🌦️ On Pain and Suffering

When faced by sickness or misfortune, it is easy to become delirious. Rejecting reality and escaping from pain seems so alluring when the present moment is so far from our expectations.

We no longer see what is in front of us and we live as though unconscious, somehow accomplishing everything without a trace of it in memory.

But pain has utility insofar as we realise it as a tool to become present and for accepting our lives totally. When you are in pain next, realise how much you try to numb the pain and treat the pain, and distract yourself from thoughts about the pain, and seek entertainment as distraction, and the myriad other things you might do.

Pain can manifest as physical sensation or emotions - these are the two things which seem to create or be interpreted as suffering. At a more enlightened and spiritual level, all suffering can be reduced to just desiring. At our current level, which includes most of us, we see suffering as sickness, pain, disease, misfortune, etc.

And why do we desire? To satisfy our ego. By attaining and having things, we build our sense of self - and having convinced ourselves that our identity is based on what we have and what is done to us, we suffer when things go awry. To lose something, be it wealth, respect, love, health, means death to the ego.

But we will never have enough, since our sense of self is not determined by ourselves but by our context. Our thirst for wealth, power, respect, glory, is insatiable. Attaining a true sense of self cannot be through possessing, and no amount of ego-gratification can provide lasting satisfaction and long-term fulfilment.

So what then defines us, if not the glory, wealth, and fame we might possess? Who are we at a core?

I think ultimately we are our actions. We are what we do in every moment. All of us either act according to the past, or the future, or the present. We either act striving to preserve our ego, or act striving to destroy it. Every time we take offence, feel jealous, get riled up, feel depressed, feel helpless, even feel fear - this is all in accordance with trying to preserve the life of the ego.

When we have realised the full extent to which our ego controls us, outwardly we would appear to have a quite confidence. No complaints would even rise to a thought. There would be no hesitation in making decisions. Others would look at us as though extreme, but to us it would be mere simplicity.

But to reach this state, or even begin to reach it, we need to first become conscious of how attached we are to our ego at every moment we can. Every moment we neglect monitoring our thoughts and observing ourselves is another moment spent in unconsciousness!