Christian, a reader of this blog made a very interesting question: is suffering important for you to get some sort of enlightenment?
In my opinion it isn’t necessary. As a Catholic, the example of Jesus is quite telling: he traveled all his life, having dinners, meeting people and yet we remember him going though “passion” , nailed to the cross in the last days of his life.
The same applies to other avatars of humanity, such as Buddha: they were enjoying life. But for some reason the idea has gone round about suffering as a justification for us to go to heaven, or to sacrifice to others.
All my work is based in sharing the best of life and transmitting your happiness to others.
I would like then to hear your opinion on suffering and this attitude towards the spiritual path.
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Dear Paulo,
I just finished reading your “Aleph” and immediatly felt the need to write you…
I feel I shall punctuate that I don’t always write to the authors of what I read, I actually never did so before…
I haven’t read all of your books, but I noticed that when I happen to read one it always happens in “the right moment”.
I stumbled upon Aleph last thursday, 24 hours after having discovered the baby who was growing within me had ceased to live nearly one month before, while I was looking for “a few” books to help me run away from what I was living.
Of course I knew that Aleph wasn’t likely to offer me an escape in the world of fantasy, but I somehow felty it would have offered other, something I needed though feared.
Immediatly after finishing the reading I felt I wanted to write you and to thank you; I din’t know how to do so but I remembered that in the book you mentioned your blog and here I am.
I don’t know if you personally read all the comments on it (it looks like an enormous effort) neither if you will happen to read mine, but I think that it’s anyway important to me to try and reach you with these words, maybe you will read them, maybe it won’t matter, maybe somebody else will and that will result to be the reason for my writing them…
Last wednesday night I was feeling a huge pain, both emotionally and physically, and I said to my husband I would have been ready to accept it if it was to give life to our child, but I could not bear I was going through that when He/she had anyway died… I wanted to find a reason, a meaning; I knew it was somehow there, just beyond my reach, but could not find it…
Then I had to go through medical care and to try and begin facing the healing period, which I knew would have been rather a psychological then a physical matter…
I had bought 7 books, 5 of them were fantasy, the last 2 were Redfield’s Twelfth Enlightenment (I’m trying to re-translate the title from Italian, but I’m sure it should be near enough to let understand what I’m writing about) and your Aleph. I had thought it would have been wise to start from the “lighter” books and to leave these latter for a few days foward, but of course I then acted the other way round…
Well, I can’t say I’ve fully healed, nor that I completely accepted what happened, but I want to thank you because reading Aleph helped me aaccepting part of my suffering and understanding a few things I’d like to list here, maybe for myself, maybe for others, I don’t actually know…
1) My child, in this life and occasion, didn’t stay with me for even a couple of months; but it hasn’t ceased to live and exist somewhere else on “the trein of life”!
2) If he/she chose to “come” and quite abruptely “go” there is a reason (that I might come to understand it or not) or more precisely there are some reasons, one linked to me, one linked to Him/her, one linked to my husband and so on… and each one has a meaning and an aim in our individual path.
3) A friend of mine who has gone through the same experience a few weeks earlier than me told me that she wants to make so that her experience makes sense in her life, makes her a better person and halps her understanding other women facing it… We both are psychoterapists and I start feeling it is being so also for me. I already know I will soon have to do something witha patient: up to now I had colluded with her feeling of guilt and had tried to help her having her understanding that she couldn’t have done anything different seen her stage in her evolutional path (she had feared becoming a mother since she still had unsolved matters with her own and had overworked during the pregnancy); now I know she couldn’t have done nothing at all, cause nothin was there to be done.
4) I also know I could do nothing cause nothing was there to be done and I’m starting to accept something I’ve always had troubles to deal with: not being almighty that is being impotent.
5) since this part of your forum is related to suffering and I instinctively chose it while wandering in which section to write I found myself thinking about the quetion “is suffering necessary” and I think: no, it isn’t… nevertheless I think that when we happen to step into it may as well be worth taking what we can out of it.
6) Eventually I want to thank you for havin warned us readers from procedind to do the excercise of the fire ring… I was immediately temped by it, even because I had already happened to see parts of my previous lifes and in the last years I had felt quite frustrated by the fact that it had not happened again. After reading your warning I realised it would have been a very bad idea to try just now: when it happened I had been quite centered and even so it had been quite destabilizing, I can’t immagine what would have happened just now!
7) There is a time for any single thing, that we accept it or not, sometimes -as in my case- suffering derives from our incapability to accept that that time is not when it would like it to be. But, as I wrote on my facebook page: if you accept it things are like that; if you don’t accept it things are still like that.
THANK AGAIN!!!!!
Thank you
I am also posting your text in http://paulocoelhoblog.com/2010/08/10/o-aleph-comentarios-de-leitores/
Barbara
I guess everyone needs to suffer in a way or other to get what he wants,because if everything was easy with no suffer,it will be worthless.
I think we need to suffer once in a while. Life is not about happiness and success, it is also bounded with sufferings and pain for us to be able to distinguish the consequences of our actions and the reason of our sufferings. We suffer so we can learn. Sufferings make us better and stonger.
in hinduism the suffering of any type is said to be the result of your actions ,may be of pest life because we believe in rebirth . even whatever we way suffer in relationships is also said to be because of past relationships that is whatever we have done to that person good or bad in this birth in some way he or she will take from us or give to us .
“suffering as a justification for us to go to heaven, or to sacrifice to others.”
I’ve always thought that suffering is wrong and it brings nothing but pain, but in the name of my kids i chose to suffer in my marriage because of them to be happy. It did not have a meaning again ( we separated anyway) but somehow probably Jesus suffered for us (his children). Anyway we suffer, so it must have some meaning.
This is the enlightenment in my opinion. . . We all have to work to fight suffering:patiently we must turn this gigantic stone in a myriad of shining pebbles of joy . .
As like as I feel , suffering is part of the life, after or before. We don’t look for it but we meet it in our path, that is also the path of people we love,or simply of our neighbour. Well, when we meet suffering we can open better our eyes, our mind and our hearth and then we’ll do the best to turn it in little moments of joy, much more as we can.Then we can’t not to know our gift,our path: We’ll sure realize the sense of the life.For these reasons, in my opinion I think, unfortunately, suffering gets some sort of enlightenment.Thanks to you all for the opportunity you give to a reflection. Love
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