Good Pain

It can seem somewhat pathological to welcome suffering as a tool of transformation. And to identify with the suffering of others, seems equally incompatible with our individual well being. In a world that is already saturated with fear leading to great sufferings, what value could there be in turning our focus there? The level of human suffering in the world is obviously far beyond our individual control, the collective problems simply too monolithic for an individual to affect on a significant level.

Therefore, we try to be happy within ourselves or perhaps more seriously, we impose a positive approach to life that seems to afford us some measure of conscious stability. Of course, our lives are lived in the grey areas. As we lick honey from the razor, we oversimplify our existence to a point where it is no longer our own. And this is where our positive approach can become an escape, as we flee the sufferings in a attempt to control the uncontrollable. As the conditionings of a culture and society affect the individual over long periods, of indeed entire lives lived happily within its confines, slowly this imposed perceptual methodology becomes invisible to those reinforcing all the necessary mechanistic practices for its perpetuation. True suffering is simply the unconscious realization of this forced separation from all other very real experiences and perceptual possibilities. This is not realized collectively, nor could it be. Society will not become a true civilization until the individuals who comprise it are true to themselves. All of them. Until then, the perpetuation of fear either real or imaginary will continue. The wheels that roll us under will continue to turn, and our groveling for the crumbs of life will evermore be repackaged for us, to fit into the mold of our packaged lives. The paradox of existence on one level then, may be this problem of suffering. The problem may then be unraveled by the willful exploration of its source. This is obviously unpleasant to the average person today because the layers of conditioning have been specifically set up to make it the most frightening thing imaginable. And as our time becomes erased into a control grid reality, where every 1 and 0 becomes the totality of our existence, the lack of intention creates the split existence. The achievement of ignorance is reached, and clung to for as long as possible, until the waves of unconscious suffering return and once again envelop us and attempt to suck us into the sea of reality.

Society is a lifeboat where we cling together. And in this small beginning we begin to construct a world of limitation, fearing the sea that brought us to very shores of existence. A sea of which we will always be a part. Increasingly sophisticated in our self-delusion, humankind has now constructed an island. A New Atlantis. An artificial re-creation of what may have once been or perhaps the first pathology of its kind, regardless, the resulting outlook is the same. But now as we perhaps have been safely sheltered within this island for sometime, many of us no longer even recognize the sea. The reinforced walls and waterworks we have designed to withstand massive waves. And so as the air grows more stagnant, and the resources on our island become depleted, and the very density of ready-made existence becomes more and more unsatisfactory, we get closer to the day of reckoning where the waves will be too big for us to contain. And despite our attempts to suppress our own awareness of the sea, its voice is forever heard upon on the shores of our consciousness.

What then is the point of this existence? It is often asked, what is the point of suffering? Why would God create suffering? The answers do not come to those who really don't want them, and herein lies the lack of resolution to such deep seated questions. Indeed, what is God? These questions can also be purposely vague enough to ensure no answer as the modern individual's memory is severely impeded by the flashing lights of society and culture, and we are now committed to obtaining our answers from corrupted sources perceived as the highest agencies of truth. After stripping away all the wallpaper of our self-made illusions, perhaps then we can only arrive at this answer to the first question, what is the point of existence, and that would be to simply most fully express what one is. To understand the limits or unlimited nature of the fullest expression of humanity. Or more specifically, of one's own humanity. In the modern era of enforced collectivism there can truly be no reflection of this highest truth within an individual. It is in fact the antithesis. The collectivist model depends on the total destruction of that process of flowering into self realization. Thus, suffering will indeed come no matter how prepared one may be, and in the transmutation of suffering we may perhaps find our true essence.

This process of transmutation is not the instantaneous enlightenment of the new age, but rather methodical and extended process of internal reckoning fraught with emotional, pychological, and even physical upheaval. The corrupted influences are not easily discarded, especially when perceived as the very necessities of survival. Approaching such understanding requires enduring patience and forgiveness of oneself and others to even begin upon the road of uncovering one's true essence. Or even a truer essence. For not one of us can actually say what the truth is. We can only experience it as such. But in a brazen attempt to do so, let me first declare what it is not. It is not a material reality whereby the physical rules of survival lay at the foundations. This is actually the direct opposite of truth. Truth is beyond the physical and yet incorporates all of it. It is how the physical is perceived by the materialist that creates the breakdown of the material in the first place. If all material is perceived simply as dynamic energy moving in some form of harmonic synchronicity and in reciprocation with all other energy, then we may not have the level of attachment that an enclosed perception of the material reality may present. The materialist, on the other hand, will actually defend these attachments with their life. And not necessarily in a glorious way, but in also very mechanistic and routine ways, slowly reinforcing the misperception until it is truly all that is perceived. And as the beauty and mystery of reality disappears, one begins the process of consuming oneself, as the appetite of the soul cannot be whetted by the empty calories of the gross dimension.

Thus, a society comprised of individuals who are debased in these egoic illusions and eager to embrace them at the expense of even less esoteric principles such as reason and logic, will inevitably bring about the conditions which will actually feed into this process of transmutation. The unconscious forces will never be done away with as long as they remain unconscious. And individuals will never be satisfied with anything less than the self awakening of their own nature. Thus a New World Order, and a New Atlantis are as much pipe dreams as have been all other attempts to stamp out humanity into a one size fits all matrix of mechanization. Our fears to which we may succumb, finally only compel us to spin the wheel again and again. To continually come up against the blockage as water rushes down river with the current slowly etching away the stones. Whether to plunge over the falls or lap at the edges of a stagnant pool, the nature of water will find its way through the barriers no matter what they may be, even if it requires evaporation. And in this analogy we may discover, that we are not simply just the water, but even more so, we truly are the current and it is simply our nature to flow. In the interruptions of this flow we find disease, confusion, suffering, and the necessary conditions by which we can diagnose our afflictions and remove the blockages which impede self-awakening.

Throughout the myths of the world, we find the same story repeating. And in spite of this, we continue to reaffirm religious delusions, philosophical dogmas, political ideals, etc, whose existence predicates that it must be more correct than other delusions, dogmas, ideals, etc. This is simply not the case and can be proven so through careful examination of the psychological effect of trying to reason with reality. If a model way of life is effective, there is simply no need for justification. It needs no operating manual, nor does it need the confirmation of dubious conscription. Faced with the very real material consequences of spiritual separation, many individuals within society are struggling to re-affirm a value model of our past, present, and future. Without suffering, without enlightenment.