The Nature of Suffering

Question:

The question I have asked my entire life is why do people have to suffer so much? Life is hard anyway, then people go through hell with horrible accidents and diseases like cancer. It all seems so unfair, and I ask why, why, why? And why do some appear to have it relatively easy while others have one bad thing after another happen to them? I’ve never been able to reconcile these things.     Judy

The first thing that strikes me about your question is your compassionate heart and deep philosophical wondering. That tells me a lot about who you are as a person and your own relationship with suffering. I’m thinking there has been quite a lot of it in your life.

My answer to this question reflects my own beliefs because I don’t think any of us truly knows the nature of reality. That said – here is my take on suffering.

The universe is made up of dark and light energies, the yin and yang.

We are also made up of those energies. Alternately, you could view it as being born with two selves, a false self and a true self, and that it is our job to move out of the false self and into the core of light that lives at our center. Life on earth is about the recovery of that light or self, which means learning to live from a place of truth and awakening, meaning to literally wake up from the common dream.

I have always believed that hell is here and not in some far off place, as Christian philosophy reports, and that we are born into circumstances that challenge us so we can grow and evolve out of it. It is the ‘diamond being formed in the fires of darkness’ idea. This planet is the darkness of purification until we learn to manage that energy, then our consciousness sees and brings the light.

The challenge to awakening is not to get lost in the suffering but to see it as the teacher it was intended to be. I think if you look back over your life you’ll see the shift in consciousness that was birthed from each hard time you had. The thing that is important is not to become the hard times so you see nothing else, and allow it to form your world view. We all go through periods of darkness which are intended to be tunnels to something else, not permanent homes.

You might want to do some reading about karma and past lives, not with an idea of changing your beliefs but as an exploration or curiosity. I don’t have space here to go into those ideas, but can say with certainty that death is not real. I have seen and talked with too many spirits who have passed out of this reality to ever believe that. Also, seeing a single lifetime as part of a larger experience allows perspective. How else can you explain a child who is writing symphonies at four years old? We remember and we come back. The idea is to work through the hell consciousness or darkness, so we return with more light. We need to BE the light. If you discover you’ve built a house in the tunnel of darkness dismantle it and keep moving.

Here’s an easy way to start. Remember that what you give your attention to expands, it becomes larger, so make an effort to pull your energy away from the troubles and suffering of the world and start looking for the good things. Focus on the positive. Turn off the news and pick up an uplifting book or article instead. When folks talk about their suffering, see them as going through the tunnel, not living there. Holding light for them when they are unable to do so themselves is an enormous gift.

Making time each morning to speak out loud all you are grateful for is another powerful way to begin. It sounds simple and not worth bothering with but it works really well, because it trains your mind to look for the light and to appreciate the goodness that surrounds you in every moment of every day.

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