The Cause Of All Suffering In Our World
Looking around our world, one cannot fail to notice the amounts of suffering * that exist in it. It is because in the course of countless lifetimes each one of us has been doing their share of creating it, for ourselves and our world with the help of our thoughts, words and actions. This too did not happen without a wise higher reason. Our own suffering familiarises us with the nature of suffering. Witnessing the pain of others aids the awakening of our Christ nature; its first characteristics are compassion and love.
Alas, when the suffering we inflicted upon others’ during the earlier parts of our earthly education, returns to us in later lifetimes when we have matured sufficiently to be strong enough to cope with them, we have no idea what’s hitting us and then may well ask ourselves: ‘ Why is this happening to me, out of all people, when I lead such a good life would never dream of harming anyone *?’ Wise ones reply to this: ‘No, not in this lifetime but most certainly in many others.’
Whenever we have worked our way through particularly difficult and traumatic events, we eventually reach the point when things begin to settle down again. The time then has come for taking stock and sorting the wheat from the chaff in our life by looking at what our experiences have been trying to teach us. First of all we need to forgive ourselves for having created the cause of our suffering, either in this lifetime or previous ones. To enable us to deal with our own suffering as well as that of others we need the kind of forgiveness that rises from deep within our heart and soul. It alone can bring the healing and peace we are seeking for every aspect of our being.
Forgiveness is always an act of clemency, which in my view can only be found through grasping the higher purpose of our experiences and why they were necessary. Coming to terms and making peace with the events of the past – not only this lifetime but all others – is of great importance for all of us. Because of our inner oneness, when one of us heals our whole world does the same.
I believe that the main cause of all the suffering we and our world ever had to endure is ignorance, i.e. not knowing who and what we truly are *, where we came from and one day will be going to; the wise higher reason why we are here and that we and our world, the same as everything else in the whole of Creation, are subject to great Cosmic laws, God’s laws *. Everything that is in our lives has its origin in our own thinking and behaviour patterns, and that all things start and end with us. Therefore, if we wish to change our world, we have to begin with ourselves.
In the long course of our evolution, it became necessary that we should forget or rather lose all contact with the conscious awareness of these things. But fortunately, this amnesia was not intended to last forever. The wise higher reason behind everything that happens in earthly life is that each one of us through their own experiences should find out the difference between good and evil, darkness and light, and so forth. Alas, as a result of our memory loss, the consciousness of our race gradually filled itself with ever more false beliefs, superstitions and prejudices.
As Don Miguel Ruiz writes in ‘The Mastery of Love’: ‘The mind knows – and that’s the problem’. The earthly mind for a very long time has been thinking it knows things that are now revealing themselves as untrue. To this day, this creates all the difficulties of our world. They are hard to overcome because we need to convince the earthly mind of the truth of the knowledge that is now coming to us from the highest levels of life and help it to accept this.’
I believe that the first essential step towards ending the suffering of our world is taking a good look at ourselves, our deeply ingrained behaviour and thinking patterns and also our inner motivations. It is necessary to establish which ones, maybe even all of them, do no longer serve our own progress on the evolutionary spiral of life and that of our world. They then either need to be discarded completely or at least changed. Born of the beliefs we once saw as truth, the old ones can present serious obstacles. As we all have brought a great deal of excess baggage of this nature with us from previous lifetimes, everybody has their work cut out for them.
To paraphrase a teaching from ‘The Life and Teaching of the Masters of the Far East’, Volume Three comes: ‘A house that is divided within itself in due course is bound to shatter and fall, but united it remains forever. Choose carefully whom you wish to serve, for division is failure and death. Yet, unity in the principle of the Great Father/Mother of all life assures eternal honourable evolutionary progress and dominion by the highest forces of life.’
The above is relevant to what is happening to everybody now. Many by now are trying to develop their spiritual nature, but are wrestling with letting go of their old fears and habits. For as long as our small earthly self and our Highest or God Self are at loggerheads with each other, we represent a divided house. The time has come for choosing between allowing the desires of our lower nature to run our life for us or turning towards to the living God within, our inner guidance, so it can show us the way. Through this the mind of our heart develops; that’s where the living God within dwells.
Shedding the emotional baggage of the past that this requires is by no means easy, as many of our beliefs are very old indeed and therefore deeply embedded in our subconscious. There is nothing for it but waiting until they surface and when they do, ask God and the Angels to show us how to deal with them. This requires patience and a great deal of courage. I find it helpful to know that any obstacles on our spiritual pathway unfailingly present us with opportunities for growing in wisdom and understanding. So let’s rejoice and give thanks and praise for our Divine Father/Mother’s wisdom and love who for every one of His/Her children of the Earth provides this kind of learning.
For as long as we refuse to pay attention to what our earthly lessons wish to teach us, time and again they will be presented to us and that in many different forms. Until our reactions show that we have got the message, we shall not be allowed to move on to studies of a more elevated nature.
* Recommended Reading:
• ‘Why Is There So Much Suffering In Our World?’
• ‘Why Do Bad Things Happen To Good People?’
• ‘Realise Your Inner Strength’
• ‘The Law Of Karma’
• ‘Disasters’
• ‘The Living Bread’
This article is a chapter from ‘War And Peace Between Nations.
If it has whetted your appetite to read more, please follow the link below:
‘War And Peace Between Nations’