notes on being and suffering
Being exists outside time and space. Therefore, it belongs to the infinite. We often think of the infinite from a finite perspective — that the infinite goes on forever like heaven. We may be imagining that the infinite is horizontal. An alternate way to conceive of the infinite is “the infinite in the moment” or in a vertical perspective — something that happens right now in the eternal. Nevertheless, each of these two ways of conceiving the infinite puts them into a form so that we can think about it when it may be too formless to wrap our thinking around it at all.
Human language cannot describe or in any way quantify Being. To begin to understand Being we may surrender to a feeling and a sense of it. It is both vast and can “fit on the head of a pin”. Being is analogous to the quantum world where light is a wave and a particle. Experiences of Being often leads us to flashes of enlightenment. Nevertheless, Being belongs with Mystery.
Is there a purpose to suffering or is it just a random pain in the ass? Let’s suppose it has a purpose. Our spirit — as long as we believe or sense a life separate from the life that begins with birth and ends with death — inhabits our physical body. At death, the body dies and Spirit moves on. Why its called “The Afterlife” seems like an oxymoron to me. It might be re-named to “The Between Life” or “The Life Freed of the Physical”.
Suffering happens through injury and entropy as the body wears out and dies. The injury could be physical, emotional, sexual and /or spiritual of any combinations thereof. Entropy is the finite condition of the body wearing down through use and aging. Since humans will go to great lengths to avoid experiencing suffering including hating it then the purpose of suffering is most likely lost on these people. That pretty much includes almost everyone since a natural proclivity of humans is to resist and/or avoid pain instead of dealing with it directly. This process of not wanting to deal with pain appears to be hard-wired into our biology. Taking suffering on without suffering over suffering can be a way to create energy. The creation of energy could be the purpose of suffering when awareness is applied.
Our suffering over suffering is another way of stating that we become attached to suffering as in “My pain was off the charts today” etc. People with “disease titles” begin to define themselves based on their disease. The catch-22 is that the natural state of humans is to become attached. There can be an additional amount of pain within our attachment to the pain we experience. Buddhism is the study of release from attachment, by the way and has a long history as well as methods — through a variety of spiritual practices to release attachments.
The purpose of suffering when experienced with awareness from a witness place within ourselves can create energy when observed. The mere experience of observing something within ourselves without judgment and from a place of unattached or universal compassion releases some of the attachment — but only in the moment.
In the following conversation between a seeker who is questioning (a Seeker Questioning) or SQ and a guide providing optional answers of OA (the author) is a slightly different twist to the Q/A process:
A Night of Weirdness
SQ: Weird for me was that I felt like I was pre-fever, pre-lethargy, my skin felt uncomfortable like I was almost getting sick. It wasn’t fun.
OA: Your night-self [was]detoxing your fears.
SQ: Maybe
OA: Your fears keep you from seeing / feeling the resplendent radiant you.
SQ: I am resplendent! Rarrw!!
OA: Better. Now believe it without the theatrics. Your unadulterated presence is a force from your being that — is. Once you fully realize that, then all your dreams will come true via being and less doing.
SQ: I’m trying to being. Except my body hurts and I feel like I’ve had something going through me and it feels weird
OA: There is no try. Being is. Being doesn’t mean one does not experience pain and /or suffering, joy and ecstasy- Being includes all experience and turns it into transcendental enlightenment, love and compassion for oneself and every being everywhere. Being allows us to release our attachments to pain and suffering (where attachment can be 50% of the suffering for example). This allows the light of the self to embrace the fragile ego in each of us. The light of the self — fills us with love to assist our core self and ego to release attachment to pain and suffering in the moment.
OA: I feel the worry / anxiety in you about the weird thing going through you.
OA: If you can release the worry etc. and realize the part of yourself that is aware of the thing going through you, with out attachment to the weird and it’s associations then you may be able to experience being.
The exchange was done by texting, between a young woman I consider a daughter — though we are not related through bloodline and used by her permission. Thank-you.
