What exactly is meant by "escaping suffering" as a motivation for enlightenment?

[actualizing25]

Hi guys,

So what is meant, when people on the spiritual path talk about "escaping suffering"?  Are these emotional problems they try to run away from? Are these more existential sufferings? What kind of suffering are these people, who use it as a motivation for enlightenment, trying to escape?

 

Thanks for the answers

[Tim R]

3 minutes ago, actualizing25 said:

What kind of suffering are these people, who use it as a motivation for enlightenment, trying to escape?

Suffering in general. 

Doesn't matter which kind of suffering, because it is all just suffering. 

12 minutes ago, actualizing25 said:

So what is meant, when people on the spiritual path talk about "escaping suffering"?  Are these emotional problems they try to run away from?

Spirituality and the attempt to end suffering doesn't mean "running away" from suffering. It means finding a method by which all suffering can be truly eliminated. One wants to become free, once and for all.

If for example, I have emotional problems - I could use alcohol or opiates to escape my suffering, but that isn't a very good method, because all I have done by getting high is ignoring and suppressing the issue. So it will come back to haunt me. Therefore I have to deal with it in some other way. 

Take the Buddha as an example: he analyzed how suffering is created and then he developed a method to end it - but he recognized, that all suffering in and of itself is not the problem, but rather a symptom of something else: illusions. And the methods he developed aimed at seizing and eliminating those illusions and thereby grabbing the problem of suffering at its root. 

[Moksha]

Why suffer unnecessarily? The only reason people suffer is because they have not awakened to the reality of who they are. They chase after happiness in a transient world that, by its very nature, can never deliver what they want. The look for security in insecurity. They crave love, without realizing that their essential nature is love.

It's important to distinguish between suffering and pain. An enlightened person is as vulnerable to pain, dissolution, and death as any other human being. But they no longer suffer, because instead of denying reality, they realize and embrace it. The quality of their existence and their interactions with others is more refined. Their love is unconditional, and that makes all the difference.

[Breakingthewall]

imo means that the separation is to a greater or lesser extent suffering. there is no rest because the mind is seeking, it cannot stop because it has been displaced from its center. This can manifest itself in many ways and there is no escape except to equalize. Whoever is insightful will realize that their only way out is a trip to the center

[BipolarGrowth]

They aren’t talking about any specific type of suffering. It can be emotional, existential, or any other kind. Ultimately suffering is eradicated by living in a higher state of consciousness. Once in a state like what some awakened people might have made permanent for themselves, likely through meditation, I was taking a shit at my friend’s house. His bathroom smells like a rancid overdose of cat shit as he always leaves them closed in that room. Instead of experiencing suffering due to perceiving this smell as bad, I actually could kind of enjoy the aroma. I had no more judgment around it. It was merely a sensation like anything else. Higher states of consciousness = more love and acceptance for experience/existence, especially those things you wouldn’t normally tolerate at a regular level of consciousness. 

[Leo Gura]

Their life becomes such hell that the only solution becomes spirituality.

Like a cornered rat.

[Vrubel]

@Leo Gura I think a huge part of why I got into spirituality was to escape suffering, but my life never felt like a "hell".

When I was a teenager I made the commitment to myself that I will find the thing in life most worth persuing and then to pursue that thing.

At the time I was very deep into being a stage orange atheist and having no clue about spirituality. So naturally, I thought that my goal in life was to get rich. But even so, I remember very vividly a moment where I intuited that there is something much better and grander than material success, something "nobody" knows about and that somehow I would get it. There was this old cliche: "I always felt that I was destined for greatness". I only didn't know what that greatness was.

This intuition made me open-minded and incredibly excited when I first learned about spirituality from Actualized.org YT videos despite being deeply stage orange. I have stuck with my goals of spiritual wisdom and God-realization ever since. From the moment I learned about spirituality and that I am supposedly God, there was no way back for me. Retracting these goals simply does not compute in my brain.

Edited January 31, 2021 by Vrubel

[traveler]

They want to escape existence, to exist is to suffer. This all arises from the experience of being seperate from everything. A person arises and goes on a search to find that which is before and beyond itself, what it can not see is that what is before and beyond itself is arising as a person looking for it. There is no seperation, not even in seperation. 

[Leo Gura]

"Hell" is a subjective notion.

Some people can stand a deeper hell than others. The more conscious you are, the less hell you can stomach. Since you want something higher.

[Vrubel]

@Leo Gura Don't all people want to have "escapes" from their lives/hell? If they don't know about spirituality they will have something like partying, drinking, sport, gaming, or traditional religion. 

[Moksha]

2 hours ago, Breakingthewall said:

imo means that the separation is to a greater or lesser extent suffering. there is no rest because the mind is seeking, it cannot stop because it has been displaced from its center. This can manifest itself in many ways and there is no escape except to equalize. Whoever is insightful will realize that their only way out is a trip to the center

⚡

[Leo Gura]

@Vrubel There are basically only two motivations in life: avoidance and seeking.

If you ain't seeking truth for its own sake, the only other way you can find it through avoidance of suffering or by accident.

[BipolarGrowth]

2 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

"Hell" is a subjective notion.

Some people can stand a deeper hell than others. The more conscious you are, the less hell you can stomach. Since you want something higher.

@Leo Gura This doesn’t align with my experience although with certain definitions of hell it isn’t a contradiction. I’ve seen that the more conscious I am, the less any experience could even be labeled as hell as I’m just growing in acceptance as I grow in consciousness. I also feel that consciousness work, and thus becoming more conscious, has allowed me to endure “negative” circumstances with far less resistance than before. 

[Vrubel]

9 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

@Vrubel There are basically only two motivations in life: avoidance and seeking.

If you ain't seeking truth for its own sake, the only other way you can find it through avoidance of suffering or by accident.

I think in my case it is a little of both, avoidance of suffering and seeking. Whenever I feel most depressed I feel most motivated to do some 5-meo. But also deep inside I always was kinda interested in existential matters. Before I knew about spirituality I extensively studied (western) philosephers thinking they had something figured out. It mostly made me cynical and nihilistic. 

[mandyjw]

Can you imagine of all the things there are to want in the world and believe in yourself to the point of obtaining them, mansions, fame, etc, that if someone told you that you could transcend suffering that you'd actually really believe it was possible? Can you imagine a more entitled, ridiculous, high reaching, lofty goal than that? 

Suffering is the indication that something is off. We use our mental frameworks to avoid that guidance and then we call it suffering and we believe it to be inherent in life. We avoid the real message and ignore the suffering, assuming that we already know how things are, how we are, how other people are. You (Awareness) are not two separate things. So of course, you cannot look back at yourself and compare yourself in judgement because you are not two. Any thought or perspective that you hold that looks back on your Self and finds it lacking in anyway is not aligned with Truth or Love. You know this because it feels awful. But because we DON'T know this in our ignorance, we ignore it, and we call it suffering. 

Edited February 1, 2021 by mandyjw

[actualizing25]

@Leo Gura What if you have both motivations? You want to avoid suffering and at the same time you seek Truth for its own sake? Is it then possible to find Truth/ get awakened?

[Leo Gura]

18 minutes ago, actualizing25 said:

@Leo Gura What if you have both motivations? You want to avoid suffering and at the same time you seek Truth for its own sake? Is it then possible to find Truth/ get awakened?

Yes

[Tal]

@Leo Gura  Isn't the two connected, because findng the Truth also means your suffering ends, and vice versa? 

 

[Tal]

I find that the less conscious you are the more your motivation is avoidance and the more conscious you are the more you care about truth for it's own sake. It's like Deficiency/fear motivation and Being/growth motivation it maslow's terms

[Tal]

Also something interesting in the journey i find that you cannot imagine so far into the future what it's gonna feel like or be like, so you can't really know what's possible for you, until you do the work.