Geral Blanchard, LPC, is a psychotherapist who is university trained in psychology and anthropology. Formerly of Wyoming and currently residing in Iowa, Geral travels the world in search of ancient secrets that can augment the art and science of healing. From Western neuroscience to Amazonian shamanism, he has developed an understanding of how to combine old and new healing strategies to optimize recovery, whether from psychological or physical maladies.
MDMA and Suffering
Geral T. Blanchard • October 14, 2022
In the mind of his Holiness the Dalai Lama, suffering and compassion are conjoined, they are inseparable.
He teaches the Four Noble Truths, the first of which is: If you are alive, you will predictively experience suffering. When that happens most people tend to instinctively go inward, losing track of other person’s and their similar experiences of emotional pain. The inclination is to detach from friends and nest. Healing, however, involves bringing those two elements, suffering and compassion, together again. This means re-connecting with one another to allow it to happen.
Tibetan Buddhist teachings distinguish between three types of suffering: 1) the suffering of suffering, 2) the suffering that accompanies change, and 3) the suffering of pervasive conditioning.
The first one refers to the inevitability of suffering and the need to immerse ourselves in it so that we can understand similar pain in other people. It is a common experience that connects us because we are all hurting in various degrees. Suffering must be a social event if compassion is to unfurl from it. A person can’t allow their suffering to go unexperienced while in isolation because that can uncouple them from the rest of humanity and, therefore, their ability to experience compassion for everyone, including themselves. So, a degree of self-reflection is important before one can imagine similar pain all around them and resume being a part of the Whole. The Dalai Lama says, “Only by opening our hearts to others can we experience true happiness ourselves.” And MDMA is referred to as the “heart opening medicine.”
A second kind of suffering often arises when our world has been turned upside down – like when trauma strikes. The natural human tendency is to resist this imposed
change, to return to what we’ve long known, even if it has been a largely unhappy existence in largely unsatisfying social relationships.
In Buddhist circles, change is to be regarded as the teacher who brings an awakening and transformation to people, like a seed readying us to germinate, take root, grow, and blossom.
This leads to the cessation of ignorance, how the slumbering human mind can no longer play tricks on us. So, Buddhism is best seen not as a religion, but as a philosophy or psychology of finding enlightenment (purification of the mind), even amidst turmoil and change – a big job indeed.
The third type of suffering – pervasive conditioning -- is another way of referring to a cyclical existence of looping, obsessing, and ruminating following adversity. This is when people in pain repeat the same thought patterns and coping behaviors again and again even though they do nothing, for the most part, to free individuals from an entrenched reaction to pain. This is regarded as self-inflicted suffering, or in football terms, “piling on.” Suffering, however, can be regarded as a prompt encouraging us to cut into well-established and reactive habits that have kept discomfort alive. If a person alters their response to suffering, thereby disallowing pain to sustain a mind primarily focused on the story of suffering, they cease feeling like a helpless victim. In that way the individual becomes the conductor of their mind’s symphony, and by learning how to interrupt the cycle of pain to chronic suffering, an increasingly harmonic concerto is composed.
Buddhist philosophy suggests we may not always know the karmic beginning of a phase or cycle. The good news is that it is much easier to determine the end point. If our motive -- our intention -- is to labor at uncovering the root of suffering within ourselves, we will likely find a way out. Part of the disentangling will come via compassion -- self-compassion and compassion for others -- and perhaps surprisingly, extending it to enemies as well. An abuser’s ignorance of the pain they have been inflicting, and the reasons behind it, is no excuse for us to remain ignorant of the same. So the goal of compassion is to rise above the fray with intrapersonal and interpersonal wisdom, not for a moment liking what has happened to us, but simply understanding the human condition more fully.
That is the subtle interdependent nature of relationships, according to basic Buddhist tenets. MDMA treatments are designed to awaken that part of the mind that provides greater understanding of the human condition of which we are inextricably bound – social connectivity. After all, it is divisiveness that causes suffering, yet unity relieves it. But what causes the causes? Unexamined human patterns of thought.
When a person gets closer and closer to understanding their karmically conditioned existence – those troublesome, puzzling, and uncomfortable cycles they engage in – it is at that point an individual can experience cessation, the ability to govern their responses (vs. impulsive and thoughtless reactions) to the expected pain of predictable life traumas and tragedies.
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“Our true enemy resides inside ourselves, not outside.”
- Dalai Lama
“Unless we have some experience of suffering, our compassion for others will not amount to very much. Therefore, the will to free ourselves from suffering precedes any sense of compassion for others.” - Dalai Lama
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Additional Reading:
The Dalai Lama’s Little Book of Mysticism: The Essential Teachings
Other Topics
Basics of MDMA
Rituals and Ceremony
Brain and MDMA
Trauma
Heart
Energy Movement
Quantum Physics
Native Cosmologies
Nature
Spirituality/Enlightenment
Kogi Tribe
Books written by Geral T. Blanchard
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Just as we have started to witness the reality of individual post-traumatic growth (PTG) – not just bouncing back after trauma but bouncing forward – could we entertain the concept of intergenerational growth (IG) – in other words, thriving from generation to generation?
There can be two levels at which trauma is processed. The first tier may be a time of quiet denial or the dissociation of nearly all thoughts of how painful the past was. The body feels it, but the mind does not speak it. On the second level a person awakens to the entirety of it, often an unpredicted and sudden onslaught of previously suppressed details with extensive associated pain. When trauma is reconstituted at the second level it often happens unwillingly. A person may be swept away by an awakening that seems very ugly. It feels like too much to absorb in its entirety. The result is often to feel afraid, even shattered – at first. Now with everything out in the open, what must be done with it?
At the second level of awareness, it is almost impossible to go on pretending that everything is fine. No longer can the visuals and emotions be kept submerged. One wonders, “Damn it, will I ever get better?”
Traumatized persons, with their pervasive pain, typically seek mood altering experiences. This can include ascetic restrictions, hedonistic over-eating, chemical dependency, sexual dependency, sexual anorexia or celibacy, romance addiction, relationship dependency, compulsive gambling, TV or movie binging, rock climbing, auto racing, reliance on antidepressants and/or antianxiety medications, religious addiction, and so much more that can serve to pacify, distract, and avoid unpleasant thoughts and feelings. By thrill-seeking, the higher the risks being engaged, the greater mood alteration one can experience. It’s a big dopamine splash and more.
These are the adult versions of childhood thumb sucking, according to Dr. Harvey Milkman, the author of Craving for Ecstasy (the feeling of ecstasy, not the drug). Harvey pointedly said, “Growing up consists of finding the right substitute for your thumb.”
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It’s impossible to talk about projection without incorporating a discussion about Sigmund Freud and Donald Trump. In this article I will skip Donald but throw in a little Carl Jung. Freud, of course, named several distinctive defense measures – reality distorting strategies to keep us safe. Two of the big ones are displacement and projection.
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