Post 11: The Transformation of Suffering

Title of Painting: The Storm

Anger, pain, confusion, emptiness, despair. You stand as the storm builds, as waves pummel and crash. Lightning strikes. Friends flee. You don’t run! You are alone in the cutting rawness of the world. You feel it all— reject nothing. You marvel. Being, awareness here in the storm. Then an unfathomable miracle— “I EXIST!” “I AM”

(The date of this social media post: Dec. 27, 2015)

The title of this blog could have also been “From Darkness to Light…Again and Again,” for that is how our journey feels. Our experience is like the ever-changing patterns of shadows and light created by clouds gliding over the landscape. It is in our very nature to go through these, often dramatic, shifts of mood.

When I unexpectedly find myself lost in the shadows, totally identified with some fear or pain, the first tool that often presents itself is acceptance. It is in the embracing of what is going on that things begin to transform. Merged with awareness, acceptance looks directly at the pain and turns it into pure vibration. Then the pain becomes soft and pliable—one can move through it and go beyond it.

Yet, as great as this transition is, it is but the beginning of our movement from suffering to Truth. Our condition, where we are presently, is so unstable, unreliable, and often painful. We have not yet moved to the miracle of what we really are—to where freedom and joy await us. It is not until we have had enough that we are finally willing to let go of this illusion we have created. Many of us will never get to this point. Instead, loving what they have created as the body/ego self, despite all its pain, they will refuse to let this self go as their sole identity. I am calling you to move to the revelation of your Self—to finally be done with the dark games of the ego and its whole drama.

How do we find this new sense of Self? The answer is simple. It is all around us. We move into space. How do we “move into space?” That too is simple. We look at it. We feel its energy. We let the mood of it, the life of it dye us through and through until we become one with it. Embrace space this moment with a warm welcome as your new Self.

Space will never let you down. At first, space may seem too simplistic, lacking in substance, complexity, or character. But as the life of space starts to open up to you, you will see it offers you so much more than the world of the ego. It offers you your magnitude, peace, consistency, and above all—Oneness and the Life of the Universe.

Listen to Space. Feel it. Let it teach you what It is and what you are. Let It become YOUR feelings—YOUR thoughts—thoughts of a wholly different nature. Perhaps you cannot feel or hear them yet; just be patient. You know this new world better than you think for you have only forgotten It, having long ago fallen asleep in the dream of the world. But this is the time to awaken and embrace YOURSELF—embrace Space. It loves you.

By doing this, you do not lose anything. The body continues to exist here in space and time; the dream of the world goes on. Most of the body sensation remain the same as before, but they are no longer possessed by the heaviness of the ego self—the sense of “me.” Now they just are. How miraculous the body now seems, existing in this dimension of space and time as an effect of our higher will or Cause—an extension into this dimension for extending love.

The awareness looking out of our face is a tiny expression of a vast transcendental reality that is our Self. We are pure awareness, pure being-ness, which we will discover at times, exits on an incredibly large scale. As we let our awareness extend out from the body into space, we will come to experience our magnitude. I am calling you to a whole new kind of relationship with your body, your Self, and this world.

We started this blog looking at our suffering, and we ended it with the glory of what we are. This is truly an amazing journey “From Darkness to Light.”

Our work now is to more and more consistently move to space as our primary sense of Self.