Notes

Stop Useless Suffering Before It Begins
If there could be only one idea - a lamp whose light could show the aspirant of true to life the way out of the prison of dark thoughts and punishing feelings - it could surely be this: Your true Self doesn't win in life by overpowering problems, but by revealing they hardly ever really existed as you once believed they did.

Truths such as this can be difficult to accept. Tell some people the foundation of their present mental or emotional pain is really a negative by-product of a mind trapped in an illusion and, as a rule, their response is to cling even more tightly with their suffering. With few exceptions, the justification of their pain is really as follows: given what they have had to endure, there is no alternative but this - their pain.

So before we go any farther, let's set the record straight:

Many things that have happened, and that continue steadily to happen in our world are, at best, dark and difficult to cope with. Let there be no question relating to this: sleeping humans do terrible what to others, in addition to to themselves.

But the key point here, for those seeking the Self that never dies, is that passing events - in themselves - don't have the power to make us suffer. It really is our negative reactions that first blind us, bind us, and then hurl us right into a world of hurt.

The proof of this crucial finding, that events themselves are not the source of our psychological suffering, is situated in the inspiring life stories of several people throughout history. One at a time, we learn how individuals, facing impossibly painful conditions, not merely transcend the hardships they face, but emerge from them in some way transfigured. And what you can do, all can do; the victory of a single soul over any darkness lights the road for several that follow. Several real-life stories help illustrate this beautiful truth.

Not many years back, a brilliant young athlete was injured within an accident that left him paralyzed. Instead of falling into despair, he continued to help other teenagers who have been similarly injured to overcome their sense of loss and to lead healthy, productive lives.

In an interview about how the accident had changed his life, and how his loss had come to enrich the lives of others like himself, he made some very revealing comments. He told the reporter that without the accident that took his legs, his eyes never would have been opened to see there is a whole new dimension of life just waiting for him to be awakened to it. read more -shattering experience had so transformed all that he knew about life before it that, if given a choice, he wouldn't change whatever had happened.

How did he come out together with life-conditions that tend to bury most others? Instead of be dragged down because of it, he decided to learn the life-elevating lesson that lies hidden in every unwanted moments.

Choosing this right path in the face of his pain brought him immeasurable rewards. For example, he found realize, as we must, that his true Self is not linked with his physical body, or to the results of any unwanted circumstances. His awakening to truths such as this fulfilled him with techniques that no man-made trophy ever could. Although in the eyes of the world he had are more limited, in fact his universe had expanded to understand a new sense of freedom beyond anything he might have hoped for in his former state. A devastating event, which could have sown the seeds of bitter regret and resentment, grew instead into a soul-ennobling opportunity that gave him a complete new way to look at his life. A vintage Arabic saying suggests the trick behind this triumph: "The nature of rain is the same, nonetheless it makes thorns grow in the marshes and flowers in the gardens."

In his inspiring book Man's Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl describes his experiences as a prisoner in a Nazi death camp. Even though many became embittered and hardened within their captivity, some were able to transcend even their horrifying circumstances to build up a relationship with a higher power.

No longer tied to the meanness and cruelty of the planet in which they found themselves physically, they achieved a spiritual knowing that lifted their lives - and others around them in exactly the same dark situation - far beyond the reach of man's inhumanity to man.

Such transformation is basically incomprehensible to those who believe their anger at some injustice makes their hatred righteous. The spiritually blind suffer only themselves, but always "see" others as being responsible for why they feel the pain and sorrow they do.

To be able to see any life event - good or bad - as a "vehicle" to greatly help transport us from our present level of understanding to an increased one, requires that we create a new relationship with these unwanted events inside our lives.

Instead of trying to protect ourselves from their website, we must be ready to see what they're revealing to us about ourselves in that same moment. The difference between both of these paths, and their attending possibilities, cannot be overstated. The latter results in the truth that the Divine already includes a higher purpose for our life, one which includes all of the powers we have to transcend any painful situation; while the former path ensures the fear and suffering which are inseparable from trying to protect the false images we have of ourselves, with their imagined false purposes.

Yes, the path that leads to revelation is more difficult, but only in the beginning. Following its way, we have been asked to look for the source of our suffering within us, instead of what our suffering points to outside of us to be its cause. Why choose this route?

Because it's only by deliberately illuminating these darkened corners of our own consciousness - where shadowy parts of us work in secret to misdirect us - that their authority over us could be brought to a finish.

Author Vernon Howard always encouraged his students to select and only this "uphill" path, regardless of how challenging it may appear. His teaching on the subject was direct, and perfectly clear to anyone weary of walking in circles. He always said when facing any difficult situation, including the darkness in oneself: "Take the easy way, and perpetuate the hard life; take the hard way, and realize the simple life."

Though it may seem too steep a hill to climb, especially the very first time we consider its ascent, nevertheless, here's the first step that leads to freedom from useless suffering: we must begin to doubt our very own suffering. To the idea the masses cry, "Impossible... Pain so real as ours is undeniable!"

No one says to deny this pain, or even to otherwise pretend it's not there. Yes, the sensation of any pain is real, but here's what we must come to see - if we'd set ourselves free: all of the excuses we're handed - by ourselves - for why we should continue to hurt ourselves are like flies that travel with trash.

The only real purpose they serve would be to make something worthless seem valuable; garbage is garbage, regardless of how it comes wrapped!

Consider closely the twin truths in the next summary of this study. Within them rests the understanding - and the energy - you need to start throwing useless suffering out the entranceway:

1. The justification of any negative state serves one end only: the protection and the preservation of the type in charge of its manifestation.

2. Any section of our nature that finds justification to justify our pain... is the way to obtain that pain it justifies.

Key Lesson

We are wrongly resulted in think that life makes us in to the kind of person we have been. In reality, it's our degree of knowing that makes life what it is for us! That is why nothing really can change for all of us until we note that attempting to change some condition in life, without first changing the consciousness in charge of its appearance, is like... blaming the mirror for what we can't stand seeing in it!

From The Secret of one's Immortal Self by Guy Finley. © 2015 by Guy Finley. Used by permission from Llewellyn Worldwide, Ltd.

Guy Finley may be the best-selling author of a lot more than 40 books and audio albums on self-realization. He is the founder and director of Life of Learning Foundation, a nonprofit center for self-study situated in southern Oregon where he gives talks open to the general public four times every week. For more information please visit http://www.guyfinley.org/

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