If there could be only one idea -- a lamp whose light could show the aspirant of real life the way out of the prison of dark thoughts and punishing feelings -- it would surely be this: your true self doesn't win in life by overpowering problems but by revealing they never really existed as you once believed they did.
Truths such as this can be difficult to accept. Tell some people the basis of their present mental or emotional pain is a negative byproduct of a mind trapped in an illusion and, as a rule, their response is to cling all the more tightly to their suffering. With few exceptions, the justification of their pain is as follows: given what they have had to endure, there is no alternative but this, their pain. So before we go any further, let's set the record straight:
Many things that have happened and that continue to happen in our world are, at best, dark and difficult to deal with. Let there be no question about this: sleeping human beings do terrible things to others, as well as to themselves. Compassion and her older sister Empathy seem to be on an extended vacation so that suffering grows unchecked. But the key point here for those seeking the Self that never dies is that passing events in themselves do not have the power to make us suffer. It is our negative reactions that first blind us, bind us, and then hurl us into a world of hurt.
The proof of this crucial finding that events themselves are not the source of our psychological suffering is found in the inspiring life stories of many people throughout history. One by one, we learn how individuals facing impossibly painful conditions not only transcend the hardships they face but emerge from them in some way transfigured. And what one can do, all may do; the victory of a single soul over any darkness lights the path for all who follow.
To be able to see any life event -- good or bad -- as a vehicle to help transport us from our present level of understanding to a higher one requires that we develop a new relationship with these unwanted events in our lives. Instead of trying to protect ourselves from them, we must become willing to see what they are revealing to us about ourselves in that same moment. The difference between these two paths and their attending possibilities cannot be overstated. The latter leads to a revelation that the Divine already has a higher purpose for our life -- one that includes all the powers we need to transcend any painful situation -- while the former path ensures the fear and suffering that are inseparable from trying to protect the false images we have of ourselves, along with their imagined false purposes.
Yes, the path that leads to revelation is more difficult, but only in the beginning. Following its way, we are asked to look for the source of our suffering within us instead of what our suffering points to outside of us as being its cause. Why choose this route? Because it's only by deliberately illuminating these darkened corners of our own consciousness -- where shadowy parts of us work in secret to misdirect us -- that their authority over us can be brought to an end.