Suffering

I personally believe it to be one of the big lies historically/culturally taught by Christianity.  There is this idea that if somehow one becomes "perfect" one will suffer no more.  It is an idea that implies if one is good enough somehow one will not have to suffer ever again.  They call it heaven. The concept of heaven is a lie in this context.  When one is in 'heaven' one is not disturbed by the physical world any longer, it does not mean one has gone to some other place physically.  In other words, heaven is a state of mind. It is a level of consciousness. One can go to heaven, be there for a minute, and come back to physical reality, and never go again their whole life.  Heaven is a state where suffering is no longer seen as suffering, although one will still be suffering. 

The current Dalai Lama has said, "Hardship, in forcing us to exercise greater patience and forbearance in daily life, actually makes us stronger and more robust. From the daily experience of hardship comes a greater capacity to accept difficulties without losing our sense of inner calm. Of course, I do not advocate seeking out hardship as a way of life, but merely wish to suggest that, if you relate to it constructively, it can bring greater inner strength and fortitude." Using this as a point of reference, suffering causes us to grow up, and eventually we grow up enough that even though we may still suffer, we embrace it, enjoy it even, and this is heaven. It is a play on words. Heaven cannot be conveyed, only experienced.

Suffering is to the soul what lifting weights are to the body, what reading a book is to the mind.  Avoiding suffering is to avoid growing up.   All of these people making decisions so that they will be safe are living a lie, they are keeping themselves from growing spiritually.  Safety in those terms is death spiritually speaking.  They are still alive, breathing, but they are not living.  As I have said before, perception is everything.  

Remember that these terms are metaphors for psyche experience. Remember that God, Self, the unconscious, Christ, Truth, are all synonymous. They are the same thing being looked at from a different angle. 

"To pay attention to the unconscious does mean to deliberately make oneself miserable in order that the autonomous psyche will be able to function more freely" and according to Edinger, who is about as studied on Carl Jung as one can be, who wrote that what you just read, says the most important sentence Jung ever wrote was, "the experience of the Self is always a defeat for the ego." It can't be put any simpler than that, any experience of God, Self, the unconscious, Christ, Truth will be a defeat to the ego. What is defeat? Suffering.

Using the story of Christ here seems somewhat appropriate.  Looking at it from this perspective, Christ's ability to affect others went hand in hand with his willingness to suffer.  The same could be said of Buddha; he was willing to pay the price in order to understand the meaning of life.  I've not personally met anyone in life willing to do what the Buddha did to acquire this knowledge. Imagine what it takes to want to do something so much so that you will pray half your life to make sure it happens.  That makes for loneliness for sure.  The Dalai Lama supposedly prays over six hours a day. According to any human I've ever met, that would amount to suffering, according to their ego.

Choosing to become sensitive to the environment creates a great deal of spiritual suffering, but what is really going on is that one is learning how to suffer and it not be suffering.  Every human being ever born on this planet can do what any great mystic has done, and more, but one must be willing to pay the price.  That is the only difference between you and Christ or Buddha; they were willing to suffer first in order to know the truth.

Back to reality shall we.  What does this mean in our lives? Obviously many of us are a long way from being able to heal others just by thinking it, or at least we think we are, so how do we bridge the gap?  Perspective is how.  One must change the way in which they perceive. 

Living a lie is one of the more painful forms of suffering because the person trapped in the lie typically must go through something serious in order to see the truth.  As Carl Jung once said, "There is no coming into consciousness without pain."  I am sure we have all seen this phenomenon.  A great many people avoid an issue until it piles up so high it falls on top of them. I have suffered a great deal in life because of lies.  Being stuck in this state is very painful and it is also a sure way of knowing that an individual has not recognized and understood their own ego.  The majority of the people on earth are locked into this state.

Please recognize the difference between suffering because of ones perception and actually suffering just from being alive.  There is a difference between actually being abused and being the source of ones own abuse.  A child has no choice, an adult does.  To be clear, a child's suffering is the absolute worst kind. Unfortunately, or so it seems, those who suffered the most as children tend to become the most aware adults.  Society however is against such individuals. Which causes even more suffering. 

Suffering, in this context though, is actually a 'healing' process.  Please understand, that the spiritual people, those few aware individuals, do not consider terms such as good or bad.  The person of a higher consciousness sees all existence as one thing, the person confused by their own ego sees things as good or bad, mine or yours, here or there, etc. The ego has preferences, likes and dislikes. The Universe does not. For instance, the death of a loved one is something all humans face at some point in life.  Christ had loved ones and they died too, but he, did not see it as suffering.  Learning to be lonely and not suffer is a terribly difficult thing to do.  Suffering is suffering, in the experience of it, it heals and teaches ones soul to grow, and once the lesson is learned it is suffering no more. So many lessons to learn.

Suffering is the lesson to be learned, just like a complex math problem, one must wrap their mind all the way around it for it to be known and truly understood.  It is an experience to be had that causes one to become a better person.  If we walked around all day in a state of contentment and happiness there would be no spiritual growth.  Think about it, whenever you have been content in life, did you really change and grow any at all?  Now compare that time of contentment with a time of great turmoil.  A lot of people resist change, because change is always hand in hand with suffering.  Again this is a play on words. It could be said that this culture has tricked people into experiencing change as suffering. These people are willfully choosing to remain ignorant.   To live on the edge seems dangerous indeed to one who resides safely in habit.  

Eventually one learns that safety is a lie. There is no such thing. It's just a word monkeys made up. It does not exist in the Universe.

The truth though, is that there are things in life which must be learned which cannot be learned in any other way than through sheer suffering.  For this reason if one lives a lie suffering is inevitable. 

 

I was in a relationship once for all the wrong reasons.  Most people I talk to agree with me, our twenties are a nightmare compared to our thirties, and most agree that they too have had one of 'those' relationships.  As I like to say, growing up is a bitch.  It wouldn't matter who looked at the relationship I had back then, they would know it was a complete mess.  It was even obvious to me and I was living it.  I was trapped in a relationship with a woman because I was trapped by fear.  I did not know who I was; she did not know who she was.  I was scared to be alone.   I was scared no one would ever want to be with me.  I knew my life was a wreck, I knew I wasn't "me" and I knew if I didn't do something soon my life was going to be over; I was no longer going to be me if I didn't do something immediately. 

I had been living a lie, more than a few actually, for so long that the consequences had built up to such a state that I was in complete despair.  I would literally lie in bed and pray that somehow I would not wake up.  I was too much of a coward to take my own life, so I was asking God to do it for me. At any time in the journey of my life I could have realized the truth, but because I refused, massive suffering ensued.  I was locked in a toxic relationship with a woman, who had no respect for me, and I had none for her, but because of our fears we refused to do the right thing.  It was a living nightmare.  I had lost everything.  I was just lying in bed praying for it to all go away.

We fought every day.  Love hate, as they say.  The truth is, the opposite of love is fake love, that is, love that pretends to be love but is not.  I believed then, the same lie I had always believed.  It was a fundamental lie.  I believed I was not worthy of love, and so was acting it out in my relationships.  I believed that all I would ever know were screwed up women who would always cheat.  I believed I was flawed in some way and could not be fixed.  I believed I was broken.  I just wanted it to go away. 

It did go away.  Really quickly too.  We were separated within a couple of weeks after spending five years together in misery.  You see, up to that point in my life I had never really prayed with my whole being, to make it right.  Up until then my ego was always engaged with some personal desire, always afraid.  Prior to that point, I didn't even know what to pray for.  Up to that point, I had not ever really been ready to do absolutely whatever it took regardless of whatever price that might be asked of me.  That was the secret ingredient.  I had never been truly ready to take responsibility for my Self.  I did die in that room praying to God. The voice in my head said clear as day, "God will do nothing for you that you can do for yourself." It took losing it all, living a waking nightmare, some of the worst suffering of my life, reducing me to a pile of weeping helplessness, to realize that I am all that I need.  I grew up; instantly.

Because of the lie, because I believed that I deserved to be treated like crap by a woman, that is exactly what I got.  My belief was based on a lie and at the time it was literally killing me.

If you had asked me a couple weeks before that experience if I was a grown-up I would have said that of course I was.  Everyone and their dog was giving me relationship advice, life advice, telling me this or that, and none of it mattered, it was something I had to experience.  I lost all my friends because of this relationship.  Yet, I ‘thought’ I was a grown up.  The ego is such a terrible thing to taste. 

Looking back on it now, all that suffering saved my life.  I am not suggesting that I could not have avoided this traumatic event in my life; I am saying that living a lie creates the worst suffering.  Which incidentally creates the most growing up. Because I chose to live a lie, because I listened to my ego instead of the truth, I suffered tremendously.   The minute I admitted the truth the suffering ceased immediately.

After that I spent five years single. Five years to myself. I decided to get my thinking in order before tackling my feelings. Once I felt secure in myself I decided to get back into the thick of things.  I realized because of bad choices I didn't get the full range of experience out of my twenties, so I had to make up for it in my thirties.  Going to college was a very similar experience.  I didn't go to college to learn crap out of a text book, but for the social experience of growing up in America that I did not get when I was younger.  I wanted to fit in, and in order to do that I had to have similar experiences.  I trained up so to speak before going back to riding the edge.  I got my head right.  The edge is that place where every step you take could be off the edge of a cliff.  The edge is where one lives when pursuing true Self.  No time to think, just be!

I let myself fall in love again.  Or maybe it is better to say, that I allowed myself to be in proximity to someone who is a great deal like me.  The difference between 'love' and 'in love' is quite radical, and it is also quite dangerous to one who is idealistic.  Allowing oneself to be in love is very dangerous because of the consequences of it not being returned.  The energy is overwhelming. An idealist can hardly bear to not be loved.  But can you see in order to become spiritually strong enough to be in love and not care about the consequences requires one to actually do it.  No amount of dreaming enables one to run a marathon, or climb a mountain. I can fantasize all I want about writing a book, but if I never write, the book will never happen.  One does not sit down to write, and the first 40,000 words be a bestselling book either.  So many people think the next person they meet is going to be the one, not realizing they still have a great deal of training to do.  One can fantasize about love all one wants, but if you never go through the experiences of love, you will never know love.

If one is not willing to sacrifice greatly for love, one will never know love.  I finally learned that in order to truly learn what love is, I must allow it to happen, fearlessly.  This is growing up.  Doesn't matter that I was in my thirties, wouldn't matter if I was in my sixties.  Ever since I was a child I just wanted to know what real love is, not what my parents say, or church says, or what my wife says, but what is love really?  In my life, because I had already suffered so much as a child it seems quite easy for me to make decisions that others balk at because of the suffering involved.  If one has already suffered tremendously, what is a little more? Most people call you crazy or stupid if you do something that you know is going to cause suffering.  These people miss the main point of life, they are living a lie; safety is an illusion.  So many people will tell you to avoid the thing that will set you free because they are too afraid to face it themselves. 

The main point is that it takes suffering to learn life lessons and that it is only our perception that this suffering is negative, and that is what makes it suffering.  Like I said, it's a play on words. When I fell in love again in my thirties, after years of not having felt that feeling; I cried more that year than any year of my life.  I let it all go.  Everyone around me was labeling me this or that, telling me I was making a mistake, etc.  The truth was, I was growing up, and doing it quite rapidly.  I was willing to do what I knew I needed to do, despite what others said, and despite whatever seeming suffering may ensue.   I had already suffered so much because of my relationship with my ex-wife and I was tired of living with it.  I suffered horribly for so many years of my life, afraid of the hurt, afraid to let myself feel that love again.

If you really love someone you do not care what they do.  Being possessive of other people is just an immature reaction, like the three year old who doesn't wish to share a toy, since in the child's mind it really believes the toy is theirs. The lesson for me in life has been to believe in myself despite what other people do.  I'm sure this is everyone's lesson.  If I love someone, then I love them.  I walked away from that person that I was 'in love' with because I finally learned a truth about myself.  They were hurting me, so I had to walk away. 

We are only 'in love' with those who are just like us without us knowing it.  Being in love is the opposite of the shadow projection.  Realizing the projection immediately ends the sensation of being in love; on to the next lesson.  If you ever meet someone and are instantly in love, that person has qualities exactly like you do, but you just don't see it yet in your self.  Once you do, you won't be in love with that person anymore, you will simply love them.  The person I fell in love with had the same spirit as me, the same type of soul so to speak.  This is why you should always allow yourself to fall in love, even though you will suffer for it; you will learn more about yourself than in any other way I know of. 

Eventually though, we stop falling in love with people, or maybe it is better to say, we are in love with everyone.  This sounds alarming to the romantic, but in reality, once one knows themselves, they know only true love.  Being in love is for growing up, real love is for grown-ups.  To be honest it felt really good to go through all that drama even though I was in my thirties.  I do not see how I could have learned those lessons any other way.  Because I am so wild I am not sure I would have survived that experience in my twenties.  Maybe in my life, that is why it went down in my thirties.  Without those experiences though I cannot be growing up, I would just be stuck for the rest of my life at an immature stage.

The woman who I lived a nightmare with she would tell you too, how that time in our life was a great purging.  Even though her experiences of it are quite different, it purged her of some of her lies, purged her of some of her pain, the same as it did me.  There is a great deal of pain involved with coming to terms with the worst of what one believes; the worst of one's self.  That suffering cleaned us a bit, it saved our lives, and it was some of the darkest times of our lives.  Everyone says it was horrible, it certainly seemed so, but how can what saved us be horrible?  It is only our ego that gives things such labels as good or bad, horrible or wonderful. 

This has much to do with the people I know who had childhoods similar to mine. They like me, are quite bitter, and upset. They like me rail at the culture. We want to know why this happened to us. I tell them, look how those others are asleep at the wheel. That suffering you went through is the precise reason you are aware of these things. If that suffering had not happened to you more than likely you'd be sitting around watching TV, eating bullshit, wasting your life with stupid opinions. You'd be telling yourself lies to that you could avoid it. That suffering gave the experiences required for knowing. We know the darkness of this culture, while the rest are blind. It is a terrible burden for sure, but nothing in life is worth having that does not require suffering.  One of my favorite analogies goes like this; if it is good for you, you will have to work first, and then get your reward. If it is bad for you, your reward will come first; and then you have to pay. Childhood suffering is doing work first, while having an easy childhood is getting the reward first. It is incredibly difficult to see this though; a painful pill to swallow.