Theos-Talk Archives (May 1996 Message tl00241)

Eldon writes (Keith>quoted) (Keith Responds>>)

ELDON:
In your posting you write about the benefits of suffering and how
it is something that cannot be avoided. I'd use a different word:
"pain". Pain is the mirror of pleasure. Both are a part of the
experience of life. But suffering is not. Suffering is a state of
mind that we don't have to approach our experiences with.

If I were jogging, and my legs hurt as I ran, there would be
pain. But I could be enjoying the run, and not think about the
way that my legs feel. Paying attention to the pain, I could
wish to be doing something else, and let myself suffer. Or
ignoring the pain and enjoying the run, I could have the identical
experience, minus any sense of suffering.
KEITH>>

.>>Thus pain is information,  yet suffering is still  the self-conscious
response and awareness of MY pain and cannot always be ignored.

Buddhism would call the cause of suffering to be the attachment
to our expectations. We fail to recognize the impermanence of
life, and want to repeat or hold onto experiences that have
previously brought us pleasure. This clinging to the past and
failing to embrace the present, this wanting to be someone and
somewhere else, is the cause of suffering.

>>Paradoxical nature of our level of consciousness exposed.  We always want,
want, want! Even wanting not to want!
>>This desire to be somewhere else not suffering may be a desire to be
unconscious (oblivion-THANATOS) or super-consciouss beyond the current level of
self-consciouss humanity (desire for evolution-EROS)
>1) suffering is a tool for spiritual growth

>>Selfconscious dissatisfaction may be a calling to evolution or death.


 Change is unavoidable.
If we cooperate with planning and directing it, we remain
somewhat in control and don't have to suffer.
>>Pain consciousness is feedback loop (like pleasure) on state of system.  It is
an awareness of levels of structure information (COSMSOS) or disippation-entropy
( CHAO)  A Janus headed portait appears!
>3) suffering is necessary as the shadow of good
>>Suffering feels like entropy and may be, but it is information.
Suffering is the feeling that we don't want to be in life
as we find ourselves at the moment. It comes from *denial*
and lack of cooperation with the processes of change. It's
not the shadow of good, it's the shadow of living in
harmony and cooperation with the eternal law of change.

Each of us, though, is a nucleus of one. When our barriers drop
and we accept others, we are a living center of brotherhood. We
don't need a theosophical group to do this work.

>How many have been called to the path by suffering more than by
>complacency, boredom or simple curiosity?  Until the Buddha stepped
>out of the palace and Christ out of the carpenter's shop spirituality was
>superfluous to the enjoyment and struggles of life.  Suffering was the
>initiation fee, so to speak.

Unexpected pain in life (which you call suffering), like physical illness,
is the last and most primal attempt of life to get one's attention. If
we were more inattentive, we could resolve the inner conflicts and deal
with the issues in a more effective manner, before things get to that
stage. But pain is also an inseparable part of life, and itself is not
suffering, but rather the "bitter" in the "bitter-sweet" flavor of life.

Just as there is a "music of the spheres", a sound-quality to life, there
is likely a "flavor of experience", a taste-quality to life as well. And
we can savor the taste, rather than spit it out of our mouths and say
"I don't like life."

-- Eldon


------------------------------
Keith to Eldon:

Thanks for the thoughtful response to my questions of suffering.  Not to put
words in your mouth, Eldon, but to add my own ideas to yours,  "pain" as you use
it seems abstract, impersonal, value-freee, cleansed of human  emotion,
something that can be measured scientifically like synaptic uptake of
nuerotrasmitters of X (pain molecule).  This is a valueable perspective from a
detached perspective.  Detachment seems a type of goal.
Yet compassion is even more mysterious.  How do I feel your pain?  This ablity
to pick up another's dangers and respond gives us most of the examples of the
proof of ESP.  "I knew the baby was in trouble, I felt it?" are common
expressions that show a linking to the higher connected consciousness through
the linking with the essential danger of another.   Clinton has very adeptly
used this expression of mass sympathy; "I feel your pain!" to evoke a feeling of
connectedness.

Pain and accidents don't really bother most of us.  It is deliberately and often
spitefully inflicted pain by one human on another or even self-destruction.
This reveals spiritual exchanges that are really hard to accept like  wars and
suicides and serial thrill killing and one could go on.
Humanity seem to be capable of inflicting sprititual suffering of an advanced
level that foreshadow the higher levels as much as unitive bliss (many would
disagree). Neoplatonism (reduced to the absurd perhaps) seems to offer a " take
your medicine (really good for you) even if it tastes bad (!) because it will
help you later" platitude.   Gnosticism seems to take the extreme oppostite
stance that there is nothing good about suffering, that it only reminds us of
our loss of the complete bliss and unlimited power of the heaven world.  It is a
cruel reminder of our enslavement to evil spiritual forces that have seduced us
and that salvation is an escape from prison.  I admit I have held on to a
gnostic attitude because, as  critics of gnosticism  perhaps rightly suggest, it
gives one an excuse for excesses and shifts issue of responsibility It also
gives one a misguided (I now believe) since of superiority and specialness.  The
gnostics are the chosen, the elect and as such are granted special dispensations
perhaps -- rebels with a cause, criminals on a mission like Robbinhood, the mask
of superiority of the misfit.


Eldon seems to suggest that change does not allow our final judement of the
world process  by our limited consciousness, but demands that the awareness of
pain and pleasure are part of the energy flow in time and  are forces to be
cooperated with for growth in the long run or suppressed or gone against or
misused with long term consequences.  The ability to experience my pain and by
inference your suffering leads to an expansion of consciousness.  Still, it may
take many lifetimes not just to hear it, analyze and even to feel it, but  to be
detached and committed at the the same time--satisfied with the impossiblity of
satisfaction because we are not  separate from any of it.

Namasate
Keith Price