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“If you had not suffered as you have, there would be no depth to you as a human being, no humility, no compassion." —Eckhart Tolle
Linda: While a pain-free life is not an option for any of us, a life in which pain can become the source of greater strength, compassion, and wisdom is. Suffering doesn’t guarantee an increase in compassion or resilience, it only provides us with the means through which these qualities can be developed and deepened. Whether or not they are depends upon whether our suffering is meaningless or meaningful. While we don’t have the ability to prevent suffering, it is within our power to have it be meaningful.
While for some of us the term meaningful suffering is an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms, not only does such a thing exist, but all of us regardless of our I.Q., age, or life experiences, have the power to make meaning, and thereby bring redemption to our suffering.
Meaningless suffering, which is often characterized by self-pity, resentment, anxiety, resignation, resistance, and despair can be paralyzing in its unending and ever-deepening sense of powerlessness. We may find ourselves in an apparently inescapable cycle of pain that is continually reinforced by our resistance to fully accept the feelings that initially triggered our suffering in the first place.
The failure to fully and completely experience and investigate the feelings that have been activated inevitably locks us into a pattern of resistance that creates a secondary pain. More pain is created by trying to avoid the original pain of the actual event or circumstance. Suffering not only becomes meaningless but is amplified when we struggle to escape it through resistance such as denial, distraction, rationalization, intellectualization, or blame (of ourselves or others).
The first step in the process of transforming meaningless suffering into meaningful suffering has to do with our willingness to fully receive the experience rather than reacting to it with aversion. This could mean feeling anger, sadness, shame, anxiety, despair, or whatever other feelings may be present in our field of awareness. Having the feelings, and acknowledging them to ourselves and to others, can spare us the unnecessary agony of sliding down the spiral of resistance. If we can catch ourselves at the first sign of distress, whether it’s a minor upset like getting stuck in traffic or a major disappointment such as having our house broken into, we can interrupt the slide downward.
More often than not, we don’t let ourselves feel it all until we are already possessed by our reactivity and have been reinforcing our resistance for several minutes, hours, or even days. The point is that it’s never too late to interrupt the cycle, and bringing presence, awareness, and acceptance to our experience begins the process of bringing meaning to our suffering.
Once we have stopped adding unnecessary pain through our resistance, we can begin to become more open to seeing whatever lessons there might be for us. "What is it that there is for us to learn here?” is a great question to ask ourselves, but only after we have quieted our mind enough to ask the question to ourselves without shame, blame, anger, self-recrimination, or judgment. The tone of voice we use to investigate our situation is more important than the actual words of our inquiry. When we conduct our investigation with care, curiosity, and compassion, we’re much more likely to generate valuable insight rather than self-condemnation or angry outrage.
Suffering becomes meaningful when we trust ourselves to use the experience to deepen our capacity to become more whole, loving, and wise regardless of what we are going through. We may not feel this confidence at first. It takes time to trust that anything of value could possibly come from anything that hurts so much. Our lack of trust need not stop us from being open to the possibility that good can come from even seemingly horrendous circumstances.
We need not know what good will come nor even that it will come, but simply to be open to the possibility that some form of redemption could occur as a result of our willingness to more fully open to what is being brought to us. In that process, we build the cornerstone for the foundation of the quality of resilience. It is this trust or faith in the healing power of conscious suffering that brings meaning to an otherwise meaningless situation.
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