Suffering Leads to Grace

Hello and thank you for the questions: To have "finally dealt with suffering" is a statement that is so far off for me that I cannot relate to it. I hear many people use terms, and have stories about "their darkest hour" etc. Suffering is suffering and developing a skillful effort around it is a process, a training, a commitment.

A vast majority of us have not had this "finally dealt with". Though perhaps intellectually it sounds nice. Finally, in this case (to me at least) means complete liberation and having transcended the painful reactions associated with conditional suffering.

In terms of consuming into ourselves, this can be very tricky and I would not recommend putting any more on us than is necessary. Suffering is suffering and if you see suffering as grace then you see suffering as grace, but suffering is suffering, it is not grace otherwise the word suffering would instead be defined as grace. I feel when we learn more about this suffering we are not afraid to call it what it is. It is suffering and there is nothing wrong with it. It is a normal part of this human existence and we need not rename it.

Many stories can be shared, but every time suffering arises I go back to my practice of Anapana/Vipassana and come to see the transient nature of this suffering. It is not grace. it is work, and it works. It is skillful effort and the results are bound to come. But I don't know about grace other than to relate it to suffering, It comes and it goes.

When we are able to see the changing nature of things then our mind stops playing these silly games of attachment, aversion, etc. This is a type of death to the habitual tendencies of the mind, the personality. But were we really ever living, having been slave to this? I think not. So we learn how to live, how to become alive.  

 Suffering is always painful, it is well said that the frog under Harrow ( Plow ) only knows the pain. Pain of suffering is hard to define and you get only one thing out of it- that is concentration towards God.
In normal condition while you are praying  the God a small thing will distract your attention but when you  are suffering your prayers will not be disturbed even by big noise or  other irritating factors. So the pain give us the real concentration towards the god.

According to the philosophy of "Bhagwad Geeta"; - What ever we are facing at the moment is the result of our previous "Karma"  so what is happening has to happen, and it will happen, it can not be changed as it is the fruit of our previous Karmas,

Now when you have take the fruit of your old Karmas and your attention is on god and you are praying him with sincere concentration, the time to come will have the effect of this prayer so you are bound to get a better deal for your Karmas from the God, which you could never have been able to get without suffering at present. and praying the god with the concentration you got after having suffered and undergone through the pain.

So it is not with me but every one The suffering gives the grace.

 “Suffering Leads to Grace” is such an inspiration to me.  Suffering and pain constantly reacts in my subconscious and when I am not conscious of my suffering it will create this tormented consciousness.  Everything becomes this torment and everything is this unbearable reminder of my alienation from life.  Much of my unfinished work mocks me, my failure to love mocks me, my family mocks me, and this inability to have a purpose mocks me.  It is all because of my cell disease.  Maybe much of self-accusations have a basis in fact, but my self-absorption and self-indulgences makes the anguish even more real.  I know, to a real extent I responsible for bringing on my anguish on myself, which is why the self-accusations cuts so deeply.  The only way out is to do away with this tormented consciousness and I do this by denial of my truth. 

There have been many times innocent remarks will send my mind into schizophrenia.   I feel terrorized, the madman attacks, and then the insane paranoid delusions set in.  My mental connections go haywire, I start rocking back-an-forth, true craziness and my fears become consuming.  The stranger trying to console me becomes the policeman who has come to arrest me.  Fear becomes a life of its own.  My thoughts are uncontrollable, scaring me when I do not want to be scared.  My mind will race wildly and I become terrified of my fears because I cannot escape them since they originate with me.  My anger just burns. 

When I come out of one of these burning attacks, after both my body and my brain have splintered into a thousand pieces, I deteriorate into a state of emptiness.  I become isolated from my environment, from other people, and from my inner life --- from thinking feeling and doing.  My deep struggle between these various pairs of polar opposites: between identification with others and a rejection of them, between feelings and doing, between love and hate, is all this emptiness.  The ambivalence becomes so intense the evil will exclude the good.  Eventually, my suffering becomes this nothingness: nothing to identify with, nothing true, and nothing valuable in which I can believe in.  My fear becomes fulfilled and within this void feels this terrifying attraction to darkness.

There is a part of me that over identifies with my woundedness, with my sense of inner deficiency, and sometimes I make a lifestyle out of suffering.  It gives me something to do in my agitation and restless mind.  Yet other times I have caught myself in my emotional reactions and my belief in my deficiency, letting this raw material filter through my unconsciousness.  The moment becomes this opening, a moment of inspiration, like a catalyst shocking me into awareness.  This suffering compels me to choose to give it a meaning.  Giving a meaning to my suffering and pain, to give meaning to my experience, even my nothingness, creates me.  It feels like suffering is a positive force and I can sustain my awareness of myself here.  This place is to suffer and give meaning to it is a self that who transcends it.  The moment becomes the self and I fall into my faith, feeling my deep void.

I live in this complex and exhausting life.  Sometimes I refuse to make contact with anyone and even God because it is all an intolerable idea.  The horror and uncertainty of my own body is an enormous stumbling block.  Yet if I do not force everything to a conclusion, force my mind to seek order, my realistic faith can let the moment emerge spontaneously.  Faith becomes a “given” and I feel this inner Essence that cannot be lost or harmed.  Truly it is beyond beliefs, beyond doubts, learned procedures and the moment is not lost.  This place requires my soul, rather soul-making, and is this unselfconsciousness the moment just IS.  The act itself transcends the self-consciousness, and becomes this spontaneous quality of inspiration.  Faith itself becomes self-aware.  There is no place to hide, shocking awareness and the richest part of my consciousness life becomes outside of my control.

Faith in nothingness is like walking of the edge of the world.  It feels like suffering and emptiness, paradoxically, becomes the guide.  Divine awareness is discovered in death and becomes this value to which I submit.  My daily deaths creates this tension between conflicting sides, my suffering, and I have certain hostility here, so raw I do not feel it can be healed.  Hopelessness is strong and is a big trap, yet at the same time I have to move beyond my self-awareness and to let go of my trap in self-consciousness.  In this moment, the self is possessed both in suffering and in my physical breakdown of my own body.  There is this unshakable equanimity in the moment.  Suffering can truly be one with where I learn both self-possession and self-transcendence together and sometimes this profound center has mystical overtones.  When all is said and done, I wish we all could suffer together and allow this to be a gift to each other.  It is place transparency allows everything to pass through the consciousness, nothing “sticks” in the consciousness, and Essence is possessed.        

Just a side note, my body is soaking wet from the sweats and I feel deep exhaustion.  It is merely just this moment that is the source of everything and it becomes this inner Essence.  There is deep alienation in this place suffering and the gift is where the flat tire no longer needs to be fixed.  Essence is found in the suffering and becomes more than just an idea but a living experience.   Suffering is accepted and it can catalyze into shocking awareness and the moment is Essence.  There is no significant accomplishment here and the moment just IS, a shinning Void, where hopelessness and hope are held together and the stillness creates Divine awareness.

Your presence is deeply significant, a human being who suffers like me, and yet you are all a source of life, this Inner Essence that lets me touch my experiences and leap into the unknown.  Thank you!!!              
 
        

 To suffer means to carry.  Suffer doesn't mean pain, it means our carrying of pain.  Pain is a given.  How we suffer pain is up to us.  I can suffer my pain efficiently or in a way that creates more and unnecessary pain.  I consume pain into myself by accepting it as part of my life and carrying it efficiently, not denying it.  I am to have and consume my pain, and not it have and consume me.  I am bigger than my pain.  The more severe the pain, the more difficult I assume it is to live that way.  I may find out some day -- I haven't yet been put to the extreme test.  Grace is the gift of growing.  When my dear friend died, the grace that loss helped me to find was that I am more than I realized and gave myself credit for.  I die to who I thought I was by being open, listening and seeing, being receptive and accepting, and allowing myself to let go and realize more of who I am.  I appreciate Ram Dass' saying that the people of India speak of their saints as being the living dead because they have died to who they thought they were -- that's profound. 

Reading this passage marks the *3rd time* Ram Dass has shown up in something I've read...just in the last 36 hours! Important message for me, I think. :)

Several nights ago, I started reading the book "Broken Open" by Elizabeth Lesser...it's a beautiful book and I recommend it highly. Just last night I read the chapter she writes on Ram Dass. She knew him before his stroke, and also after it. In the book, she shares her experience of how Ram Dass' soul really shined through after his stroke, and his personality fell into the background; whereas before the stroke, his personality was more in charge (even though the soul was there all along). I think our soul has an opportunity to shine through even more when we embrace our pain with love and kindness, humble ourselves to it, welcome it and invite it in, see it as grace. As I see it, that's certainly what Ram Dass has done in the wake of his stroke.

I want to say a little more about this book I'm reading by Elizabeth Lesser. Not only does she so openly and vulnerably share about the pain she's experienced in her life, she tells many stories of people who allowed themselves to feel pain in a way that brought them closer to their hearts. And how life opens so beautifully when we do this, bringing us closer to our own humanity. She also tells stories of people who have pretended that everything in their life was fine, even when it wasn't, and how they almost (or actually) lost their lives as a result.

Recently, in my own life, I've been experiencing these waves of suffering once again. It caught me by surprise...sort of like, "oh, you're back?" And for a while I've just wanted it to go away. Luckily, I remembered from past experiences that I will contract and suffer even more if I turn away from it. So I've noticed that I have 2 options. I can fall asleep to the pain and numb myself to it. Or, I can stay vibrantly alive and awake to it, turn towards it, allow myself to feel completely, and let it break my heart wide open. I've tried both ways, and I've found that the latter way is much more energizing and life-affirming. Right now, I see this as the most important work I can do.

"And the time came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom." ~Anais Nin