Changing for the Better: Correcting at Last

There are several ways to deal with the “normal” hurt and pain that we experience living our lives in the world. This pain, of course, varies from one living situation to the next. In some countries life is just about unbearable. There isn’t enough food or water. There are corrupt government systems where people are being systematically murdered and tortured. When we look at those places we can at least take comfort in the fact that it isn’t happening in our lives, if that is the case, but that is often not good enough. Suffering is very subjective. Noticing that other people are in more pain and distress than oneself often doesn’t bring comfort. All of these horrible occurrences bring about a great deal of distress, but suffering and distress are often two different phenomena. One’s suffering need not correspond with the amount of distress in one’s life. One can suffer anywhere, even during the best of circumstances.

What becomes most important, therefor, is to relieve one’s own suffering so one will have the energy necessary to remove distress (the stressors that cause suffering). This means relieving the suffering of oneself and also the suffering of others. In the past people have mistakenly thought that they could relieve their own suffering by relieving other’s suffering. People have covered their pain and suffering with a deep layer of resentment or anger and then have projected this anger onto whomever is understood as the enemy, or the other who is the cause of injustice in the world, in order to remove that person and thus reduce suffering. The problem is that it doesn’t reduce the internal suffering, pain, anger, or resentment. A person trapped in pain, anger, and resentment will never be able to help create a better world--they will be able to create a different world with its foundation being the same underlying pain and anger that the enemy has. One must heal oneself before one heals the world. There is redemption, however. There is satisfaction.

Satisfaction only comes through the process of awakening. Awakening means becoming aware of truth. It means becoming aware of the relationship between the self and the universe--the self and the all and all. When one can complete understand this truth through living as one with the universe and God, one will be awake. This type of truth is nothing that can be talked about or explained accurately, it is something that must be lived. It is a state of being that can be attained through a practice that makes us look deeply into the self and see all of the hurt and pain, and all of the illusion and self deception so that we can cleanse ourselves of it until we come to the central core of the self that is free from illusion and self deception. When we arrive at this deep center--the true center of our being, we will find God. We will find the true self--the one self that is indeterminable from the divine self. When we find this self we will be one with God and our actions will constitute the truth. We will be living in wholeness and our actions, like the power of God, will bring forth life and healing without the anger, resentment, and self deception.

In order for this to happen one must be willing to follow just about any spiritual path to the end. Meditation, contemplation, and prayer are not simply exercises for relaxation, or to give us strength to struggle to fulfill the hopes and dreams of an unfulfilled, unhealthy ego, these practices are to push us to a higher way of thinking that transcends the ego and awakens us to the ever present awareness of the divine in which we live an move and breath. The end is the dissolution of the ego and the awakening of God. When one has awakened one lives a life of joy and bliss. Suffering is brought to an end and one is free no matter what the circumstance. Change happens often in our lives for better and for worse. Correction only happens when one is fully awake and becomes the God that one has been seeking throughout a succession of lives.