics through stubbornness, and an unusual willingness to suffer for the sake of grades. As an undergraduate, I was not particularly passionate about quarks, quasars, or quantum mechanics, but I was academically very competitive, and once I’d settled on physics as my major I determined to place myself at the top of my class. I did so by throwing myself into the hardest classes and putting in the hours required to ace the tests. This was, to put it mildly, a bad idea. I got a sort of grim pleasure from vanquishing my classmates in these academic slogs, but I was basically miserable. So why’d I keep it up? When multiple people are striving towards a shared goal, they often rank themselves by progress within their peer group. This was my mistake — I swapped an absolute goal (figuring out how bits of nature work) with a relative one (scoring higher on tests than my classmates). Later, when I found myself unhappy, I couldn’t leave without feeling like I’d lost something. That social capital sunk cost was the first part of the trap I found myself in. The second was a positive feedback loop that encouraged me to spend ever-increasing amounts of time on my work. Humans inherit convictions mimetically from each other — we learn what to value by imitating our peers. As my desire to excel academically grew, I spent greater amounts of time in and around the physics department. The more time I spent there, the greater my desire to excel. I’d never given physics much thought at all before my senior year in high school — but once I was surrounded by other physics students, competing for the same pool of grades and research positions, I could think of little else. This inherited desire was unchecked because I had no life outside of academics — no fixed reference point. Although quitting would have made me happier, I felt like I had nowhere to quit to. My tunnel vision left me with few concrete notions of alternative pursuits, and without a destination, I could not seriously contemplate leaving.  Plans are never plausible until they contain specifics, and implausible plans tend to be discarded. Many of my peers in physics only added incredulity, consciously or otherwise. The result was a reality distortion field — quitting was not just painful, but unimaginable, unthinkable. I ended up in graduate school not because I wanted to toe the bleeding edge of natural science, but because I simply couldn’t imagine doing anything else. That’s the mimetic trap in a nutshell: it hurts to leave, and there’s nowhere to go. It decouples the social reward signal from the rest of objective reality — you can spend years ascending ranks in a hierarchy without producing anything that the rest of humanity finds valuable. If you value the process itself, that’s fine. I didn’t. Cowardice kept me from acting on this, and after a while I came to believe I had to succeed in this field I’d fallen into essentially by chance. “Why does this matter?” is an excellent way to gauge if you’ve drifted into a mimetic trap. If you find this question impossible to answer honestly, you’re probably wasting your time. Getting out is the hard part — that requires courage and diligent planning. It’s much easier to avoid falling in. But in either case, you’ll benefit from building a system that steers you towards productive, meaningful activity in the long run.