Transfiguring Pain and Suffering

Consciousness

Feb 7

I was with my wife Terry and one of our dear friends who is moving to Portland to join her family as she enters the last segment of her life.

Joyce Rawlings-Davies is a wise woman whose fine work with the Enneagram instrument is acknowledged in the preface of Don Riso’s and Russ Hudson’s book Personality Types: Using the Enneagram for Self-Discovery which was published in 1996. It was impossible not to recount our long relationship, the roads we had traveled together, and how she had been such a significant resource to me over the years. Joyce is a master of the Enneagram.

We tried to recall when we first met which was nearly 25 years ago and I became aware of a number of things I had forgotten, one of those being my psychological state at the time. I was still grieving and caught up in events of the past and wore my suffering like a merit badge. Suffering for me in those days confirmed that my life was worthwhile. I admit I was a little taken back when I recalled my days and years of seeking martyrdom through my suffering and how good I was at it.

I look at myself then and don’t know him. I have sympathy for him but also a certain sense of disgust for his willingness to suffer as he did. Of course, now, I understand the necessity of the journey, the need to have done what I did, the choices I made.

I speak of suffering with authority because I did so much of it. I have no problem saying about myself that I am a master of grief, pain, and suffering and I mean that in a good way. I took on a lot in my life and the suffering I chose would take me to the brink of what I was capable of bearing but then I found my way out and turned my suffering into mission and purpose in my life. So, when I speak of suffering, I speak of an old friend that I used to know. So, let’s get started.

My definition of suffering is that your suffering is your resistance to what is happening, to what is now. If there is no resistance, there is no suffering. Be careful about people who have achieved this level of development because they are, regardless of what they look like on the outside, they are very powerful people on the inside.

The suffering can exist at an everyday level, like having an argument with a loved one, or the suffering can be an accumulated, progressive building up of suffering related to a major event in the past that you have not been able to resolve. And I may as well go ahead and say it now that that particular kind of suffering, the suffering that continues to build up, will eventually move from the invisible to the visible and it will find its way into your body…it will tend to localize in a particular place, a particular organ and you’ll never know it.

So, it’s not difficult to accept up to this point in evolution the first law of Buddha’s 7 noble truths…that is that life is suffering. Now, I am simplifying this concept but it serves our purpose. Obviously, there is much more to it.

The second truth is that the cause of suffering is desire and that by releasing desire and learning to let go of your cravings and desire nature, you could experience a different way of living and being. It’s simple but it’s true. Now back to my definition.

Suffering is your resistance to what is happening because you don’t want what is happening to happen.

In many texts and philosophies regarding these matters, you will read that this nature, this suffering is innate. I assure you that it is not. If your understanding of human nature is based upon the negative then I assure you that you do not understand. Suffering is learned. Suffering is ignorance and is a true sign that you do not understand what is happening. Now, that’s OK. I’m not trying to be above it but negativity is not an expression of truth because truth is always expressed in the positive.

It doesn’t mean that bad things don’t happen…it means you don’t understand why they are happening and why they are happening is always for the good, for the evolving, because the negative conspires with the good to bring the good about. Neither you nor I know what the individual soul is up to and because nothing happens that is against the soul’s wishes, nothing is wrong. I know that’s so hard to get and believe but notice that if you didn’t like that and you didn’t agree with that…notice what happened…notice you tapped into your resistance. You didn’t like what I said or you didn’t like what so and so said and so…and we’ll speed this up a little…so, you suffer.

Who is the author of your suffering? You are!

Who is the author of your letting go and moving into joy?

The outer does not define the inner. The inner defines the outer.

Now, let’s get clear about this. It is true that your experiences will absolutely contain the negative, the heartbreaking, the grief. But you are not your experiences…you have experience but you are not your experiences. You are your existence that is using those experiences as tools of awakening, as vehicles of transformation, and you are the one that created those experiences. I know this is hard to believe but no one did anything to you. You did it to yourself!

And when you see the perfection of all things, the oneness of the entire unfolding, how can you suffer? You can’t! You would see the micro out there in life through the macro being that you are.

If you create a unified perception of everything in your life, good and bad, you will see that unity is the true foundation of experience in your life.

Watching the movement on the surface, you get a pretty good idea of how to eliminate suffering in your life.

Imagine lying on your back at the bottom of the ocean and watching the movement on the surface, you get a pretty good idea of how to eliminate suffering in your life. Granted, some of that movement is going to take you to the edge of your capabilities but remember that was your choice and your creation. And yes, they’ll be plenty of time when you forget and you’ll do your suffering, your crazy dance, your ignorance. And that’s OK! Your friends will get a kick out of it and it can be very entertaining.

In a more conscious state, in an awakened viewpoint, you would see the event as…ready…you would see the event as your Self and nothing separate, nothing divided. And in the meantime, the suffering continues.

So, if we stop here for a second, we could say that unity, a supreme omnipresence of unity, a unified perception of the vertical is the foundation for understanding, for interpreting experience in the horizontal, in everyday life, resulting in equanimity, with mental, physical and emotional balance, replacing division and separation.

We could say that the omniscience of the vertical is the foundation that unites with behavior and action in the horizontal, resulting in cosmos and order in your life, replacing chaos and meaninglessness.

We could say that omnipotence of the vertical is the foundation that unites with the individual will and desire in the horizontal resulting in certainty and power, replacing suffering and fear.

Of course, it’s really easy to negate these possibilities because of your current state of limitations but just because you don’t believe this, it doesn’t mean it’s not true…now we’re right back to the resistance piece.

Limitation, enslavement, and poverty of all kinds in the horizontal, including spiritual poverty, always results in limitation in the vertical. It always results in the blinding of spiritual sight.

The absence of spiritual sight always results in meaninglessness and once again, we’re back to the suffering piece but sometimes that’s just where you find yourself and that’s OK.

I’m here to remind you that there are other choices.

You may be the most enlightened individual on the planet but you’ll notice that the rest of the world is not. The struggles and sufferings that are a part of daily life cause many to feel that existence is an act of futility in trying to acquire conditions of satisfaction and fulfillment.

That being the case, many philosophies have argued that life here must be abandoned and satisfaction found somewhere else…an escape from earth.

You get a hold of something and you do everything you can to hold onto it but the thing you’re holding onto is not static but in motion. It can be a person, a job, money, stability of some form…but the human mind associates stability with permanence and this is a root problem in coming to terms with suffering.

I am suggesting to you that the only thing that is stable in the physical world is the center that you carry within yourself. This is a quote from Aurobindo’s Savitri:

“A prisoner of a hooded magic Force,
Captured and trailed in Falsehood’s lethal net
And often strangled in the noose of grief,
Or cast in the grim morass of swallowing doubt,
Or shut into pits of error and despair,
He drank her poison draughts till none was left.
In a world where neither hope nor joy could come
The ordeal he suffered of evil’s absolute reign,
Yet kept intact his spirit’s radiant truth.”

Who has not felt the pain of suffering?”

But later Aurobindo says,

“Assured of the bliss for which all forms were made,
Unmoved by fear and grief and the shocks of Fate
And unalarmed by the breath of fleeting Time
And besieged by adverse circumstance,
It breathed in a sweet secure unguarded ease
Free from our body’s frailty inviting death,
Far from our danger zone of stumbling Will.
It needed not to curb its passionate beats;
Thrilled by the clasp of the warm satisfied sense
And the swift wonder-rush and flame and cry
Of the life impulses’ red magnificent race,
It lived in a jewel-rhythm of the laughter of God
and Lay on the breast of universal love.”

Assured, unmoved, unalarmed, unbeseiged. Just imagine being and living like this! Sounds pretty inviting. Actually, it’s more than that. It’s already who you are. It doesn’t have to be earned or deserved. It exists in spite of your past, your shame, your pain, your success, or your money. But how long you choose to wait to realize this is up to you.

Remember that when I mention the name, The Mother, the mother is Maria Alfassa Richard who would become known as the mother. The Mother's teachings over the last 30 years of her life were the basis of The Agenda, a 13 volume / 6,000 page journal that was recorded by Satprem, one of her disciples. She was an extraordinary human being whose life and work are relatively unknown in the United States.

Her wisdom once again clarifies this situation:

“To cling to something that one loves, to cling to one’s habits, to cling to one’s so-called needs, to cling to the world as it is, it is that which binds you. You must undo all that, one thing after another. Undo all the ties. And it has been said thousands of times and people continue to do the same thing... Even they who are most eloquent and preach that to others, do cling — they cling to their way of seeing, their way of feeling, their habit of progress, which seems for them the only one.”

We'll see if we can make some progress with this understanding that joy resides beyond duality and that suffering is not necessary. Recall a scene in which you were suffering, hurting, sad, or immersed in negative emotion. Recall all of the pain and struggle in that moment. Now, back up about 10 feet and watch yourself going through the suffering.

Just watch yourself as best you can without judging yourself. And now as you are watching yourself, allow yourself to feel joy watching yourself going through this experience. Feel immense compassion for yourself, for the part of you that feels threatened or discounted or afraid or whatever it is. Feel the joy and privilege of just being here as a human being, growing and evolving.

Bless the moment.

Bless the hardship that gives you the opportunity to grow and evolve.

Bless yourself and embrace the circumstances.

See that joy can exist as the container in which you play out every moment of your life, including the difficult ones. You can be just as addicted to being joyful as you can be to suffering. Suffering is not necessary. There is no need to suffer. If love is all there...and that's true...then why not act that way even in the middle of struggle?

Now, I have a test question for you. Fill in the blank at the end of this test question:

Change your perception of your life in such a way that you see suffering as preparation for __________________________________________?

The correct answer is joy, heaven, bliss, happiness, release, letting go, or whatever word is synonymous with joy. There is no need to suffer. It's OK to give it up. It's just stuff. The intention of suffering is to serve the grandest part of you, that part of you that is unthreatenable, eternal, and safe. Now, if you don't think that's true, then don't worry. Your mind will easily find something to prove that joy does not exist and that pain is the way of the world and you’ll go back to being who you were. But I encourage you to give up your need to defend your right to suffer.

However painful the path may be, you are always free to change your perceptions. Everything here, everything, including the unbearable, is the absolute meeting itself in the physical world. What that means from the standpoint of the individual is that everything that happens in your life, every heartache, every setback is forcing you closer and closer to the center of your being where you will realize who and what you are. The compression, the forcing inward through the hard knocks of life are the tools of the divine to awaken you. When you change your mind and begin to perceive your life that way, your center will grow and grow until you see that your suffering is the separation from your true self, a separation that will come to an end in one lifetime.

Your task, your focus should not be to struggle against the difficulties of your life but to keep your connection to your inner being nourished, fed, and guarded. It is through this effort, the inner journey, that you will emerge. It’s not about going higher and higher…it’s about going deeper and deeper.

If you go back over your life, you can find a negative situation that as time went by, you were able to let go of, you were able to release. It doesn’t matter whether or not it was a big event or a small event.

When you change your mind and begin to perceive your life that way, your center will grow and grow until you see that your suffering is the separation from your true self, a separation that will come to an end in one lifetime.

Now, having successfully navigated your way, you can look back and describe with a lot of detail what you had to do to be able to let go…and sooner or later, you will notice that you had to begin to detach yourself from the event. Detachment from your pain is one of the most important first steps. Developing even the willingness to detach can be a bear but that is where it begins…with your willingness to detach.

Now, I am going to stop here before we move on and I really want to really impress upon you the importance of some principles and connections related to consciousness.

1. You live in two worlds…the horizontal and the vertical. The horizontal is the material world and the vertical is the spiritual or metaphysical world.

2. If the horizontal was all there was, there could be no way to resolve the issues you face as a human being on a daily basis and that certainly includes pain and suffering.

3. You experience pain and suffering but do because you know that when you are suffering, it’s not supposed to be like that. You know it’s not right.

4. Pain and suffering are effects. They are not causes. Until you learn of the cause and its purpose, you cannot free yourself of the things that bind you. So, there’s no need in discussing your experience of pain and suffering unless we can also include your existence as the central reference point.

5. Without a spiritual understanding of why pain and suffering would exist in the first place, you have no other choice but to keep repeating the same old patterns.

6. So, I can speak about detachment and it’s important, but without the vertical, the spiritual as the reference point, discussing the horizontal, the material, is a waste of time.

7. Knowledge is the bridge between the horizontal and the vertical. Knowledge between your pain and suffering and your freedom.

8. You ARE the vertical in a physical body in the horizontal pretending that you don’t know that.

9. So, stop seeking answers for who you are not and start being who you truly are.

10. Death is not your release from suffering. Life is. Life is your release from suffering. Then, and only then, will your suffering be transfigured forever.