Learning To Transform Our Daily Sufferings Into Divine Presence.

Suffering is unavoidable

Suffering is unavoidable. The question is how to make it useful, and in particular, how to transform it into presence. The main thing is not to express the pain you are going through externally. Of course, we still feel it, but we act as if we were not suffering; that is, we do not grumble, or become angry, or seek sympathy, or anyway show our suffering. This has the effect of causing an internal division of selves into the part which is suffering and the part which controls the expression of the distressed. The second part is outside the suffering, and so it can begin working to change the suffering.

This brings us to realize that our suffering is not real, or imaginary. Emotional suffering for example is sometimes based on what others think about our actions, while the truth is they probably have other ideas about us. There is sometimes basis for suffering, that is physical pain, or intense emotional pain - but what happens we make it worse by thinking about it.

Understanding and observing imaginary suffering will help us to gradually eliminate it. This is also true of what can be called unnecessary suffering. Some suffering is a necessary payment in order to achieve an aim for instance, if we want to get to the top of a mountain, we must accept the physical suffering of the climb but much of our suffering serves no purpose, and so is unnecessary.

After unnecessary suffering is observed, what is left is real suffering. Only this real suffering has possibilities for development; work on imaginary suffering, being based on something which is imaginary and so has no real existence, can only give imaginary results.

The separation of ourselves into two parts which occurred at the beginning with non-expression now becomes crucial to further progress, for the next step is to accept this real suffering and to stop fighting against it. Real suffering never involves all of our being; in fact, in the absence of imaginary suffering, the part outside the suffering inevitably proves to be by far the greater part of ourselves, and this part can accept the unavoidable suffering of the lesser part. In this moment, things are what they are reality is what it is and even if efforts to change might have been possible at one time, it is too late now. Fighting against the suffering is useless. The best thing is to go forward with our lives. However, this is not a passive or resigned acceptance. Part of acceptance of the present situation is accepting the possibility of change in the future, and of our responsibility to make efforts toward that end.

And now, having separated from the suffering and then eliminated or at least reduced the imaginary component of it and accepted the real suffering, we are ready for transformation. It involves seeing the suffering in the context of universal laws, of seeing its beauty. And obviously such things are not possible for an ordinary man. Whereas the preceding steps can be accomplished through work on ourselves, transformation requires the presence of a higher level, the level we call Divine Presence. In fact, they are two aspects of one thing: Divine Presences transforms suffering, and transformation produces Divine Presence.

If we transform our suffering then we are in a better position to produce Divine Presence in ourselves. But it is not only suffering which can be transformed; beauty and pleasure can also be transformed into Divine Presence by the same techniques. However, because our lower selves assume that pleasure is theirs by right while suffering is something to be avoided or at least worked with, we must first learn to transform suffering. The endeavor is to become skilled at transforming all our experiences into Divine Presence.

by: Carl Francais

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