9   Suffering TC  "9   Suffering" \l 1

Whatever you emphasize, you are ruled by.

When a certain thing is realized, you automatically gain control over it. Then it does not control you, but you control it. When we find a great measure of self-integration, gradually, we exude a strength to be able to control, and that is the only way to go beyond the sufferings that we suffer.

You cannot escape emotions; but you can go beyond them.

Man is not made to suffer, man is a product of joy and yet he comes into this world crying. From joy we come and to joy we proceed; man is made of light. And in spite of the glass of the lamp being dirtied sometimes, the true light must still shine through. So, there is much hope, there is much love, and there are no problems or suffering really. We think we suffer; we delude ourselves into thinking we suffer. This is a product of thought and when, through meditation, you go beyond the level of thought, you will know that there is no suffering. It is all but joy.

A person creates conflicting ideas within himself, and it is this very conflict that creates illness. As a matter of fact the conflict is an illness itself.

What is the use of analyzing darkness? It does not solve the problem. In analyzing darkness, we only find it to be darkness. The element that is missing is the light of the superconscious. Take the direct line to the superconscious. The human being has this ability.

All suffering can be seen as an offering.

This is the object of life, this is the purpose of life: to find the real Self that resides within you. And when that is found, life’s mission is completed. This does not mean that all your troubles are going to cease.

There will be troubles while we are living in the relative world which is governed by the various gunas. Those ups and downs will be there. You cannot have an ocean that will be still all the time. Some days the sea is calm, other days the waves are rushing high. But amidst all you are based in the silence, and not in the turbulence.

Before, concerned with the surface values, we only noticed the turbulence. We were tossed on those waves—here and there, from pillar to post, in the turbulence.

But realizing the fact of the calmness in the depths we get anchored to the silence; then we enjoy the turbulence. It is beautiful. So long as this universe exists, this turbulence will always be there.

Your problem is that the mind is centered on suffering, instead of joy. “If I have to pay for it (karma from previous actions) then so what!” This should be our attitude.

When we go through suffering and turmoil we are just experiencing change in the shapes or forms. Now that is what we want to get away from, through our meditational practices. Be established within the Self of the spirit while watching the names and the forms continually changing. Then we will not be affected because we will have risen above it. We will have then become the proper observer and the small self will be able to say, “I am not the doer. The doer is the spirit. It is that energy, that force, it is Divinity that manipulates all this, and I am just the instrument.”

Dissatisfaction is a necessity in the process of life. When satisfied, an individual stops progressing. That very dissatisfaction is a process to stimulate one towards greater growth.

The human being is the greatest magnet in the world. He attracts what he deserves. A person would say, “Why has this befallen me? Why did I have four tire punctures in one day?” When did you last have your four tires checked? Please remember that we are, and no one else is, responsible for everything that befalls us. When we have problems, we always shift the blame. We shift the blame to our husbands, our wives, our children, our bosses, or to our friends, to the guru, and when we can not succeed in this at last we blame God. But man does not realize that all fortune or misfortune is attracted to himself by himself.

Most trouble is over petty things. Observe them. Do not get stuck in them.

Even for the bread you eat, you need an external force: a knife to cut the slices. Everything requires an external force. Yet the realization that the external force and the internal force are the same, has to come.

When that consciousness dawns, all friction will disappear, because the cause of all problems is duality.

When you think you go through a pleasurable moment, be sure to know that you are going to have some pain as well.

We must go beyond the conscious and the subconscious levels of the mind, in which are contained all the karmic combinations of impressions that make a person feel miserable, or superficially joyous.

The sufferings that people have can be overcome. When a certain trend is set in motion it has to reach its culmination. But if we have the attitude of acceptance, reinforced by the subtler layers of the superconscious mind, then nothing hurts and everything is accepted. And even if it does hurt, we know the value of the hurt, for it is also transient . . . “This is not the whole of my little existence.” It is a matter of attaching importance to the right things.

All sufferings are borrowed, they are not yours. They are borrowed from circumstances around you because sorrow and suffering is not your true nature. You are not yourself. That is the falsity of life. You do not give full value to yourself, and why not? Because you do not know yourself.

Do not confuse the sun’s rays with moonbeams. Moonbeams are soft and the sun’s rays are hard. Deny neither. The lunar aspect is but a reflection of the solar emanation. The moon and the sun combine without causing an eclipse in daily life. All this means but one thing—the key is harmony.

By uttering words of an aggressive nature we can do so much harm to a person’s entire life. If we hurt somebody with a stick, that wound will heal in a few weeks or a month. If we leave a scar on a person’s mind, that scar can remain for a lifetime.

It is the mind that invents the satans and gods. The entire universe is nothing but mind and all problems in life are created by the mind. Culturing the mind through meditational practices, we learn to overcome the mind and go beyond it. There truth is found.

We will never find a single person on earth who entertains negative thoughts and wrong thinking that is a happy person, because this is in direct opposition to happiness.