A New Year Meditation on Study, Pain & Progress
For everyone, the year 2020 has been chaotic, destabilizing, and even ruinous. The breakout of the coronavirus pandemic changed the whole world almost overnight. It has acted as a catalyst to turn minor issues into major problems. Political instability here in the US was another factor in this mess. Between the election, the George Floyd protests, and… well, there’s no need to run through the laundry list of issues we have faced.
With my current mobility issues, the lockdowns didn’t change a whole lot for me, but it complicated the acquisition of prescriptions and therapy greatly. With all the problems that have developed, it’s important to also notice the good things — the silver linings — because things can be so much worse without that which we take for granted. I’m grateful that I have a loving partner and devoted family, even if many of them are thousands of miles away. I’m grateful for housing and food security. Beyond Zoom and FaceTime, altspaceVR made a world of difference for me — and that community I owe a great debt of gratitude.
altspaceVR is a social app in virtual reality. The most widely-known social app is VRchat, which to be frank, is full of screechy pre-teens and trolls. It’s not for me. altspaceVR is special because its a more mature community with tons of events, hundreds of worlds to explore, and all sorts of people from around the world to meet and get to know. Since I joined altspace, I’ve been to a dozen concerts, comedy shows, talks on art and humanism and biohacking — I even attended Burning Man — which decided to go virtual and chose altspace as their platform. The highlight for me has been meditations with EvolVR, a non-denominational meditation group started by Unitarian minister Jeremy Nickel. Sitting with this meditation group regularly has made a world of different, not only in my spiritual life, but also my social life. I haven’t made so many friends in a year or two since college. The people with EvolVR are delightful, kind and insightful and it didn’t take long for me to feel like it was my own sangha — my spiritual community.
Our EvolVR community faced a tragedy this year. A dear friend of mine — Skye — who came to all sorts of EvolVR events, built worlds with her partner Trinity and who always spoke from the heart with great wisdom at our meditations — passed away this year quite unexpectedly. The grief was real, having lost a real friend whom I’d only known as an avatar in virtual worlds. Her partner was understandably devastated and crushed emotionally by the loss. Our community held a memorial event which was quite beautiful, with her friends reading some of her poems, some of which felt eerily beautiful in their understanding of the fine line between life and death. This was the first virtual memorial I had attended and it felt 100% real as well as 100% necessary for us to process the mourning and cope as a community.
This past year I started teaching Meditation for Chronic Pain every Saturday — coincidentally in February, a month before California was put in lockdown when the virus began spreading. With all sorts of in-person events and social gatherings on hold, more and more people turned to VR to ‘get out’ of the limitations of isolation, to have fun and meet people, old and new friends alike. Leading these meditations for people in need was a great responsibility and honor. Daring to reach out and help people from a place of suffering began to shine a light into that darkness, and I began to see a difference between my chronic pain and the sufferings of the mind. Seeing so many people come in with different issues — cancer, a car accident, severe back or neck pain — it broke my heart and compassion poured into the gap. Thus I decided to write a book called The Painbender’s Handbook. I began collecting the best Meditations for Chronic Pain that I teach for EvolVR, along with several essays on important principles that define this new — yet ancient — manner of managing pain, actively taking measures to mitigate it, and living one’s best life — proud of one’s perseverance.
My spiritual practice evolved into the practice of painbending, and in the solitude of 2020, it became an all-encompassing research project. Drawing from all sorts of Buddhist traditions, yoga, New Age, psychology, philosophy and neuroscience I started to find a thread of how to come to terms with chronic pain, stop rejecting it or resisting it, break out of self-limiting beliefs, and live a life that’s in touch with the presence of pain and yet not restricted or defined existentially by that chronic pain. Pain is a fundamental element of human biology — an important signal that’s meant to alert us to danger — and while it’s a physical sensation, it has mental factors deeply embedded, and even our level of social engagement can have an impact on that pain. Painbending is an active approach to one’s own chronic pain, an approach with eyes wide open, with grace and pride. The fundamental dignity of people with chronic pain — a dignity often lost or subdued in this culture — is something I hope to help rebuild with this book. I hope that even a fraction of the millions of people with chronic pain issues may find some benefit in it and live a joyous life.
How we have managed our lives and our struggles in 2020 will impact our personal development. How we talk to ourselves about it, and how we recount these events for others, will come to define us in some way. One of the most potent mechanisms for dealing with pain is reframing things to find a positive angle, to unpack our inner scripts and negative thoughts. This year will produce huge changes for everyone — tidal changes that will affect the whole world. So much more of our lives are virtual now. The need for social connection is more important than ever.
