Life is Difficult and Painful.

This is a great truth, the first of the Four Noble Truths.

Most people cannot, or will not, accept that this life is a vale of tears, and will often seek to escape from themselves and their pain into drugs, booze, sex, junk food, gambling, religion, mental illness…  However, there is no real escape from suffering other than unconditional acceptance of one’s own true identity and the realisation that we cannot change what happens to us, we can only change how we react to events and what we ourselves do.  But, what we do will, in some way, change what happens to us.

With acceptance comes change.  ~  Jaco Snoek

Yet, even in this deterministic universe there is no real cause and effect, at least none within ordinary human understanding.  Ordinary human understanding tells us that a chicken is just an egg’s way of creating another egg ~ this idiotic theory is perfectly in agreement with the Principle of Causality. So which is wrong, our idiotic theory or the principle of causality?  It doesn’t matter, it’s just semantics, and words are poor tools with which to describe infinity.  Anyway, the cosmos doesn’t care either way.

Sadly, very early in life we learn to have expectations of reward for our actions, and this is what motivates most of what most people do most of the time ~ this is called the Expectancy Theory, and it’s fundamentally flawed in the same way that the eternal law of cause and effect is flawed.  There is no Divine Omniscient Consciousness to ensure that the law of cause and effect always applies.

If you do something good, you may not get a good result.  If someone does something bad or evil, they may not get a bad or evil result.  It is not always possible to determine in advance the end results of our actions.  And, no matter what we do there are some things we cannot change.  For example, by your actions alone you cannot change another person, most certainly you cannot make someone love you.

So, what’s worse than knowing you want something, other than knowing you can never have it.  ~  James Patterson

No matter how good and competent you are, you may suddenly find yourself up to your eyebrows in deep shit, and there may be nobody to blame.  Sometimes things just happen.  Sometimes there is nobody to blame, and sometimes there is nobody to thank.  This is part of chaos theory.

Mankind has as much difficulty in accepting chaos  ~ the disorder, confusion, and unpredictability of life ~ as a man has with unconditionally accepting himself.  The sun rises, therefore there must be a Sun God.  The Nile floods, there must be a Nile God.  Some women are beautiful and loving, there must be a Goddess of Love.  Man created Gods and Goddesses to escape from, and make sense of, the pain, disorder, confusion, and unpredictability that surrounds us.

The only escape from pain and suffering is acceptance, and perhaps the only divinity is the divinity within us.

The path to freedom from pain and suffering lies not in trying to escape into drugs, booze, sex, or whatever.  The Warrior’s Path to enlightenment is through acceptance of oneself and simple self-discipline in body, mind, and spirit.

There is an ultimate truth for each of us, and it is this; we are who we are, and the only thing we can change is ourselves in order to reach our absolute and fullest potential.

If you cannot, or will not, open yourself to unconditional acceptance of who you are, and become willing to change and grow, then the only person who will really go on suffering is you.  The Cosmos doesn’t really care one way or another.

~

jack collier

jackcollier7@talktalk.net