SUFFERING: A CATALYST FOR CHANGE

Suffering is unavoidable. In a world ridden with egocentricity, suffering is both inevitable and essential for wholeness. It forces us to question the reliability of our attachments and challenges our rigidities. Suffering reminds us that much of what we consider important is essentially irrelevant. It unmasks both personal and cultural lies and exposes the shallowness of our rose-colored glasses and positive thinking. Little else can force an individual to question life’s meaning -- and his own purpose -- more powerfully than does significant loss or profound suffering.

In many ways, suffering is a gift. Pain and loss remind a person how helpless he really is in the face of internal and external attack. These experiences serve to highlight the limits of an egocentric, control-oriented life, by defining what is beyond the individual’s control. This is an important step toward achieving accurate self-awareness.

The illusion of the Ego being in charge is difficult to maintain very long in the face of suffering. Only the Center has sufficient depth and power to sustain most people through intense suffering. The other alternatives are hopelessness, bitter anger, or fear.

It is not enough that the sufferer be told of the existence of the Center and the divine energy that emanates from there. A living faith and a genuine, non-illusory hope must be based on experience. Pain demands a journey inward.

Those who cannot see or feel the light of the Center within themselves live in danger of being overcome by the darkness of their pain driven emotions. Most try to find comfort by living on the surface of life. When loss or suffering become too great to ignore any longer, the impact can be devastating. Once the door is opened, not only is the pain of the immediate issue there to be dealt with, but also long festering, previously ignored wounds will break into consciousness. In the face of intense suffering, positive elements of the person’s self-image may be thrown into question. The Ego becomes unstable. The victim puts more and more effort into being “normal,” and knows simultaneously that something is very wrong.

Contrary to what many cognitive theorists propose, most of the deepest emotional suffering is not due to wrong thinking. It flows from the frustration of the child’s natural, driving need to be one with others and with life. All other things being equal, the earlier the injury, the more profound the pain. The dysphorias, or painful emotions, that arise from it, have a primal, almost numinous quality. Once triggered, they reverberate throughout a person’s life. They will not stop affecting her until intentionally embraced and responded to appropriately.

Significant disruption in the attachment process between mother and infant, as researched by Mary Ainsworth leads to the deepest and most intractable experience of suffering. Whether distorted parenting causes the infant and young child to experience abandonment or engulfment or both, this distortion can precipitate any or all of the major dysphorias in varying combinations.

The individual is not responsible for this profound pain from childhood, nor can he control it through self-discipline or good intentions. Some people are able to dissociate it, but it continues to limit their lives nonetheless.

Suffering seems to be expressed in seven basic painful emotions: hurt, which is the trigger for all of the rest; grief; anger; fear; shame; loneliness; and sadness, which can be a secondary component to any of the other six expressions of suffering.

Simple hurt is the straightforward, uncomplicated, initial reaction of a person whose trust in others or in life has been violated. For those to whom life matters, life often hurts. Connecting to others and to creation and caring about relationships are necessary in order to be fully alive. The more someone cares about life, the more she will hurt when she perceives the brokenness of the world.

Most other dysphoric emotions are secondary responses to the initial experience of simple hurt. They constitute various possible reactions to the fact that one’s bond with others or with creation has been threatened or violated. The only other alternatives to pain are detachment or empty optimism.

A traumatic childhood will usually precipitate all the dysphoric emotions, which must eventually be worked through by the adult. Of these, grief will always be present and cannot be avoided if there is to be any hope of healing. This grief often feels very similar to the depression the person may have suffered from for years. Once connected with its childhood origin, however, it is experienced very differently. Although debilitating and painful, the sadness and anger now feel cleansing. There is a sense that something is being finished. This feels very different from the hollow sadness and anger of the person’s life-long depression, which was grief that could not be completed because it was detached from its childhood roots.

Finding and freeing the Center is the only final answer. This demands that the individual renounce society’s customary ego-dominated reaction to internal darkness by facing it instead of hiding from it. The negative thoughts and feelings must be owned and given expression, and yet not allowed to possess the Ego. The compassionate helper who has already walked this path is frequently invaluable here. She can give the sufferer permission to express his negative” reactions. At the same time she can also help protect him from being overwhelmed by it all.

When this balance is achieved, the True Self is able to be experienced and will blossom through the Ego. When the darkness is not faced and owned it will either hide the True Self or distort its expression.

Sometimes, if the victim is able to adequately repress the painful experience and its impact, the Ego can reassert its control and the crisis will pass. He then joins the ranks of those who have so desensitized themselves that they are nearly impervious to pain. To them, these considerations are of little interest. They have perfected egocentricity. They feel very little pain, and experience no inner healing.