Why doesn't God relieve suffering for mankind? 

The following is channeled information from the other side, received during WWII, via the mediumship of Winifred Willard, reported in “From The Seventh Plane, Inter-World Messages” (1946):

If God can [relieve suffering] for mankind, why doesn’t He do it? Why doesn’t He take control of man’s life at all times, regardless of anything else? Why doesn’t He tell the human how to go and what to do from day to day? Why doesn’t He thus avert so many tragedies and prevent so much wreckage?

It would seem on first thought that the argument is right. Countless men have asked the questions and resented what they called the indifference of God to human suffering. They ask by the millions, why God did not prevent this terrible holocaust. Why did God permit this nation or that, to go wrong; these people to mire themselves in the mud of beastliness? Why does God permit epidemics to go rampant through communities? Why does He take ones so dearly loved? Why does He not sit at the helm and guide all peoples everywhere to safe port on the other side of life?

Do you really think you'd like being treated like an animal in a cage, or a robot without sentience?

The answer is simple in its fundamentals. In His Infinite wisdom and power, God could do all these things. But instead He has given man the right of free will, to make his own choices, to be good and do right, or to be evil and go wrong. He has given nations the same right to their choices. If a nation determines to lower the moral standards and luxuriate in crime and sensuality, that nation is free to do just that. If it prefers to have government of the people, it may. If it elects autocracy and concentration of power, it may follow that path to the logical end. If it becomes a warring nation, lusting on human blood and reaching out in aggrandizement toward ever more power, that nation may go as far as its resources permit.

class is in session

God never takes the reins and makes the human follow where He drives. Infinitely higher is His gift to mankind, the gift of free will. With the gift, He places upon nations and individuals the responsibility of exercising this freedom of will and of choice and then taking the consequences of choice. It could not be otherwise. If nations or local governments permit conditions which breed disease, those nations must pay the price of the working of the law.

suffering is not a required course for graduation, it's just that most people will learn the hard way or not at all

If nations or men forget their highest selves and live on lower levels than are clean and pure and God-like, they may. For they are free agents. But they reap what they sow. The law thus laid down, is never abrogated. The nation which wars for selfish ends and through greed of selfish power, will perish by the sword and be its own undoing.

When things go well, we smugly take full credit; when things go wrong, we egocentrically blame God. It's a "heads I win, tails you lose" proposition.

God does not send war; nor pestilence; nor tragedy; nor sickness; nor any other hard thing. But He has put into the hands of the children of men the freedom of will that enables them to direct their choices and thus to reap their own harvests of goodness and righteousness and peace and joy—or the reverse.

God’s law … knows no difference between high estate and low. It is an impersonal law which is one of God’s greatest gifts to humankind. It makes it possible for the human to hold himself in pride and with conscious greatness as he makes his way through the world, knowing that he is not slave or servant of any, not even of God; but that he is permitted the glorious right to choose for himself…

'Why has this happened to me?' 'Are you not part of the human race which has luxuriated in the short-term benefits of selfishness?'

Does this mean, people will ask, that the individual upon whom trouble descends like a blighting cloud, has done some wrong and is being punished by an angry God? Could it mean that? No! It does not mean that. But the law does not operate with each individual as an isolated case, independent of the group with which he lives and works. It meshes into the community, the nation, the world in which each one finds himself… This law of the universe could not isolate each individual and deal with him through the years as a separate entity…

laissez-faire management style

... it is the out-working of man’s choosing and not of God’s will that the earth has turned red with shed blood because there are those who know no limits of greed for wicked power.

every obsession constitutes a refusal or inability to consciously address the pain in one’s deeper being

Every addiction, every fixation, every out-of-balance craving – whether it be drugs or alcohol, work or shopping, eating or indolence, religion or charitable works, sex or entertainment – becomes an avenue to cover up the pain in one’s hidden person. None of these palliatives reach to the core issue.

All such attractions, in the end, become fatal attractions. Not even the pursuit of aesthetics, of beauty, of the fine arts, will fill the hole in one’s heart. This is why historian Paul Johnson asserted that “art is not enough.” He was speaking of Hemingway, whose inner demons eventually led the great writer to suicide. Art is not enough because nothing is enough, there is no royal road to inner peace, other than accessing one’s true self.

And this is why apparent love relationships and marriages break down so quickly. In the aftermath, people might remain together but only in a dazed condition of “what happened to the thrilling love?” which, as the Beatles wrote and sang, “has a nasty habit of disappearing overnight.” John-and-Mary heady romance has no hope of surviving because they entered into their compact in order to neutralize the pain already existing in their lives. The relationship, fundamentally, did not cause the pain – although some relationships do a very good job in this area, too; but, instead, their union merely brought out the pain lurking below, temporarily anesthetized by the thrill of “getting married.”

Honestly and openly addressing the pain in one’s spirit is a major part of our task in this world. See more discussion in the “Surrender and Acceptance” article.

Consciousness, not matter, discovered to be elemental by the Kogi people of South America

In the “creativity” article, we spoke of the famous painting wherein Isaiah is listening.

Isaiah listening versus Isaiah questioning

We in the West are proud of the scientific method; and, rightly so, as it’s produced an awesome array of technological advancement.

However, there’s another, entirely different, but absolutely valid, approach to knowledge production of which we tend to be oblivious. It is the realm of intuition, of creativity’s “discontinuous” leaps forward, the quantum realm of the mind’s infinite possibilities, the child of Universal Consciousness.

In this latter world, Isaiah does best just to listen and will refrain from asking questions. Why this diminishment of questioning? Questioning does fine when allied with the scientific method but gets in the way when we enter the intuitive realm. The problem with questioning is that it presumes an intellectual framework into which we desire new information to fit. In a sense, we've already decided what the answer ought to be. But what if the answer is far above our present paradigms of knowledge with no correspondence to present understanding; in such case, it would be best to maintain silence and simply listen, as “The Wedding Song” uses the phrase, to “something never seen before.”

What I’m about to introduce must be presented in severe elliptical fashion. Brevity must rule as the subject is too large, but worthy of extensive study and consideration. I hope that you will learn more by searching the linked references.

the Kogi people have learned to listen

For some decades British journalist-anthropologist Alan Ereira has investigated the high-mountain tribal Kogi people who live in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in the north of Colombia.

The Kogi have learned to listen to the whispering messages of Universal Consciousness, as expressed in Nature, to a degree that might be unrivaled in the world, save for the best medicine men of North American indigenous peoples.

We have discussed this form of "listening", this "going within" to access Universal Intelligence, on the "true self" page. But the Kogi are masters, far ahead in this, and take it to high art-form.

How can we confirm their expertise? The Kogi know things, and are able to do things, for example, in terms of environmental cleansing, reforesting, of healing the land, that we in the West are not able to do.

immediately picks out the one star in a blizzard of galaxies

During a trip to London, this Kogi master met with a leading astronomer. A photograph was brought out of the Hubbell “deep field,” a tiniest postage-stamp, and apparently empty, section of the inky blackness which, under intense magnification, revealed some few thousand galaxies. As confirmed by the astronomer in the video, the Kogi immediately pointed to the single star – not a galaxy – amidst the blizzard array and, in Kogi language, referred to it by name; as if it were a close friend! All this is sensational enough, but, let's keep in mind, this star resided in a section of the heavens totally hidden and unknown, totally inaccessible to human eyes, until just a few years ago.

Much of the Kogi wisdom remains cloaked to us. They refer to us in the West as their “younger brothers.” Prodigal brothers, we take it. They don’t fully trust us to do the right thing, as the memories still linger of the RCC-Conquistador brutalities and genocide.

But the Kogi understanding of Universal Consciousness (UC) is right in line with what physicists such as Prof. Amit Goswami tell us about the quantum realm: UC represents infinite possibility but has pared down the choices so as to direct reality toward prescribed goals and destinies. In this vein, Alan Ereira reports that Kogis have a view of “Mother [Consciousness] as memory and possibility.” This is Dr. Rupert Sheldrake’s “the mind is a quantum field of possibility.”

Out of this primordial essence of Mother Consciousness -- which is the ground of reality, not matter -- all things were created. However, before she created, she “explored, almost infinitely” the various possibilities to arrive at just the right mix for those of us who would inhabit Earth. This is the answer to Leibniz’s question of the “best of all possible worlds.”

See Beshara Magazine's article on the Kogi.

See Alan Ereira's report.

View Alan Ereira's video.

An excerpt from Dr. Frankl's concentration camp memoirs:

... a semi-starved prisoner had broken into the potato
store to steal a few pounds of potatoes. The theft had
been discovered and some prisoners had recognized the
"burglar." When the camp authorities heard about it they
ordered that the guilty man be given up to them or the
whole camp would starve for a day. Naturally the 2,500
men preferred to fast. 

On the evening of this day of fasting we lay in our earthen
huts — in a very low mood. Very little was said and
every word sounded irritable. Then, to make matters even
worse, the light went out. Tempers reached their lowest
ebb. But our senior block warden was a wise man. He im-
provised a little talk about all that was on our minds at
that moment. He talked about the many comrades who had
died in the last few days, either of sickness or of suicide. But
he also mentioned what may have been the real reason for
their deaths: giving up hope. He maintained that there
should be some way of preventing possible future victims
from reaching this extreme state. And it was to me that the
warden pointed to give this advice.

God knows, I was not in the mood to give psychological
explanations or to preach any sermons — to offer my com-
rades a kind of medical care of their souls. I was cold and
hungry, irritable and tired, but I had to make the effort
and use this unique opportunity. Encouragement was now
more necessary than ever.

So I began by mentioning the most trivial of comforts
first. I said that even in this Europe in the sixth winter of
the Second World War, our situation was not the most
terrible we could think of. I said that each of us had to ask
himself what irreplaceable losses he had suffered up to then.
I speculated that for most of them these losses had really
been few. Whoever was still alive had reason for hope.
Health, family, happiness, professional abilities, fortune,
position in society — all these were things that could be
achieved again or restored. After all, we still had all our
bones intact. Whatever we had gone through could still be
an asset to us in the future. And I quoted from Nietzsche:
"Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich starker." (That
which does not kill me, makes me stronger.)

Then I spoke about the future. I said that to the impar-
tial the future must seem hopeless. I agreed that each of
us could guess for himself how small were his chances of
survival. I told them that although there was still no typhus
epidemic in the camp, I estimated my own chances at about
one in twenty. But I also told them that, in spite of this, I
had no intention of losing hope and giving up. For no man
knew what the future would bring, much less the next
hour. Even if we could not expect any sensational military
events in the next few days, who knew better than we, with
our experience of camps, how great chances sometimes
opened up, quite suddenly, at least for the individual. For
instance, one might be attached unexpectedly to a special
group with exceptionally good working conditions — for this
was the kind of thing which constituted the "luck" of the
prisoner.

But I did not only talk of the future and the veil which
was drawn over it. I also mentioned the past; all its joys,
and how its light shone even in the present darkness. Again
I quoted a poet — to avoid sounding like a preacher myself
— who had written, "Was Du erlebst, kann keine Macht der
Welt Dir rauben." (What you have experienced, no power
on earth can take from you.) Not only our experiences, but
all we have done, whatever great thoughts we may have
had, and all we have suffered, all this is not lost, though it
is past; we have brought it into being. Having been is also a
kind of being, and perhaps the surest kind.

Then I spoke of the many opportunities of giving life a
meaning. I told my comrades (who lay motionless, al-
though occasionally a sigh could be heard) that human life,
under any circumstances, never ceases to have a meaning,
and that this infinite meaning of life includes suffering and
dying, privation and death. I asked the poor creatures who
listened to me attentively in the darkness of the hut to face
up to the seriousness of our position. They must not lose
hope but should keep their courage in the certainty that the
hopelessness of our struggle did not detract from its dignity
and its meaning. I said that someone looks down on each of
us in difficult hours — a friend, a wife, somebody alive or
dead, or a God — and he would not expect us to disappoint
him. He would hope to find us suffering proudly — not
miserably — knowing how to die.

And finally I spoke of our sacrifice, which had meaning
in every case. It was in the nature of this sacrifice that it
should appear to be pointless in the normal world, the
world of material success. But in reality our sacrifice did
have a meaning. Those of us who had any religious faith, I
said frankly, could understand without difficulty. I told
them of a comrade who on his arrival in camp had tried to
make a pact with Heaven that his suffering and death
should save the human being he loved from a painful end.
For this man, suffering and death were meaningful; his was
a sacrifice of the deepest significance. He did not want to
die for nothing. None of us wanted that.

The purpose of my words was to find a full meaning in
our life, then and there, in that hut and in that practically
hopeless situation. I saw that my efforts had been successful.
When the electric bulb flared up again, I saw the miserable
figures of my friends limping toward me to thank me with
tears in their eyes. But I have to confess here that only too
rarely had I the inner strength to make contact with my
companions in suffering and that I must have missed many
opportunities for doing so.

don’t worry about threats, they can only kill your body, and that’s not much

In the writing featuring Revelation’s metaphoric ‘Beast’ and ‘False Prophet’ – the Monster Mentality and the Lying Teacher -- we discussed that these dark symbols do not refer to any particular person, currently or in history, but depict the dark side of every human being, but coming to full-flower in some.

Look at any page of a history book, concerning any time period, and you will find a chronicle of wars, brutality, murder, oppression, deception, propaganda, treachery, fraudulence. This is the human condition in its unenlightened state. The world is run by Dear Leaders who control all aspects of society: military, corporate, religious, academic, political, small social groups, and, too often, families.

History, in a sense, runs in cycles, an ebb and flow of a certain quietude but then overwhelming with blatant, frothing, despotism and autocracy. There is no single “end time” but many “end times” in which the ambitions of the insane-for-power rise to frenzied levels. Today, right now, we are witnessing the final stages of one of these recurrent eruptions of naked totalitarian power-grab. All this is part of the collective lesson humankind is meant to learn before we move on to the next worlds.  

The darkness is very thick today, like a black cloud from Mount St. Helens moving in. We have ones, right now, like William Wilberforce, who tirelessly worked to abolish slavery and instantiate human rights, who are constantly attacked by the vested interests who would lose much if reforms were instituted. And this is why we see the witch hunts, the non-stop character assassination, the false indictments, an overturning of the rule of law – anything, to stop the reformers.

The modern William Wilberforce loudly pledges to destroy the entrenched enemies of society. And this sends the dug-in prevaricators to desperate panic. What most people don’t realize is that, if the reformers, in fact, do gain legal right to assume office, the “hidden government” is not going to quietly lay down their arms and acquiesce to being destroyed. In their frothing “madness maddened” cravings for power, they would rather destroy the country and the world than to see their empire dismantled. And this means that we are headed for a conflagration that we’ve not seen before in this country. People are not prepared.

And in the midst of all this deep-rooted tyranny, we find Jesus saying – as he himself lived in a totalitarian society – that, yes, we might experience threats to our person when bad comes to worse. There’s a New Testament verse which illustrates, but, before reading it, consider what he did not say. He did not say,

“When the Dear Leaders enter a blood-in-the-water frenzy for all-out control, do not call all your friends to create a lobbying group to awaken a sleeping God; do not act as if you need to ‘inform the deity and then ask for a favor’; do not think that prayer is some sort of peddling technique to twist God’s arm to get what you think you want and need."

No, the condition of the world cannot be changed, not until, as the Gospel of Thomas instructs, each person discovers the light within. And so, there will be no Superman to swoop in to save us, that’s not why we came here, and some of us could be killed.

But the good news is that when they kill your body, that’s all they can do to you. And that’s not very much. Your future good life, held in trust for you, cannot be touched by the ‘Beast’ and ‘False Prophet’. What Jesus did say is this:

Don’t be intimidated. Eventually everything is going to be out in the open, and everyone will know how things really are. So don’t hesitate to go public now. Don’t be bluffed into silence by the threats of bullies. [They can kill only your body, but there's] nothing they can do to your soul, your core being. Jesus of Nazareth, Matt. 10:27-28, The Message translation

Does pain accompany violent death?

The following was written by Michael Tymn:

*****************************************

Posted on 25 June 2012

Does a person who suffers a sudden, violent death experience pain?  A number of messages from the spirit world suggest that there is no pain, although there are indications that the spiritually-challenged person, i.e., the person who still thinks of himself as only his physical body, can “sense” the pain through his spirit body because he does not realize that he is “dead.”  

What may have convinced renowned author Victor Hugo of the reality of spirits was a mediumistic communication on December 9, 1853 from André Chénier (below), a French poet, who was executed at the guillotine on July 25, 1794.  By means of table raps or taps, Chénier tapped out the remainder of the poem he had been working on just before his execution.  It was in the same style as his work when living.  While there is apparently an opposing view holding that it was more in Victor Hugo’s style, it was recorded that Victor Hugo was not present at that particular séance.  Chénier also communicated new poems in his old style.

Chénier told of his last moments on earth, seeing the slop basket swaying beneath his head, half-filled with blood from those executed before him, and, suddenly, hearing the creaking sound above his head.  After the sensation that his head was falling into the slop basket, he found himself far above his headless body, his soul body being enveloped in a diaphanous sheath.  He then felt the presence of his mother and mistress.  He observed a luminous line separating his head from his body.  “Death appears to me simultaneously on the earth and in the sky; while my body, transfigured by the tomb, plunges deep into the beatitudes of eternity,” he communicated.  “I see, at an immense distance below me, my other body which the executioner is throwing to the worms, my head rolling in the guter, my wound gushing blood, my guillotine blade being washed, my scalp hanging at the end of a stick, and my name being execrated by the crowd. (For more about Victor Hugo’s experiences, see my latest book, The Afterlife Explorers, and John Chambers’ excellent book, Conversations With Eternity.)

Although Chénier does not clearly address the pain issue, one might infer that he felt no physical pain.  Pioneering French psychical researcher Allan Kardec asked a communicating spirit if one retains consciousness after decapitation.  “He frequently does so for a few minutes, until the organic life of the body is completely extinct,” was the response, “but, on the other hand, the fear of death often causes a man to lose consciousness before the moment of execution.”  Based on other communications, Kardec explained that “in all cases in which death has resulted from violence, and not from a gradual extinction of the vital forces, the bonds which unite the body to the perispirit are more tenacious, and the separation is effected more slowly.”  Kardec and others have said that the more spiritually evolved the person, the quicker the separation.  

In communicating through South African trance medium Nina Merrington, Mike Swain, who died in an auto accident, told his father Jasper Swain, a Pietermaritzburg, South Africa lawyer, that he left his body an instant before the cars actually impacted.  Heather, his fiancée’s young sister, was also killed in the accident.  As set forth in the 1974 book, On the Death of My Son, by Jasper Swain, Mike told of being blinded by the glare of the sun reflecting off the windscreen of the oncoming car.  “All of a sudden, the radiance changes from silver to gold.  I am being lifted up in the air, out through the top of the car.  I grab little Heather’s hand.  She too is being lifted up out of the car.”

When they were about 30 feet above the car, they witnessed the collision below them and Mike heard a noise like the snapping of steel banjo strings.  He said that they had suffered no pain.

There have been a number of other communications suggesting that the individual leaves the physical body before violent death is experienced and thus does not experience any pain.  In her intriguing 2011 book, The Survival of the Soul, Lisa Williams, a popular medium of the present day, offers the words of her spirit guide, Ben, on the subject. Ben told her that when a person is about to die under violent circumstances, his or her spirit team knows about it in advance, although they don’t know the exact moment.  Thus, they have to be ready to “catch the soul when it pops out of the body, before any trauma or shock can hit the body, which is why so many on this side say they did not feel anything at the moment of a fatal accident.”  Ben further explained that the soul will remove itself to protect itself from pain.

Williams tells of a reading in which a person named Chris came through to communicate with his mother. Chris had died in a bike (motorcycle?) accident.  He told his mother that after his body was ejected from the bike and was heading toward a rock wall, he was bracing himself for the impact when he was “tugged out” of his body.  He then watched what happened to his body from above.

In her 1973 book, Peter’s Gate, medium Jane Sherwood relates the communication by a man who had died in a motorcycle accident. “The grey road rose swiftly to meet me and a shattering blow put me out,” the man, who had adopted a nihilistic view of life when alive, said. “Immeasurable time seemed to pass before I came to myself without the accompaniment of pain.  Then I opened my eyes with a shock of surprise because somewhere in my mind was the conviction that I could neither move nor see, but the nightmare had lifted and I opened unbandaged eyes.  I raised a hand to feel my head and was reassured.  The last half-hour terminating in the crash had retreated into a misty past and I saw and contemplated the small distant views of roadsides reeling past, grey skies and spring blur of hedgerows. There had been an accident in which I had been knocked out.  I ought then to be in bed somewhere, perhaps in a hospital.”

At first glance, the above case seems to conflict with the communications suggesting that that a spiritually-challenged person might “sense” the pain, until we remind ourselves that a nihilistic view does not necessarily mean that the person lacked spiritual qualities.  He could have been a morally righteous person who simply didn’t believe.  As William James put it, “If religion be a function by which either God’s cause of man’s cause is to be really advanced, then he who lives the life of it, however narrowly, is a better servant than he who merely knows about it, however much.  Knowledge about life is one thing; effective occupation of a place in life with its dynamic currents passing through your being is another.”    

In a 1922 book, Our Joe, author Charles S. Mundell tells of communications from his brother Joe, who was killed during a hunting accident in California.  Joe communicated that he set his rifle down against his leg as he rolled a cigarette.  As he reached for a match, he knocked the rifle over and he remembered nothing else until he awoke in his deceased grandmother’s arms. He recalled no pain.

In his soon-to-be released book, Tell My Mother I’m Not Dead: A Case Study in Mediumship Research, Trevor Hamilton, the biographer of pioneering psychical researcher Frederic W. H. Myers (Immortal Longings), tells of communications coming from his son, Ralph, after he was killed in an auto accident during 2002.  In one sitting the medium related: “No pain.  The body felt pain but he had left it. He was jammy.”  Not familiar with the word, ‘jammy,” I asked Hamilton for a translation.  He explained to me that it is English slang meaning “lucky” and that it was the kind of word that Ralph would use with his mates.  But Hamilton recognizes that there is nothing evidential in such statements and that they lend themselves to “a rather rosy sense of wish-fulfillment.”  On the other hand, Hamilton gives weight to the consistency in a large number of post-mortem communications, referring to cases cited by Dr. Robert Crookall in his 1961 book, The Supreme Adventure.

In addition to after-death communications, Crookall cites cases of people in the jaws of death who survived and told about it.  He quotes David Livingstone, who was attacked by a lion:  “He shook me as a terrier does a rat.  It caused a sort of dreaminess in which there was no sense of pain or feeling of terror, though I was conscious of all that happened.”  The pain began later.

Crookall theorized that the violent shaking caused an exteriorization of the “soul body” and therefore a loss of physical sensation.

Crookall further mentions a case which sounds very much like the Mike Swain experience mentioned above, except that the person survived.  One R. H. Ward is quoted: “A car in which I was a passenger seemed to be on the point of…a head-on collision…I felt myself to be actually shocked out of my body.  I had the strange impression that one aspect of myself was several yards distant from the cars, and watching, quite calmly and objectively all that was happening to the bodily aspect of myself, which was still sitting in one of the cars…It mattered not at all to my separate and usually conscious self that my body was likely…to be smashed to pieces; death was quite unimportant, and evidently something which might happen to a quite unimportant part of my total nature.”

A doctor who survived a plane crash reported:  “The moment it became obvious that a crash was inevitable…one lost all apprehension.”  The doctor recalled a “pleasant awareness” while looking down at his body some 200 feet below.

Mountain climber A. C. Benson told of falling into a crevasse when climbing in the Alps.  “My first feeling was amusement,” he said.  “I hung over an immense depth…They tried to haul me up, but could not.  I was certain of death.  I hung like this for twenty minutes and all that time I had no single thought of fear.  I was being slowly strangled by the rope.”

Benson went on to say that he actually felt disappointed upon being rescued.

Eckhart Tolle, The Power Of Now

BEYOND HAPPINESS AND UNHAPPINESS THERE IS PEACE: THE HIGHER GOOD BEYOND GOOD AND BAD

"Seen from a higher perspective, there is no 'good' or 'bad'. There is only a higher good - which includes the 'bad'. 

Is there a difference between happiness and inner peace?

Yes. Happiness depends on conditions ["happenings"] being perceived as positive; inner peace does not.

Is it not possible to attract only positive conditions into our life? If our attitude and our thinking are always positive, we would manifest only positive events and situations, wouldn't we?

Do you truly know what is positive and what is negative? Do you have the total picture? There have been many people for whom limitation, failure, loss, illness, or pain in whatever form turned out to be their greatest teacher. It taught them to let go of false self-images and superficial ego-dictated goals and desires.

It gave them depth, humility, and compassion. It made them more real. Whenever anything negative happens to you, there is a deep lesson concealed within it, although you may not see it at the time. Even a brief illness or an accident can show you what is real and unreal in your life, what ultimately matters and what doesn't.

Seen from a higher perspective, conditions are always positive. To be more precise: they are neither positive nor negative. They are as they are. And when you live in complete acceptance of what is - which is the only sane way to live – there is no "good" or "bad" in your  life anymore. There is only a higher good - which includes the "bad."

Seen from the perspective of the mind, however, there is good-bad, like-dislike, love-hate. Hence, in the Book of Genesis, it is said that Adam and Eve were no longer allowed to dwell in "paradise" when they "ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil."

This sounds to me like denial and self-deception. When something dreadful happens to me or someone close to me - accident, illness, pain of some kind or death - I can pretend that it isn't bad, but the fact remains that it is bad, so why deny it?

You are not pretending anything. You are allowing it to be as it is, that's all. This "allowing to be" takes you beyond the mind with its resistance patterns that create the positive-negative polarities…

For example, when a loved one has just died, or you feel your own death approaching, you cannot be happy. It is impossible. But you can be at peace. There may be sadness and tears, but provided that you have relinquished resistance, underneath the sadness you will feel a deep serenity, a stillness, a sacred presence.

This is the emanation of Being, this is inner peace, the good that has no opposite.

What if it is a situation that I can do something about? How can I allow it to be and change it at the same time?

Do what you have to do. In the meantime, accept what is. Since mind and resistance are synonymous, acceptance immediately frees you from mind dominance and thus reconnects you with Being. As a result, the usual ego motivations for "doing" - fear, greed, control, defending or feeding the false sense of self - will cease to operate. An intelligence much greater than the mind is now in charge, and so a different quality of consciousness will flow into your doing.

"Accept whatever comes to you woven in the pattern of your destiny, for what could more aptly fit your needs?" This was written 2,000  years ago by Marcus Aurelius, one of those exceedingly rare humans who possessed worldly power as well as wisdom.

Editor's note: In "The Wedding Song" Kairissi and Elenchus discuss the issue of "there is no 'bad' when viewed from a higher perspective," that of God as Singular Pervasive Reality.

Eckhart Tolle, The Power Of Now

Dissolving the Pain-Body

"Every emotional pain that you experience leaves behind a residue of pain that lives on in you. It merges with the pain from the past, which was already there, and becomes lodged in your mind and body... This accumulated pain is a negative energy field that occupies your body and mind... It’s the emotional pain-body."

CONSCIOUSNESS: THE WAY OUT OF PAIN

Nobody's life is entirely free of pain and sorrow. Isn't it a question of learning to live with them rather than trying to avoid them?

The greater part of human pain is unnecessary. It is self-created as long as the unobserved mind runs your life.

The pain that you create now is always some form of non-acceptance, some form of unconscious resistance to what is. On the level of thought, the resistance is some form of judgment. On the emotional level, it is some form of negativity. The intensity of the pain depends on the degree of resistance to the present moment, and this in turn depends on how strongly you are identified with your mind...

Past Pain: Dissolving The Pain-Body

As long as you are unable to access the power of the Now, every emotional pain that you experience leaves behind a residue of pain that lives on in you. It merges with the pain from the past, which was already there, and becomes lodged in your mind and body. This, of course, includes the pain you suffered as a child, caused by the unconsciousness of the world into which you were born.

This accumulated pain is a negative energy field that occupies your body and mind. If you look on it as an invisible entity in its own right, you are getting quite close to the truth. It’s the emotional pain-body.

It has two modes of being: dormant and active. A pain-body may be dormant 90 percent of the time; in a deeply unhappy person, though, it may be active up to 100 percent of the time. Some people live almost entirely through their pain-body, while others may experience it only in certain situations, such as intimate relationships, or situations linked with past loss or abandonment, physical or emotional hurt, and so on. Anything can trigger it, particularly if it resonates with a pain pattern from your past. When it is ready to awaken from its dormant stage, even a thought or an innocent remark made by someone close to you can activate it.

Some pain-bodies are obnoxious but relatively harmless, for example like a child who won' t stop whining. Others are vicious and destructive monsters, true demons. Some are physically violent; many more are emotionally violent. Some will attack people around you or close to you, while others may attack you, their host. Thoughts and feelings you have about your life then become deeply negative and self-destructive. Illnesses and accidents are often created in this way. Some pain-bodies drive their hosts to suicide.

When you thought you knew a person and then you are suddenly confronted with this alien, nasty creature for the first time, you are in for quite a shock. However, it's more important to observe it in yourself than in someone else. Watch out for any sign of unhappiness in yourself, in whatever form - it may be the awakening pain-body. This can take the form of irritation, impatience, a somber mood, a desire to hurt, anger, rage, depression, a need to have some drama in your relationship, and so on. Catch it the moment it awakens from its dormant state.

The pain-body wants to survive, just like every other entity in existence, and it can only survive if it gets you to unconsciously identify with it. It can then rise up, take you over, "become you," and live through you. It needs to get its "food" through you.

It will feed on any experience that resonates with its own kind of energy, anything that creates further pain in whatever form: anger, destructiveness, hatred, grief, emotional drama, violence, and even illness. So the pain-body, when it has taken you over, will create a situation in your life that reflects back its own energy frequency for it to feed on. Pain can only feed on pain. Pain cannot feed on joy. It finds it quite indigestible.

Once the pain-body has taken you over, you want more pain. You become a victim or a perpetrator. You want to inflict pain, or you want to suffer pain, or both. There isn't really much difference between the two. You are not conscious of this, of course, and will vehemently claim that you do not want pain. But look closely and you will findvthat your thinking and behavior are designed to keep the pain going, for yourself and others. If you were truly conscious of it, the pattern would dissolve, for to want more pain is insanity, and nobody is consciously insane.

The pain-body, which is the dark shadow cast by the ego, is actually afraid of the light of your consciousness. It is afraid of being found out. Its survival depends on your unconscious identification with it, as well as on your unconscious fear of facing the pain that lives in you. But if you don't face it, if you don't bring the light of your consciousness into the pain, you will be forced to relive it again and again. The pain-body may seem to you like a dangerous monster that you cannot bear to look at, but I assure you that it is an insubstantial phantom that cannot prevail against the power of your presence.

Some spiritual teachings state that all pain is ultimately an illusion, and this is true. The question is: Is it true for you? A mere belief doesn't make it true. Do you want to experience pain for the rest of your life and keep saying that it is an illusion? Does that free you from the pain? What we are concerned with here is how you can realize this truth - that is, make it real in your own experience.

The moment you observe it, feel its energy field within you, and take your attention into it, the identification is broken. A higher dimension of consciousness has come in. I call it presence. You are now the witness or the watcher of the pain-body. This means that it cannot use you anymore by pretending to be you, and it can no longer replenish itself through you. You have found your own innermost strength. You have accessed the power of Now.

What happens to the pain-body when we become conscious enough to break our identification with it?

Unconsciousness creates it; consciousness transmutes it into itself. St. Paul expressed this universal principle beautifully: "Everything is shown up by being exposed to the light, and whatever is exposed to the light itself becomes light." Just as you cannot fight the darkness, you cannot fight the pain-body. Trying to do so would create inner conflict and thus further pain. Watching it is enough. Watching it implies accepting it as part of what is at that moment.

The pain-body consists of trapped life-energy that has split off from your total energy field and has temporarily become autonomous through the unnatural process of mind identification. It has turned in on itself and become anti-life, like an animal trying to devour its own tail. Why do you think our civilization has become so life-destructive?

But even the life-destructive forces are still life-energy. When you start to disidentify and become the watcher, the pain-body will continue to operate for a while and will try to trick you into identifying with it again. Although you are no longer energizing it through your identification, it has a certain momentum, just like a spinning wheel that will keep turning for a while even when it is no longer being propelled. At this stage, it may also create physical aches and pains in different parts of the body, but they won't last. Stay present, stay conscious. Be the ever-alert guardian of your inner space. You need to be present enough to be able to watch the pain-body directly and feel its energy. It then cannot control your thinking.

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