the Gift of Suffering
How you see things will always depend on where you are standing….
Well, that sure was an interesting trip!
Having spent much of the last week bouncing between the depths of despair and a feeling of nothing other than joy and love, I ended the week going as deep, if not deeper into despair than I may have experienced before.
I am aware that suffering is a well worn path to arriving at a place of the sweet clarity of the moment, but still I’m not sure I would wish it on anyone - forgetting of course that the Bhudda’s very first noble truth is, we all suffer.
So if it’s going to happen anyway then I hope this may help you to reframe your own suffering - not that the experience itself will be any less painful, but that there may be an opportunity for a different outcome at the end.
Whenever you suffer, you can look back on the expereince and simply try to discard it in the hope that it will not happen again (and all the very best of luck with that), or you can take a moment to ask, “What is the lesson here? What is life trying to show me?”
I choose the latter option.
So, ignoring the stories, they always come down to the same thiing - I have no worth whatsoever and am failing at life.
That is a really painful story but it’s the truth of what was going on.
Having faced that and allowed it to be, without trying to make it better, without trying to repress or suppress it or to rum away from it, I eventually emerged.
The lesson for me was this:
The story that I am a terrible person who can do nothing but fail is false.
It is a story with no more reality than Harry Potter.
There is a part of me that will almost certainly react to life this way - it is called my ego and the stories it tells are very familiar to me.
Having travelled through the dark night of suffering, I arrived at a place where I no longer need external verification to see the truth of who I am.
And the truth is, I am actually quite precious.
I do not mean this in any vain manner.
I am no better or worse than anyone else on the planet.
It is simply that I recognise my intrinsic vallue as a human being having this quite troublesome human experience.
With all of its drama.
Recognising my value includes recognising my human failings.
It means I see that my failings do not diminish my value, nor do they define me in any way.
It means accepting myself exactly as I am and not wishing anything to be any different from how it is.
it means giving myself full permission to be exactly as I am.
Arriving at this place allows me to relax.
And then there is space.
And then there is room for the Love to come flooding in.
