Is Suffering a Gift of Time?

How to find the hidden treasure in your suffering

Your veins are taught with poisoned blood, your body stiff with anger. An ailment of sorts that has beleaguered you from the beginning of time. The very gift in suffering turned to a recurring malignant tumour that scrapes your life away life time after life time.

Must you ask a scullery maid for her wages just to show her mercy. Or is it not the brittle brush at her bend that sours the milk of her labour. Her suffering intends on making her see a different perspective, make a different choice; her rescuer is her jailer. What has she yet to learn in this tangled affair?

What every pilgrim knows

On every pilgrimage is a lesson intact in the hold of suffering. Nature’s way is a swing on the pendulum clock. A chiming tick, tock that swings to the rule of time. But man’s nature is beyond the rule of time. To have chosen to live entirely by time is to have chosen his fate. Because after all, no matter where you are in the world, the clock keeps ticking. So, there is no escaping this swinging noose.

Your suffering is time bound, if you step into your true nature just like the Buddha; suffering seizes. This is the awakening to your fullest potential, instead of seeing things/events through the limited glass of knowledge and time, you start to expand to higher consciousness.

Take responsibility

But just like the scullery maid, you never want to look at the situation for what it is. Your suffering becomes a way of life. You invent stories and narratives to justify the rotting flesh in your prison. Whether it is politicians, pundits, priests or parents you blame, it makes no difference. The only entrapment possible is self-entrapment. Your ego strengthens its hold on you day by day by your enforcement of your beliefs and stories that cause you suffering.

Hell bent on you becoming its servant, the ego uses your mind at its disposable to send you to a living hell. Then when you are down trodden, it smears the wall with bloody graffiti to celebrate yet another success. Meanwhile, even in this incapacitated state, your counsel is your dementor. And hence it is not surprising that your suffering becomes a recurring plague.

What mystics know

All sages and mystics have alluded to the fact that suffering is part of time. Therefore, you must experience suffering on the journey to your awakening in order to transcend it. In order to recognise your awakening, you have to recognise that which you are not; suffering!

This is the hidden trick in all of this, suffering is a tool, a ladder to higher levels of consciousness. In walking through your judgements, impressions and all perceptions projected by the ego, you break free of the mind. This is what Rumi refers to in his journey to awakening. The fire that burnt him so fervently is the fire that caused him so much longing to such an extent he could climb the ladder to higher levels of consciousness.

So, take the tentative steps towards your heart and search for what you need to start your journey. For some it may be a book, meditation and others, a living master. Whatever it is, seek it with a passion that engulfs all lingering doubt. This is the only way out of the maze of repeated suffering life time after life time.

I invite you to Journey into Self Exploration

Happy Seeking!

Image credit
Linzo