The Healing Power Of Self Love

Although hardly a week goes by without some expert claiming that alcoholism is an inherited trait, the evidence from studies of twins and adopted children is far from clear. While genes may be crucial in some cases, childhood experience is usually the key. The main contributory factor is parental care: even if there is such a thing as a predetermined genetic vulnerability, your childhood history determines whether you will succumb to it.

-The Times



With the rare exception of that brand of psychopathological human species, which derives extreme pleasure out of being flogged on a regular basis, the natural tendency of Homo sapiens and other species is to avoid pain/ suffering, and to seek out pleasure. We are biologically programmed to avoid pain as a means of self-preservation. Because of this, we naturally seek out those experiences which bring us pleasure, and refrain from those that cause pain or suffering. We eat, drink, sleep, dress, get married, study, work, get involved in charitable activities, smoke, have sex, steal, lie, commit suicide, pray, indulge in crime, meditate, exercise, and read, among many other activities, so that we may avoid pain and suffering.

By engaging in these activities, we hope to make our lives better- to find happiness. Even when we choose not to engage in these activities, our motive is still the same. Those who practice fasting and self flagellation for religious reasons for example, hope that these painful practices will bring them happiness or pleasure by warding off greater suffering at some future point, in this lifetime or thereafter. Therefore, even those who deliberately subject themselves to pain, do so because they hope to avoid pain!

Through reflex action, we instantly draw away from anything that causes us physical pain. When subjected to unbearable levels of physical or psychological pain, our mind may even ‘shut down’, making us unconscious or mentally ill, so that we become oblivious to this pain. The avoidance of suffering, and the search for pleasure, is a major driving force behind all human behavior. In a real sense, we are predisposed to pleasure seeking. The Dalai Lama explains: “It is a fact- a natural fact of life- that each one of us has an innate desire to seek happiness and to overcome suffering. This is something very instinctive, and there is no need to prove it is there. Happiness is something that we all aspire to achieve, and of course we naturally have a right to fulfill that aspiration. In the same way, suffering is something everyone wishes to avoid, and we also have a right to overcome suffering.”

Much of human behavior is modeled around this delicate relationship between pain and pleasure. The irony however is that, even if we are biologically programmed to avoid pain as means of self preservation, we must experience it if we are to grow and survive. We must work hard, if we are to meet our basic needs; we must exercise regularly, if we are to live healthy lives; we must study hard for very many years, if we are to have satisfying and fulfilling careers; we must control our natural desires and drives, if we are to avoid breaking the law; we must endure the pains of declaring our own independence from other people, if we are to mature and grow; we must save more and spend less of our income, if we are to survive the pangs of poverty; we must fight in self defense when attacked, if we are to survive; we must refrain from all forms of over indulgence, if we are to remain healthy and sane; we must transcend material desires, if we are to grow spiritually and self-actualize.

Growth of any kind, by its very nature, involves the endless struggle against our natural drive to avoid pain. Growth in all its forms is a prerequisite to happiness, just as its absence is a major cause of intense suffering. This means that, while on the one hand we must avoid pain in order to survive, we must experience it if we are to survive. We must suffer so that we may ultimately cease to suffer. Because much of the human race has a tendency to avoid suffering, it exists in a state of unending misery.

We are suffering, not because life is difficult or unjust, but because we refuse to willingly suffer and this stifles self growth. It is because of this that the first of the Four Noble Truths which Buddha taught was ‘Life Is Suffering’. When external reality is painful, or put another way, when the problems in our lives generate pain, we naturally seek to avoid that pain. How we go about this task of avoiding the pain that reality generates, is what determines whether we become alcoholics or not, normal or abnormal, well adjusted or maladjusted, sane or insane, happy or sad.

This is the dilemma that every human being is faced with- how to avoid this pain and remain sane at the same time! “So if this aspiration to achieve happiness and overcome suffering is our natural state of being and our natural quest,” says the Dalai Lama “the question is how we should go about fulfilling that aspiration?” The pain generated by our external reality is what we commonly refer to as life problems. Mentally healthy people deal with this pain by successfully coping and adapting to their environments.

Through the application of the tools of discipline, they are able to solve most of their problems. Consequently, they experience a significant reduction in the pain generated by external reality, and life becomes bearable. Life becomes worth living, because the pain of living does not exceed the pleasure of living. In this sense, life is the endless attempt to reduce on the pains generated by external reality, through the application of the tools of discipline in problem solving, so that we are not overwhelmed by the pains of living. When the pain generated by external reality exceeds the pleasure it generates for a significant period of time, we can be said to be maladaptive, abnormal, or mentally ill