Suffering - path to compassion
The existence of suffering is one of the hardest things for people to come to grips with when thinking that love is supposedly the goal of life.
However, like most outcomes on this planet, learning to manifest love is a result of a process of actions, some of which seem to be counter-intuitive in the context of the ultimate goal.
Incarnation is limitation△
Much today is about how we can unshackle ourselves from life's limitations, but being in a body is already a huge limitation, compared to our higher self.
The creative process, along with understanding the means to make it happen, occurs all up and down the creative chain of manifestation. That begs the question of why should there be limitations in the first place?
In the inner worlds, thought immediately proceeds action. That is, creation and its result are not separated. In our inner self, we may create and enjoy the results without understanding the process, which makes it difficult to know how to create really large changes, which may involve a lot of energy. By incarnating, we experience time, the most significant aspect of which is that we see the causal path between an idea and each step towards its creation. By repeating this process in various activities over many lives we get to thoroughly understand the overall process.
The other aspect is that in having limitations, especially different ones from life to life, we create alternative ways of achieving similar outcomes, which, once repeated many times, allows our higher selves to adjust the means according to the particular circumstances presented. We can see this creative process in action within the undertaking of any activity within our daily lives, which provides us with an idea of why it is similar at the level of our higher self.
Actions and their results△
We do something and expect certain results, even if those expectations are sometimes unrealistic.
If we are realistic, and consistent in the actions we undertake, we will tend to get consistent results. This is cause and effect, accentuated by the effort that each step requires, and the consequent duration of those efforts. This is the standard stuff any project manager works with, and immortalised in myriad Gantt charts produced to manage projects.
Within human interaction, in early incarnations, we are fairly oblivious to the effects upon others of our actions, often creating pain and suffering, but ignorant of what that really means. That is, until we are treated to the actions of others that may cause pain and suffering to us. However, if we survived those actions, we react to the circumstances immediately presented to us, and lash out. Interestingly, that retaliation is a manifestation of a sense of justice, with which we are all born, though don't really understand how to give effect to it without creating more retaliation.
We continue through a myriad cycles of this revenge retaliation, feeling justified and arrogant in our actions until we start to be dissatisfied with the pain and suffering imposed upon us, especially if we cannot see any link between what we have done and what happens to us. We can fall into the despair of injustice, seemingly incapable of changing our circumstances, but continuously suffering. The extent of the suffering helps us to deeply feel what suffering is, and leads us to eventually understand that the suffering we feel is what we create in others by our actions.
That it takes such an extraordinary amount ot suffering to get to this point is what makes suffering so powerful as in incentive to change our ways. Yet, we don't learn lessons simply, so will regress to retaliation until our thinking becomes consistently stable enough to override our retaliatory urges. However, it takes a lot of learning for our higher selves to create personalities that really manifest that understanding enough to let it rule their lives, and even to sacrifice their life for it.
Compassion and love△
With understanding that the actions we do creates suffering similar to what we feel, we begin to consciously avoid creating that suffering in others, because we do not want that for them. That is compassion.
With compassion, we open ourselves to being a repository of the grace to let others be who they are, and supporting them along their own path that leads to their own will to be compassionate. We do this because we understand that we would not have got to our own compassionate nature without a significant dose of suffering, by ourselves and others. However, being compassionate is not enough, because it does not really alter anything beyond ourselves, except that others may observe the benefits of what we manifest. Living it is not powerful enough.
We then still alternate between lives of compassion and retribution, until we do more than just live compassion, but manifest compassion as part of our being, radiating it as a force that others can feel and respond to, even if they cannot consciously recognise it. We are then the love that makes us a living part of creation, spurring others to do more than just act, but be, so that all their actions are done out of love.
Multi-faceted development△
Now, this all seems like a fairly linear progression, but human incarnation is not linear.
Instead, we go though a series of cycles, within each of which we learn some measure of many qualities each round, building up our understanding over many lives. Without this repetitive, incremental process, we would be quite imbalanced if we concentrated upon only one for many lives, and so need to build up complementary qualities which temper our tendency to obsession. This is why we seem to get impediments to running away with our own obsessions, usually in the form of obligations which require us to tend to others' needs.
In this way, we learn balance, and so more able to manifest love and compassion, despite having circumstances in our lives that would seem to work against that. That builds strength of character and conviction, which are needed to really be a centre of creation in the universe.
Time to move up△
While many religions supposedly teach compassion, in practice their doctrines often impose hardship and suffering, as if we haven't learnt any at all.
We have accumulated a lot of compassion through many incarnations, yet we are still tied to a lot of religious thinking that is treating us like we just got off the bus on this planet. In typical religious over-simplification, we apparently must endure masses more suffering, supposedly for our salvation. This is why we must let go of religious indoctrination and learn to see ourselves as we are now.
Most of humanity has learnt a lot of compassion, and it is time to make that compassion exist as a core thread of our societies. We do not have to have mass suffering at the hands of powerful psychopaths that do not understand compassion at all. Time to remove such people from inhibiting mass compassion flooding our collective consciousness and allowing us to live lives driven by it, as we emerge from the blanket of selfishness woven by the heartless.