Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me. (Matthew 25:40)

As with so many of the saying of Jesus, this one is beautiful, simple and true in many different ways.

It is true through a Jungian filter, where we see Christ as the realized wholeness of this human self, and the ways we treat others as mirroring the ways we treat ourselves. This one is helpful, although a little limited.

More interestingly, it is true in the sense discovered by mystics from any tradition… There is only God. There is no I with an Other to be found anywhere, even if it may appear that way. All beings happen within, to and as God.

God can notice itself or not while functionally connected to a living being (in our case, this particular human self). If it doesn’t, there is suffering. If it does, there is a release from suffering.

And if there is suffering, it is, in a very real sense, God that is suffering.

It doesn’t touch what God is, which is this stainless awakeness untouched by anything in the world the same way as space is not touched by its content. Suffering is nothing else than this awakeness itself, no other than God itself.

Yet, it is experienced as real, substantial, happening to a separate I, so it is very real in that sense.

All of this means that whatever we do for any being, we do for God. Whatever we do for the least one, the one who suffers, we do for God. When we help someone, even in small ways, it is God we are helping.

It is God helping God. God exploring how it is to be finite, to be helped, to help.

All happening within, to and as awakeness.

A few things about suffering…

• Suffering comes from beliefs in stories, and we can look at this in a few different ways…
  • It comes about through the discrepancy between our stories of what is and should be. In my own experience, that is the only place I find it. (For instance, physical pain is just pain, not suffering until there is a “should” added, saying it should not be there.)
  • Suffering happens whenever there is a belief in any story, because any story has a “should” in it and life will or can always show up differently from any should in any story.
  • Suffering is there as soon as there is an I with an Other, and this I with an Other is created as soon as there is a belief in any story. There is an identification with a particular perspective and identity, and there is a disidentification with their reversals. From here, an I with an Other is created. There is an exclusive identification with one part within the realm of form, we become an object in the world, and are the mercy of the larger whole. We want things we don’t get. We lose things we have and want. We get things we don’t want. We are stuck with things we don’t want.
• This suffering can happen in many forms and at different levels of intensity, from a slight sense of unease to full blown suffering.
• As anything within the realm of form, suffering is a guest, living its own life.
  • We can invite it in or not, in different ways, but it still lives its own life, on its own schedule.
  • As as with any guest, we can relate to it in different ways. We can resist the experience of it, push it away, try to escape, and it only becomes stronger. We can allow it, in a wholehearted and heartfelt way, and it shifts.
• When what we are awakens to itself, suffering falls away. (What we are… this field of awakeness and form inherently free from an I with an Other, yet functionally connected with this particular human self.)
  • There is a release from identification with stories, so suffering also falls away. And there is a release from identification with resistance, so suffering falls away that way too. (This happens to the extent awakeness notices itself as awakeness.)
  • Suffering is recognized as no other than awakeness itself. It is just a manifestation of awakeness itself, of God, Buddha Mind, Brahman. It is perfect. Nothing is missing.
  • Suffering is recognized as never happening to an I with an Other. It just happens within God.
• At the same time, there is a natural compassion when suffering happens in other human selves.
  • It is experienced as real, so is real. It is God who temporarily forgot what it is, so experiences suffering. It is God suffering. (Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.)
  • And this human self naturally does what it can to alleviate this suffering.
    • It takes it seriously, because it is experienced as real so is real.
    • It uses whatever means it has to alleviate suffering in the short term, in any of the conventional ways. (Emotional, informational, instrumental/practical support.)
    • If there is interest in the other human self, and it asks, this human self can also help exploring suffering more in depth, helping it arrive at a more complete release from it.
• As with anything else, this has to be explored and come alive in our own life. Believing anything about it helps in a temporary and surface way at best.

In Suffering, Evil and the Existence of God, an opinion piece in New York Times, two books on that topic are reviewed. They seem to share a conventional Christian theological approach to the topic, the view that there is no good solution to the question of why a good God allows evil in the world, and they also share not going much further.

Within the conventional Christian views on this topic, we end up beating our heads against the wall. So the reasonable course of action would then be to go outside of this context and see what we can find there.

Why not look at why the Christian mystics have to say about the topic? What about other philosophies and religions? And maybe most importantly, why not explore it in your own experience?

Even a superficial inquiry into our own experience would tell us that (a) good and evil are human-made and culturally dependent concepts, and (b) suffering comes when our stories about what is and should be clash.

In a way, it is so obvious and so simple that it is easy to dismiss. We may notice it, explore it to some extent, and then tell ourselves that there has to be more to it than that. It cannot be that simple. And there may also be a fear that embracing this fully would lead to a breakdown of any shared norms into anarchy, nihilism, the worst forms of value relativism.

Exploring it a little further for ourselves, we find a freedom from identification with particular views, which is also a freedom to apply any view as seem appropriate to the situation. With this release of identification with views, the appearance of substance and inherent truth in views goes out, there is no need to defend or attack the truth of views anymore, and they appear as tools of limited and practical value only. We can allow ourselves to be guided by our experience and the natural empathy that arises when there is this release from identification with views, and freely and fluidly use any view that has practical value in a particular situation.

Albert Ellis, one of the early (western, mainstream) cognitive therapists, died last week.

In a Buddhist/Adveita/nondual perspective, he was right on in realizing that our “personal philosophy contains beliefs that lead to his [our] own emotional pain”.

It is also funny, and telling, how he drew a magic line for what to question. Anything that has to do with how our particular identity is made up and fleshed out is questioned, and rightly so. A lot of stress and suffering comes from these types of beliefs.

But the core beliefs, that of being a separate self, and taking ourselves to be this human self, were not questioned by him. These beliefs went unnoticed. They were taken as so obviously true that they were granted asylum from examination.

These too are personal, or rather cultural, beliefs that lead to our own emotional pain. In fact, they are at the core of our experience of stress, discomfort and suffering. Everything else, all the beliefs that has to do with our fleshed-out identity, are only flavors and enhancements of this one essential suffering.

Of course, all these secondary beliefs prop up the core belief in an I with an Other, so questioning the core beliefs directly does usually not have the immediate effect of all of them falling away. (Although it can, in some circumstances.) Usually, we have to question both types, over and over, for some time, unraveling one thread at a time in the tapestry of beliefs until the whole thing comes undone.

In the introduction to Diamond in Your Pocket, Gangaji describes how her life before awakening was a ground of suffering, and after a ground of joy, independent of the surface experiences.

(When there is a sense of a separate self, there is inevitably suffering, in spite of conventional joy and happiness. And when this is seen through, there is equally inevitably joy, in spite of whatever surface experiences are there.)

I notice this ground of suffering in myself, and also the habitual resistance in avoiding it. As often as I have seen beliefs and emotions dissolve into clarity and joy, through inquiry and being with, there is still hesitancy there. Still a holding back. A part of me does still not quite believe it: behind the dragons is the treasure.

This is another not-new insight, but one that becomes very clear through different forms of inquiry:

When I suffer, it is because I am willing to pay the price of suffering to be right.

Or rather, to be right in the sense of holding onto one story as right and its reversals as wrong, taking it as an exclusive truth.

The belief has a shadow, which is the truth in all of its reversals, and also the inherent neutrality of the situation which is revealed when the relative truths in all the reversals cancel each other out. And this shadow is what creates the suffering.

Life shows up in ways that correspond to the shadow rather than the original belief, there is a dissonance, and suffering.

I have just picked up The Book of Job, translated and with an introduction by Stephen Mitchell. Before I get too far into it, I want to explore what comes up for me around the topic of suffering now:

• Life happens. Everything is living its own life, and comes and goes in our lives as guests. This is true for the physical world, and also for our experiences. Even our experiences… everything we may take as ourselves such as our thoughts, choices, impulses, actions… even all of those are guests, living their own life, coming and going on their own, and on their own time.
• An experience of suffering comes from the clash between life + a belief. Life is one way and it should be another way, according to my stories about it, so there is a sense of something being off. If the clash is mild, there is stress, and if the clash is stronger, there is suffering.
• Suffering can be seen as an invitation…
  • To deepen into who and what we are. To deepen into our shared humanity, to allow edges to round off, to see that we are all in this together, we are all in the same boat, to find in myself what I see in others and recognize in others what I know from myself, specifically, to recognize the suffering of others as my own, allowing for a receptive heart which invites action.
  • To allow and be with our experiences, as they are… allowing the resistance to them to fall away, seeing that it is the resistance, or rather the identification with this resistance, that creates the experience of suffering.
  • To see what is already more true for us. To investigate our beliefs, see if they are true, what happens when I hold onto it and if it wasn’t there, and explore the truths in all of its reversals. And seeing that the truths of its reversals, all together, is what is already more true for us, and also reveals the inherent neutrality of the situation.
• And then finally, to find a genuine appreciation for what is, as it is…. not as an invitation for anything, not as something that will get us something else, not as something to manipulate… but for its own sake. To appreciate, and even love, what is, as it is. As life… as God expressing and experiencing itself.

In alchemy, this is also the three phases from nigredo (the misery) through albedo (working through, clarification, differentiation) to rubedo (the fruits of the work), and then back to nigredo again to explore a new facet of it.

There are two ways to lose a belief, and they often go hand in hand.

One is through friction.

I have a belief telling me how life is or should be, and an identity telling me what I am and am not. In both cases, I split life right down the middle, allowing one region of the landscape and not the rest.

When life inevitably shows up outside of my belief or identity, there is a friction between my belief and life, which is experienced a uncomfortable… as stress, something being off, suffering, anger, fear, and so on.

This friction, if it continues, slowly wears off (and out!) the belief. Over time, constantly at odds with life, it has to go, in spite of even the most persistent resistance. It is just too obvious that life is more than my belief, and I more than the identity. My personality may not like it, especially at first, but there is not much choice there either.

The other is through investigation.

I notice the warning signs of holding onto a belief or identity (stress), I identify the belief or set of beliefs behind it, and investigate its effects, what would be without it, and the grain of truth in each of the reversals of the initial story. This too allows it to fall away, although it can be faster and less painful, even fun.

In the first case, I take the side of my habitual beliefs and identities, and it may be a drawn out and painful affair.

In the second case, I take the side of life inviting the belief to go, and it becomes more playful, have a sense of more ease, and can even be fun and enjoyable.

Although most of the time, there seems to be a mix of the two. There is the friction between life and belief, and the stress and resistance that comes with it. And there is the ease of the investigation, when that is finally engaged with.

What are some of the gifts of failure, missteps, loss, shattered dreams, disappointments?

The conventional way of looking at it is that it helps us see what does not work. We have a goal, tried a certain strategy, and it didn’t work. So at least we know that, and may explore new strategies that are more likely to succeed.

It may also help us revise our goals. Maybe what I thought was my goal is not really a goal, just a strategy to achieve a goal I wasn’t even conscious about. For me, when I explore any of my goals - from the big picture ones to the everyday mundane ones to the ones I don’t really want to acknowledge - they all come down to wanting to be free from suffering, and wanting happiness (or at least contentment, appreciation for what is).

It helps us become more conscious of our beliefs and identities, and the stress we create for ourselves when life shows up different from our beliefs and identities. It is an invitation to explore the beliefs and identities triggered by the situation, and find what is already more true for us… seeing the truth in all the turnarounds of the initial story, and maybe even the inherent neutrality of the situation when all the stories have canceled each other out. Doing this, I can find the genuine gifts in any situation, and find (more) peace with it as it is.

The first one helps me be more efficient in the world. The second helps me become more clear about my real goals. And the third one helps me find peace with life as it is, and to deepen and mature as a human being… allowing some of the hard edges to soften (releasing my grips on beliefs and identities) and allowing a wider embrace of life.

Failure by Kings of Convenience

When we take ourselves to be a separate self, it is natural to want to avoid suffering and friction. And if we identify ourselves as a spiritual practitioner, at least in some traditions, we don’t like resistance and misidentification much either. In fact, our whole practice is often aimed at getting rid of it.

As long as we want to get rid of it, or anything, we are stuck in it. We are identified with content of awareness (resistance, beliefs), which is exactly what we were trying to escape.

And when we finally see this, really see and feel it, allowing even this identification to go, we are fine with all of it… which is also when it tends to fall away.

It is tricky. Wanting something to change is what traps us. And only by fully and wholeheartedly allowing it all can it change, but by then it doesn’t matter anymore. We are doing it for another reason… because we see we don’t have a choice, and because we want to be consciously more closely aligned with what is.

One of the ways to be more consciously aligned with what is, and to allow it all, even the suffering and resistance, is to explore it from the emptiness and form sides more in depth.

From the emptiness side, it is all OK. It is the temporary form play of emptiness. All forms are revealed as inherently neutral. Or as God manifesting and exploring itself, as God’s will.

From the form side, we can explore the genuine gifts of what we resists.

At one level, we see that suffering is an invitation to wake up. When we are not fully awake to who and what we are, there is suffering.

At another level, we see that the misidentification is a part of the play of God. It is God temporarily forgetting what it is, and exploring itself as some small realms of its form aspect (as a separate individual.) It is beautiful, a beautiful play and exploration, even when suffering comes up because of it.

And resistance is an inherent part of misidentification. When we take ourselves to be a separate self, as a region of the world of form, resistance is what allows it in the first place.

Also, resistance and misidentification is what allows for an exploration of parts of the form realm in more detail. It filters a lot out, so that some regions of form come into the foreground and there is a deeper and more intimate familiarity with it. It is part of God’s exploration of itself.

In a very real way, to resist any of this, or to put it down in any way, is to resist and put down God.

This has been in the foreground over the last few days…

There is the field of seeing/seen arising, with no inherent center anywhere.

When something arises in this field, and there is an identity, and what arises is outside of this identity, there is suffering. It can be a very mild form of suffering, or more noticeable, but it is there.

Examples

So if there is an identity of someone who enjoys quiet, and there is noise, there is suffering. Without the identity, or the attachment to the identity, it all just arises as part of the field. There is noise, there is this personality, and they are just part of the field as it happens right now.

If there is an identity of someone who wants to be free from pain, and there is pain, there is suffering. And again, without this identity or the attachment to this identity, there is just the field arising of various sensations, of pain and personality, and that is it. It all arises as the field.

If there is an identity of someone who likes beauty, and there is not beauty, there is suffering. Or someone who likes beauty, and beauty is here, there is suffering because it may and will go away. And so on.

Struggle within the field of form in the foreground

When something arises that is outside of the identity, and there is attachment to the identity, the separation and discrepancy comes to the foreground. The two aspects of the field of form, the trigger and identity/reaction, are in the foreground and apparently opposed to each other. There is a sense of discomfort and struggle.

And there is an impulse to make this discomfort and struggle go away. This is a very healthy impulse, coming partly from knowing - intuiting, sensing - that it does not have to be that way.

One solution is to reorganize the field of form, either by removing or changing the trigger or the personality/reaction. It may or may not work, and even if it works to some extent, it is only a temporary solution. The patterns are still there, waiting to come up again. And no matter how much we work at it, and how sophisticated we become at it, we can’t quite control either the wider world or our own personality. It will always be unpredictable, live its own life.

The field itself, as a field, in the foreground

The other solution is to shift the center of gravity out of a segment of the field, from the personality/human self, to the seeing of it, or even better, to the field as a whole, to the field of awake emptiness and form, inherently free from any one center, personality, a sense of I, or any other aspect of what is arising.

Now, the field itself, as a field, as awake emptiness and form, is in the foreground. And any aspects of what is arising, any triggers and personality/reactivity, arise as this field. They are all just aspects of the landscape, threads in the overall tapestry, current flavors of the field, they all blend into the field as a whole although they can also be discerned and focused on if need be.

Identity is suffering

Identity not only leads to suffering, but is suffering. It is the field taking itself to be just a segment of itself, filtering itself through a sense of I and Other, creating a sense of struggle within itself.

And the only real resolution to this is for the field to notice itself, as a field, as the field of awake emptiness and form, and all forms, including triggers and personality/reactivity, as awake emptiness, as flavors of the field, threads in the overall tapestry.

Notes

More accurately, it is an attachment to a particular identity that brings suffering. A seeing of an exclusive identity as an absolute truth. An belief in a set of thoughts that make up an identity, from the idea of I to man/woman, young/old, liberal/conservative and so on. It is a way to know how to divide the field up into I/We and Other.

Even after the field awakens to itself, there is still a conventional identity left for this human self, used just for practical purposes. The main parts of this identity are the basic ones, such as name, gender, occupation, address, phone number. In addition, there are the flavors of this personality, the likes and dislikes in many areas of life, and these are now seen as amusing quirks and flavors, not taken very seriously.

In Buddhism, they talk about three (greed, anger, ignorance) or five (greed, anger, pride, envy, ignorance) poisons, or roots of suffering.

All of these can be collapsed into one: ignorance.

One side of the coin: ignorance of what we already are

And this ignorance can generally be seen as ignorance of what we really are, as Big Mind, Spirit, emptiness and form, Headless, absent of any I.

Other side of the coin: ignorance of the mechanisms of samsara

At the other side of the coin, this ignorance can be seen as ignorance of the mechanisms of Samsara. What, specifically, is it that happens when there is a mistaken identification. When Big Mind suddenly takes itself to be only a fragment of itself, as a part of the seen or as the seeing itself.

What is it that is really happening, and how can I explore that, over and over, in my own experience, so there is a gradually deepening familiarity with this process, eventually leading to a natural release from it.

Exploring the coin

There are many ways to explore either or both sides of this coin.

The Work: exploring both sides of the coin

Through The Work, we explore - in quite some detail, one way of looking at the mechanisms of samsara. What happens when there is a belief in a thought, when an abstraction is taken as truth itself? What are the consequences of this, in the many areas of my life? How does it unfold?

Towards the end of the inquiry, in question four and the turnarounds, we get to see who or what we are without this belief.

By doing this, over and over, on whatever beliefs remain and come up, we learn not only about the mechanisms of samsara but also what we are without beliefs. Gradually, there is more and more of a taste of and emerging into Big Mind.

Other approaches

The Big Mind process is another way to explore both sides of the coin, to almost infinite detail.

Headless experiments may not guide us through the terrain in the same detail as The Work and the Big Mind process, but they certainly set the stage for it by allowing us a taste of what we really are. From here, we are free to explore on our own, in as much detail as we want.

There are several aspects of suffering…

• It is Existence manifesting. It is Existence, God, Buddha Mind, experiencing itself in one of the innumerable ways it is experiencing itself through this evolving universe. It is perfect as it is. Nothing is missing.

• It comes from a case of mistaken identity. It emerges when awareness is exclusively identified with - or temporarily caught up in - the small self. This causes awareness to believe in thoughts, and function in a dualistic way - seeing the distinctions but not the seamless whole.
• It is one of the mechanisms through which awareness is encouraged to awaken to its own nature. It is the whip, while the bliss of awakening is the carrot.
• It is that which motivates awareness, even while exclusively identified with the small self, to be actively engaged in the world. This helps the self develop, the species to evolve, and Existence to unfold in always new and rich ways.