Week 2: Letting go of Needless Suffering

“Your attachment to suffering
is greater than the attachment to your pleasure.”

Gourasana

To live in a body in the material world means suffering. For some people, that is very obvious, for others it is not so apparent.

There is a suffering like illness, war, murder, that we can’t do much about. And there is a suffering that we create ourselves because we hold on to illusions and mind patterns.

There is unnecessary suffering that you yourself have the power to change. One of the ways it shows is being attached to how we think “it” should be: concepts and beliefs, which all turns into non-stop judgments. And that turns into resistance.

Many are also attached to feeling painful feelings, which keep us in the hamster wheel of wallowing.

In order to step out of unnecessary suffering we need to take the responsibility for how we allow the illusion to influence us. “To step out” means letting go of old habits and ways of thinking and behaving that we might have done for most of your life.

For us as seekers for God’s love and truth, it is vital that we become aware to what extend we allow our minds to keep us in these illusory behaviors. Not only because we really suffer, but also because we are blocking God and Gourasana’s energy and love. The patterns of needless suffering keep us trapped in the illusion.

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Possible areas for you to explore to see where (and how) you keep yourself in needless suffering:

Judgments

• “I can’t do it. I am not qualified. I’ll never make it. It is not right for me. I should feel differently than I do.”
• Concepts
• “I have to be a certain way for God to love me. Once I do these specific things, then I’ll be worthy and then things will change.”

Beliefs

• “I’m not lovable. I can’t make it. There’s something wrong with me. This is just the way I am. This is just how my mind works.”

Being stuck in an issue and creating a story

• Maybe you can think of at least one example where you’ve done that.

Being triggered, losing your state of connection and yet still continuing to justify doing this.

Defensiveness – completely a state of suffering. It leads nowhere.

Continuing to go back to living in the past

• How often do you go back and dredge something up from your childhood or earlier years in your life? You let go of something and then you pick it up and recreate it.

Wallowing in endless feelings

• Your feelings are a way to open yourself to God, but they can be a big spiritual hamster wheel if you don’t move through and let them go.

Complaining

• This is one action that everyone can take. It is like a habit to see everything through the filter of something is wrong.

Ten No’s

• We are all familiar with them.
• (If you were at the Advanced Intensive last September, remember Juan’s presentation about the 10 No’s and the examples, which people gave of themselves. This event is available in a Make-Up format for a fee. Contact Registration@miracle.org if you are interested.)
• The Ten No’s can be downloaded from the “Materials” tab at the top of this page.

Take some time this week and evaluate for yourself where one or several of these illusory behaviors exist in your life. And then see what is the right action so you can change.

“Every day closer and closer to God, and freer and freer.
Freer and freer every day, and closer and closer to God every day.
And you need to do everything that you can do every day to make that happen.”

Kalindi (From the RTF Talk “It Is Possible – We Need to Get Going“)