Conscious Growth.com

July 15th, 2007

Suffering. Your mind likes it. Everywhere you look, you see things that shouldn’t happen. “I shouldn’t have to wait for my food. I shouldn’t be at work today. That girl should have fallen in love with me by now.” At times, we feel we’ve earned the right to whine about certain things (like those jerks who have their blinker on but never move over and you wait oh-so-patiently for 30 seconds before you snap).

The sad reality is that suffering is self-created and self-inflicted. Yep. It’s time to wake up and be responsible for a bit. Suffering is the side effect of a limiting paradigm within you. This unawareness is projected onto the world where the problem appears to be “out there.” In reality, you make the rules and project it onto events. The events aren’t making the rules.

Common Forms of Suffering

Forgetting Control - Your character is within your control. But that’s about it. Your mind thinks it should control more than this. It wants to control people, events, outcomes, and so forth and creates suffering when reality doesn’t agree.

Not Following your Passion - Personal thoughts, people’s opinions, or the environment may influence you to “play it safe” rather than follow your heart. When you choose to settle in life, you feel a slow gnawing at your soul. Thoreau calls it a life of quiet desperation.

Illusion of the Past- A simple way to suffer is to believe in yesterday. Let it imprison you. Of course, the past isn’t real. It’s a bunch of thoughts in your head. The only moment that exists is this one. It’s where choice and comfort are always available.

Not Facing the Truth - There are moments when you need to look at yourself and your situation with honesty. Moving away from the direction of Truth creates suffering.

Lack of Clarity - Most mistakes and assumptions are just poor planning. Whatever your goal, a proper plan improves results. Suffering happens when you don’t have a clear intention.

Get Suffering to Work for You

Suffering, for the most part, is habitual. It’s unconscious. It comes up as anger, guilt, fear, shame, jealously, and so on. One thing is certain though. It happens and it isn’t pleasant. By accepting your human limitation, you can get suffering to work for you.

Suffering can a blessing in disguise. It comes with its own fuel. Negative emotion works like a good slap in the face. It doesn’t feel good, but it wakes you up. In reality, you were stuck in a poor paradigm. You probably weren’t consciously choosing it. Negative emotion brings you out of unconscious living and points you to Truth.

Of course, once you’re awake, you don’t need to be slapped repeatedly (unless you’re into that). Some people try to use negative emotion as fuel to change. They’re always angry and always pushing forward. But growth is unlimited. So you never find peace. Use your negative emotions to help you become conscious. To take responsibility to do what you can to improve the situation. That’s all. Suffering will give you a little poke when you forget what life is about.

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