Hard Truths Part 3: Suffering

 Have you ever asked yourself why we suffer?

This question has led me down some interesting rabbit holes seeking answers.

I opened my heart up and asked Source some questions. Source has a way of placing things in front of me sometimes when I seek to understand myself.

In part 1, we talked about needs.

In part 2, we discussed what you really are.

Part 3 will explain suffering, the role of the mind, and what to do with it.

The Facts-

There is no profit in wellness.

There is no profit in personal mastery.

There is no profit in autonomy and free thinking.

There is also no sympathy gained in being whole.

The game is rigged against us. Humans have become a source of profit for many things in this world.

We live in a culture of victim consciousness. We are victims of our stories, traumas and experiences. We live in the past because of our wounds. And I was one of those people… until someone called me out on it and I finally got fed up with my own suffering.

We live in a culture where we place our attention in fighting for the needs of others while simultaneously running from our own shit. We do for others, we depend on others instead of teaching others (and ourselves) how to actually heal.

We live in a culture that preaches mental health acceptance, but pills are pushed instead. Numbness leads to a nice profit margin for big pharma. People have adopted mental health struggles as identity. Mental health providers are becoming a short supply due to so much need.... and these poor people are getting burnt out in no time flat.

They Hide the Truth-

We lost our sight.

We lost our way.

We forgot who and what we truly are and how to be in the world.

Do you think habits are good for you? Maybe you will think differently after I tell you habit has replaced our ability to be fully conscious. Habits lack intention and it is one step closer to being “automated”. Everyone seems to be on autopilot. There is little awareness or intention on the little things anymore. Next thing you know, the day has flown by, and you literally remember almost nothing about it. Don’t believe me? Try going backwards through your day from right now and tell me what you remember…. scary truth isn't it?

There are forces that exist here that cause you to become unconscious and only when we focus our attention do we have a way out. Can you identify the forces trying to keep you locked in a loop of unconsciousness?

Course Correcting-

We need to slow the hell down. You see way more at 30mph than you do at 90mph.

We have not been taught how to deal with life here properly. I know I sure the hell wasn’t and I’m out here winging it like a lunatic with the rest of you.

Ask yourself these questions…

What is life throwing at you and how can you learn to just roll with it instead of being taken down by it?  

Can you be the observer instead of the experiencer?

FACT: Perspective dictates suffering.

What possibilities is life effortlessly presenting to you that are outside of your own ideas? Oftentimes we think we know how something should go or what we want to do, but the Universe may have other ideas.

When we tend to think we know more than the Universe, we usually get humbled.

If you are aware enough, you will catch the signals and signs, but that requires being present. It may come in numerous people mentioning certain words to you. Or someone may come to you with an idea or opportunity. Yet, we knucklehead humans try to control the way life flows. Sadly, it doesn’t work that way, and we suffer because we don’t get it. This honestly has been one of my hardest lessons, as I am an utter control freak.  

Why We Suffer-

FACT: Suffering comes from the mind’s interpretation of a particular occurrence.

Suffering is perception, and its experience is very, very real. Its power is equally as real. So, healing suffering requires mastery of the mind. (Ever heard that phrase "mind over matter"?). However, most of us do not want to do the work necessary to release ourselves.

This is why we distract ourselves.

This is why we busy ourselves.

This is why we can't be present. And if we can’t be present, a whole slew of things goes south. Awareness goes right out the window. Your Divine Throne is your awareness.

Have you read in the Bible how Jesus cast demons into swine? It wasn’t literal. The “demons” are heavy emotions, and the “swine” are the humans who are ruled by their emotions and are reactive… lacking awareness.

So, guess what… we are all swine until we wake the hell up and do the real work.

To master the mind and overcome suffering, we can't run. We have to be with it when it visits.  The biggest travesty in life is that we were not taught how to do this. We are not taught what healing means or looks like.

A therapist I know said something pretty profound and I will never forget it… “Healing is the ability to feel something until it exhausts itself… you don’t go looking for it, it just happens”.

**Herein lies the work we all avoid… feeling it when it visits until it exhausts itself and being mindful of our perspectives when this happens.

Anxiety is mental defensiveness or resistance... the emotional "oh shit" meter.

Now, here we are, a culture of medicating it instead of teaching us how to sit in it and still feel safe in our bodies doing so. We don’t realize it’s a messenger, and we are idiots trying to kill it.

We are not taught how to feel or heal.

We must become empty, become transparent.

Know Thyself! these words are actually carved into the stone walls of sacred structures of ancient history.

Every character has a story... but the story isn't you. The body isn’t you either.

Suffering lies within the mind’s perceptions of the stories.

When discussing the epidemic of anxiety, I heard a Navajo elder say  “Worry is not wisdom. It is a tired mind trying to control the wind”.

Think about those words for a moment. They are powerful if you have the ears to hear it.

A tired mind tries to control what it cannot control.  It tries to prepare for every bad scenario (I call this catastrophizing, and it is a sign of trauma and an attempt to “prepare for pain”).

The river does not stop flowing because a stone is there. But the stones do disturb the flow and slow it down considerably.

Can you live life in a way that allows things to flow without being blocked, stuffed or numbed??

The Healing-

Are you sick of suffering?

Are you willing to do the work?

FACT: Life happens and there is nothing we can do to protect ourselves from the pain of life.

Suffering is what shapes our way Home, if we can see it this way. Suffering forces change. When we get knocked on our asses, we do one of two things…

We either lay there doing nothing and we will eventually die in that exact same spot. This is living in the past. If you live there, you will die there.

Or we can dust our butts off, allow ourselves to be present (remember this is a NEED, not a want), check our mindsets and allow acceptance of what is occurring in the “now”.  In this space we become aware of what is real within us and we can transmute it.

Which one are you living in?

Are you still laying there in what happened or are you living in the now?

Our power lies in choice.

We can all choose how we perceive things.

We are not powerless, helpless victims, so stop telling yourself you are.

Observe your mind when things are hard.

Feel what presents to you until it exhausts itself, but do not go looking for similar threads of suffering when it comes. The evil one sneaks into the mind and does this as a way of burying us a little deeper in the mire.

Energetically speaking, we are in a window of time where we can truly leave the pain and suffering of the past behind, but we must be aware of the present moment. As we move forward, the energies will not allow us to bring the past with us. If we run from what needs healing, I promise you, those emotions/feelings/sensations will get the volume turned up until you have no choice but to deal with them. I think you can look back over the last several years and see that volume has been gradually getting turned up. Now, it will become deafening if we don’t voluntarily do the work.

All the healing modalities in the world cannot do the work for you… they serve as an agent, but not THE agent. We are the only agent that can make us whole. Everything else available to us is assistance.

But we are the boss.

With Love,

Becky Costello

Psychic Medium

Dancing Elk Shamanic Healing