Power of Choice: Pain & Suffering

With suffering we recycle in the suffering going over and over the same story. Pain lies below suffering. When we choose to go into the suffering the pain can end, otherwise it remains unending.

“Choice implies consciousness - a high degree of consciousness. Without it, you have no choice. Choice begins the moment you disidentify from the mind and its conditioned patterns, the moment you become present ... Nobody chooses dysfunction, conflict, pain. Nobody chooses insanity.” Eckhart Tolle

Do we choose suffering? Lyn, an energetic healer, has this to say about pain and suffering. “We tend to avoid pain. Numbness and addictions indicates an avoidance of pain.

With suffering we recycle in the suffering going over and over the same story. Pain lies below suffering. When we choose to go into the suffering the pain can end, otherwise it remains unending.

When we make the choice for Yes, the Grace can come in.

When we can hold/contain the pain, Grace can come in. Containing requires staying present with the pain or specific emotion, without slipping away and becoming unconscious. When we stop containing the pain, we fall back into our unconscious ‘shadow’ which feeds on pain like a hungry beast.

Withdrawal into fear, feeling powerless, victimized, holding onto anger, or feeling unpresent all indicates we have fallen into our shadow selves – parts of ourselves which we deny. We can hold these parts with compassion.

When we run away from our pain, which was meant to be faced, it only gets worse. When physical or emotional discomfort arises, our mind gets activated and spins around all the details. Let the thoughts come and contain them without going over and over them. We keep the energy inside ourselves rather than projecting it out onto a person or situation.

We have a choice whether the energy spins inside of us or spins out into blaming or being angry at others. Then the situations will continue to occur over and over again, creating suffering each time if we choose taking no responsibility for ourselves.”

“Always say ‘yes’ to the present moment. What could be more futile, more insane, than to create inner resistance to what already is? What could be more insane than to oppose life itself, which is now and always now? Surrender to what is. Say ‘yes’ to life -- and see how life suddenly starts working for you rather than against you.” Eckhart Tolle

Lyn continues. “If we choose, however, to hold a point of inner containment, then we experience more discomfort like a pot of boiling water with a lid. The energy builds so it can transform.

We also can choose to hold no anger towards the thoughts that arise in our minds. This can be a challenge for when our minds become agitated this indicates some unconscious choice.

Our minds want to stop us feeling. We can bring ourselves back to the present by screaming, exercising, using our breath, or focusing on feelings or sensations in our body.

As we contain, the patterns will dissolve. A truth lies at each layer of the pattern, when we remain present. When all the layers dissolve, we experience joy or peace or oneness.

When we learn how to contain our pain and emotional reactions, we create a cup like a grail. Then Grace has a place to come into to change our lives and those around us.”

Choice for Life

A number of people took part in a weekend seminar examining their past and future critical choices. A critical choice involves a decision which has a major impact on our lives. Many times our choices, in the past, may be made from an unconscious emotional reaction, which then leads to suffering. The more conscious our decisions become, then the less suffering.

The following examples illustrate how some of the people had handled critical choices in their lives.

In the past when June, an office manager, faced big decisions, seeing no other solution, she run away from them, which resulted in a feeling of emptiness and being a prisoner of her emotions. Tina, in search for liberty, married out of rebellion and now lacked the courage to end an unsatisfying relationship. Another woman, Josie, had moved from a European country to South America. She felt wonderful as her emotional wall tumbled down, yet, over the course of her life she underwent fourteen surgeries on her lower body.

Julie, a lawyer, suffered severe depression and thoughts of suicide most of her life until recently. She had repressed her emotions all her life and when she finally choose to leave a codependent relationship of many years where her husband abused her emotionally and financially, she made the decision out of reaction. This left the bank door open for her husband to further take advantage of her financially.

Julie has this to say. “I experienced intense depression and agony since childhood. Even with psychiatrists and medication the depression remained. Everyday I faced the choice to commit suicide or live.

I went to India to undergo an intense 21 day emotional and spiritual purification. Even after India, the depression continued, even though I made a choice in India to start to look at what I had avoided all my life.

My biggest change came when I decided to accept Divine help. Then Divine Grace and inner spiritual light started coming into me.
I continued working with an energetic healer who assisted me to face and enter my fear. The fear began to dissolve. Afterwards, even thought I still felt sadness, my agony changed quickly. Thoughts of suicide no longer overwhelmed me. I began to laugh and make new choices.”

It takes great courage to face and choose to go through our fears as voiced by Eleanor Roosevelt, “You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.”

The poet Robert Frost states the same in another way, “The best way out is always through.”

We always have a choice to go through our darkness and come out the other side into the light. “Making conscious choices clears the chaos in our lives,” says Lyn, an energetic healer.

Lyn continues. “We all have a ‘wall of war’ like the Berlin Wall. This wall builds up inside us with all our conscious and unconscious choices of ‘No’ to positive change in our lives. It consists of all we choose to be unwilling to see about our lives.. The first step in the coming down of the wall involves a willingness to recognize a wall exists. We can then choose to chip away at the wall, which involves a willingness to see the truth about ourselves. God’s Grace can come into our lives when we finally choose to see.”

During the seminar Josie, a business consultant, made a beautiful statement, “When we make the right choices our soul smiles.”

Oprah Winfrey has this to say, “Before you agree to do anything that might add even the smallest amount of stress to your life, ask yourself: What is my truest intention? Give yourself time to let a ‘yes’ resound within you. When it's right, I guarantee that your entire body will feel it.”

Some people experience suffering in the midst of making a choice for our minds attempt to take charge. Joanna, a seminar leader, expresses it this way. “Our mind wants to be our best friend, yet, it disallows change, which it fears.”

Lyn, a personal growth seminar leader, reminds us, “We need all parts of ourselves to make choices. When faced with a difficult choice, which affects others, parts of us may split off and leave energetically. A sign such as confusion indicates some part of us has left. Also when a choice includes someone else we may take them into our energy field as part of ourselves. To make the best choice we need to let them go. In other words, we make the choice in our own sovereignty. Another important aspect to consider involves the inner child, which has to be open to receiving the choice also or else our hearts desire never occurs.

Breathe and invite the inner child to breathe in also. When our inner child feels fear then we create fear. Our inner child connects with our power to move forward. Our adult and inner child must feel the same for creation of a new choice to occur. We can live life as a child. By being the happiness, we show the joy of the child.”

Lyn explained another technique to manifest new choices. “Feel your old life. Feel the new life and the inner child. Then step across an imaginary line on the floor into the new life while making a I am statement such as ‘I am receiving ....’ Each day step across the line into a specific activity of your new life while feeling it physically.”

Julie, a lawyer, commented, “Daily I have made choices related to the past, painful choices.”

Lyn suggested to Julie. “Bring the feeling of the pain into the present. Leave behind everyone else connected to the pain. Just bring yourself forward. Like a new born baby, cut the cord to the past. Be present now.”