On Suffering

At the end of my last posting, David Birkett commented “I'm interested in your view of creation and the universe as regards those people born or cast into desperate circumstances.” Actually he and I discussed this question in bed that night, because he’s my husband, (we certainly know how to have fun). I thought that I would put the essence of what we discussed in this post, and invite others’ views.

Firstly, on a practical note, the exercises I described in my last post, done regularly, are designed to make it less likely that you generate more self- imposed suffering. Furthermore, when suffering occurs, you will be better able to deal with it. Fewer things will be interpreted by you as ‘suffering’, and are more likely to be interpreted as a learning experience instead. You also become psychologically and spiritually more resilient. I can vouch for that, personally.

But why should there be suffering in existence in the first place? And why does it seem to be doled out so unfairly? Why couldn’t an omnipotent God create a suffering-free world in the first place?

To begin with, I would like to refer readers to my second post of 10 October 2012 ("A spiritual cosmology and the problem of evil"). This is my own working hypothesis, but who am I to know the mind of God?? I’m reminded of God’s answer to Job, in the book of the Old Testament Bible of the same name. Job is a good man, and yet God stands by while he loses everything, including his family, and suffers horrible illnesses, while his previous neighbours and friends come to the conclusion that he could not have been the good man that they had thought, to be suffering like this. In the end Job turns on God and demands “WHY?” God yells back “WHO ARE YOU TO QUESTION ME? Where you there when I created the world?” 

There are a number of eastern religions that are no more puzzled by the existence of suffering in a world where there is also joy, than they are at the fact there is dark as well as light. A single glance at the apparently infinite variety of creation might assure one that this is a universe which is exploring every conceivable possibility. The Buddha famously declared, as his ‘first truth’, that life IS suffering, and he searched hard to find a way to avoid being reborn into existence. Sufis (Muslim mystics) have been known to refer to this world as a ‘vale of suffering’, and both Kaballah and Sufi mystics tell tales of souls begging God not to be sent down to Earth to incarnate. But go they must.

Whatever’s going on, suffering seems to be essential to the process.  A few years ago there was a programme shown on TV called ‘Where was God during the Tsunami?’ which interviewed the priests, rabbis, imans etc. of various religions about why they thought God allowed suffering. I remember a Catholic priest saying that ‘God must have cried as he pushed the button to bring about creation’ because he knew the suffering that would ensue.

As well as there being stories within mystical traditions about less courageous souls not wanting to incarnate on Earth, there are also stories of souls who actually volunteer to enter into lives that will be full of suffering. There seems to be two reasons why they do this; firstly, to learn more quickly, and so make their way back up involution more quickly (again, see my second post on 10^th October) and, secondly, to ‘work off’ other people’s negative ‘karma’. 

The theory behind karma is that every action we take out of free will has consequences for the state of our soul. Some actions will make it lighter, so it advances back up the ladder to the Divine. Others will make it heavier, pulling it down into purgatory, and maybe even into a self- inflicted hell.  (Nobody gets sent to hell. We send ourselves there.) My husband particularly likes the theory about volunteering to undergo suffering in order to help others. Not only does it give his suffering meaning, but allows him to feel quite noble as well.

I desist from reminding him that his suffering might also be the result of misdeeds in past lives, which now need to be balanced up! Seriously, this particular theory is used in some societies as an excuse not to feel sorry for or even to help people who are suffering, or coping with desperate circumstances, and even to add to their suffering. I hardly need point out that this is not compassionate behaviour.

Christianity has a particularly interesting and rewarding take on suffering. Not only do Christians know that God experiences suffering, through becoming human Himself and suffering one of those most agonising deaths that can happen to a creature; but also that an inestimable amount of everyone’s karma was paid off as a result of His doing so, so we can all avoid hell if we so choose.

I hope I do not appear to be taking this subject too lightly to anyone undergoing suffering at the moment. To put it even more personally: as an endogenous depressive (I don’t need things outside of myself to make me depressed, I just don’t have enough serotonin to cope with everyday life) I have had prolonged episodes when I am terrified every time my husband or son leaves the house, in case they have an accident, and I never see them alive again.

You may consider this an unreasonable terror, but for me it was real, and almost unliveable with. I can appreciate the suffering of people who have good reason to fear they will never see a loved one again. Susan Jeffers wrote a book called ‘Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway’ in which she proposed that it’s not fear of actual suffering that frightens us, it’s the fear of not being able to cope with that suffering. Her book underlines the need for courage to live this life fully. In another of her books ‘End the Struggle and Dance with Life’ (where do they get these titles???) she suggests the following prayer that I have now incorporated into my everyday practice:

“Dear God, I trust that no matter what happens in my life, it is for my highest good. And no matter what happens in the lives of those I love, it is for their highest good. From all things that are put before us, we shall become stronger and more loving people. I am grateful for all the opportunity and beauty you put into my life. And in all that I do, I shall seek to be a channel for your love.”