Episode 5—The Role of Suffering
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The Role of Suffering
By Bernard Dozier
We’ve all heard, “No pain, no gain,” and that makes it easy to assume that suffering is essential to living. But, I can’t believe that. And I can’t believe that suffering is the key to spirituality, as the “pillar saints” did 1600 years ago. Still today, in the Philippines, men have themselves nailed to crosses at Eastertime. That reminds me...
During the Crucifixion, which was incredibly painful, Jesus spoke several times of several things, but He never mentioned His suffering. Childbirth involves immense pain, but new mothers nurse their babies -- not their suffering.
Seems to me if suffering was the key spirituality, Jesus wouldn’t have prayed to avoid drinking the cup of painful death ... and we’d be trying to get to the head of the line for the next shuttle to Hell’s suffering.
So, what is the role of suffering? Is there anything redeeming about it?
One of the positive things about suffering is that it’s negative feedback that’s telling us when out thinking goes astray from spiritual principles. Another positive thing is ... that we can learn from suffering that suffering isn’t any essential part of learning. That misinformation comes from our Ego.
Most of the time...and in most of us...our Ego pushes us around in little circles of limited beliefs. Ego is our fake ID. Ego would have us believe that we’re human instead of Spiritual beings going through a human experience.
Ego would have us believe that we know better than our Creator, and that our Creator’s power is weakened by being far, far away.
What our Ego doesn’t understand is that the Creative Spirit is Omnipresent Life, Love, Wisdom, Power, and Substance—spiritual principles that are the foundation of all that IS.
So, when our thought and actions misapply Life, Love, Wisdom, Power, and Substance the reaction is pain...suffering. Since mind and body are intertwined, we suffer emotionally and physically.
Let’s go back to the Ego. Ego is a type of satan or adversary who masquerades as our best friend. Ego creates the erroneous belief that we’re apart from and immune to God, the Good. Ego doesn’t believe in the Universal Law of Cause and Effect, and sees no link between the “sin” of sowing Limitation and the reaping of suffering.
Ego in us even prides itself not only on our sinning but on the suffering that results from it.
Suffering does not purify or elevate or redeem the soul. It isn’t like the Refiner’s fire.
Surely the Creative Intelligence that shaped the universe with love, doesn’t want us to think we’re atoning or paying for or making things right by our suffering.
Creative Intelligence has given us intelligence...and its active in us in many ways...as intuition, as insight, as vision, as foresight and hindsight, as judgment and logic, as memory, introspection, meditation, and prayer.
The result is understanding that lets us see life clearly and truly. When we come into understanding of all the divine positives that make life work, we realize that suffering must not be part of the divine plan, or Jesus wouldn’t have spent so much time releasing people from suffering.
Suffering isn’t proof of spirituality...and it isn’t good for us. So many of the advertisers on TV know it, and want to sell us a pill to help with the symptoms.
But why not go for the cure? Replace Ego’s misdirections with a mind focused on appreciation and gratitude for the Creator’s nurturing, healing Energy at the center of your soul...and your life.
