Suffering seems to be one of those fundamental human experiences that we
all have in common, and is perhaps the one we would all gladly give up. We
often feel oppressed and frustrated by suffering because we do not understand
it. It can pierce the heart of our being and our identity, and shake every
assumption we hold about ourselves and the world. It often seems to destroy
our will-power and overthrow our commitments, to our dismay.
We fear suffering, and react to it with anger and frustration, because we
feel oppressed by it and powerless against it. This is another way of saying
that we are the victim of our suffering. We take the victim stance when we
assert our powerlessness against something, and then project our power onto
the "victimizer," which gets blamed for our situation. We then indulge
in feelings of self-righteous indignation, "justifiable" anger, and
self-pity. The denial of our own power (and its consequent projection) lies
at the root of suffering. We will come back to his point.
Let's look at one example of suffering that many of us experience on our
path of personal growth and healing: suffering over lost peace.
Spiritual insights seem to come in waves; that is, when we have a flash of
spiritual illumination and understanding (or a "peak experience"),
it is always followed, after some time, by a return to our previous "normal" state
of mind and spiritual understanding. Our insight will often stay with us in
the form of an intellectual understanding or belief, but it may take years
for it to really become integrated into our everyday being and our way of relating
to the world.
For example, many of us have had the powerful experience of realizing that
our lives are guided by a higher purpose than our own, and that every event
in our lives is a necessary step in the unfolding of our highest path. When
we are actually experiencing the truth of this insight in the moment, it gives
us great relief and joy, and allows for a peaceful acceptance that lets us
calmly abide in whatever situation we find ourselves. In this space we are
conscious of the necessity of every thing that has ever happened, and of the
nonexistence of "coincidence;" we have great, loving compassion for
ourselves and others, and we are in touch with our desire to "play out
our part" in life. In this space we do not suffer.
Unfortunately, we usually "come down" from this experience in short
order. With luck, its effects will stay with us for a few hours or days, giving
us a chance to reexamine our lives and our assumptions in its light. These
can be occasions of powerful and effortless growth and healing. But the peaceful
experience always eventually fades, and we find ourselves back in our "normal" state
of mind.
Days or weeks later, the experience has faded to a memory, a mere idea, and
we can hardly even recall its impact. Struggling to remember and recreate that
sense of peace and joy, we find instead the familiar, oppressive "reality" of
our doubts and fears, beside which peace seems only a fantasy. It is at this
point that we start once again to feel powerless; frustration and anger return,
as we feel outrage at the universe or God for having "robbed" us
of our peace and joy. Then we experience the suffering of being the victim
of this undeserved punishment. We may say, "Now that I have seen that
I really, truly want only love and peace, why must I go through all of this
garbage all over again?"
Inseparable from our suffering is a belief or an interpretation that we have
about it, though we may be unconscious of it. In this example, we suffer because
of our sense of powerlessness to create what we want (peace and joy), and the
interpretation of our suffering is that WE ARE POWERLESS, and a victim to God
(or the universe). In order to transform suffering by understanding it, it
is necessary to clearly see what meaning or interpretation you have attached
to your suffering. This is because your suffering is, in truth, a RESULT of
the interpretation, and NOT the other way around. First, you form a belief
based on some experience, and THEN you experience suffering, BECAUSE OF that
belief.
A BELIEF CAUSES US TO SUFFER SIMPLY BECAUSE IT IS UNTRUE. Restated, suffering
results from believing an untruth. Notice, in our example, that we did not
start to suffer until we had given up on creating peace, and decided that we
were powerless to do so. That is the point where we start believing the untruth
of our victimhood, and simultaneously start suffering. All suffering has victimhood--
the belief in powerlessness-- at its root.
So far we have only looked at the CAUSE of suffering, which is a necessary
first step in transforming it. What about the purpose of suffering?
If we allow the idea that all suffering is the result of a false belief in
powerlessness, then our suffering is the messenger that reveals to us our areas
of disempowerment. Whether or not we then take steps to heal these areas is
our choice.
Another way to look at suffering is to see it as the universe's way of showing
us what we are attached to. Any attachment is also rooted in a belief in an
untruth, and is therefore a cause for suffering. For example, we may be suffering
because we have no life partner at the moment, and we believe that we are lonely
and unhappy because we have no partner. In this case, our attachments are to
(1) having a partner, and (2) the BELIEF that we cannot be happy without one.
The way out of suffering is to release the attachments and untrue beliefs at
its root. The fact that we suffer over our attachment is what tells us with
certainty that the underlying belief is, in fact, untrue.
The harder work, by far, is this matter of releasing our attachments and
untrue beliefs; this is truly a lifetime's (or many lifetimes') work. In the
meantime, we may take some comfort in understanding the purpose of suffering
not as some form of cosmic punishment, but rather as our higher guidance faithfully
showing us all of the areas where we are mired in attachment and resisting
growth.
When you think about the incredible number of attachments we have, it is
enlightening to realize that we seldom suffer over more than one at a time.
Perhaps this is because our higher self knows that we cannot realistically
work with more than one attachment or belief at a time, so there would be no
point in our suffering over more than one at a time.
It is also helpful to remember that suffering is not something that is thrust
upon us like a punishment by the universe; it is what we ourselves have created
by choosing to deny truth and believe in untruth, and it is our incentive to
reconsider these false beliefs. When we are in the midst of suffering, realizing
this may not give us any peace. We need to be careful not to BLAME ourselves
for having created our suffering. This would only be the creation of more suffering
through the false belief that we DESERVE to suffer, which is a self-supporting
vicious circle.
Identifying the false beliefs that underlie our suffering will bring us closer
to healing our disempowerment, but it will not always bring us immediate release.
In the meantime, we can fruitfully use the experience of suffering to teach
our subconscious that our suffering comes from denial and giving away our power.
To do this, when you are suffering, you could use an affirmation like,
"This is what it feels like to give my power away.
This is what denial feels like.
This is what blaming feels like.
This is what attachment feels like.
I choose to release my false beliefs and attachments,
and remember my Truth.
I choose to take back all of my misplaced power,
and remember my role as the creator of all my experiences."
Using an affirmation like this will help us stop projecting the CAUSE of our
suffering onto God, the universe, or others. This we must do in order to remember
that only WE have the power to stop our suffering. First we must come to terms
with being the creator of our experience-- without blaming ourselves or others.
Then we can focus on how and why we HAVE created our experience and suffering.
This leads to understanding, and allows us to release our attachments and false
beliefs, and thereby release ourselves from suffering.
Authors
Details:
Direct replies or comments please send to Matthew
Blais <healspirit (at) yummage.com>
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