In the last few days, I’ve found myself talking quite a bit about suffering with friends, even relative strangers.

Sometimes the conversation drifts philosophically to the concept of suffering itself. But more times than not, the suffering we discuss is very specific and personal: the acute effects of experiencing loss of life, loving relationships gone awry, wreaking mental and emotional havoc within.

Having endured it myself (who hasn’t!), I’m grateful and humble that I can discuss suffering and try to offer my advice while not, at this point and place in my life, experiencing a devastatingly heavy burden of pain, depression or heartache.

Something sort of profound that happens when these sorts of discussions take place. I feel their pain — I feel deeply connected to their pain. Maybe the effect is a surge of subconscious memories bubbling to the forefront of my mind — ghosts of suffering long since buried suddenly resurrected, rising once more in hopes of offering someone else a lesson of hope and perseverance and overcoming.

How to Read This

This piece is an open letter to anyone who is suffering.

I’ve split a wonderful quote on suffering by psychotherapist Thomas Moore into six block-quoted segments, which serves as a greater narrative throughout. This letter is not intended for any one person or to help with any particular situation. I write it attempting to summon some bit of Truth woven in our shared human consciousness, and thus it should speak to anyone about anything.

As I first discussed in last December’s post, Strongheart: Harvesting Compassion in the Faces of Strangers, I believe that an open heart — any compassionate soul — connects incredibly deeply and incredibly quickly with other human beings through suffering. Suffering is one of humanity’s common denominators: it sheds labels and cuts to the core of our Being. As we all endure suffering, we are indelibly connected by it.

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An Open Letter to a Suffering Soul

“The dark night of the soul is a profoundly good thing. …”

Dear Friend,

Love surrounds you, always.

In times like these, it certainly doesn’t feel it. Amid suffering you feel blinded to any and all light — even as the sun shines brightly through your windowsill. In times like these your spirit is stagnant, your heart beats just to beat — not because it has cause, or hope, or good reason to keep on.

And yet love surrounds you always.

I can hear you quipping, “That’s easy for you to say…”, and indeed it is. In life is it easy to speak from experience when the experience has long since passed. So, too, is it easy to speak of “ideals” and “wants” and “shoulds”, especially without the intimate knowledge of the suffering you have been chosen to endure.

But suffering is just that. It is chosen.

We suffer by our choice, or we suffer by the choices of others, or we suffer by the choice of fate… destiny… God… or life itself. And although your suffering is completely overwhelming right now, the magic of time slowly unburdens all pains — affording us the opportunity to reflect, to learn, to grow, and to turn suffering into vital lessons. These irreplaceable lessons teach us how to attain the single most elusive pursuit in the history of humankind: purposeful living.

True happiness.

… It is an ongoing spiritual process in which we are liberated from attachments and compulsions and empowered to live and love more freely. …

You see, every event in our lives serves significant purpose — each moment, each day, each experience; whether glorious and loving or devastating and painful. Every gracious moment of tearful joy is, at its core, remarkably similar to each forced-upon feeling of a victimization and suffering by a heartless and chaotic world. The effects — how we feel — are distant. But the cause What causes

… Sometimes this letting go of old ways is painful, occasionally even devastating. But this is not why the night is called ‘dark.’ …

Every terrible feeling, every bout of debilitating depression, every instance of suffering is a genuine opportunity for something newer and better. As stepping upon fiery coals surges forth an uncontrollable, instinctive reaction to run and escape the pain; suffering, heartache, depression, are humanity’s natural means to propel a mental-emotional surge of conscious change.

… The darkness of the night implies nothing sinister, only that the liberation takes place in hidden ways, beneath our knowledge and understanding. …

Suffering is the fire beneath our feet that sets a storm of instinctive reactions in our brains to escape, to run, to live, to change. The burden of our suffering is so severe because pushing our thinking minds to the brink of overwhelming, total collapse demands immediate action. This is the feeling of a breaking point, when “something has to give.”

What nature intends to break, I believe, is not our will to live. It’s counter logical for human instinct to ever push a human being to self-destruct — such is the incomprehensible yet prevalent tragedy of suicide.

Nature, I believe, intends to break the human Ego.

… It happens mysteriously, in secret, and beyond our conscious control. …

We suffer to reduce our individual, egoic perceptions of Self — the labels, the titles, what we “do for a living”, and who we “think” we are. Amid such unbelievably heavy sorrow, suffering reduces our egotistical self-perceptions and returns us to a purer state.

A humbled state. A vulnerable state.

We feel far from invincible; we feel that we’re crumbling. We feel far from any job title’s description; we feel only raw human emotion. We feel far from any thing or any one person being able to alleviate our pain, give us pure joy, or fill the void of our sadness. The labels are gone. Our ego is hurt. Money and possessions are meaningless. Our ego reels. All of the unnecessary perceptions of “who we are” and judgmental thinking patterns about others are reduced to rubble. Our ego is silent.

Instead there is only our true Self.

And who we each are at the core of our Being as humans is a simple, caring and compassionate being, longing for fulfillment and happiness in life.

… For that reason it can be disturbing or even scary, but in the end it always works to our benefit.

But the burden of suffering doesn’t only serve to destroy our own ego. When a compassionate soul sees suffering in another human being, the egoic walls of self-defense are dissolved. We see others who suffers and innately lend our hands as best we can, realizing that we are not very different. Instead, we see ourselves in each other.

As love binds us, suffering binds us. And that is why we must suffer.

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Flickr photo credit: Shandi-lee

How do we love ourselves for who we are? Why should we bother? Is “self-love” conceited? Narcissistic? Delusional?

What is it about “loving oneself” that seems like such a simple concept but remains so elusive? Does the very term “self-love” misrepresent the important concepts of self-acceptance, self-confidence, and inner peace?

These are the questions that sprung to mind as I contemplated an email from a reader, Eileen A., who wrote me an email with a request to address the issues of self-love and self-hate.

The Reflection in the Mirror

Eileen works in women’s fashion and tells me in her email that she is “overwhelmed” by the amount of “self-hate” that she sees in the world of advertising for her industry. “With all the advertising today, I see a lot of women in my job who hate themselves whether it’s because of how they look, what they do, what’s going on in their lives,” she writes. Eileen continues:

“Have you done a post on how to love yourself in a world designed to foster self-hate? This world isn’t designed to give people self-efficacy. How can one face a world bombarding us with conflicting images and still look in the mirror, confident in the knowledge that we’re all beautiful manifestations of a perfect universe?”

As I read Eileen’s questions, I notice how she refers to “the world” as being a cause self-hate a handful of times. My mind begins to wander, and I start to question if self-hate is really to blame on external influences – caused by the world at large — or internal influences – more or less a matter of personal perspective — or, in all likelihood, some combination of both. Let’s begin by examining what we see when we look in the mirror.

On a biological level, there is a “natural want” by human beings to look and feel more attractive. Physical attraction plays its obvious role in the survival and continuation of the human species. On the social side of life, our physical appearance — from our natural looks to how we groom ourselves and our individual fashion/style — directly influences our social standing in everyday life. Of course, the influences of self-love and self-hate are so varied and complex that entire volumes of books might barely scrape the surface of underlying causes and effects. Reducing this most complex issue to its core, to me one thing remains certain: Human beings are naturally imperfect, yet wholly complete creatures.

Naturally Imperfect, For Better and For Worse

Humans tend to look at the down-side in life. I’m not sure why this is, exactly. Psychiatric and scientific experts tend to believe that the human species’ focus upon negative aspects of life — ranging from physical dangers and threats, to the imperfections of our bodies and wrinkles on our faces — has a lot to do with the human species’ natural instinct to survive:

To both survive and propagate the species, fear is a key component. Fear, reluctance, hesitation… the emotions we loathe and look to avoid in our everyday lives are the exact ones that ensured the very survival of the human species throughout tens of thousands of years of a tumultuous existence!

Beyond the instinct to survive, we all recognize at least one thing about our species and our individual selves: we are not naturally perfect. Everyone has faults, flaws, and individual shortcomings. And in a consumer-based society, television and magazine advertisements exploit the common knowledge that we are imperfect by telling you, the consumer, that you are imperfect and in need of this remedy, this product, this status symbol, this luxury, and so on, and so on…

Naturally Imperfect, but Wholly Complete

At the same time, although every human being is naturally imperfect, we are naturally whole: the combination of our individual strengths and individual shortcomings make every human being unquestionably and exceptionally unique. Having both strengths and weaknesses is a great gift! Our strengths — manifested in our talents, gifts, interests, hobbies, passions, personality traits, and so on — are what we naturally offer our friends, families, and the world around us. Our natural imperfections provide to us the grounds to appreciate all that we have, to improve who we are, and to develop our inner selves so that we may be better men and women.

Self-love really is about recognizing that there is no externality that human beings require to achieve completeness, happiness or inner contentment. All that we require is wholly within. And our strengths provide as much to us as our weaknesses. I know, at times it sucks being imperfect: I am awful at math, and running long distances is such torture for me that I am beginning to believe that generations and generations of the Ursillo family remained sedentary for thousands of years at a time.

It’s not “self-hate” to notice your shortcomings and imperfections. It is, however, “self-hate” to only focus upon them or to victimize yourself by wishing to be someone other than who you are. Every facet of who you are, for better or for worse, ought to be explored fully. This is the process of self-exploration. Through self-exploration, we discover our strengths (and strive to maximize them as best we can) and weaknesses (which we try to minimize and improve upon). Remember that as human beings, we are each naturally imperfect, but wholly complete. The key to self-love is self-acceptance — for better or for worse — because gratitude is the cornerstone of happiness.

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Flickr Photo By: Elephi Pelephi

Attachment is a natural byproduct of our materialistic society.

For me, materialistic attachment began with my extensive collection of G.I. Joe toys when I was young; I prized each action figure as if they were real heroes!

But attachment in our society goes beyond materialism and childish attachment to things. Attachment is glorified in epic stories of love and romance in movies and books: drilling the idea into young consumers that “true” love is two missing-halves uniting; each soul barely able to have scraped through life without the other.

Attachment is also subtly hidden within our everyday behavior: from our individual perceptions of ourselves (the ego) to the concept that our personal histories confine and limit what we can do today and become tomorrow.

Truly, we can gain an entire world of possibility, empowerment and new life by abandoning attachment to these things and, instead, by “letting go.”

1. Abandon the Ego

“When you let go of who you think you are, you awaken to your true self.”

When we discuss the ego, we are referring to “the self” as it pertains to an individual understanding and mental image of “who we are,” the conceptualization of “me.” We each have an ego, to varying degrees, because the ego is simply our own sense of self.

I am Dave Ursillo, I am a writer, I am 24 years old, and so on. However, we can see our ego manifested in many of our actions, decisions, thoughts and words. This is problematic because it emboldens and inflates a self-image that will give way to unnecessary conflict and confrontation and long-standing grudges.

Abandon your ego. Recognize when the ego is voice talking in your head, instead of your true and humble self. When you let go of who you think you are, you awaken to your true self. Abandon what you think you need to do to create or uphold an image of yourself in the eyes of others. Instead, be open to what may be.

2. Abandon the Unnecessary

“What you have lost that you realize is not needed, you have never lost.”

Over the course of our lives, we all experience loss to varying degrees: possessions, relationships, and the lives of those whom we love and care about deeply.

Dealing with loss is never easy, and it is never pleasant. Loss is a devastating obstacle on the path to happiness. However, there is a stark difference between loss of that which we wanted and loss of that which we thought that we needed to survive.

Abandon what in life is unnecessary. Besides one another, we truly do not need much to survive and be happy in our lives. Fulfillment is embodied not in things we own and possess; it is simply a matter of perspective. What you have lost that you realize is not needed, you have never lost. When you abandon what was unnecessary in the first place, you come to embrace as little as what you require.

3. Abandon the Past

“When you let go of the past, you reclaim the present and a world of future possibility.”

Abandoning the past is a major hurdle for many men and women. It’s understandable: we recognize our personal histories as having brought us to this day, this present moment. This much is true. What has occurred in our individual pasts has necessarily influenced who we have become today.

Nevertheless, what has occurred in the past never limits what we can choose to become, pursue, or do on this day.

Of course, I am referring to the power of choice within you, that we each possess; there are physical limitations in every aspect of life. I cannot choose to fly by flapping my arms, nor visit the moon on a whim. But I can choose this moment to pursue a path to engineer a contraption of personal flight, or embark upon a career to become an astronaut.

Abandon the past that haunts you. Forgive yourself and those who hurt you. Never forget the lessons learned. The past does not limit our free choice as human beings — only by our choosing to we allow what has occurred unto us in our individual pasts to hinder the present moment.

Our human potential is always unlimited. When you let go of the past, you reclaim the present and a world of future possibility.

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Should we “believe in” regret, embrace natural feelings of remorse and shame about the past and harness them as lessons that can help us grow, mature, emotionally develop and thus propel us toward greater destinations, tomorrow?

Or should we choose to not believe in regret, but instead “holster” or stash away and neglect those feelings of remorse and guilt about our pasts, understanding them as unfortunate-but-necessary vessels that have brought us to this point in our lives, today?

To Regret or Not Regret? That is the Question..

It seems that there are at least two equally strong but diametrically opposed camps of thought regarding regret. One camp embraces feeling regretful as natural and inevitable to occur, that it presents the opportunity to evoke positive change and inner growth. The other camp explicitly chooses to disregard ever feeling regretful, that the past should be left there and that regrets burden our minds and prevent us from acting as we “ought” to.

Every now and then, I take some time to brainstorm a handful of blog post drafts with interesting titles and subjects that I intend to return to and finish writing at a later date. A few weeks ago, one of the blog post topics I came up with was, “Why You Shouldn’t Believe In Regret.” At the time, I thought it would be a strong (though controversial) subject for discussion because for someone to categorically choose to “not believe in” something like regret has Renegadeism written all over it.

However, only about a week later, I came to think that the premise of the piece was completely ridiculous, saying to myself, “Understanding ‘regret’ holds some serious potential to actually help people change and grow,” and deleted the post. Now, I present the question to you, the reader, and ask for your thoughts and honest opinions: As Renegades, should regret either be harnessed (utilized for our benefit) or holstered (put away, neglected, denied outright)? Or is the answer to find a blend of the two?

To Harness or Holster Regret?

The late American playwright and composer Jonathan Larson said, “Forget regret, or life is yours to miss.” You’ll find similar, powerful quotes across the Internet that espouse a like-minded philosophy: that guilt stemming from missed opportunities, that “hanging onto” mistakes from the past entails a burdening, lingering effect that negatively impacts how one lives and leads his or her life in the present moment.

Choosing to “not believe in” regret can reveal maturity and peace of mind from one who has relinquished attempts to control all aspects of one’s life, and thus come to accept the unpredictable nature of it. But, the more I consider the nature of regret, the more I fear that neglecting to understand and harness one’s regret is ultimately more detrimental because holstering it can cause us to neglect to take responsibility for wrongdoing, to acknowledge one’s own shortcomings, and failing to learn lessons from the past — all of which can be harnessed and used for the sake of bettering one’s self in the present and future.

I’m reminded of a brilliantly written and incredibly insightful piece by the New York Times’ Jonah Lehrer in February, which boldly suggested that the remarkable prevalence and impact of depression across the human species might indicate that humanity unwittingly utilizes the depression as the means to evoke change:

“[Perhaps] depression has a secret purpose and our medical interventions are making a bad situation even worse. Like a fever that helps the immune system fight off infection — increased body temperature sends white blood cells into overdrive — depression might be an unpleasant yet adaptive response to affliction.”

Could something similar be said of regret? As the prevalence of depression could indicate that the affliction is  used by evolution to plausibly propel change, development and growth, so too could regret be harnessed for the sake of personal and emotional change.

Refusing to be Hampered by It

As Jonathan Larson warns, regret can threaten to hamper and hinder the extent to which we live our lives. This much is surely true. But equally as much, regret — an emotional reaction to a conscious realization — enables human beings to be able to understand that actions and behaviors of the past ought to be done differently in the future. In other words, doesn’t regret empower us, propel inner growth and emotional development by allowing us to realize our mistakes?

Perhaps, whether we choose to harness it for our own personal development or holster it so as to not be burdened by past mistakes, we need to make the conscious decision to not be hampered by regret as we move forward with our lives. Perhaps there is no one “right” way to consider regretful feelings, but a handful of better, more positive ways to encounter it and use it for our individual benefit and for the sake of bettering those around us.

What do you think? Is regret for the better, or for the worse? Or is the answer more complex than a simple Yea or Nay?

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The word “Renegade” is derived from the medieval Latin word renegatus — the perfect participle of renego, meaning “deny.”

Here on DaveUrsillo.com, “Renegadeism” is an unwaveringly positive and defiant attitude embodied by ordinary men and women across the globe who consider themselves to be distinctively different than the masses: we who are “dreamers” and “believers,” who strive to be achievers of a bigger goal — of a significant purpose.

We dreamers who brandish the name “Renegade” live, defy, believe and thrive in what we love to do, in spite of the an increasingly cynical world that surrounds us. As Renegades, we deny convention for the sake of convention, deny mounting cynicism, and deny disbelief.

Under the name of  “Renegades” we brandish a determined and resolute mindset through which we individually engage in Self-Exploration, striving to explore who we truly are on the inside; better ourselves through intellectual growth and emotional exploration; become Self-Aware, realizing and coming to trust our constitution, unique gifts and talents; and develop ourselves to be the best men and women that we can be, for the sake of everyone around us. Renegadeism is about “believing” in defiance of naysayers and developing the Self on behalf of others. It’s really that simple.

Renegadeism Begins with Self-Exploration

Human potential is uniquely unlimited. There is no restraint on what creativity, imagination or love we may summon and possess. Within ourselves, we have an insurmountable potential to dream, believe and achieve–simply because we are human. What resides within us is all that we need to achieve anything we put our minds to. Historically-brilliant men and women–from Sun Tzu to Ralph Waldo Emerson, Benjamin Franklin, E.E. Cummings, Marcus Aurelius and the fourteenth Dalai Lama Tenzin Gyatso–have long espoused the merit and honest value of understanding the Individual and developing confidence and trust in one’s Self as an important starting point for the betterment of others.

We, the Renegades, willfully engage in the dedicated practice of Self-Exploration, or the examination and analysis of our unrealized spiritual and intellectual capacities–the unlimited potential that we each individually possess. Renegades place explicit focus and attention upon developing the individual Self as a starting point for bigger and better things. Through introspective exploration, we come to better understand our behaviors, our motivations, our personalities, our relationships, and our lives. In other words, we become “self-aware.”

Self-Awareness leads to Self-Reliance

Self-awareness is gaining and developing a new level of consciousness and an ongoing understanding of our personal traits, behaviors, abilities, talents, gifts and potential in life. By becoming better aware of who we are on the inside, Renegades forge a new sense of knowledge and understanding of the Self. Self-awareness lessens our natural tendencies to be insecure and self-conscious, because we understand our emotions and the motivations for our behaviors every day. Understanding one’s sense of Self and being less insecure ultimately reveals a new world of confidence and peace of mind; once achieved, a Renegade builds his or her own self-reliant temple, against which there is no cynicism, disbelief, or naysayer that can shake the dreamer and believer from achieving whatever he or she desires.

Achieving this level of confidence and peace of mind, we become self-reliant: our motivations come from deep within our hearts and souls. We realize that our actions, thoughts and behaviors are inherently pure and good for they stem from deep within our spirit. When our motivations come from within, we ultimately have little to ever regret. We are free to make mistakes and contradict ourselves, to learn and grow, because we are motivated by our hearts and souls and what is within us.

Join the Ranks of the Renegades

Renegadeism begins with the choice of conscious self-exploration. Through the realization of our unlimited potential, we become self-aware. Through self-awareness and better understanding our gifts, strengths, abilities, passions and unique human potential; we gain a level of self-reliance, an unwavering source of motivation and trust that resides deeply within us and upon which any dream or goal can be achieved.

What it means to be a Renegade is as limitless as our human potential. Renegadeism is an open philosophy, not confined or restrained by traditional laws, conventional rules or strict limitations. Renegadeism is open to evolution and constant refinement with YOUR input, thoughts, and contributions. Renegadeism will evolve, change, and strengthen as men and women like you join the Ranks of the Renegades and share your opinions and ideas with me and especially with one another.

Today, to believe, it’s as if you have to be a Renegade. Are you among our Ranks?

Step 1) Follow me and the Ranks of the Renegades list on Twitter to connect with fellow Renegades

Step 2) Connect with our community on the DaveUrsillo.com / Ranks of the Renegades Facebook Page

Step 3) Blog, Tweet, Facebook and share your own Renegadeist efforts with fellow Renegades, friends, family, and strangers alike. Keep me and fellow Renegades in touch with what you’re working on, ideas you’re developing and what it means Renegadeism means to you.

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