Letting go of Suffering | It's okay to take shortcuts

[Keryo Koffa]

Imagine reality can be anything you want but you're unaware of what it is and what you are and how it works.

You spend so much time learning, in hindsight it seems like you spent eternity learning the simplest things.

When problems arise, your response and bitterness multiplies them and makes everything hard.

Social relationships reinforce each other's negative beliefs and tension which cripples everyone's growth and happiness.

You worked all your life really hard to get where you are and someone else might get there immediately without any suffering. They look like a genius and it doesn't seem fair and that makes you feel bad and creates room for resentment. If you actually create reality through your beliefs, you have the power to decide, but whatever you decide applies ubiquitously to everything. You can make everyone else's path as hard as yours has been if that feels fair to you but this will also affect your continuing path.

On the other hand, you can let go and let it be easy and that means some teenager might trip on acid and become as wise as someone who meditated for 50 years or done plenty of self-actualization. And this is exactly it! Do you feel this resistance? You're looking for all the life lessons and personal experiences and hard work and trials you faced and immediately create a reason why that teenager is stupid and all the things he's missed on the way, but this is exactly it. This is the very mechanism that prevents life from being easy. And now you'll make up reasons why it shouldn't be easy, but fair and hard working instead, you're denying happiness out of bitterness through unfairness. You are as God deciding that because you suffered, everyone else has to, that there has to be a reason behind it, that it has to carry meaning, that it's more sensible, more inspiring, more personal, that there are side effects for shortcuts. YOU ARE LITERALLY CREATING THE SIDE EFFECTS THROUGH BITTERNESS, EVEN THOUGH YOU YOURSELF USE PSYCHEDELICS INSTEAD OF BEING A YOGI FOR 2000 LIFETIMES CLIMBING MOUNTAINS AND STANDING UNDER WATERFALLS FOREVER.

So then, this is it, suffering, ignorance, meaning. We have the choice to make life easy or hard and what world we'll create.

But this is always so, we are human, that's already a privilege, we exist that's a privilege, we're not dying in wars that's a privilege, we live in luxury that's a privilege, we have all the knowledge in the world that's a privilege, we have psychedelics that's a privilege, WE'RE STANDING ON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS THAT SPENT THEIR ENTIRE LIFE EXPLORING WHAT WE LEARN IN 5 MINUTES AT SCHOOL AND THAT'S OKAY AND BEING LIKE THAT IS OKAY AS WELL.

You are imposing side effects onto shortcuts, our entire life is a shortcut.

[TheAlchemist]

I sometimes catch myself thinking that maybe I haven't suffered "enough" yet, maybe I haven't been deep enough into hell yet for me to live out some story of coming stronger and wiser through it to the other side.

But then sometimes I wonder, how much is enough? I have this idea in my mind that I have to explore and understand the depths to become whole but maybe there are some distorted ideas mixed in. 

The perspective you shared helped me shine a light on this pattern of thinking, also helped me recognize that it is coming from cultural conditioning. It surely connects to these cultural ideas we have about human worth, achievement and who deserves what.

 

Here's an exercise for me:

Imagine this kid has a more holistic, nuanced, wise and overall deeper insight into some fundamental aspect of reality than any guru figure, philosopher or teacher you ever looked up to. The kid had a nice and chill life and just got all the answers, figured his life out without much suffering. What then? What kind of resistance comes up?

 

 

Edited June 24 by TheAlchemist

[cjoseph90]

good post, thanks. good perspective