A Closer Look at Suffering

What we think of as suffering is really fear that we will be condemned and punished at some point in the future; that we will regret and lament the position that we've worked ourselves into; that we will be forced to hate ourselves for who we are now, looking back from the future. This unbearable thought causes us to shudder—and it is this trembling vibration that we experience as pain. The pain has no reality in truth—it is an illusion constructed in our imagining of our future condemnation—in the same sense as a nightmare dream. If we reach a certain point of honesty, we can look back at the entirety of our own past sufferings and will only find the false anticipation of pain and judgment—the fear of it—but not the bad thing itself. That pain, that suffering, it was never actual. It was an illusion created by entertaining fear, and is one more illusion we can practice letting go of—that we can forgive. To the extent that we expose this dynamic and look beyond it now, the illusion of suffering breaks. We can let go of the victim narrative and forgive our offenders all the imagined hurts we think they caused us. It is now—and always was—OK. We were always safe and nothing could harm us in truth.

Looking inward to expose the falseness of suffering can be done always, as a way of forgiving—of relaxing—of eliminating fear. The big bad thing we fear never comes. It hasn't gotten us yet. The proof is that we are still ourselves. Why, then, would it get us in the future?