Suffering and Growing

Life has, for so many, been a virtual study in suffering. The donkeys (bodies) have suffered through a number of critical and serious dysfunctions. The body is the instrument through which we often learn our most important lessons, including sympathy, empathy, compassion, and many other forms of tolerance, patience, and Love.

This is the "hard way" to learning. Earth is the notorious "school of hard knocks." But these events have created interior strength for countless millions. They have also tended to create, or to reinforce, interior detachment. They have also led to death, and the afterlife experience. So, they have taken away the fear of death. So, all in all, despite setbacks, they have had an overall positive effect.

The fastest, and surest, way to inteerior growth is suffering. The Buddha started an entire system of spiritual psychology (more that than religion), by asking the simple but complex question, "Why is there so much suffering (dukha), and is there anything that we can do about it?"

So, Buddhism emphasizes detachment from the material world, and emphasizes that happiness is a completely interior process, unrelated to "external" things and conditions. We are happiest only when we can realize that we have a great Source of joy within, and when we realize that It is independent of material "stuff."

Living with order in a chaotic world, and with reason in an unreasonable one, requires the adoption of good moral and ethical guidelines, which, in Buddhism, is called the "eightfold path." These include such items as "right speech, right action, right meditation," and others.

But beyond,far beyond, those practical suggestions is a very deep realization. It is this: Deep in "your" and "my" Unconscious is a Mind that is all wisdom, beauty, and deep tranquillity. Stillness, as in meditation, is the Way to cultivate our connections with, and realizations of, this deep Mind. This Mind is the true "Buddha," or "Christ."

Coming in touch with It, mastersages such as Jesus have altered the planet. But they, the mystics of history, were not content simply to touch It, or to realize that It existed. They wanted actually to embody It, to become It, in physical incarnation. Jesus was "God" precisely because he was the incarnation of Love, for "God is Love."

These masterteachers all taught that the Way to become enveloped within, absorbed by, this Supermind was Love. So, we call It the "Lovemind" or "Coremind."

The mystic's path is that of "surrender." This means that we stop trying to run our own lives, and instead, turn our lives over to perfect, stainless Love. Trying to run our own lives is analogous to an ant insisting that it run a cybernetwork. This is not something that we must, or can, do. Instead, it is a state of being that we must allow to happen. Again, this is where interior stillness or meditation comes in. For, with practice, meditation leads to a regular, steady state of "stillmind," a mind of vast tranquillity. While not "untouched" by the events of the world, the mystic does often "transcend" (rise above) them, and is not controlled by them.

Jesus said, "You cannot serve two masters." So, we find by experience that we cannot serve both the world and Love. In choosing to surrender to Love, we shatter the shackles that keep us bound always to the world. We get off its maddening rollercoaster, and find an equanimity or even, smoother, more stable plane of being. The crazy heights and depths tend to level off, preventing our plunging into depression or anxiety.

It would take a whole book fully to explain the Way. So, your deep and fine inquiry cannot be completely answered in a single small article such as this. But, happily, I have written books about the Way. If you would like to begin at the beginning, with an intro, I recommend the book called Falling in Love with Yourself: Love and the Inner Beloved. If you'd like a copy,just send your snailmail address to:
rmfrancis@juno.com.

We'd be more than happy to send you one.:)