Suffering and Self-Deceit

[Gianna]

How do you know you are suffering if suffering is all that you have experienced? It's like if the entire globe was blue you wouldn't know that it is blue because blue is all that you see and all that you have ever seen. So realize that it is the same with suffering. If suffering is all that you have experienced then you don't know that you are suffering. You can't recognize suffering from non-suffering because they are one in your reality if you are experiencing it. This is why victimhood is so taboo in our culture. It's because we can sense inauthenticity and we don't like it. When someone is claiming to suffer (i.e. acting like a victim), we can see in that moment that they are not actually suffering because they have to be beyond it to recognize it. So we get annoyed because it's like, "Why are you decieving yourself? Can't you see how unproductive this is? You are letting yourself follow falsehood. Change directions. Wake up. What are you doing?" Of course, this is coming from an attitude with very little empathy, and thus, understanding. But the point is that it's easier to see other's deciet than it is our own. Because true suffering goes completley unnoticed and that's what makes life scary. Because it is when we suffer that we engage in the most deceit. You are so in the dark about yourself that you don't even know that you are in the dark because you have imagined an entire reality in the dark and lost yourself in it. So your darkness actually looks full except you've dreamt up a miserable reality because misery is all you've ever known. That's true self-deception right there. So how do you pull yourself out of it? 

Well, deceit erodes when you erode and everyone dies. And the Truth is what stands because it is all there ever was. But how do you go an entire life without recognizing it?

It's scary to realize that we don't know what we don't know. We can't see what we can't see. We cannot become aware of something that is outside of our awareness. But yet, we grow? So how do we grow? Growing happens from outside of you but realize that nothing is outside of you because you are everything. So when little blessing happen to you– either from outside of you or from inside of you– know that it is a gift from yourself to yourself. 

Let me ask you this, has anyone ever changed your life? How do you know it is them who has changed your life or if it is yourself who has changed your own life? For instance, if someone gives you something to understand, they are not giving it to you because you are the one understanding it! You give yourself understanding; no one can give you this? If there is an insight to give to a group of 10 people, who decides out of that group who will get the insight? They decide. You decided whether or not you get something. You are always the one to decide how much you will allow yourself to know. This is why true learning is a process of unlearning– because you already know everything! So when you come to know nothing (i.e. you come back to your most primal state of being) you will suddenly realize everything because you are everything. You can be downloaded with this understanding in a nanosecond because you are the thing that's being understood. You just can't hold on to it for long because it is infinite. So the nanosecond you understand it is the same nanosecond it is gone. It is fleeting, like time. But time doesn't exist. And yet you do. You are eternal. Eternity is always present so it is always there to realize. But we forget this because we love the remembering of it. We are living on the other end of the contrast so we can dip into it whenever we feel like it and be blessed with both of everything we desire.