The apprentice Fakir lied there squirming on the bed of nails. His master lied perfectly still beside him.
“But… Master, don’t you feel the pain?”
“Of course I feel the pain. The trick is not minding the pain.”
One could go even further.
Anything in life is either resisted, accepted, liked or enjoyed. While it is perfectly fine to have any of these four attitudes toward anything as you wish, it helps to be aware of this scale should you wish to enjoy life more.
- R = Resist
- A = Accept
- L = Like
- E = Enjoy
You could confine yourself to only doing things you currently enjoy. Or you could seek to expand life by enjoying more. Or if you are prompted or even forced to do things you really don’t like, you could practice liking or even enjoying those things.
It may seem far fetched to start enjoying some of the stuff you hate, but it can be done - as long as you take one step at a time.
Start by identifying some area in life you could benefit from liking or enjoying that you currently resist or don’t like. See if it is possible to start accepting that - by practicing to not resisting it when it happens. Then try to practice liking it until you can start practicing enjoying it.
Any problem disappears if you can like or enjoy it.
One such example that can help you understand the value of this scale is to start practicing doing cold showers. Yup, turn on only the cold faucet and watch how you are resisting the cold water. Practice accepting the cold shower until you are sorta fine with it. Then find something about it you can like until you feel truly fine with showering in cold water. And if you keep at it, you can learn how to enjoy a cold shower in the morning.
The same goes for practicing to accept, like and even enjoy your mother-in-law, your annoying neighbour, your asshole boss, public speaking, making a fool out of yourself, or even pain.
Link to this post: https://isene.org/2020/03/RALE.html