We are all suffering. There is a fair chance that if you are reading this piece it is because you are suffering right now and looking for balm, something – a word, an idea, a sentence, a premise, a medicine, maybe a chant – that might help ease your pain. As a man that has suffered much I am no different to anyone else. I want to understand the nature of my suffering and find pragmatic exercises to replace it with a heavy dose of peace.
If I can’t do this, if my suffering is unavoidable then I at least want to make sense of it, I want it to be for some reason. My sojourn on this spinning globe is not a long one, maybe one century if I am blessed, so I don’t really want to spend any of it suffering unless I can profit from the experience. We can all endure suffering if we know why. Nietzsche said that if we know the why we can endure almost anything.
In my bid for knowledge I - like most – have left my city, left my country actually even left my body in search of the pain panacea. Outside, usually in books or conversations with gurus I found no such relief (other than the temporary inspiration that good information often affords). Rather I found direction in the guise of a finger that pointed not out East, not to the temples of Tibet, or the churches of Rome, rather it pointed back to Coventry, back to my house, back to my garden, back to my body and deeper still back that dark nothingness that pervades all things when I close my eyes. Every time I go out I am directed back in. Every time I try to run I am encouraged to wait and see. Every time I hide I am advised to try visibility instead. Go inside. Have a good look at the discomfort that resides there. Why? Because suffering is the body’s way of telling us that something is wrong. And if we keep covering the message with artificial blankets (pain killers, drink, drugs, sex, denial) we might never know what, and that never knowing could kill us, or worse still it could lead us into a long life of unnecessary suffering.
From my limited understanding there are two kinds of suffering. The suffering that we inflict on ourselves and the suffering that is inflicted up on us by circumstance.
The suffering that we bring on ourselves we should, if at all possible, eradicate. There is no joy and little gain in suffering unnecessarily. To do this we need mass and clinical self-honesty. Nearly all suffering can be traced back to the self. If you are really honest, if you own everything, if you place yourself at cause and expect nothing from anyone, if you can stop your negative thoughts most of your suffering will end. No one can offend us, no one can let us down, no one can abandon us, disappoint us, make us jealous, cheat us, make us envious, angry, greedy, depressed, poor, under educated, fat, unfit. These are all circumstances that we accept, perhaps because we do not know any better, or maybe because we are too lazy to change, or is it that we enjoy being a martyr to our suffering? At one time or another I have fallen into all of these categories.
But I have since learned to recognise that I am the centre of my universe. The responsibility for my health, wealth and happiness lie not with the hospitals and doctors,, not with the government and certainly not with other people. The moment we rely on outside forces for our well being we become their prisoners.
The responsibility lies with you.
If your suffering is health, why not make it you life’s mission to understand your body; find out how to get well and stay well. Become an expert, do a degree, a MA, a PHD, become the most knowledgeably man on the planet with regards to health.
If your suffering is economic, who do you think is going to change it if you don’t? There is no one coming to your rescue. There are no more heroes. Study economics, put your self into an apprenticeship with the wealthy and the rich, study business and make yourself a man of great economic knowledge. The information is all out there, much of it free. Don’t blame any outside forces, don’t blame the government because of poor minimum wage, don’t blame the conglomerates for stealing too much of the pie, blame is the predictable response of the masses and once employed it knows no end. So get out there, earn your worth and ease your suffering.
If your suffering is mental make it your life to understand the cerebral schematic and put that information to work for you, in fact put that information ‘out there’ so that you not only ease your own suffering, you ease the suffering of all those who find themselves in a psychotic goal. Scour the internet, invest in books and lectures and courses, talk to the psychologically robust, ask them their secrets, then put the information into employ and be the proof that it works.
This option if open to everyone.
But information will not drop out of the sky. You need to hunt it down.
It can be done. It has been done. History is brimming with folk that have taken responsibility for their own suffering and not only succeeded in easing their pain, but have become massively successful at the same time.
Victor Frankl said that all suffering is relative. Whether you are lying in bed sweating and manically depressed at 3am or you were the victim of the Auschwitz horrors your suffering will feel as though it knows no depths. It has been proven by psychologists for instance that the symptoms of manic depression can be as frightening to the recipient as climbing out of a dug out with a bayonet to engage in mortal combat. What I have learned from my suffering is that I don’t like it much, but if I am there and I can’t immediately get out of it I am going to learn as much from and take as much out of suffering as I can. Much of the great stuff I have learned in the last forty six years has come directly from periods of suffering. In fact I would say that personal development is a natural by-product of enduring pain if you are wizened enough to look in rather than out. The Sufi Poet Rumi said that the Chick Pea only got its flavour from being boiled in the pot, and when it tried to jump out and escape its suffering The Cook pushed it back in with his ladle and said, ‘you think I’m torturing you, I’m not, I am boiling you to make you sweet.’
There is a lovely old Japanese saying that mirrors Rumi’s premise; the iron ore feels its self needlessly tortured as it enters the furnace. The tempered blade looks back and knows better. When suffering is our goal we all tend to look for an escape, and if there is a way out my recommendation is that you take it. But not before heeding the advise on offer, your suffering wants you to see something. Do not turn away. Address it. Right now if you can, because if you don’t you will find yourself back where you are in the near future, again and again, until you do get it. Once you are in possession of the vital information leave your suffering. Take responsibility, make decisions, change, adapt – do what is necessary but leave. Sometime you can’t.
In these circumstances Frankl suggests something radical – and my experiences have led me to the same conclusion. ‘Be worthy of your suffering.’ Handle it. He said that there is great liberty in suffering, that we have the opportunity in our darkest moments to reach a higher consciousness by enduring it, an opportunity offered to few people.
This doesn’t mean that you just accept suffering, rather that you endure it stoically while actively looking for a solution.
Pain is a great adviser. Suffering is wise counsel. If you are brave enough to look closely at them they offer you great secrets. And the answer is always hidden within the problem.
What I have learned and what I now is this; if you go into your pain, if you are brave enough to do that, to sit in it, examine it minutely the self inflicted suffering will dissipate (because it can only feed on fear) and the life imposed suffering will offer you transcendence.
Suffering ceases to be suffering when we truly lose our fear of suffering.
No one can do this for you. But you can do it for you.
And do you know the great thing. Once you take responsibility for yourself, you will draw assistance from ever living corner of the universe.
Martial Edge would like to thank Geoff Thompson, International author and Blackbelts No1 Self defense expert in the world for providing this article. Anyone who is not familar with his work, go to his site and check it out!
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We are all suffering. There is a fair chance that if you are reading this piece it is because you are suffering right now and looking for balm, something – a word, an idea, a sentence, a premise, a medicine, maybe a chant – that might help ease your pain. As a man that has suffered much I am no different to anyone else. I want to understand the nature of my suffering and find pragmatic exercises to replace it with a heavy dose of peace.
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