Why do we suffer?

My loves it is 3:38 PM central time zone and I am at my desk pondering on a topic that would be most beneficial, given the time that we are in. With the pandemic causing adverse effects on our mental, to the government withholding aid that many of us need in a time of “crisis.“ Boom! Then it hit me, why do we suffer? Why is it that we go through these situations that seem to take a toll on our way of living? Why does it seem so hard for us to get it together as a whole and help one another propel through these thresholds. Take sometime out with me to dive into this question and let us see if we can find an answer.

Ego

I feel like a professional when it comes to the topic of ego. I can have a discussion about this all day long, it is that intriguing to me. The reason being is because I realized that ego is so detrimental to our progression, but we hold on to this false rendering of ourselves so tightly. It is to the point where it is almost laughable. I am sorry if I have offended you because that is not my intentions, I just understand the grip that ego can have on our lives. I also think about a video that I watch frequently from Sadhguru and he mentions that it is hard to keep up the same person everyday, but he deemed it art when you can change personalities. This possibly could have went over your head, allow me to explain what I feel he meant by that.

Ego can be describe as the person you believe you are through experiences, labels, religion, sexuality and the list goes on. Once we start to identify with ego we feel we must keep up this image because it is who we are. It is the divide between me and you. The reason why I have these set of experiences and you don’t, I like the color blue and you like the color green, I think I am better and you are inferior. You see ego creates this polarity between me and you, and then we start to believe that there is no way anyone can understand me because this is my life. No one else could possibly know what I go through, yet alone even begin to relate. Ego might say I am black and you are white we live two totally different lives. I am here to shut down ego and say this is the ultimate deprecation of the human life. The belief that you are this separate entity from the rest of us. The belief starts in the mind and it continues to be dressed with each label or experience. We begin to put layer after layer after layer on this person and we must continue to uphold this image. The image that your high school classmates knew you as, the popular kid, the athlete, the beautiful girl, the intelligent nerd. You begin to adopt whatever you feel these qualities entail with the label. Before you know it you are 25 years old and you realize the image you have worked so hard to maintain just crumbles. Then you begin to identify with the anxiety and the depression because previously everyone wanted you to hang out and now no one does, people called you for the answers and now you don’t have them, people called you up for dates because you are just so sexy and now you gained 20 pounds and your “friends” believed you changed.

The situations above are similar to my life. Up until I graduated from my life coaching course I believed myself to be this person that everyone has to love. If they don’t love me then I will shape myself to any form to make sure of it. I had to maintain a level of perfection to my peers and also my family, Edwin could do no wrong. Thinking back on it, I was nothing short of foolish. The projection of my insecurities came in the form of people pleasing because I was not confident enough to be myself. Instead I chose to work diligently in my endeavors to be this image that everyone could rely on and be cool with. Then in my 23rd year I experienced anxiety and depression. Everything that I worked so hard to uphold just slowly withered away. I began to lose what I thought was my truth.

I began to realize who I actually was and have always been, awareness. I began to understand that when I show up to certain scenes in life the person I was called to be in that moment will shine through. Whether that be the goofy child or a businessman or even a bartender at my job. I began to realize that I am not a set person with limits. I am truly boundless and unlimited consciousness. It is the same limitless being that you are as well. How can you be ego? Ego contributes to suffering and misunderstanding and ultimately detrimental to the progression of the human race.

Object vs. Self

One of my secret mentors ( I say secret because he does not know it yet) is Deepak Chopra he wrote a book called the “7 Spiritual Laws of Success” that book changed my life. One of the many gems in this book was the concept of object and self referral. You could even distinguish the two by saying the outward facing path or the inward facing path. When you accept reality from what you see you will believe an illusion. This is what referencing objects will get you, the fact that you drive a nice car or you are the CEO of the company. Do not misconstrue me, It is cool to have nice things and to climb that corporate ladder or own your own business, but suffering arises when we identify or are influenced by these objects. Objects that are in fact not real, just creations or images from consciousness. It is much similar if not identical to the examples above dealing with ego. That identification removes us from alignment of our true nature.

Then we have reference of self you can think of this as self awareness or I have heard it be called knowledge of self. With mental health on the rise and more of us are becoming aware to it, I am happy to believe that we are on the right path of realigning with our true nature. You begin to notice who you are when you say “I”, I went to sleep, I used the bathroom, I ate kale. These statements all come from awareness. Recognition of self is true power, it has a gravitational pull for all of your desires and stems from the source (God). The best thing you can do for yourself and your reality is to know who you are. It activates your unlimited potential and in turn creates a life that is effortless. This is true love, this is peace, this is acceptance, this is you.

Fear

Now some of you know this all to well. You wake up and start your day in fear and worry that the worse will happen. You have so much fear that you establish imaginary walls to protect yourself from life. You walk around with so much fear that if your day is not the same as yesterday then something has to be off. You even have anxiety and fear around death, something that you do not know anything about. We resemble turtles, in a way that when threatened we retreat to our safe zones the shells. My loves think with me for a second. Life itself can be dangerous, I mean at any moment your life can end. You walk out the door someone can kill you, you may get injured in a car accident when you are the safest driver on the road or in my case a very good swimmer, but your friend almost drowns you because they are afraid to kick their feet. Fear produces reaction in the body-mind. It convinces us that we need to stay away from essentially the beauty of life. There is absolutely no way to progress in fear because you are cutting off the natural process of living. When we allow fear to control us we limit ourselves to that shell and cut our potential drastically. We must turn that fear into love. Love is the only way to conquer the suffering that is self inflicted from fear. Let us begin to turn to love and always choose love as it breaks us from our own prison. Let us bask in the peace that love is and furthermore move into a place of optimism and compassion. Family we are often our own source of suffering and now that we have identified that we can move from a space of individuality into a space of warmth and unity.