How to be peaceful, free and happy regardless of your circumstances Why is there suffering? Is it meaningless?

Just an inevitability in an hopeless, chaotic universe? Or is there something more to suffering? Many seem to think of suffering as inherently bad, but is that really true? Lets take entertain an imaginary scenario. Timeless, omnipresent consciousness-awareness-freedom itself decides to create a game. Its much like a computer game, with the game seen through the main characters first person perspective. Consciousness-awareness populates the game with characters, and plays the role of each and every character. As consciousness-awareness-freedom (CAF) is playing these roles, something starts to happen. At some level, (CAF) starts to forget its true nature and believe it truly is the characters it is inhabiting. Like when we watch characters on a movie screen, we identify with their suffering, feel the pain that they feel. As consciousness-awareness-freedom dreams this dream of limitation, the suffering in the character and the game world begins to intensify. Wars occur in the game, rapes, murders maybe on a lower level, suffering occurs as some desire to seek always more: a never-ending dissatisfaction with life in the game world. This suffering is the call to awaken. Some of the characters begin to feel it so intensely that they become desperate to escape. They just cant continue being this limited character anymore. Whereas once they were concerned with playing the game, and making their character succeed, they now start to look around and question the reality of the game world. And for those who are prepared to look very intensely, at the truth of themselves, and the truth of the dream world; For those who simply wont labor one more day under delusion it happens. In a sudden intake of breath, the limited game world character realizes he is not the character. In fact the character does not even exist in the truest sense. The experience of a character was just a temporary dream, an imaginary arising in his own true nature: consciousness-awareness-freedom. Yes, it is possible. However, the total dissolution of the character, and the complete realization of truth tends to come after a considerable period of searching, truth-seeking and effective spiritual practices. An intellectual musing about the nature of reality is all very well, but what about your pain, your suffering, which is happening now? It is in fact the nature of suffering in the game, that each and every experience of suffering is encoded with a doorway. Learn to step through that doorway and every single experience of suffering can and will lead you to greater joy and a state of increased freedom from suffering itself. What is suffering? Suffering is an emotional state. It has myriad forms: fear, anxiety, sadness, depression, anger, grief. If you look within, every time you suffer, and look very closely at your suffering, youll start to notice all sorts of things about the different forms of emotional suffering: you can locate where the sensation is occurring in your body, and identify different qualities of the sensation of suffering. It often tends to feel dense, heavy, in some cases hot or cold. Theres a wide spectrum of these qualities. The Process of Perception and Reaction To really see suffering clearly you have to closely observe your processes of perception, interpretation and your emotional reactions to them. So lets take a hypothetical event, and use it as an example. Lets say you get a letter, and it says you owe $100,000, and the bank is going to repossess your home if you dont pay up by tomorrow. Lets examine the process of perception here.

Stage One: Sense Perception

Your eyes perceive the text on the letter and send an image of the letter to your brain.

Stage Two: Conceptual Interpretation & Objective Fact

The image of the letter is sent to your brain, and the visual images of words on the page are translated into concepts that can be understood and have a certain meaning. This is simply the translation from visual image to objective fact: there is a letter and it means the bank are going to repossess your home. Now the mind takes this conceptual understanding of language and imagines its implications. It may imagine all sorts of things, maybe it imagines homelessness. Maybe it imagines the pain of this imaginary future event. It will tell some sort of story about the subjective meaning of the sense inputs and the conceptual interpretation. The ability of a mind stimulated by a strong negative emotion, to imagine unpleasant scenarios, and tell sad stories, is practically limitless.

Stage Three: Self-Referencing and Subjective Meaning

Stage Four: Emotional Reaction The mind takes these imagined implications and story and translates them into an emotional reaction. Fear, anger, grief. Something unpleasant, probably. Stage Five: Attraction or Aversion Depending on whether Stage Four is pleasant (lets say the letter says you won the lottery, and theres a happy feeling), or unpleasant (bank taking your home and anxious feeling), we tend to feel an attraction or aversion to the overall experience which is occurring.

By the way, whilst Stage One and Stage Two are sequential, Stage Three and Stage Four are not necessarily so. They are more like a feedback loop.

They both sort of fuel each other. The more intense the emotion, the worse the minds imagination and story becomes. The worse the minds imagination and story becomes, the more intense the emotion.

Lets now take a really close, honest look and see where the suffering occurs. Does suffering occur in Stage One? At this point there is a visual image of a letter, not yet interpreted to mean anything at all. Its just a series of different colors and shapes. Well, I dont think anyone would try to claim that a series of different colors and shapes on a blank white page is truly a cause of suffering. Does suffering occur in Stage Two? At this point, theres a conceptual understanding of the shapes and colors on the page. They words say the bank is going to repossess your home. Can suffering be found in a conceptual understanding of certain words? For example, lets say you get this letter, but you immediately recognize the postman has delivered it to the wrong address and its addressed to someone else. You still understood the conceptual meaning of the words, but there is no suffering, the letter was not meant for you. Stage Three: If the suffering is not found in the conceptual interpretation by which we understand the events in our lives, it must start in the subjective meaning we attribute to them. So the suffering really occurs in Stage Three, Four and Five. All at once, there are: A series of imaginings about the letter. A mental story comprised of and interwoven with these imaginings. An emotional reaction, which is simply a series of sensations with different qualities, which you can find is localized in or near the body. A sense of (in this case) aversion to the experience which is occurring.

These all tend to take place simultaneously. But this reveals something thats pretty interesting if you think about it, and think about its implications. The suffering is all something that happens inside you. If the letter got sent to an empty house, to someone who didnt exist, there certainly wouldnt be any suffering right? Theres a nice thought that pops into my head as I write this, and it says Try telling that to someone who just got a letter saying their home is going to be repossessed. And I like this thought, because all of this intellectual understanding that suffering is in you, and not out there, is all very well and good. But now is the time to make it practical, to turn this simple observation of what is true, into a technique which can actually help YOU free yourself from suffering. The extent to which you suffer, when you get that hypothetical letter, or experience any event in your life which feels unpleasant, is linked to the extent that you identify with Stage Three, Stage Four and Stage Five. It is also linked to how much you believe your own mind and mental stories (Stage 3). Those are the key terms: identification and belief. Finding Freedom So less intellectualizing and more practical techniques that actually deal with the rawness and reality of suffering. The technique is very simple. Step One: When you experience a sense perception that triggers an unpleasant Stage Three, Stage Four and Stage Five, find a relatively quiet place, where you can be alone. It might not always be a sense perception (say someone shouting at you, a troublesome day at work, or a letter of debt) that sets off this chain reaction. It could just be a thought; perhaps you recall a memory of a bad experience, and start going through the entire reaction. Step Two: Close your eyes. Take your attention COMPLETELY out of your thoughts and your imagination. With fervent concentration, give TOTAL attention to the emotion you are experiencing. Find where it is in the body. Be deeply, deeply aware of how that emotion feels. Commit so much attention to your feeling sense that there is none left for thinking. The compulsion to drift into imaginings and mental stories will be extremely strong. Every time the focus drifts into imaginings and mental stories, direct full attention back to feeling the emotion, to resting awareness on the emotion. Step Three: Breathe deeply and regularly. No huge effort, just natural, regular, full, breathing. Sit still in an upright, comfortable position. Keep returning full attention to your emotion/feeling sense any time it wanders. Sit in that position, breathing, giving full attention just to feeling the emotion, until the emotion subsides. It may take 30 minutes, it may take

two hours, but commit to sitting there, giving attention to your emotions, but not the mental stories and imaginings that surround them, until the emotions subside. Step Four: As you become deeply aware of the emotion, also notice any aversion to the emotion which may be occurring. When we have a strong negative emotion, it often comes also with a feeling of aversion. Notice also what the aversion feels like. It often feels constricting. Aversion tends to constrict the emotions we dont want to feel. What happens? Essentially this technique gradually dissolves and integrates the negative emotion. This leaves you to face difficult situations with a calm, peaceful, happy awareness, instead of a state of emotional stress. You could stop reading now, and it wouldnt matter. Youd find out for yourself what happens when you diligently apply that technique every time suffering arises. But Im going to share the insight anyway. Short Term Effects The technique exposes you to the truth of your immediate reality. All that is really happening is a sense perception (or a random thought) has occurred, been interpreted, and now theres a rather unpleasant sensation occurring. Anything which says otherwise is imagination and delusion. When you take away all the mental stories, and you take away the imagination, suffering is just an unpleasant sensation in or around the body. Can you deal with a huge story your mind spins you, about how the house is going to be repossessed, how your future has gone to waste, how your hopes and dreams are crushed (blah, blah blah)? Probably not too easy to deal with. Can you deal with allowing yourself to calmly, deeply experience an unpleasant sensation in the body? This is probably somewhat easier. You are detached instead of identified. The technique immediately moves you from a position of identified delusion to a position of detached observer. You go from I am afraid/anxious/sad etc (identification) to an experience of witnessing a feeling of fear, anxiety, sadness etc. You go from My life is awful because blah blah blah is happening to an experience of witnessing a thought, and this thought is claiming my life is awful because blah blah blah is happening. The truth sets you free. When you stop believing and identifying with your mental stories and imaginings about reality, there is freedom. I like the quote here of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj: Once you know with absolute certainty that nothing can trouble you but your own imagination, you come to disregard your desires and fears, concepts and ideas, and live by truth alone. When we talk of non-life threatening situations, the worst thing any terrible set of circumstances can do to you is cause you to experience an unpleasant sensation in your body. Longer Term Effects Its no good me telling you this. If you read this and dont live by it, its not going to do you any good. If you choose to live by this, it stops short of nothing but completely transformative. The longer term effect of living by this technique is gradual, but complete internal liberation from suffering. Freedom from belief in imagination and mental stories. When you start with this technique, chances are your imagination and mental stories during times of suffering are like a big, black cloud that take up the entire sky and block out perception of all else. This is what mental stories and imaginings are like when stimulated by painful emotions, and then believed in and identified with. This technique is like a metaphysical vacuum cleaner, which goes inside your being, and vacuums up all the dark clouds. The freedom is limitless. I like to play around with worst case scenarios like losing my job and being made homeless, or finding out I have cancer and only a month to live. Having practiced this technique for many years, the only outcome I can find for all life circumstances is joy. The technique is a rock that you can sit upon when a tsunami devastates all else around you.

Final Words: But, but, but The extent to which you are successful with this technique can be directly measured by your ability to: 1. Catch yourself when you are suffering and become aware that you are sinking into an unpleasant experience. 2. Detach yourself from your illusory imaginings and mental stories about your situation long enough to find a quiet place, sit down, and apply the technique. Years of practice have taught me that the mind is the most seductive and clever trickster, particularly when it comes to getting people to identify with their suffering and believe in the imaginary stories that surround their negative emotions. I certainly still fall for it sometimes. Most people are absolutely convinced by and deeply believe in their own mental stories about why their life sucks or why this or that situation is terrible and painful. They would rather suffer, and continue to believe in their own mental stories about why their suffering is unavoidable, valid, real (etcetera) than question the reality of those mental stories. But the truth of suffering is pretty simple. Once you stop believing in the mental stories and imaginings, suffering is just an unpleasant sensation in the body. No big deal. There are no buts to this, its just the truth, and you can believe in a story that your mind tells you to validate and perpetuate your own suffering, and use your negative emotions to inject reality into your imaginings and mental stories or you can

STOP!
Right now!
And apply the technique.