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.
Though it may seem too steep a hill to climb, especially the first time we consider its ascent, nevertheless, here's the first step that leads to freedom from useless suffering: we must begin to doubt our own suffering. To this idea the masses cry, "Impossible! Pain as real as ours is undeniable!"
No one is saying to deny this pain or to otherwise pretend it's not there. Yes, the feeling of any pain is real, but here's what we must come to see if we would set ourselves free: all the excuses we're handed -- by ourselves -- for why we must continue to hurt ourselves are like flies that travel with trash. The only purpose they serve is to make something worthless seem valuable; garbage is garbage, no matter how it comes wrapped!
Consider closely the twin truths in the following summary of this study. Within them rests the understanding -- and the power -- you need to start throwing useless suffering out the door:
♦ The justification of any negative state serves one end only: the protection and the preservation of the nature responsible for its manifestation.
♦ Any part of our nature that finds good reason to justify our pain is the source of that pain it justifies.
