A Way Through

How emotional pain and suffering can be used as a catalyst to make us more conscious and can be seen in a positive light to get us to where we need to be.

Pain and suffering do not last forever.  They can't as it's impossible, once we realize what is at the root.  What causes pain?  What causes suffering?  I am, of course, referring to emotional pain.  Both of these conditions rely on an ego.  They need some sort of defined image or idea about what life should look like.  A simple definition of pain would be when life does not match my own idea of it.  Suffering, then, is the ongoing, repetitive attempts to make life fit into my ideas about it.

Victors In Life

"We are victors in life when we receive bad news with as much joy as good news and see the blessing in trials. You have risen above this world and cannot be moved."

This is part of the paradox of spirituality.  To many, they look at a statement that we can be happy during sad times and do not understand it.  This is foolishness to many.  This is because there are many hidden truths that undergird this statement.

Since we are spirit, in essence, we do need to fear anything.  We will live eternally without any effort on our part and we cannot lose our lives.  If we consider our earthly existence to be our life, then we have something to fear.  However, our earthly existence is but a shell for our spirit.

A recurrent theme that I am experiencing now is learning to think outside of duality.  Some say this is how supreme consciousness thinks, and that this is the ideal we should all aspire to.

The essence of suffering is attachment to outcome.  Attachment to outcome is being tied to our earthly existence, that is duality.  In its basic form, duality consists of labeling things.  We label this good and that bad.  However, labeling prevents us from experiencing the "subject of our labeling" fully.  We do not see it as a unique experience but want to categorize it with prior experiences, even before we get a chance to experience it!

We are victors in life when we receive bad news with as much joy as good news and see the blessing in trials. You have risen above this world and cannot be moved.  To not be attached to outcome means that we truly our joyous in all things, which is our basic nature anyways.  If we are filled with joy in trying times, how easy is it to be filled with joy in the normal, everyday life?

To have attained such an ideal, is truly living in heaven while you are still on earth.  An undercurrent to this topic, which I will touch on briefly, is the reason why we have trials.  A trial is only "trying" if it touches a part of us that is identified with pain.  The blessing in a trial is the opportunity to heal this pain through forcing us to confront why we are feeling it in the first place.

Once we receive healing for this pain, we then break the cycle of karma that led us to put ourselves in a situation that would stir the pain up.  That is the joy we must have when in a difficult situation.  Feel the associated pain but realize that it is really joy that has been disguised and that you are making progress on your spiritual path.

Brokenness and Joy

"There is joy in all things because we see the blessings in hardship."

A friend of mine watched the video of my blog post on "The Law of Brokenness" and had a very interesting comment that I wanted to explore.  The place I want to always be in life (and in my writings) is open to new ideas and changes to any idea.  I do not take ownership of these thoughts, as most of them are based off of teachings elsewhere anyways.  An important truth that I am realizing is the importance of being open.  Our Western training teaches us that truth is absolute and either right or wrong, however truth is relative and inclusive.  I like the idea of resonating.  Some truths resonate with some people and not with others.

The point was that one can surrender to joy and not only when you are destitute.  That is a great point and one that I will explore a bit.  My intention in referring exclusively to brokenness was to identify a trend that I noticed, which seems to contradict it being a law.  However, the trend is so strong that I thought it warranted being considered a law.  My immediate response was renaming the law to "The Law of Surrender."  Before I address that directly, I also wanted to point out that brokenness on the spiritual path needs to be approached from a higher perspective.  From this perspective, there is joy in being broken.  There is joy in all things because we see the blessings in hardship.  This is one point that maybe should have been more fully developed.

At the time of brokenness, I doubt many are joyful, however, so I completely agree that it is important to focus more on the end result which is surrender.  To say that the Power of the Universe only works through a certain class of people is limiting this Power.  So, in this law of surrender, I acknowledge that the path to surrender usually involves a brokenness of some kind.   However, surrender can readily occur through joy as well.