Welcome the inevitability of the moment🔗

To start with, we need to understand that suffering is not a state of life, it is a state of mind. It is not an event in your life; it is your response to some event. Whether you suffer or not in a particular situation depends entirely on your reaction to that situation.

When do you undergo suffering? Maybe when you fall ill or when your neighbor gets a new car or when your loved one leaves you or when your boss fires you etc.

Suppose you decided to just accept these situations without anger or resentment just as they are, would you still suffer as much? After all, there is nothing inherently painful about your neighbor getting a new car. Even if there is pain in the moment, as when a loved one leaves, you cannot wish it away.

Try to accept, to welcome the inevitability of the moment without reaction. It is only your negative response to an experience that allows it to hurt you.

No one or nothing can make you suffer without your silent permission.

Acceptance with awareness

Make a habit of witnessing experiences minus your personal judgment. Learn to recognize with clarity the causes of your suffering, both the obvious and the subtle.

An important thing you should know: one of the most deeply hidden reasons for suffering is that you could be enjoying it. For example, falling ill can become a source of pleasure if it fetches you the attention and care you have been craving for. Look deeply why it sometimes gives you pleasure to inflict pain on yourself or on others. Is there a better channel through which you can receive the same pleasure without the suffering?

Become aware - this is the first step.

The second is to accept totally the here and now, without question and without reaction.

Acceptance with awareness - this is the only way out of suffering.

In a way suffering is essential because suffering can be a powerful catalyst to growth. Just like a seed first has to rupture before a plant can grow and blossom, intense suffering can break down the defenses of your ego, leaving you open and vulnerable to existence.

In the Mahabharata, there is a beautiful quote by Kunti, the mother of the Pandavas. She says, 'Oh Krishna! Let pain and suffering come from all sides in my life. They will constantly remind me about you, my Lord.'

Suffering is not necessarily the key to bliss. But if you learn your lesson well, suffering can certainly open your eyes to the unreality of suffering. It can teach you how unnecessary it is to suffer at all. This is what I call 'necessary suffering'!

A small story:

Once the pope sent a message to the chief of the African tribe, asking how their missionaries were doing. The chief wrote, 'Oh they are great, so loving, so compassionate, so much of service they offer, and they're very tasty also!'

We are also continuously eaten, we do not know, we are eaten by the pain. Our whole life we are just swallowed by pain. If you have heard of the concept of pralaya, it is the total destruction of the earth. The real pralaya that happens to our life is pain.

Just see, it starts with the pain, the pain of the birth, the excruciating pain that you have to undergo at the time of taking birth. Because you have to cross a very small passage, such a big body has to come out of a small passage. Excruciating pain, you actually enter into a coma when you come out. According to energy, according to the mystics, before entering into the world, you are consciousness. You enter into coma and come out, that is why you forget the past life, the past births. It starts with the excruciating pain and there is excruciating pain in the end, the death.

Almost life is like the bridge between pain and pain. If you see the Golden Gate Bridge, in USA, just as the Golden Gate Bridge connects two places, life is nothing but the pain to the pain.

This body can teach you a lot of things. If you can work on this body this body can teach a lot of things to you in life. The pain is not only the physical pains but more importantly the psychological pains and emotional pains also. Physical injuries can be healed just by a little bit of medicine. But psychological injuries take a long time to get healed. When you fight with each other, you actually get psychological injuries.