“The essence of greatness lies in the ability to choose one’s own personal fulfillment in circumstances where others choose madness.”
Viktor Frankl from “Man’s Search for Meaning”
In today’s society, the present moment is the great absentee. The only moment that truly exists, the only one in which one truly is, paradoxically – in the everyday life of a person who “survives” – is almost never taken into consideration.
So then, “when” are we?
When we manage to perceive that we have been engulfed by a thought-form dynamically fed by an inner dysfunctional emotional state, the road “magically” opens up before us:
Step back and observe everything from outside yourself, as a Witness.
This does not mean refusing to be “present” to these perceptions, but rather the exact opposite: entering the true state of Presence, that of the Essence which IS and which needs nothing except to Be Pure Consciousness, to Observe, and to embrace the Whole.
When we are in suffering, we are simply trying to flee from the suffering, but we are not aware of this. We dwell in the past, in memory, in recollections, in the mind. Being in the Here and Now is not being in the mind. Suffering is caused by the reaction of our mind interpreting a situation already lived. Being in the present allows us to definitively leave that past behind.
Being in the Here and Now is being in acceptance of this suffering.
The moment we fully welcome this suffering without judging it, but simply staying with what is, this suffering will transform into Joy.
Suffering is the shortest path to awakening.
Provided that we do not flee from suffering but rather immerse ourselves completely in it, perceiving its energy, focusing our attention on the physical and emotional sensations of that precise moment. This is because suffering – like fear – does not actually exist: it is a construct of our mind, indissolubly linked to a recollection, a memory of the “past.” A construct, however, that has a history it is necessary to know.
Life is a continuous evolutionary process, and any event that happens to us occurs for a very specific reason – in truth there are two, and paradoxically opposite ones! – related to our deep need to put ourselves in a position to learn from that specific experience.
Everything is always part of an evolutionary process, and nothing ever happens by chance!
Everything that happens often has a much deeper meaning, and we have the opportunity to evolve by deeply accepting what has happened as an opportunity to understand and increase the expansion of our Consciousness. There are therefore no mistakes, nor feelings of guilt, since everything is perfect as it is and is aimed at our evolution.
Suffering, then, is necessary until we reach an evolved and conscious way of functioning. At a primitive level of functioning it is necessary so that the individual becomes aware that this is a path that does not lead to the fulfillment of their Soul. Furthermore, it is useful, mainly to be able to empathize with the suffering of others and develop Compassion, a fundamental step for our evolution, for the expansion of the Heart Energy Center, and an essential step on the path toward Ascension. And in order for this purification process to take place, one must be ready to suffer. Arming ourselves with much patience, we must open our mind to suffering, because only by embracing suffering does it cease!
It is the lack of awareness that produces suffering, but it is suffering that leads to awareness, which makes suffering disappear!
By becoming aware that suffering exists at a collective level as a lack of awareness, and by not identifying with it, we will completely change the perception of our existence. By trying at all costs to give an explanation to our suffering, we avoid experiencing it at a deep level; only in the absence of explanations and judgments can we truly experience the other. This is because our mind interferes continuously and prevents us from experiencing what is, and it does so through the judgment of what is right and what is wrong, through the comparison of this with that, of today with yesterday or with tomorrow!
“There is Suffering. But it is not my Suffering. I do not identify with it. Since I AM what I think I am, I consciously decide every day to be Joy, Wellbeing, Love, Abundance, and Light for myself and for all those around me!”
“None of us is a victim of the world around us; rather, we are our own tormentor!”
What we believe, what we think, and what we put into words is truly powerful! This is because everything we “live” does not exist a priori in objective Reality: what exists IS CONSCIOUSNESS. We too are Consciousness: everything we think, feel, and emanate, we ARE, and this is transmitted all around us and, echoing in the “nothingness” and in the “unknown” that surrounds us, “Manifests our Reality!”
If we change these aspects regarding what surrounds us, the world will change accordingly. Time does not exist as we know it: it too is a creation of our mind, precisely of the Ego, of our defensive Self, of our baggage of psychic superstructures. It serves us in order to give meaning to the path we have chosen to live incarnated, in order to have the experience we need to have in our physical body, and to remember.
But, in truth: “YOU ALREADY ARE THAT!”
“Time” and “Space” cannot influence the Self because they are within us. Even what we see around us is within us, because it was created by us!
Everything is happening – or rather, has already happened!!! – simultaneously in the Infinite Instant of the Vertical, even though we live it within that linear time that we need in order to experience it and remember! It is here that free will is born and manifests itself, fundamentally, as the “mode” through which we treasure these experiences! “Free” will therefore consists in the “how” and not in the “what.”
Suffering fully accepted, that is, with Awareness, ceases to be “painful,” because we understand that it was not based on truth but on a momentary reality. Suffering always presupposes a change, a “becoming,” and change is always positive, in favor of Life!
Pain does not entail this change, since it is only passivity, and is therefore in favor of non-Life! Both Suffering and Pain arise from a psychic elaboration of something that has to do with the past.
But how can awareness transform pain into suffering, and suffering into evolution?
- By living in the Here and Now
- By seeing everything that happens to us in an impersonal way
- By having a deep and judgment-free experience of everything we put ourselves in a position to live
- By keeping the focus of our Interest, and therefore of our Attention and ultimately of our Energy, on the experience we are living, even if painful, rather than fragmenting it into continuous and useless questions and doubts that serve no purpose for the experience itself
Often, the unaware person enacts a protective mechanism that consists in moving away from Suffering; in doing so, they give free rein to non-transformative pain, since they move away from Awareness of that experience and of the reason why it is necessary. What is advisable is to “enter into that suffering” before it becomes pain. By bringing all our Attention and our Awareness, then, precisely to that specific point in our body, and remaining as much as possible in that point, perceiving and fully living all its reactions, even physical ones, without in the slightest wishing to change them, we will come into contact with that repressed and frozen emotional charge which, in the long run, like “peeling the layers of an onion one by one,” can be completely thawed and reactivated.
Pain latches onto a trauma and a traumatic activation that, at least in its early stages, requires outside help.
Suffering, on the other hand, is the cry for help that arises from pain, in the case where a traumatic activation has not been reached and there is still all the “space” needed to intervene through perception, analysis, understanding, and awareness-building – all these processes inherent to the experience that we consciously agree to undergo.
How, then, does this process of becoming aware occur, and above all, the transformation of this specific experience?
It is not enough to accept it by remaining in contact with it; it is necessary to live it deeply, experiencing it in the body as well!
And allowing the body to react to them through psychophysical “discharges.”
Until we definitively become aware that the blocks to these discharges and to transformative awareness are always created by ourselves, also in relation to certain experiences – whether real or presumed makes no difference – which absolutely need to be relived and brought into awareness within the experience.
THE CRISIS
The “crisis” essentially consists of a turning point that outlines one road toward Evolution and another toward Involution. So-called “chaos” therefore represents a real opportunity for growth, depending on the individual’s capacity for adaptation, inevitably sustained by their own Awareness.
Every time we witness a change from an old model to a new one, it is always accompanied by “chaos” straddling the two: an energy field changing into a new one must first “disorganize and destroy itself,” where destruction is nothing other than a destruction of patterns, not of content, since nothing is ever created and nothing is ever destroyed, but everything is transformed, and so we witness a Transformation. This reminds us of what happens in the famous Chladni figures. Ernst Chladni was a pioneer of the Science of Cymatics, who used, for his experiments, thin metal plates mounted on a resonance box with a transducer installed at the base. Sand is spread on the plate, and then specific sounds are reproduced. The sand particles begin to “dance” as a result of the sound produced and form geometric patterns, mostly circular. By changing the frequency, these figures also change, after an intermediate phase of “chaos,” an essential phase for a kind of “reset” and “reorganization” at a new level of “Informed Energy.”
Indeed, in the Chladni figures, when the new sound frequency is introduced, the geometric pattern becomes visually disorganized before transforming into a new pattern with a more evolved organization: without “chaos” it is not possible to grow, evolve, and access higher states of consciousness.
The new sound frequency, for us human beings, is Grace.
“No consciously induced spiritual growth can occur unless mental and emotional homeostasis are also present. Spiritual homeostasis, under circumstances of strong stress and physical conditioning, produces that quality for the sake of which the Monad, the celestial Spiritual Father, sent his son, the prodigal son, to incarnate.”
(page 34, “In the Footsteps of the Master”, Baker-Hansen, Edizioni Crisalide)