To end suffering two outcomes are necessary. The first is to disrupt the sequencial process that creates suffering; pain – fear – separation – personalization – story – belief – reactive pattern. The second is to resolve the existing, internally embedded fear. When the fear is resolved the separation, personalization, stories, beliefs and reactive patterns will no longer be necessary to protect you.
Disrupting the process: Pain is part of life. Pain happens. Accept your pain. Look at it and address your pain. Hold it in non-judgmental neutrality. Witness it but don’t become it. How you hold your pain will determine if you enter the process of suffering or not.
Fear arises when you are in pain. That is a natural, instinctive survival response. Accept your fear. Turn toward it and hold it with non-judgmental awareness. To distract yourself from it or suppress it will set off the process of suffering. It is at this point that it becomes most advantageous to see deeply with awareness and resolve the fear. If you resolve the fear, the process of suffering will not engage. If you suppress or distract yourself from the fear, the process of suffering will unfold. It is natural to not want to feel the fear. So the reaction of distraction or suppression is understandable but it Is also the path to suffering. To interrupt the process of suffering, turning within and becoming aware is essential. When you shine the light of awareness on the fear, it brings it from the darkness to the light and dissolves it. That disrupts the process before you have to experience suffering.
Resolving fear: Fear is resolved through Self-love. It is bringing self-compassion, self-acceptance and self-love from within and bathing every aspect of yourself, including the pain and fear, in that love and compassion. Self-love is immense acceptance of every aspect of yourself. In immense acceptance judgment evaporates and justification is no longer required.
Immense Self-acceptance is the road to authenticity. Most people live searching for acceptance outwardly, from relationships, acquision, position and circumstances. This is the search for worth, acceptance and love. But those things are only available inwardly in knowing that you are instrinsically sufficient, worthy and lovable because of your humanity and essential nature. Self-love, Self-compassion and Self-acceptance have the power to halt your move into separation when fear arises, thus disrupting the progression of suffering.
Self-acceptance and Self-love heal the cracks in your foundation caused by fear. Self-love releases the grip of the survival instinct. Self-compassion restores trust. It all begins and ends with you. Resolution is not about the other. It is always about the unresolved energy of fear held deep within you and its resolution, dissipation and release. This is not about trust in someone else. This is about trust in yourself. This is not about understanding another or forgiving another. This is about understanding and knowing yourself. Immense Self-acceptance has the power to calm the fear and restore peace.
Separation is a way of life and the dominant persepective most people live in. As such, this outlook makes Self-acceptance seem like a difficult prospect. In fact, Self acceptance can be achieved through a reverse in approach. You are trained first through the senses and then through society to look outside yourself. The senses are always directed outwardly. Society teaches that things, relationships and circumstances will bring you worth, acceptance and love and all of those are sourced from outside of yourself. When you turn awareness within and release the concept that things outside of yourself will create internal peace and fulfillment, Self-acceptance becomes possible. When your search for belongingness, esteem and self-actualization moves from without to within, the process of resolving fear begins.
You reflect exactly what is inside of you onto every situation. Your outside world becomes what you are inside. In the Yoga Vasistha it is written, “The world is as you are”. This is a critical understanding when it comes to resolving suffering because what happens when you are in fear and separation? That fear and separation inside become reflected outwardly and become personalized and turn into your story. A truth that there is pain becomes a fearful story that expands suffering. A simple truth that there is pain becomes permeated with fear, separates you from your Self and others, becomes filled with judgment, justification, attachment and aversion and is made into the story of your life. When you reverse your focus and bring your awareness within and shine the light of compassionate awareness upon the fear, you are shining light on the darkness and dissolving the energy of fear embedded within you, freeing you from suffering.
The fear, separation, personalization, stories, beliefs and unconscious patterns were pain defense mechanisms. They arose as survival mechanisms. With Self-acceptance they are no longer necessary. In resolution the memory of what caused the pain will remain – but with resolution it will energetically exist in neutrality. In neutrality, in non-judgment, in acceptance and in Self-awareness fear no longer has power and you are free. When you end the game of looking away, distracting and avoiding and begin to see deeply, you can end the fear, separation, personalization, stories, beliefs and patterns. You can bring mindfulness, love and compassion together and find resolution. Fear will ease and become dominated by love.
When you move from living unconsciously and outwardly focused into living mindfully, with courageous, non-judgmental Self-awareness, you can also see that the collective fear-based unconsciousness that is the source of the suffering agreement no longer includes you and you can release yourself from the agreement to suffer. When resolution happens within you, it begins the process of resolution in the collective unconscious. Your individual resolution is the ultimate act of compassion because you bring resolution to the collective unconscious and ease the suffering of the world.