Saying yes to what is, is the fastest way to enlightenment.
We have the power to take charge of suffering. Our circumstances are merely conditions. It is our mind that causes the pain. Things are as they are, and we suffer because we imagined differently. Needing things to be anything but what they are, is the culprit.
We suffer also because we perceive a situation in a certain way. It’s not the ‘load’ which breaks us down, it’s how we carry it. We don’t respond to a situation directly, but to our interpretation of it and what that triggers within us.
Attitude is the difference between an ordeal and an adventure.
Author unknown
The distance between the mind’s rigid demands and expectations and what is, is called the pain gap. The more we identify with our minds and the more attached to a particular outcome we are, the greater our pain and the more we fight against what is.
When emotional pain joins with emotions of similar frequency, what is known as the emotional pain body develops. It consists of all the pain we have accumulated in life so far and is self-created as long as mind runs the show. Our pain body is largely dormant until triggered by as little as an innocent remark. The resulting emotions can range from a vague background static and unease to acute fear or deep grief. The effects are restricted life energy flow, physical illness and a generally miserable existence.
If unchecked, the pain body lives through us and keeps attracting resonating experiences. It creates conditions that reflect its own energy frequency back at it and it feeds on that. We will want more pain: to inflict pain or to suffer pain or both – there isn’t much difference. Our thoughts and behaviours will keep the pain going, both in ourselves and in others.
Pain is physical, but suffering is mental. Beyond the mind there is no suffering. Pain is a signal that the body is in danger and requires attention. Suffering warns us that the structure of memories and habits, which we call the person, is threatened by loss or change. Pain is essential for the survival of the body, but nothing compels us to suffer. Suffering is due entirely to clinging or resisting. It is a sign that we are unwilling to move on, to flow with life.
This all paints a pretty gloomy picture, so let’s extricate our Selves out of this mess, shall we?
Accept responsibility
Whatever we experience, is of our own making. We create our own heaven and hell.
We like taking credit for the positive, but tend to deny ownership of the negative in our lives. Yet we’ve caused both. We create our own experience with our thoughts. Life is as simple or as complex as we make it.
The day we really start living, is when we decide our lives are our own. No apologies or excuses, no-one to lean on, rely on, or blame. The gift is ours. It is an amazing journey and we alone are responsible for the quality of it. Author unknown
So, it’s not what’s ‘out there’, it’s what’s ‘in here’, that matters. We create both our thoughts and the reality they project. We are responsible for what we see. We choose the feelings we experience, and we decide how to respond.
We can’t change what’s going on around us until we start changing what’s going on inside us. We can’t expect peace and harmony in the world, if we don’t have them within ourselves. The pollution of the planet is a reflection of an inner pollution. It is millions of unconscious people not taking responsibility for their inner space.
There are no victims in the universe, only creators. When we think everything is someone else’s fault, we suffer. When we realize everything springs only from ourselves, we experience peace and joy. If we fully accept responsibility, we’re no longer victims. We are the masterful creators of our lives. Whatever happens to us, happens by us and through us. It makes no sense to condemn those aspects of life we disagree with, since we caused them. Only when we accept responsibility for all of our life experience, do we have the power to change even part of it.
Take control at source
Everything hinges on the one thing we have complete control over – our minds. Mind is the only thing that needscontrolling; not other people, outward circumstances, or our bodies. We can master being completely in charge of what goes on in our minds, having complete control over our thoughts. We have the power to take control at source.
Peace and well-being needn’t wait until all issues are resolved and all disturbances removed. It arises when we stop letting anything disturb us, big or small. Ceasing the undesirable thought stops the associated emotions and the underlying harmony is restored. We don’t have to work at creating peace and happiness. Peace and happiness are our natural state.
Nothing matters until we make it matter.
It all begins, develops and ends with us. What we give power to, has power over us – if we let it. We choose what we turn our attention to and invest our energy in and likewise what we turn attention away from and retrieve energy from.
We change our reality by thinking new thoughts, leading in turn to new emotions. We drop thoughts of the reality we don’t want and cultivate thoughts of the reality we do want. We also choose whether to have any thoughts at all for that matter. This is how we create, pause or dissolve all manifestations of the mind.
Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional. Simply decide: no more polluting your world with mental garbage; no more creating problems and pain for yourself and for others. The only reason why these problems and pain remain a part of your life is that you keep thinking about them.
In the creation of individual reality, thought control is everything.
Neale Donald Walsh