“True spirituality is a sacred entry into suffering, like someone entering a temple to pray.”From Deshojando el Corazón de la Eternidad
All our experiences and actions flow as if in an ocean littered with garbage. Sooner or later, the waves will push everything to the shore, and that is where we will have to deal with it.
But it is hard for us to do so. I create suffering and then I do not want to own what I have created: that is the behavior we always hide behind to avoid it. And yet the soul has to learn from what it has created, because we cannot forget that we are co-creators of the universe.
The first suffering
The primordial suffering of human beings is not knowing who they really are. From there a second stage is born that increases it: not finding an answer to that question, to the point of losing all sense of reality.
When we lose our focus, we get trapped in this physical creation. We over-identify with the experiences, the desires and the situations that we ourselves co-create, until we lose ourselves in the fascination of material existence. We forget our Divine Presence and lay a false identity over it: we believe we are our name and everything that adorns it. That is what blinds us to the Divine Presence that we already are, here and now.
We suffer because we have become disconnected from our Being. And it is an experience that grows, because unconsciousness and the ignorance of what we really are increase suffering and pain, and the mistakes we make keep adding up like the beads of an abacus.
The opposite of what we were taught
The process of freeing ourselves from suffering is precisely the opposite of what we have been taught. We do not have to escape from it. We must recognize that everything we live is an extension of ourselves, at one level or another. When you observe it that way, as your own extension, you make it dissipate.
But it is hard to accept that this is so, because we never stop handing all our power over to the mind. We have given ourselves over to a consumerist materialism that sells us, elegantly packaged, the idea that the end of suffering lies outside us, in trivial things that distract us for a moment from what afflicts us. That is how we disconnect from the present, obeying the mind in its distractions.
We hold on to it out of fear
We ourselves are the ones holding up the shell of suffering, because we are afraid to live without it. We stay in harmful relationships simply because they have become familiar to us, and the same happens with suffering: we keep feeding it for fear of breaking away from what we already know, for fear of a loss, a detachment or a change.
Many times we tie ourselves down with vows we make to ourselves. We condition ourselves to people, facts and events, and we decree that we will remain in them, convinced that it is the right thing to do. If this is your case, you will need to make new vows to yourself, to let go, to detach and to free yourself. Do not tie yourself to your own ignorance, believing there are no other possibilities for you.
Observe your mind as well. It always encourages you to keep swimming in your pain, justifying you again and again in your feelings of hatred or anger, making you believe you have reason enough, or that you are a victim unable to find other options. There, in those justifications, is where your own light is draining away.
Love is not pain
Love and pain are opposites. Love is not pain, and pain is not love. However, the opposite idea can be embedded in us from early childhood, when our parents are the most important people in our lives. If you were raised with pain, you learned to love your own tormentor and grew up believing that people are entitled to hurt you. And so you end up loving the ones who hurt you.
I say this from my own life: the father I loved the hardest was the one who hurt me the most. There came a moment when I realized I did not want to carry that pain on my shoulders anymore, let alone bring it into the lives of those I love. So I accepted my decision to lead a life based on love instead of pain.
The idea that love hurts must be removed from our hearts. We cannot build our lives around pain, and we must learn from it, accepting it as a lesson for the growth of our soul. But pain is not always a requirement for learning; a lot of that is also found in love and harmony.
Facing it without fear
It is not about wanting to suffer in order to transform yourself. But neither can we run away from the monsters we ourselves have created: the more we try to get away from them, the bigger they grow. That is why we must face them without fear. Suffering is the most significant wake-up call life gives us, and it is necessary to accept it and not evade it.
When we feel powerless, abandoned, sunk in the most complete loneliness; when we give up and surrender to that suffering, when everything seems to be sinking beneath our feet, there, precisely there, is when we can enter into communion with the universe or with the Supreme Being. You are not alone in your suffering. The Divine Presence is with you, holding your suffering; the universal Father-Mother is being the consciousness that suffers what is happening to you.
Breaking the shell
When you stop and become aware of your sufferings, you can recognize them and transform them. It is very important to cleanse yourself emotionally, but above all it is about fostering your presence. Enter into a devotional process: what the universal Father-Mother most wants for you is a pure heart.
Breaking the shell of suffering means entering into something so simple that it is truly astonishing. Everything is always simpler than the mind can conceive. We have to learn that there is love and happiness alongside suffering, and that love in action becomes compassion.
Trust needs to be developed. I can assure you that, once you embrace the change in your life, the Universe will allow you to live in harmony and, at one point or another, it will be in charge of reminding you what the best decision is. Connect with your heart today and allow Divinity to reveal itself to you in any of the millions of ways it could.
From Dr. Zuluan Orion's books: El refugio del corazón · Deshojando el Corazón de la Eternidad · Illumination