The Causes of Suffering
Nobody likes to suffer and then we can ask ourselves why is there so much suffering in the world? Pleasure and pain, joy and suffering, happiness and sadness, they are all but the opposite facets of the same coin that is life. We can’t have one without automatically meeting the other one.
But if we don’t want to suffer, what should we do? Surely there must be a force that pushes us towards the cause of the suffering and this force is the imperious need to have an identity.
In yoga it is shown that the Inner Self, the true Self of our being is immortal and infinite, beyond any physical or mental limitation, beyond any suffering, any delusion and disappointment. Still, because of the power of the cosmic illusion, we don’t see our essential true nature – in other words, we are completely ignorant regarding what we really represent. This ignorance allows us to have an identity, which separates us from the rest of the Universe. Because of this, we identify ourselves with the body, which is only the instrument of the manifestation of the Self or of the spark of deification that exists in all of us. Our fundamental mistake is that we identify ourselves with our physical body, with our mind and our personality.
If we were to list the causes of the sufferings, these would be:
- The man ignores his real, divine nature, of eternal spirit, of spark from God The Father, omniscient and full of infinite beatitude.
- Because of this ignorance, he identifies with his body and personality, which is, with the modalities and instruments through which he expresses in this world.
- This identification creates a lot of attachments and abhorrence.
- The nature of the physical world is changeable and the man doesn’t have any real power on the exterior events. Therefore, he can’t always insure or protect the things he is attached to and he can’t always avoid the ones towards which he feels abhorrence. Thus, he suffers and experiences the whole range of negative emotions, like: disappointment, wickedness, suspicion, jealousy, anger, fear, resentments, bitterness, hatred and all these appear because he can’t get what he wants.
- The necessity to maintain the physical body in the best conditions until the end of its mission in this present existence determines a natural attachment towards the body and the man will suffer if the body is injured or is in danger.
Thus, the ignorance and the suffering manifest through 4 types of inner behaviours that profoundly mark the man’s life.
- The mean feeling of individuality and ego
This identification leads all his actions and generates the selfishness, the infatuation in front of the success (“I am strong, powerful, intelligent, I succeeded”) and the suffering and shame in front of the failure (“I failed, I am ill”). - The attachment
This aspect of the ignorance means to identify yourself with the pleasurable experiences that are formed due to the memory of the objects that produce agreeable impressions. - The abhorrence
This aspect of the ignorance means to indulge in miserable states and it appears as a result of the memory of the unpleasant experiences. This gives us the desire to oppose, to resist, to take revenge. - The fear of death
This is the tendency to cling to life, which brings us back to the first stage: people hang up to their ego as to a life-buoy on a stormy sea, they repress their fear of death, lose themselves in the ephemeral illusion of the eternity of the moment in order to forget it, instead of accepting to live, evolving, developing their beings and helping the humanity to develop in this ascending sense.
All these happen because we don’t see some fundamental aspects of our possibilities of action in the manifested world, such as:
Every thing or phenomenon that we want to realize existed, exists and will eternally exist in the macrocosmic Absolute.
We must be conscious that every energy, thing or phenomenon belongs to the Universe and we can only possess it temporarily, except the Essence Self. We come into this world lacking any force or element and we leave in the same way. Some don’t have this possession even during their existence. In other words, we only borrow a certain force or a certain object from the universal, macrocosmic manifestation.
Any thing, phenomenon or energy is distributed according to the law. There is no luck, bad luck or whim. The law of Karma, of the action and reaction, of the cause and the effect acts everywhere, in all cases.
Yoga is a practical philosophy. It doesn’t only analyse why we are suffering, but also offers the solutions for transcending this suffering, for going beyond the alternation pain – pleasure, joy – suffering, etc.
One of the optimal solutions is to learn to be less attached regarding the obtaining of objects, friendships, loves, material and social situations.
Another modality to orient the mind positively is to think of and to conjure up the opposite of the negative state we feel at a certain moment. Gradually, if we persevere in this direction, we’ll notice our mind changes in a positive manner.
Also, the total orientation and aspiration towards the liberation from the cycle of successive reincarnations, towards deification and the persevering efforts in this direction can annihilate the causes of the sufferings and can produce that ineffable happiness of the search and finding of God.
Therefore, become conscious of the causes of your sufferings and eliminate them. You are here to discover that you are perfectly and completely happy. Don’t let anything and anybody make you believe the opposite. Discover the Truth, because, as Jesus said, “The Truth will set you free!”
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