Tag Archives: suffering

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: When Suffering Is Appropriate & Taking Back Our Energy

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There is beauty in the darkness too... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
There is beauty in the darkness too…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

It can sometimes be difficult to know what to do when someone we care about deeply is suffering. We want to rush in to help, to fix or to alleviate the suffering in any way we can. We often have a clearer perspective, looking in from the outside, and so we might want to advise or prescribe what we think needs to happen. It’s hard not to judge, criticize, or blame others and think that only we are right. In some cases, however, it’s pretty obvious that help is needed, that immediate attention is called for, and it is appropriate then to give it, but more often than not our input rarely helps. This is a hard fact to accept.

How many times have we told so-and-so that if they don’t stop their destructive behavior they are sure to suffer irreparable damage, even death? Have they really listened, taken in our advice, and changed in any way?

How many times have we been confronted by the dear one who can only whine and blame others for their difficulties? Does it really help to point out to them their own part in creating their suffering situation?

How many times have we sent a needy individual money, only to be called upon again and again with increasingly unrealistic reasons for the monetary need? We have to wonder if we are only enabling them, keeping them in a state of infantile entitlement for our own purposes. We might find it hard to let them fail, but in so doing we are holding them back from creating their own fulfilling life, far beyond anything we could ever provide.

When we rush in to help we often alleviate only our own discomfort and in the process take away from the loved one the full responsibility for taking control of their own lives. We take away their joy in accomplishing what once seemed impossible, what they dream of. We take away their opportunity to encounter what lies deep inside them too, the issues that produce their difficulties and their suffering, what they must face to become mature beings in the world.

Doing the busy work of taking responsibility... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Doing the busy work of taking responsibility…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

If we attempt to solve or fix the lives of others without their full participation, we take away their own responsibility for creating their own lives and taking their own journeys. Often they will fail to fully launch into life. They will remain dependent and needy and thus in our rush to help we have in fact done them a disservice. We deny them the opportunity to experience and face their own troubles as we have had to experience and face ours, for these are the things that help us mature into responsible human beings.

In looking back over our own lives we can track where we too had moments of suffering or crisis and how in dealing with them maturely we have moved beyond them. We had to learn the hard way that if we face what comes to greet us each day, with maturity, sobriety, and pragmatism, we learn that we can handle anything. And that is empowering!

In reality, we are personally better off letting others sit and contemplate their own dilemmas until they get to the moment of decision and determine their own course of action. This can be a tense time, but pretty soon all of our patient waiting pays off.

We might notice how life itself tends to the issues at hand in a most natural way. This natural process may arrive as a perceived disaster, but as things unfold we see that what once was thought of as disastrous is actually the very thing that offers the biggest and most lasting change. How many times have we heard people say that their worst experiences have led them to their most amazing experiences: to the meeting of their true love, to the discovery of their true profession, their true talents? Often our most painful experiences are our most enlightening, leading us into previously unimaginable new life.

If we remain stuck in our role of enabler then our energy remains stuck too. In serving others to the extent that we become energetically depleted, we allow them to take priority over ourselves, and that is not good business nor a good position to be in. If we are drained we have little to keep us going and even less to give. Our spirits recede, our involvement in life decreases and our motivation dies. If we are to remain vital, active, and fully participatory in life, we must take care of how we use our energy.

Energetically freed to really bloom! - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Energetically freed to really bloom!
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

As we free our energy from perceived duties—duties that we have given ourselves for whatever reason—we are free to live our own lives. If we free our attachment to people, places and things that are no longer useful or important in the life we live now, our energy is returned to us in abundance.

In simplifying our lives by clearing ourselves of both inner and outer encumbrances, we also free others from having to be encumbered by us, by what we think they need or want. And then we are all freed to take our journeys to fulfillment!

There is always some energy-freeing to be done!
Jan

Messages from Jeanne

Readers of Infinity: Life Is A Hall of Mirrors

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What's the point of it all?

Dear Jeanne: Why must we suffer?

The other day someone asked me a rhetorical question: What’s the point of life if all we do is die and come back to suffer again? What’s the point?

We pondered the question from many angles, from the Shamanic perspective, from the Buddhist perspective, from what we’ve personally experienced and learned, but kept coming to the greater question, that being: What’s the point of anything?

What I’ve gained—in doing deep inner work around my own life lived, in doing recapitulation, and in having had experiences beyond the mundane—is a greater awareness of everything as quite the opposite of pointless and instead full of meaning and purpose. Today, I ask, can you clarify for us: What is the point of all our suffering?

Jeanne answers:

The most straightforward answer I can provide is this: Suffering leads to growth.

I follow that up by asking you, My Dear Ones, a rhetorical question in return: How would you even know you were suffering if you did not have something good to compare it to? How would you know that suffering was happening if you did not also know when experiences of the sublime were occurring? In this dichotomy I present the two facets of the meaning of life, for there is indeed great meaning in life. The point is to evolve beyond suffering. But it is only through suffering that the pointlessness of suffering will be revealed and it is only through suffering that the sublime will be revealed as well.

Fathom infinity as endlessness though not as nothingness. In suffering, one may remain endlessly caught in feelings of purposelessness, on the endless wheel of suffering. It is only in having experiences beyond suffering, outside of the wheel of suffering, that one will understand that there is more to life than suffering alone. Suffering is relegated to that realm, to life on earth. There are many other levels of existence. In your spiritual endeavors and in your experiences of life itself you have glimpses of these advanced realms of life; fleeting as they may be, accepted or rejected, they nonetheless occur many times in a lifetime. Life is not subject to life in human form alone, but exists independent of the human form as well.

Perhaps it is best explained this way: the spirit inside every human being knows that life has meaning, that there is a point to all life, to suffering and bliss alike. It is revealed in ways that do not overwhelm. It is revealed in experiences that each one of you can handle, even though you may think otherwise.

I interrupt Jeanne with a thought. Yesterday, Jeanne, I had the clear perception, perhaps clearer than ever, that the recapitulation process is very much like the dying process, that is, as we recapitulate we shed an old self, much the way we shed our human form and leave our body in death. Would you agree?

Yes, I would agree, Jeanne replies.

I go on to state: I agree with you Jeanne that in recapitulating we invariably allow ourselves the opportunity to understand life on a deeper level. In my own process, I began to understand both the Shaman’s perspective and the Buddhist concepts of life and afterlife at a much deeper level of understanding. I could not have fully embraced these new ideas had I not had many experiences during my recapitulation. In fact, recapitulation became my greatest teacher.

Jeanne goes on to say:

Remember, it was your own spirit that urged recapitulation upon you and this is what I speak of when I say that your spirits know how to guide you through life. Your spirits know what you personally must encounter in order to evolve. Your spirits know the challenges that will present you with the means of going beyond suffering as you go through your personal struggles. And yes, you must suffer until you no longer need to.

It is only then that you will understand the point of life—yours personally—including the point of suffering and the point of spiritual evolution. Until then it will all remain a confusing concept, a great mystery; as it should.

If you find yourself caught in the endless cycle of thought regarding life—constantly asking what’s the point or why must I suffer?—you will not evolve. The question itself will keep you attached to the queries of the mind, attached to the idea of suffering and the endlessness of pointless life. Why stay there when you don’t have to? In fact, the first point of life is to fully understand life through your own experiences, and then, through your own experiences, to expand the mind to fully understand mindlessness; the concept of mind without attachment, without grasping, to fully experience open mind without fear.

The job of suffering is to aid you in ridding yourselves of fears so that your dying process—in the many forms of dying that happen everyday, in the death of old ideas and concepts of self and others, for instance—may lead you to greater awareness. Life is not relegated to life on earth alone. That is what your spirit strives to teach you every day. Even your suffering is not really of earthly experiences, but far exceeds your present moment, your present self, and your present situation. Your suffering takes you on journeys far beyond self and the mundane world.

Is not most of your suffering inside you? Where is your suffering really in the world around you? You will find that the world does not deliver your suffering, but merely reflects your inner process, long ago planted inside you. Your inner fears are mirrored all around you. Life is a hall of mirrors. So where is reality? Once you discover that reality is inside you and that you have total control over it, the point of everything else will be revealed.

Work on freeing the self from the hall of mirrors. Face the fear that sends you looking for escape from the endless hall of mirrors. Look at it closely. Realize it is buried inside you, presented in this life but even more deeply embedded from past lives. You will indeed discover that the fears you carry have been carried much longer than you suspect. You carry your life lessons always within. Until you resolve them they will continue to haunt you, reflected in life.

So, what’s the point of suffering? What’s the point of life? The real point is to answer those questions for yourself. What do you think the point is? And believe me, there is indeed a point that will be revealed and the sooner you find out the better you will feel about it, about life, about the self, and about your role in infinity, because that is the ultimate point: you all have a role in infinity, in far greater life than you can now envision. But I can’t really tell you more than that. It’s your journey to figure out, to experience every day that you live upon that earth as you experience that wheel of suffering.

Keep learning about the self. Trust your life’s unfolding and your spirit to guide you on your journey, they know where you must go and why. Solve the riddle of self first, then other riddles will naturally be resolved.

Seek openness, freedom, and fearlessness by facing all the challenges of the self in a deep inner process of not only shedding old life but in seeking new life, a new life full of energy and curiosity. In letting go, in learning what it means to let go of suffering by suffering, you will eventually get the point of it all.

May patience, compassion, and fearlessness be with you.

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: What Is Suffering & Why Is It So Necessary?

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Today, I follow up on last week’s blog, Wounded Children. I ask the question: What is suffering? And why is it so necessary?

I grew up in the Catholic religion. I went to Catholic schools and learned that Jesus wanted us to be innocent children, to be free of sin, yet the world itself did not support me in my endeavors. The world was full of sin and yes, suffering. I suffered as a child, as most children do. As much as I tried to live a sin-free life, there was no getting around sin, it was everywhere. I realized that everything, even breathing could be considered sinful.

In my weekly forays to the confessional, as often as I tried to articulate my sins, I found no actual release from them. Any absolution was momentary at best, because as soon as I walked out of the church I was back in sin-ville. As a child, suffering meant not only trying to find ways to deal with what happened to me out in the world, but, on a deeper level, it meant dealing with the fact that I would never be holy enough. I was a sinner and so I must suffer.

Illusion?

My child’s perspective was not all that far from the Buddhist perspective, which accepts that the reality we live in, samsara, is indeed an ocean of suffering. Samsara is an endless cycle of obsession and illusion, the more we try to escape it, the more it assaults us. Until, that is, we turn to it and ask: What is life trying to teach me? Why is it so necessary to suffer?

The Shamans of Carlos Castaneda’s lineage tell us too that this world is an illusion and that we are born to struggle with breaking through that illusion. They tell us that the world constantly assaults us in an effort to wake us up to this fact by presenting us with things that we want to push away and other things that we want to constantly cling to in our efforts to uphold that illusion. But in the end the Shamans contend, as do the Buddhists, that we must face the illusionary reality of the world and break it down, one illusion at a time. By challenging our perceptions, by challenging the way we think and act, and by challenging ourselves to face our deaths as new life, we offer ourselves the opportunity to break through the endless suffering of being human.

If we believe that all lives are meaningful, that our personal suffering and the suffering of everyone else in the world is important, then perhaps we might understand the necessity of it. Samsara, illusion, is endless. We are all being confronted with the truth of this as the revelations of sexual abuse swirl through the media, assaulting our personal illusions, coming into our homes on the nightly news. Our illusions are being shattered.

From a Buddhist and Shamanic perspective, this is very good. Such shatterings offer us the opportunity to view the world differently, to accept the necessity of suffering as a means of breaking us out of endless samsara. In my book, The Man in the Woods, I present the sufferings of my child self. It’s often hard for people to fathom that I suffered such abuse and yet survived the experiences. But I know that my own experiences are not all that exceptional. I hear stories of equal or worse horror every day, of abuse that went on for just as many years or even longer.

I am both humbled and hopeful as I hear the stories being told to me personally or by the media. And yet I know that, as people face their personal suffering, they are facing the shattering of their lives. But I also know that this shattering is the necessary breakthrough point to new life.

The universe itself is challenging us to face the reality of samsara and the necessity for it now. As a catalyst to shattering our illusions, constant exposure to the horrific reality of sexual abuse against innocent children is a mighty force. This exposure alone has the ability to change our world as we discover what has been kept hidden for decades, but even more deeply meaningful as we face our personal secrets.

When we are finally ready to face our personal suffering, we are ready to shatter the illusions that we have constructed in an effort to both get us through our lives but also to protect us so we could survive. When we face our inner turmoil, the suffering and the illusion of it, we face the fact of the world as indeed samsara, endless suffering.

On the bright side, in facing our personal suffering, in shattering our illusions about who we are, we begin to see the world differently. Suffering becomes understood as the means to enlightenment as the Buddhists present it and the means to accessing the warrior self as the Shamans suggest. In recapitulation, in deep inner work, in allowing ourselves to sit through the horror of the news, facing the truth of human suffering, we offer ourselves a new opportunity to evolve beyond this world of endless suffering.

Both the Buddhists and the Shamans use suffering and death as the greatest teachers and advisors. Both the Buddhists and the Shamans are aware of death at all times, preparing for it, using the challenges in this world to break through to a new awareness that we are all beings seeking enlightenment.

The reason we must suffer is the same for all of us. We are being challenged to grasp the truth of suffering as our greatest teacher, so that we may crack through it and make our deaths as meaningful as we want our lives to be.

In samsara we prepare for new life; in suffering we discover what that might mean. With each new life we are offered the opportunity to discover the illusions we steep ourselves in, that are presented to us in myriad ways by the world outside of us and by our inner reactions, disturbances, and challenges to that world. We are all here to live deeply meaningful lives—that I have no doubt about.

As I look around at the world each day and discover yet another reason to be disappointed in my fellow humans, to be distraught, disturbed and disgusted, I know I am being challenged to not turn off the television set. I am being challenged to face samsara and to ask others to face it as well. It is only through facing the onslaughts of horror that we can change the world.

We must face our inner darkness—mirrored unrelentingly, it seems lately, by the outside world—and ask everyone else to do the same. Suffering leads to enlightenment. I keep that in mind.

Thanks for reading. Love to you all,
Jan