Our Gifts come from Our Suffering?

Our Gifts come from Our Suffering?

During a meeting with a friend of mine who’s a medium, we had a rather instructive conversation. She said that our pain and lessons bring us what we have to offer. Our gifts to others arise from where we have suffered. We can thus support others through that experience.

This struck me as similar to the idea that you have to suffer to be creative, that art arises from suffering. I think there is something valuable to see here but we can understand life better by framing this a little differently.

Often we can point to an incident in our childhood somewhere in the 7 to 11 year-old range when we were first confronted with a challenge to our sense of things. When we began to become.

For the most part, the reason we suffer is from fighting what is. Resisting what arises in our life and thus building a stash of incomplete feelings and action. When the flow of life moves through us, it runs up against these unresolved barriers. We experience this friction and resistance as discomfort, pain, and suffering. Even illness.

There is an irresistible force that is moving through our lives. The same force that creates and sustains the universe. It is the flow of love. The creative force of God. And we stand there pushing back, turning our lives into a storm. Wondering why it’s not working. That we are not knocked flat is a testament to our power.

That flow through our life that causes our biggest challenges is indeed our gift. It is what life intends for us to give by moving through us. We just have to get out of the way. Then magically, the lesson becomes a flow, the pain becomes love. Instead of suffering, we radiate.

It’s very curious really. It is only our battling with windmills (a la Don Quixote) that creates this sense of difficulty. All we have to do is stop fighting. Then the battle ends, both inside and outside.

But this can take some time. We have not been trusting life for a very long time. Our heart has been closed, our mind shadowed, our senses blinkered. We have been living a dream of separation. Yet we stand in an ocean of love.

It’s who we are. How do we miss it?  That’s why they call it the illusion.
Davidya

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8 Comments

  1. Ben

    Hi Davidaya!

    Happy Thanksgiving!

    You write…

    “We have not been trusting life for a very long time.”

    Exactly. Not only have I not been trusting life. I have no real and authentic way “through my thoughts” to trust, accept, surrender, or be humble. I can’t despite all efforts to know this with my thoughts. Thoughts are a look backwards after the direct experience has happened.

    Why I write this is that I had many ideas early on about the way life is that stuck with me. They were so strong and embedded that when I was older I didn’t even know they were operating in my life. I couldn’t see them. They were “me” as I defined myself so completely that they were hidden.

    When seeing through these roles and strategies to define life according to a point of view and old conclusions what I realize is that I will never know this. In the end, I am THIS having exhausted all those strategies to control and know life. It is at that point I can open to something new.

    So, I have pounded my fists on the floor, cried, dropped to my knees, raised my fists in the air cursing, and none of it carried me over the threshold.

    My Awakenings were given… true there was a willingness to toss it all over board and still that was insufficient as I suffered so much before I was granted any relief. The 40 days and 40 nights seemed like a decade.

    My point? It was the suffering and facing it directly that led me to the point where all my knowings and all my tries failed. What is already here is this aliveness… the nectar of life that will come.

    Now I am willing to trust that grace is sufficient even beyond my willing. ;o)

    Very nice entry.
    Ben

  2. Davidya

    Wow, Ben. Thanks for sharing that. You’ve seen it clearly which means it has worked. But not how we think it should work. One cannot use mind to overcome mind or ego to overcome ego. This is the trap many of us seem to be in. (this does not mean mental techniques don’t work – but thinking it through doesn’t work)

    You can’t think humble to be humble. It is a letting go.

    Yes, we can’t see the box when were in it, just as we can’t see what a house looks like from the outside when we’re inside it.

    “I will never know this.” The me will never know but this does not mean it cannot be known.

    Yes, it is suffering that eventually leads us to stop suffering. (laughs) Sometimes I think we’re pretty slow learners though. Part of that though is that we’re in a time of great opening. The habits of old continue but now we begin to see through them. This can take some time, but a few decades is nothing in the context of thousands of years. 😉

    Thanks again Ben

  3. Sharon

    Hi, this is Share/Sharon from “gas pump” group. My buddy Carolo referred me to your blogspot and to this posting in particular.

    “We have been living a dream of separation. Yet we stand in an ocean of love.”

    Beautiful beautiful beautiful mahavaikya. Thank you.

  4. Davidya

    Hi Sharon
    Welcome to the blog. And thanks. I’m currently writing another post in a similar theme – why suffering is not necessary to awaken. Have gotten a little behind here with all the volume there. (laughs) But the coming post was drawn from that….

  5. Davidya

    NOTE: The sentence on childhood refers back to prior articles. This is around the age where our story engages and we begin to react to events that arise rather than simply experiencing them.

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