Perhaps the greatest challenge every seeker faces in the inner search is the necessity to deal with the overwhelming presence of suffering in all its forms: anguish, physical pain, disappointment...
Suffering can even blind us and it has been often used as a cruel tool of manipulation. People can do and believe anything to avoid suffering. And it's rather easy to wish for happiness and bliss, adopting a puritanical thinking, buying the typical presumptions of love and light.
Suffering can even blind us and it has been often used as a cruel tool of manipulation. People can do and believe anything to avoid suffering. And it's rather easy to wish for happiness and bliss, adopting a puritanical thinking, buying the typical presumptions of love and light.
However, if we're really honest with ourselves, it becomes obvious that the self-calming thoughts, the impulse to fight against darkness and get away from suffering makes the situation more frustrating; generating "unnecessary suffering".
Furthermore, our wish for happiness and love is in contradiction with our prides, anger or blind actions, which make ourselves and other beings suffer.
How many times do we accept other points of view without critizicing, without excluding? How many sincere efforts do we make to observe the negative habits that enslave us, such as self-deprecation, self-pity and self-indulgence with regard to little or great pleasures...? How much do we care for ourselves and others?
Certainly, Love forviges and overcomes everything, even suffering, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13. Yet, as we are, we can't love consciously.
Nobody loves or suffers consciously if not in the spirit of the Eternal Beloved that must dwell inside our body-temple.
With Christ-Massiah I have been crucified, yet it is no longer me who lives but Christ in me (Galathians 2:20)
Nobody loves or suffers consciously if not in the spirit of the Eternal Beloved that must dwell inside our body-temple.
With Christ-Massiah I have been crucified, yet it is no longer me who lives but Christ in me (Galathians 2:20)
So, maybe a crutial step is having the courage to stop for a while, seeing and feeling ourselves and others in silence, embracing humbly the pain, disappointment, frustration, depression, just as we welcome pleasure and happiness. As Siddharta the Buddha, there can be "pain" without "unnecessary suffering".
Besides, we did not come to earth on vacation. There are many debts to be paid, for all we´ve been given and all past misbehaviors.
Doesn´t the Lord´s Prayer say: forgive our debts in so far as we forgive our debtors?
Besides, we did not come to earth on vacation. There are many debts to be paid, for all we´ve been given and all past misbehaviors.
Doesn´t the Lord´s Prayer say: forgive our debts in so far as we forgive our debtors?
Only humans with openness and compassion can we pay spiritual debt, letting true peace and conscious love arrive naturally.
Pain becomes then divine, full of meaning, for it is no longer the old man that suffers, but God through us.
Thus we also contribute to alleviate His Suffering.
Hence, the more we love, the more life hurts, but the more bliss shines to compensate.
Such message seems to be implied by those famous words of Christ:
Whoever wants to be my disciple, must deny themselves, take up their cross and follow me (Matthew 16:20)
To follow Him is to study and eat his Word, which is his flesh, while to drink his blood is to live the Word with his Spirit, ready for Life, including pain.
Pain becomes then divine, full of meaning, for it is no longer the old man that suffers, but God through us.
Thus we also contribute to alleviate His Suffering.
Hence, the more we love, the more life hurts, but the more bliss shines to compensate.
Such message seems to be implied by those famous words of Christ:
Whoever wants to be my disciple, must deny themselves, take up their cross and follow me (Matthew 16:20)
To follow Him is to study and eat his Word, which is his flesh, while to drink his blood is to live the Word with his Spirit, ready for Life, including pain.
