Three Causes of Our Suffering
Suffering is a certainty of our existence. It is very real and very personal. We all know the inherent dissatisfaction that comes with living in our humanness. Despite our knowledge that we have a loving God who has written for each of us a beautiful redemptive, love story that connects with His larger story, our suffering remains because we live in a world of pain. Our suffering continues when we resist these three universal truths.
1. We expect permanence, and we grasp at predictability in an ever-changing world.
We crave resolution and security in an uncertain world. We desperately try to find security and predictability so we can feel comfortable and safe. We want so badly to be able to hold onto something, to grasp tightly to something that will relieve our discomfort. But uncertainty is unavoidable. Our universe, as God created it, functions in a dynamic, energetic flow that we don’t understand. Nothing is fixed or permanent in this world, and we fear fluidity.
Grasping at predictability in our world is like trying to hold onto water. Instead, we must learn to embrace the reality of uncertainty and learn to flow with life. Further, when we know personally and trust in a loving, unchanging God, who is for us, we have great hope for experiencing joy in the midst of change.
2. We believe that we are separate from everything else in the world, and we limit ourselves to our fixed ideas about who we are.
When we experience ourselves as separate from everyone else, our world becomes isolating, like a prison. We say we want freedom more like the butterfly, but we actually prefer the safety and comfort of the cocoon. Further, the fixed ideas we have about who we are limit us to have to act out the character we think we should be playing everyday. We spend our time and energy creating and attempting to maintain who we think we are or who will finally make us feel valuable or worthy. It requires us to write a script for ourselves where we live out of striving or obligation and expectation. Or we end up disappointed and in self-pity, feeling stuck and miserable.
We must begin to question our beliefs and challenge our fixed versions of reality. Opening to curiosity awakens our hearts and minds to a whole new way of experiencing life. We learn to be flexible and relax with not knowing, and not having to try to figure everything out. Then, we are open to receive what is here for us to know and receive today as sons and daughters of a God who loves us and desires to lavish us extravagantly with His goodness.
3. We look for happiness in the wrong places.
We settle for living a life of pain with relief. We want a fix, instant gratification from our suffering. So we relentlessly pursue our addictions and distractions, and we never learn to tolerate and reside in any moment of uneasiness or discomfort. When we feel the slightest shift of energy or negative emotion surface, we reach for whatever may bring us relief in the moment. And we remain stuck in the vicious cycle of dissatisfaction.
We must instead, learn to stay present with impermanence and discomfort, and surrender to it. When we sit in our discomfort and pain, breathe into it and stay present in it, we begin to experience an opening to love, an awareness of God’s presence in the midst of it. His spirit is present in our pain to offer us peace and clarity of truth, when we invite and allow Him into that space.
Recognizing these three causes of our suffering help us to move into acceptance of and relax with the way things are. We can then begin to relate to life differently and experience an awakening to peace and love, rather than exist in our suffering.