why do we suffer?
You are the universe experiencing itself.
Ever thought about that?
The universe is God.
Everything is God.
How could it not be?
God created man so he could experience himself.
The problem these days is that when you talk about God, people still picture a man sat in the clouds with a big white beard, judging our every move.
Us small minded humans are so incapable of comprehending a concept such as God that we had to personify it to make it a tiny bit easier to grasp. But we took it too far, like we do with most things. We just don't know when to stop, do we?
My students often ask me if I believe in God, but I'm never able to answer them, because when I ask them to define God so I can confirm if I believe in that or not, they are never able to.
Creation cannot be denied, otherwise there would be no one to deny it. So if we can confirm creation exists, then we must also be able to deduce that creation has a source.
That is my definition of God.
God is the source of creation, whatever and wherever that is.
People like to ask why there is so much suffering in the world. It's a good question. Some people suffer more than others. Some suffering is gross and acute, like passing a kidney stone. Much of life's suffering is subtle, like having friends that are better looking than you.
But still, we suffer. Why?
To run with this hypothesis, we need to accept that God (the source of creation) created man (you) so "he" could experience "himself". Why would he do this? To answer that would probably be a deeper question to answer than as to why we suffer, so maybe we'll come back to that in a later post.
In order for God to realise himself, he needs a vessel to do so. Without the vessel, God is just pure consciousness - divine awareness. But the problem is that awareness can't be aware of itself in pure form, it has to detach and become separate. This is where the vessel of human experience comes in. It is an instrument for self-awareness, among many other things.
Why are humans so special in this case? Unlike most of the animal kingdom, who are aware, humans are able to reason, which means they're capable of knowing that they're aware.
A fish is aware because it can move toward its food and eat it. But is it aware that it's aware? Does the fish know it's a fish? The truth is that we don't really know because we can't ask it, but we'd probably assume not. But we can say that (most of us) are aware of our own awareness.
If we can accept that we are a vessel for the universe, God, or whatever you want to call it to experience itself, then we must also be able to accept that this must be done in its full entirety. Because we are all small fragments of a fundamental consciousness, experiencing the universe from an infinite number of perspectives, we must accept that that has to include the good, the bad, and the ugly.
That includes all the pain and pleasure you can fathom.
It may not be a satisfactory answer, but it's the 'why' that I tell myself when I'm having a bad day. It's the only satisfactory answer I've been able to find to this question, and it saves me a little more bandwidth when I'm suffering or going through a hard time.
Rather than perpetually asking myself "why me?" I can just focus on navigating the direct experience of the suffering, which is actually a little easier once you're able to drop the resistance of questioning it.