The Cause of Suffering

Being alive in a human form is often experienced as difficult.

We struggle and suffer and rarely feel alright with the world and ourselves.

What is this sense of difficulty? What causes this sense of difficulty and pain? What is the source of our suffering? What does it mean to suffer?

Every moment is full of a symphony of sensations, thoughts, and feelings.

Take a moment just to experience how much is happening right now: sounds, sights, smells, internal sensations, thoughts, feelings, pressure, desire, or longing.

It’s impossible to compile a list of everything you are experiencing at this moment because there’s so much. And all of it is constantly changing into a new set of sensations, thoughts, and feelings.

Most of the time, we are internally busy with a rejection of or attempt to manage the experience we’re having. This internal activity is effortful and involves tensing and pushing against something we’re experiencing either externally or internally.

This internal effort is the true source of all our pain and suffering.

This is good news since it means that no experience or sensation alone can cause us to suffer.

We must resist or struggle with it for it to become painful. If we simply allow ourselves to be fully aware of the experience or sensation we are having without struggling against it, the suffering or pain is gone.

We usually think that bad experiences cause suffering, but it’s actually caused by our attention flowing toward something that isn’t here, toward something that isn’t very true, such as an idea or a fantasy, which are very small truths.

Suffering ends when our attention is flowing toward what’s actually happening, what’s true in the moment.

Suffering is the distance (the gap) between what we are oriented toward and what is. However large the gap is between what is actually happening and what you are putting your attention on is how much you will suffer. If there is no gap, then there’s no suffering.

That gap can be present regardless of whether something good or bad is happening.

For example, if someone you love is dying, your awareness may be so fully focused on what’s happening in that moment that the experience lacks the suffering you would expect, although suffering may appear later if thoughts creep in about how things should or could have been. In contrast, there are times when things are going well and you’re suffering, often because you’re afraid of things changing.

If this truth is understood, that your happiness doesn’t depend on what is happening, it can change your life. It may not affect what’s happening, but it will change your experience of it.

Our hopes, dreams, desires, fears, doubts, and worries aren’t happening, so they are very small truths.

When we give our attention to something that isn't actually happening, we suffer. When our attention is focused on these things, we never feel satisfied because they don’t nourish us.

But when we give our passion and curiosity to more of what’s true in the moment, we don’t suffer.

What are you giving your awareness, your passion, your curiosity to?

It’s very simple: Our suffering is a matter of how much of our attention is flowing toward what isn’t present, such as hopes, dreams, desires, fears, doubts, worries, ideals, and fantasies.

What we are desiring isn’t present or we wouldn’t be desiring it.

Nor is what we fear.

Our fears are just as much of a figment of our imaginations as our desires.

None of these thoughts are real, and giving our attention to what is unreal brings us out of contact with what is real, where the aliveness of Being can be experienced.

Rejection and desire are the mechanisms with which we resist what is, which results in our suffering.

They operate in a cycle: We go back and forth from rejection to desire. We think, “This isn’t good. Maybe if I got this or if I meditated more or if I had a better lover or more money or more freedom, it would be better.” Then we go about trying to fulfill that desire and, regardless of whether we succeed or not, we come back to the point where we still reject whatever is present now.

Even when we get what we think we want, we may find that it’s not that great, so we dream up something else we believe will make things better.

This activity of desiring what isn’t present and rejecting what is, creates and sustains the sense of a small self, the me.

If things are lousy, they’re lousy for whom? For me. And if things could be better, better for whom? Better for me.

We’re often not even conscious of rejecting and desiring because we’re caught up in the content of our desires and fantasies. We get so hypnotized by our fantasies that we aren’t even aware they are contracting our sense of self and making us feel very small, incomplete, and unsatisfied.

Nevertheless, that sense of incompleteness can be trusted. It’s telling you how true it is that your fantasy will make you feel better. The sense of incompleteness and smallness in the experience of fantasizing shows you just how little truth there is in your fantasy.

Fantasies aren’t very true. They only exist in your mind. There isn’t much substance or reality to them.

You can also trust when your Heart feels very full and complete. The simple alternative to rejection and desire is to give your attention to all of what is here right now, not just to your thoughts and feelings.

The biggest surprise is discovering that there is no suffering even in our suffering!

When you give all of your attention to the actual experience of rejection and desire, the suffering that’s stuck in it dissolves.

When we become curious and attentive to the process of rejection, it no longer has any sting. If you become fully present in the movement of thought, a thought can be recognized for what it is: just a thought.

The next section was a deep question that I couldn’t stop thinking about and so I asked the question and allowed the divine intelligence to use me as a channel to answer this question. (More on me starting to be open to channeling in future newsletters, possibly.)

Q: The world we live in is becoming an ever-increasing source of distress and pain. What can we do? Must we suffer these things?

A: I do believe the world situation can be transformed, and I also believe it’s possible to transcend suffering. Just by letting things be the way they are, suffering dissolves (suffering was never real to begin with). Letting things be the way they are is also the most likely condition under which transformation on all levels can occur. Letting things be isn’t the cause of change, but rather it creates conditions that allow our deeper intelligence to work. You ask what you can do. The answer is to simply allow everything to be the way it is and also be curious and present to it all as you can. It is this mix of acceptance and curiosity that allows the open flow of our divine intelligence and inspiration to move in the world. There’s no nice, neat formula to what this looks like, and so any transformation or healing of our distress and difficulties will unfold organically and probably in a completely surprising and unexpected way.

I read in a Threads post the other day from this woman and she was talking about this:

that even in the midst of a profound experience of Oneness, she is still saddened by the suffering in the world, and she wonders why consciousness seems to need to suffer so much.

Here is my response:

The question of why consciousness needs suffering is a difficult question to answer, but we can get a hint of the answer by noticing how much suffering opens our Heart. It seems that even though consciousness is infinite, it still likes to stretch itself by opening even wider. Eventually we as individuals learn that we don’t need to suffer to open the Heart. It is a great relief to realize that we can just go directly to the love and the softness. But until we learn this, life keeps reminding us to open our Heart even wider by showing us the suffering that arises when we don’t.

Even when we have surrendered and given our Heart totally to the truth, we still experience the suffering of others so that we are inspired to reach out and show them the same love that has rescued us.

The pain itself is a good hurt like the good hurt from exercise.

In the end, suffering was all just an idea of suffering, and what is really happening is this stretching and unfolding of our infinite Heart.

There’s no suffering in the depths of love, and there never has been.