That I Might Know You in Your Suffering

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Suffering.

Simply the word brings upwards images of death, despair, and agony. It may remind us of the worst times we've experienced in life: loved ones we've lost, relationships that bankrupt upward despite all our best hopes, feelings of loneliness, and deep low.

Equally presently as nosotros're old enough to know the first hints of suffering from hunger and cold to jealousy or abandonment most of u.s. start seeking the quickest possible antidotes to that suffering.

Our physiological and instinctive reaction to hurting and suffering is to escape it.

When you lot affect a hot stove your manus will be pulled back before you even consciously realize it.

Just facing suffering in our conscious mind can be even harder.

That's because nosotros want to either get rid of the suffering or make sense of it and sometimes neither of these options is possible.

That'south where facing and accepting suffering becomes the merely option.

What is suffering?

The fact is that suffering is an inevitable role of life, from aging and decease to heartbreak and thwarting.

Physical suffering is pain, aging, deterioration, and injury. Emotional suffering is expose, sadness, loneliness, and feelings of inadequacy or blind rage.

Where suffering becomes even harder, nonetheless, is in our minds and in the stories we brand almost it.

Faced with the painful reality of suffering many of us endeavor to make sense out of it in a framework nosotros can understand: nosotros inquire questions and struggle with the idea of fairness,for example, or situate difficult experiences and trials within a religious or spiritual context.

Many even cling to false ideas well-nigh the meaning of karma to reassure themselves that suffering is happening for a practiced or "justified" reason.

Our technologically advanced Western societies often respond to death and suffering by banalizing and trivializing them. We endeavor to escape the trauma by denying it really exists in the first place.

But the fact is that this is never going to work.

Suffering is part of existence, and even the most picture-perfect life on the exterior often has a deep core of pain in the past which you know nothing nigh as an outside observer.

As DMX puts it — quoting Nietzsche — in his 1998 song "Slippin':"

"To live is to suffer.

To survive, well, that'due south to find meaning in the suffering."

Here are ten aspects of suffering that can help you to lead a fuller life:

i) Merely know you've been high when yous're feeling low

The fact of the matter is that you aren't going to be the kickoff person in history who avoids any suffering.

Lamentable to break it to you.

Just suffering is the cost of the ticket for this ride nosotros call life.

Even if you endeavor to close downward any suffering you call up is nether your command it won't work. For case, if yous've been let downwardly in love and put your guard upwards you lot may miss out on the next take a chance for a loving partner, leading to years of regret and loneliness.

Only if you're overly open to love yous may get burned and have your heartbroken.

Either way, you lot have to take a risk and you lot simply must accept that suffering is not optional.

The more than yous endeavor to dodge rejection or become an easy go of it in life and beloved the more you are going to end up on the sidelines. You can't just guard all your emotions and go a robot: and why would y'all want to anyway?

You're going to suffer. I'g going to suffer. Nosotros're all going to suffer.

Y'all simply know you've been high when you lot're feeling low. So don't close downwards the whole production just considering you lot're getting hurt: either way it'southward going to continue and your just real choice is whether to be a proactive partner in life or a reluctant prisoner being dragged behind a horse.

two) Permit the pain push you forwards

Zip is going to hit you equally hard as life. And there'due south going to be times that get out you lot literally on the floor.

Being overly happy about that or total of toxic positivity isnot the answer.

Y'all won't go rich subsequently bankruptcy by "thinking positive," yous'll get information technology past digging down to the roots of how yous approach coin and your relationship with yourself and your power.

The aforementioned affair goes for the big and small-scale traumas of life.

You can't choose them, and fifty-fifty if your choice contributed to something that'south happened and caused you suffering it's now in the past.

The merely freedom you accept now is to grow from the pain.

Let the pain reshape your earth and hone your determination and grit. Let it build your resilience and fortitude in the face of suffering.

Let the fear and despair have y'all in to your core and observe the healing ability of your breath and the life within you. Let the situation around and within you, that seems completely unacceptable be met with credence and strength.

The mail-pandemic world will be shaped by how nosotros react to fearfulness, and that journey is already underway.

3) Suffering tin can teach yous humility and grace

If you've struggled with asthma then you lot know how incredible information technology can feel to take a deep jiff without any trouble.

If you've experienced the worst heartbreak then you know how finding lasting and real love tin brand you feel.

Suffering can take us lower than the rocks and reduce us to less than we ever idea possible.

The suffering of war has reduced human beings to mere skeletons. The horrific suffering of cancer has turned in one case vibrant men and women into physical husks of their erstwhile selves.

When we suffer we are forced to drop all expectations and demands. It tin be our chance to notice even the smallest positives that withal exist, like the kind person who comes to visit us as we recover from a devastating and nearly fatal habit, or the sometime friend who brings over food after the painful loss of our partner.

In the depths of suffering the miracle of life can even so shine out.

4) Suffering can help you hone your willpower

What I hateful is that fifty-fifty a flower growing up through the sidewalk crack has to struggle and experience the pain to bloom.

Anything you achieve has some pushback and life is a dynamic – and sometimes painful – process.

Although some people may seek out suffering as part of a spiritual or religious path (which I hash out below), generally it is non a choice.

Withal, how you respond is a choice.

Y'all can actually use suffering and the pain you lot have been through to hone your willpower.

Allow suffering and the retentivity of information technology exist the catalyst that allows you to become a more than powerful person: powerful at helping yourself, powerful at helping others, powerful in accepting the sometimes harsh nature of reality.

5) Why does this sh*t always happen to me?

One of the worst things about suffering can be the feeling that we're all alone.

We start to internalize the idea that suffering has come to us for a bigger reason or some kind of "guilt" or sin nosotros have committed.

This idea tin be linked to religious systems and philosophies too as an inbuilt trend of sensitive people to blame themselves and seek the answer to disturbing things that happen.

Nosotros may button downwardly our own vulnerability and believe that we have somehow "deserved" our suffering and must suffer through it on our ain.

An opposite but equally harmful reaction is to care for suffering every bit personalized: why does this sh*t e'er happen tome? we shout.

Our mind tries to make sense of awful things that happen past either blaming ourselves and thinking we deserve it or by believing nosotros take been singled out by some fell force that picks on united states of america for no reason.

The truth is yous are neither exceptionally bad and "deserving" of suffering, nor are y'all the but ane who'due south being rained down upon with holy vengeance.

You lot're experiencing suffering and hurting. It's hard and it is what it is.

six) Suffering can be your window onto a brighter globe

"Tell your heart that the fright of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second's see with God and with eternity."

– Paulo Coelho

Suffering is generally something we categorize along with other undesirable and awful things in the corner of our minds.

On 1 side you have victory, pleasure, love, and belonging, on the other you take defeat, pain, hate, and isolation.

Who would want whatsoever of that negative stuff?

We push abroad these painful and difficult experiences because they crusade the states suffering.

Only suffering is too one of our biggest teachers and all of us are going to exist getting to know it in one form or another for the rest of our lives.

Why not pull upwardly a chair and order a drink?

Suffering is going to be sticking around either way. And sometimes the sweat and blood and tears can be the haze that comes before your greatest triumph.

Sometimes the gut punch that lands y'all in ER at historic period 16 from a drug overdose tin can be the experience you lot look back on xx years later and she was necessary for the mission y'all eventually had to help others through their own struggles.

Suffering is no joke – nor should y'all "want" information technology – but it tin can end upwards becoming your window onto a brighter earth.

7) Suffering can deepen your faith and spiritual life

Suffering can deepen our faith and spiritual experiences.

All life suffers in the literal sense. Organisms feel cold and hungry, animals being hunted feel fear. Humans have consciousness of death and fear the unknown.

Along the path of life, people answer in many ways to the unknown and their own inner life.

The Syrian Christian hermit Saint Simeon Stylites (Simon the Elder) lived on a one-square-meter platform atop a 15-meter pillarfor 37 years considering monastic life was too extravagant for him in his quest for higher meaning. Food was brought up to him by a ladder.

In the pain of suffering some individuals can find a cleansing burn down. They can use suffering to burn through the layers of illusion within themselves and enter the present moment in all its imperfection and hurting.

Instead of suffering increasing the desire to no longer exist, spirituality and inner experience can be strengthened and suffering tin bring united states to a stronger determination and drive to exist nowadays and exist.

And why non accept reward of your suffering, and run into it every bit the place where growth and change can happen?

At a fourth dimension in my life when everything seemed to be going wrong, I watched this free breathwork video , created by Brazilian shaman, Rudá Iandê.

The exercises he's created combine years of breathwork experience and ancient shamanic beliefs, designed to help you relax and check in with your body and soul.

They helped me process my emotions and release built-upwardly negativity, and over time, my suffering transformed into the best relationship I've ever had with myself.

Only it's all got to start inside – and that'due south where Rudá's guidance tin can help.

Hither's a link to the free video again .

viii) Suffering tin increment your pity for others

When we experience suffering – or even choose it as some monks and others have – we begin to deeply capeesh the immense hardship that many people around us are experiencing. We sympathize more and we want to aid, even if it is but to be in that location for them.

Having compassion and empathy for others too involves starting by having compassion and empathy for ourselves. Before we can truly observe love and intimacy with others we must find it within ourselves, and before nosotros can hope for compassion and reciprocity to catamenia toward u.s.a. we must become the engine of it ourselves.

Suffering and trials of life may increase the lines on our faces, but it tin can also strengthen the kindness inside of us. Information technology tin can forge an unbreakable authenticity and desire to requite back that nada can break.

When you've experienced the very worst of life you realize that truly 1 of the greatest gifts and opportunities is any chance to make someone else's time on this planet just a little bit better.

nine) Suffering can be a valuable reality check

Instead of constantly hearing that "everything is going to be OK" or to "call back positive," suffering can exist a painful reminder and reality check that no, not everything necessarily is going to exist "fine" at least not in an immediate or literal fashion.

Would yous rather the truth or comforting lies?

The problem is that even if yous said comforting lies in one case you know they're lies they won't satisfy you lot.

Regardless of your faith or level of optimism, there are tragedies, setbacks, and challenges that happen in life that can stun even the strongest of u.s..

Some experiences tin haunt you for the rest of your life, from being a refugee in state of war to watching a loved one die.

Running away from that or pretending it's "not so bad" won't aid you or anyone else. Taking that pain and accepting it and seeing that it's every bit much part of reality as the good things is the only real option.

At that place can be times when accepting that life sucks right at present tin can actually lead you lot to finish chasing fairytales and codependent relationships and reclaim your personal power.

x. When the going gets tough, the tough become going

The truth is that life is hardand sometimes even downright overwhelming.

As much as you may want to give up – and even sometimes temporarily do – you need to become back up and keep moving. More than people are depending on you than y'all know, and some of the greatest figures in history who have fabricated the world a amend place struggled deeply in means that near of u.s. couldn't even imagine.

The blind French writer Jacques Lusseyrand heroically fought confronting the Nazis in the French Resistance and was imprisoned at Buchenwald military camp, but never lost his organized religion that life was worth living. Sadly, life had other plans and in the summer of 1971 at only 46-years-one-time he was killed along with his wife Marie in a car accident.

Life hits hard, and it's oftentimes securely unfair. Repressing or justifying that won't change that fact.

Figures who many admire from Abraham Lincoln and Sylvia Plath to Pablo Picasso and Mahatma Gandhi struggled enormously. Lincoln and Plath both had severe depression and suicidal thoughts, while Picasso lost his sister Conchita when she was only 7 from Diptheria, despite promising God he would give upward painting if He would spare the sister he loved so much.

Life will have all your assumptions and hopes and throw them out the window. Information technology will brand you endure more you e'er thought possible. Simply through it all, in that location is a shred of organized religion, strength, and promise that volition always exist in that location deep inside.

As Rocky Balboa says in the 2006 film of the aforementioned proper noun:

"You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard every bit life. But it ain't about how hard ya hitting. It'southward near how hard yous tin go hitting and keep moving forward. How much you can take and go on moving frontwards. That's how winning is done!"

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Source: https://ideapod.com/why-suffering-is-important/

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