Dissolving Suffering

Knowing the facts is first step to recovery. Suffering alone can bring an end to suffering.

Staying busy with activities, goals and ambitions is a good thing but please be aware that these do not become means of escaping from your suffering. If focusing on these activities alleviates the pain or the trauma then it is there to resurface again given the right environment. Suffering alone can bring an end to suffering. Anything that moves you away from suffering is not its resolution but merely an escape. We don’t really suffer since we have been so afraid of it. We invent so many escapes that allow us to directly meet our sorrow. We even derive utility from suffering by calling it bhog and depletion thereof. We want to understand the cause of suffering and why the other hurt us. We blame ourselves for what we did or did not do. Most of all we find an escape in an activity, a person or a hobby. But we rarely ever truly meet our sorrow and suffer. What I am talking about is feeling the psychological pain through and through with the bodily sensations it creates. Have you really felt the numbness, the deep melancholy, the imperceptible longing for how things could be different, the total lack of motivation and desire, the various uncomfortable bodily sensations, the breaking of the edifice you so carefully sought and cultivated, the amputation that must be done and regret of letting go. Suffering must be felt along all these dimensions and more. The more you suffer every time it comes up and not escape, not rationalize, not give a motive or meaning to your suffering, the freer you will become.

Every feeling, every thought must be scrutinized. Feel and think out issues that bother you. Please make sure that you allow yourself to suffer. What I am talking about is gut wrenching suffering that you never allowed to take place. More than likely, what you have felt all along is the anger at having been wronged, betrayed, molested and abused. Anger is mostly where it stops. But you can take it further than this and put an end to this suffering by logically going where your psyche wants to take you if you were to not erect any defenses. The unresolved is seeking expression and if you will let the suffering and sorrow flower they will reach their logical conclusion and will be no more. What will remain after that is a certain, quiet sadness at why fate dealt you this hand but sadness is not suffering. People in the slums are inherently sad about their lot but many live a life of laughter and accomplishment. Sadness is the residue of suffering. I am not sure if it can be removed endogenously.

Endogenously one can only go so far. Comfort and truth are at odds here. This is almost a curse. One wishes for comfort but that cannot be had if you want the truth. This is ego at play that won’t surrender. But then what are you if you surrender. But then is that just ego expressing or claiming its identity. Can the ego somehow annihilate itself? Then what will you be. Nothing. There might be a place in our minds where we are beyond mind itself.