Notes

Stop Useless Suffering Before It Begins
If there may be only 1 idea - a lamp whose light could show the aspirant of real life the way from the prison of dark thoughts and punishing feelings - it would 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 simply 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, generally, their response is to cling even more tightly with their suffering. With few exceptions, the justification of their pain is as follows: given what they will have had to endure, there is absolutely no alternative but this - their pain.

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

Many things which have happened, and that continue steadily to happen inside our world are, at best, dark and difficult to handle. Let there be no question about this: sleeping human beings do terrible things to others, in addition to to themselves.

But the a key point here, for all those seeking the Self that never dies, is that passing events - in themselves - don't have the power to create us suffer. It 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 aren't the source of our psychological suffering, is situated in the inspiring life stories of several people throughout history. One by one, we learn how individuals, facing impossibly painful conditions, not only transcend the hardships they face, but emerge from them for some reason transfigured. And what one can do, all can do; the victory of a single soul over any darkness lights the road for all that follow. A few real-life stories help illustrate this beautiful truth.

Not many years ago, an excellent young athlete was injured within an accident that left him paralyzed. Rather than 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 minus the accident that took his legs, his eyes never could have been opened to see there is a complete new dimension of life just waiting for him to be awakened to it. His life-shattering experience had so transformed all that he knew about life before it that, if given a selection, he wouldn't change whatever had happened.

How did he turn out on top of life-conditions that have a tendency to bury most others? Rather than be dragged down by it, he agreed to learn the life-elevating lesson that lies hidden in all unwanted moments.

Choosing this right path when confronted with his pain brought him immeasurable rewards. For instance, he found realize, once we must, that his true Self isn't linked with his physical body, or to the results of any unwanted circumstances. His awakening to truths like this fulfilled him with techniques that no man-made trophy ever could. Although in the eyes of the planet he had become more limited, in fact his universe had expanded to understand a fresh sense of freedom beyond anything he might have wished for in his former state. A devastating event, that could have sown the seeds of bitter regret and resentment, grew instead right into a soul-ennobling opportunity that gave him a complete new way to look at his life. A vintage Arabic saying suggests the secret behind this triumph: "The type 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. While 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 linked with the meanness and cruelty of the world where they found themselves physically, they achieved a spiritual understanding that lifted their lives - among others around them in the same dark situation - far beyond the reach of man's inhumanity to man.

Such transformation is largely 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 help transport us from our present degree of understanding to an increased one, requires that people develop a new relationship with one of these unwanted events inside our lives.

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

Yes, the path that leads to revelation is more difficult, but only initially. Following its way, we are asked to look for the source of our suffering within us, rather than what our suffering points to beyond 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 can be brought to a finish.

Author Vernon Howard always encouraged his students to choose and only this "uphill" path, regardless of how challenging it could 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, like the darkness in oneself: "Take the simple way, and perpetuate the hard life; take the hard way, and realize the easy life."

Though it may seem too steep a hill to climb, especially the first time we consider its ascent, nevertheless, here's the first step leading to freedom from useless suffering: we should 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 feeling of any pain is real, but some tips about what we must arrived at see - if we would set ourselves free: all of the excuses we're handed - by ourselves - for why we must continue to hurt ourselves are like flies that travel with trash.

How to Gain Self Confidence 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 following summary of this study. Within them rests the understanding - and the energy - it is advisable 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 source of that pain it justifies.

Key Lesson

We are wrongly led to believe that life makes us in to the kind of person we have been. In truth, it's our level of knowing that makes life what it really is for us! This is the reason nothing can really change for all of us until we see that trying to change some condition in life, without first changing the consciousness responsible for its appearance, is similar to... blaming the mirror for what we can't stand seeing in it!

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

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

Within the worldwide release of Guy Finley's new book THE TRICK of Your Immortal Self: Key Lessons for Realizing the Divinity Within, receive five free gifts from Guy, including his groundbreaking new full-length audio album "The Golden Rule of Self-Realization" filled with guiding wisdom and the easy practices you can utilize to begin living from your authentic self Click for details.
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