473 Emotional suffering Nov. 12 23

Sounds familiar?                                                                                                                             

Emotional suffering begins when you mentally label a person, a situation, or an event  as negative such as:

1- Either coming from Desire: ..............meaning not getting what you want.

2- Or coming from Hatred: ..................meaning getting what you don’t want 

3- Or coming from Illusion/delusion: Not being able to differentiate realities of life vs. our ongoing fictional dreaming state, and paying for.  

All of these cause an immediate negative emotional refusal or contraction of various durations.

Apart from obvious external causes such as the loss of a loved one, it may look like the situation is itself creating the suffering, but ultimately this is not the case.

In fact, our emotional suffering is almost always self-created, and, always in the form of unconscious non-acceptance, and resistance to what is. “Not me- not to me- Why me”

Our resistance and non-acceptance take the form of sudden and reactive  ego-driven judgments, and the intensity of our emotional suffering depends on the degree of resistance / non-acceptance 

of the perceived negative event in the present moment. 

Emotional suffering takes many forms such as anger, grief, anxiety, regret, anxiety, guilt, jealousy, fear, doubt, despair, and even depression,  etc......All of them with various degrees, and durations.

Strangely enough, the causal event of our non-acceptance is usually totally out of our control, and 

trying to resist or even reverse it will make mental suffering even worse. A perfect Catch 22.

Now this:                                                                                                                                                 Is suffering really necessary? Well, ……Yes and no.                                                                                              If someone had not yet mentally suffered, there would be no depth in this human being, no humility, no compassion, no forgiveness, no love, and this talk will not resonate with her/him.    

Suffering cracks open the very thick shell of our defensive ego. 

At this point, it has served its purpose. 

Without being masochistic that is searching/ enjoying suffering we need to say YES to suffering before we can transcend it. No other way.

Suffering is necessary until you realize it is unnecessary.  Thanks