Let go of suffering...
As you read this you may be tied up in a suffering moment of pain, loss, drama, a dark moment which feels so intense you cut off friends, or help and fall into a blocked energy within, meditating on your pain.
In these moments we fail to remember “ we are what we meditate on” , instead we defend our suffering, and perpetuate the feeling which is simply that we have identified with of loss of light.
In a few days time, a week, a month, a year it will probably seem like other moments where we sunk into suffering - a tumultuous storm in a teacup, a memory, perhaps even something that we are no longer bound to with a feeling.
The suffering we “suffer,” the emotioning -our reactions is because of our unfinished business, or our need to still grow within and heal patterns which have there route probably far earlier in our life.
We have our attachments we hold onto, or suffer attachments to things people, events, or outcomes because of a need within , that we want another or things to fill this gap.
Most relationships are not based on a balanced nurturing love which is free, but on a our need to feel loved, receive something, in effect we are looking for another to complete us.
Some even talk of this, “ he she makes me happy, complete”.
What can take many years for us to realise is that unless we heal the cause of our neediness and yearning for another to solve something we will keep repeating our core pattern, which may even be to choose independence instead of relationship.
In other words we set ourselves up with relationships based on a dream, which can only fail because at a subconscious level (despite our outward suffering) we want it to fail, or we co create a situation.
What are we searching for? Why are we unhappy?
With all my research I have found that firstly the root is always far earlier from childhood, or even ancestral. With repeated relationship failures it is often because of an original heart break that is simply repeating itself.
When we are stuck in seeing these conditions as reality we identify with our own suffering, sorrow , anger and fear, yet our real state, or Truth, what is Real is untouched.
To realise spiritual awakened states, we have to experience a death, which is a literal ultimate death of the ego, all that we have identified with in the past.
This is the truth of the teachings of Great realisers which all talk of ultimately realising that we are already happy, already full and not these distorted needy emotions which we identify with and act out!
At the very core I have found in many people an anger towards God, or the belief of what God is, and a feeling of having been let down. Where is God if he sees all this suffering?
The Truth is that God is not a giant man standing at the edge of sky listening to everyones prayers. Yet this is what we are bought up believing.
When we realise it is unlikely that God is listening in to an individual circumstance of this we feel let down, cheated in some way.
So we search for others to unite with, to complete ourselves.
Our teaching at school and home, unless we grew up in a very spiritual community, is not spiritual. We are not taught to meditate, we are not taught compassion, in fact the whole basis of school is about competition, and achievement at a personal level.
We tend as society to judge people by material wealth which equates to success.
Million pound dollar industries are set up to set up expectations, and feelings of dissatisfaction of not having this or that. We aspire for a bigger car, house, holidays etc.
Look at the unbalance in pay in the world. We pay industry large bonuses or salaries, but those in service to community do not earn large sums.
Why do we value service so lowly?
It seems to me that the very components of leading a truly spiritual life include humility, compassion and love.
All great realisers were in surrender to something Greater than their individual needs.
At an esoteric level all teachings from spiritual teachers say the same thing, that there is a requirement for us to surrender, through meditation based on devotion to God, and by changing our lives radically.
This does not mean dropping everything and being out of relationship, it means dropping the attachments, the needs and turning to something Greater and making our lives about this, whilst remaining in relationship with family friends, all those in our sphere.
Surrender
This can literally happen as a radical event, or can be felt as a gradual surrender .
For most people the surrender is not yet total. There is a sort of hedging of bets, only giving up our egoic play now and again! The very word surrender is deeply offensive to the ego.
What does seem to be the case is that we have to feel disillusioned with our play, our story. We have to recognise what our patterns in life have been about and drop the social face, which we usually perpetuate because it gets us good reviews from others.
We also play different roles, parent, friend, family member. All of these have an element of social face, acceptance. Many can have deep routed patterns which are not us authentically.
True spiritual life is a burn, it is deep internally, sometimes felt as very painful as we reveal all that has been hidden.
These moments are called the dark night of the soul, whereby we have to pass through the deepest moments of self reflection and introspection. Sometimes the insights are so intense we feel broken, but after a while we learn that if we do not resist these moments we pass through more quickly, and actually all that is happening is that we are letting in more light. It is our resistance that creates the painful moments.
But we will not have a heart awakening, or increased awareness unless we surrender to Grace.
Spiritual life cannot be just a talking shop, or platitudes , or enacting spiritual activity like meditation, puja, reading, talking , because if there is no surrender there is no event of death of ego.
