Pema has apparently learned to trust that these lousy feelings are actually (though ironically) helpful, really helpful, because they show us "with terrifying clarity, exactly where we're stuck."
She's good at explaining this irony and showing us, 'tempting' us even, to experiment with looking at disappointment, irritation, embarrassment, resentment, etc., in a very different way--a way that lightens up areas in our lives that we'd always assumed would always be dark. There's an implicit promise here too--that as this light shows us where we're stuck it also begins to teach us how to get un-stuck:
"Those events and people in our lives who trigger our
unresolved issues could be regarded as good news. We don’t have to go hunting
for anything. We don’t need to try to create situations in which we reach our
limit. They occur all by themselves, with clockwork regularity.
"Each day we’re given many opportunities to open up or shut
down.... That’s being nailed by life, the place where you have no choice except
to embrace what’s happening or push it away.
"Most of us do not take these situations as teachings. We
automatically hate them. We run like crazy. We use all kinds of ways to escape—all
addictions stem from this moment when we meet our edge and we just can’t stand
it. We feel we have to soften it, pad it with something, and we become addicted
to whatever it is that seems to ease the pain.
"There are so many ways that have been dreamt up to entertain
us away from the moment, soften its hard edge, deaden it so we don’t have to
fee the full impact of the pain that arises when we cannot manipulate the
situation….
"Meditation is an invitation to notice when we reach our
limit and to not get carried away….What’s encouraging about meditation is that
even if we shut down, we can no longer shut down in ignorance. We see very
clearly that we’re closing off. That in itself begins to illuminate the
darkness of ignorance."
