Suffering Leads to Grace
For most people, when you say that suffering is Grace it seems off the wall to them. And we’ve got to deal now with our own suffering and other people’s suffering. That is a distinction that is very real, because we may see our suffering as Grace but it’s quite a different thing to look at somebody else’s suffering and say it’s Grace.
Grace is something that an individual can see about their own suffering and then use it to their advantage. It is not something that can be a rationalization for allowing another human being to suffer. You have to listen to the level at which another person is suffering. When somebody is hungry, you give them food. As my guru used to say, God comes to the hungry person in the form of food. You give them food and then when they’ve had their belly filled then they may be interested in questions about God. To give somebody a dharma lecture when they are hungry is just inappropriate methodology in terms of ending suffering.
So, the hard answer for seeing suffering as Grace, and this is a stinker really, is that you have to have consumed suffering into yourself. There is a tendency in us to find suffering aversive, and so we want to distance ourselves from it. Like if you have a toothache, it becomes that toothache. It’s not us any more. It’s that tooth. And so if there are suffering people, you want to look at them on television or meet them but then keep a distance from them. Because you are afraid you will drown in it. You are afraid you will drown in a pain that will be unbearable. And the fact of the matter is you have to. You finally have to. Because if you close your heart down to anything in the universe, it’s got you. You are then at the mercy of suffering.
To have finally dealt with suffering is to consume it into yourself. Which means you have to, with eyes open, be able to keep your heart open in hell. You have to look at what is, and say Yea, Right. And what it involves is bearing the unbearable. And in a way, who you *think* you are can’t do it. Who you *really* are, can do it. So that who you think you are has to die in the process.
Like, right now, I am counseling a couple who went to a movie and when they came home their house had burned down and their three children had burned to death. Three, five and seven. And she is Mexican Catholic and he is a Caucasian Protestant. And they are responding entirely different to it. She is going in to deep spiritual experiences and talking with the children and he is full of denial and anger and feelings of inadequacy. In a way, that situation is so unbearable and you wouldn’t ever lay that on another human being but there it is. What may happen is she may come out of this a much deeper, spiritual and a more profound, more evolved person. And he, because the way he dealt with it was through denial, may end up contracted and tight because he couldn’t embrace the suffering. He couldn’t go towards it. He pushed it away in order to preserve his sanity.
There is a process of suffering that requires you to die into it or to give up your image of yourself. When you say, "I can’t bear it", who is that? In India, they talk about their saints as being the living dead, because they have died to who they thought they were. And they talk about the saints for whom all people are their children, so that everybody that is dying is their child dying. In that way, suffering leads to Grace.
How do you relate to the notion that 'to have finally dealt with suffering is to consume it into yourself'? Can you share a story of a time when your own suffering led you to find grace? How do you die to who you thought you were?
How can suffering lead to grace...??? The whole of humanity has been suffering for ages without ant exception, and the grace is totally lost... there is just no grace what so ever. If what Ram dass say is true the world would have been full of grace... the fact is world is devoid of any grace so far as humanbeings are concerned.
suffering has given me that compassion for other human beings that I was maybe lacking! Now I "see" other people suffering and I feel lucky that ALL my suffering is very little "compared" to theirs...In this way I express empathy and HOPE that they feel it
Also if one reads Ram Dass' book, he actually talks about being beaten by a monk with sticks. Ram Dass was a white male of Jewish ethnicity. He sat himself down at the feet of spiritual brown men only to be beaten by them. This gave me pause as someone who has been in a verbally abusive environment both at work and in the home. I've learned a lot from Ram Dass but collectively we can surely do better.
The main lesson of all these gurus is to live truthfully and actively. Depression, anxiety, stress are rooted in a lack of spirituality. Some days I am more spiritual than others. Here's to a day when spirituality and science can be respected hand in hand. #peace
The idea of consuming suffering into oneself is a fresh one. I have never thought of it that way before. Suffering has consumed me for parts of my life. I have always surrendered to it because in my experience, striving against it does not work. The surrender induced state of paralytic catharsis is restorative even it takes it own time. I accept the enforced break from the constant striving of the other times. Stasis leads to a blossoming of creativity. I have liked the idea from an earlier reading here that pain is given but suffering is optional. Pouring suffering into a creativity may be linked to consuming suffering into oneself - maybe.
Grace is Heaven's automatic immune response to wounds of all varieties.
Thankful for this gift!
Heavy. We do the best we are capable of at our stages of evolvement. When we can do better, we do. To be the best me I can be.
Suffering is a byproduct of an adolescence delayed. In other words, pain is a natural part of growth. If we mature naturally, then the suffering is practically nill. We experience the growing pains of being a teen fully. If however, our development was arrested then the lessons of adulthood come later in life. I'm experiencing this now, at age 34. I have gained grace through my suffering, yes. However, I believe our purpose is then to turn around and share our experience with others to lessen their suffering. Premature death is something we can eliminate as a species, but this requires us innovating at our highest level. Put another way, in the garden of eden, was there any suffering? We must return to the Tree of Life.
Now I understand what it means in the Old Testament "don't turn away you eyes from someone who is suffering" !!!
I think there is a difference between pain and suffering. Pain, whether physical, mental or emotional is just that. It only becomes suffering when it is judged as being bad. Great people treat pain for what it is and don't make it right or wrong. They take responsibility for it, knowing that they are not victims and, at some level, they have called it to themselves. Such people (Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jnr, Nelson Mandela, Jesus The Christ) experienced pain without suffering because they simply and knowingly, accepted it. They know that there are no villains in the world but only outcomes of thoughts. They accepted with grace what showed up in their lives and as a result impacted the lives of many millions of people whilst changing the course of human history. When we change our thoughts, we change of lives. It starts with thoughts of being responsible by accepting what shows up because that IS.
