ASCENDING THROUGH ADVERSITY
I came across an article the other day which said that the most empathic and caring people are the ones who have suffered the most themselves. It reminded me of the brilliant and stirring poem, written and recited by the youth poet laureate, Amanda Gorman, at U.S. President Joe Biden’s recent inauguration; in particular the closing lines:
“There is always light if only we are brave enough to see it; if only we are brave enough to be it….”
There is a lot of ‘suffering’ around at the moment. The larger context of the worldwide pandemic has given licence for a good deal of repressed emotion to be expressed. I often describe it as a form of ‘mass therapy’ for the world. We have literally been forced to contemplate who we really are, and where we now want to go from here. We’ve all, together, felt the weight of grief and loss of a world in flux.
The author and spiritual teacher, Eckhart Tolle, said: “We suffer until we don’t have to.”
I often wondered what he meant by this. At what magical point do we ‘not have to suffer anymore?’ The more I’ve contemplated this paradox, the more I’ve come to realise that I have a choice in how I respond to what I perceive as suffering. It takes a great deal of pressure to make a diamond; the oyster needs the grit to make the pearl and the pain of childbirth helps the mother bond to her newborn baby. Maybe then, there is a ‘natural’ point to suffering? Perhaps the more it strips us of our old, ego-burdened identities, the lighter and freer we are to ascend?
In the chapter entitled ‘Challenge and Stress’ in my book ‘Wake Up - What Are Your Emotions Really Telling You’, I share an acronym for STRESS:
Sustained Tension Revealing Every Soul’s Story
In it, I talk about how the greater wisdom of the Universe is always encouraging us to release what is no longer serving us. To finally let go of everything that we are not. I believe that, when we can surrender more and more to this wisdom, to trust that there is a grander plan at work which is wiser than our limited take on the world, then our ego-need to solely identify with our own suffering diminishes.
It is within this grander plan that my heavier, fear-based thinking has no real higher purpose to serve. When I accept this as a truth, then my hot air balloon of consciousness naturally ascends. Not because I am exhaustingly trying to burn more emotional fuel to make the balloon lift me away from pain, but because of a surrender to the realisation that the ‘pain’ may not be causing me suffering after all. It is my resistance to it, and perception of it, that is….
By nurturing my inner power to notice where I invest my pointless worry, to accept that where my attention goes the energy flows, I identify less with the balloon and more with the wind that takes it. Here, I cannot help but release the weights that I carry in my gondola basket of self, because I choose not to solely focus on how I need the world, or people, to be, in order to be ‘happy’.
I practice ‘R and R’: Relaxing and Releasing when I notice fear, resentment or anger building up inside and tethering me to the shadows of the valleys below. I realise the lightness of my very aliveness when I allow experience to flow through me, unhindered and less judged. And if I notice that I block it somewhere within my experiencing channel, then I become curious:
‘What is it about this current situation that I cannot, or will not, accept?’ Where am I in conflict with myself?
Then I step into the flow and trust the very intelligence that drives it. I surrender and ascend.
Spirituality can be defined as a state of being where we no longer attach and define ourselves solely through material and form. As when we are prepared to engage with our formless self within, and less with the concept of self that we build over time: a false self that is designed to help us survive in a world which we are conditioned to assume is only hostile.
Buddhists describe attachment as suffering. And ego attaches to a version of the world that it decides must be a certain way before it can feel truly satisfied within it. Yet, by transmuting everyday suffering into a higher awareness, and by reframing pain as a potential for spiritual gain, we naturally conclude that we suffer until we don’t have to.
“If you’re in a bad situation, don’t worry, it’ll change. If you’re in a good situation, don’t worry, it’ll change.”
John A Simone Sr
Does this quote go some way into helping you to surrender to the ‘flow of life?’ To release attachments to how things ‘should be?’
If the most empathic, sensitive and ‘tuned in’ of people are the very same ones who have suffered the most, then perhaps it’s time to see the opportunity in adversity and the advantage in ascension. After all, it is only from a higher perspective that we get to see the true beauty of the panorama, the potential on the distant horizon and to witness the true light that emanates from within.
“What is to give light must endure burning…”
Victor Frankl - Holocaust Survivor and author of ‘Man’s Search For Meaning.’