Suffering is Grace

"Suffering is Grace"

I have had a hard time understanding this concept.  How is my own or anyone's suffering, a path to grace?  Suffering is hard, painful, angry, depressing, fearful.  It is the feeling that, once a painful time in our life is over, we never want to revisit that space.  Yet, any suffering we have endured leaves energetic scars in our body. Trauma and suffering may be things we perceive as "in the past", but until we acknowledge their impact, and learn how to make some sort of peace with them,  they will continue to manifest in our lives in other ways. 

As Bessel Van Der Kolk writes in "The Body Keeps the Score", 

"Traumatized people chronically feel unsafe inside their bodies: The past is alive in the form of gnawing interior discomfort. Their bodies are constantly bombarded by visceral warning signs, and, in an attempt to control these processes, they often become expert at ignoring their gut feelings and in numbing awareness of what is played out inside. They learn to hide from their selves."

We learn to go around things. While instinctively knowing that whatever suffering we have endured will never be resolved until we go through it.  After the fact.  With a fresh perspective.  With some distance.  This is where we learn to see the grace of our lives and how all of the experiences we have had bring us closer to the gifts we were brought here to share. 

The "numbing awareness of what is played out inside" also speaks to me.  Most of us look externally for the answers to what is causing us pain.  The next book, the next diet, the next podcast or class or relationship, job, city, the next drink or pill, will bring us what we need and end our pain, our frustration.  For people suffering from addiction, the cost of only looking outside  for answers can cost us our lives. Just this week, I have heard of two  people in my larger community who have lost their battle.  And it breaks my heart. 

The truth is, we already have everything we need inside of us. 

Charles Eisenstein puts forth, what I think, is the perfect description of addiction.  He is not describing addiction to my "thing", being alcohol, but he posits, and I agree, that we are all addicted to something.  Addiction is one of the many ways we go around, rather than through.  He describes addiction as "any behavior that alleviates pain without healing its source."  Yes. 

But how do we start healing the source?  How do we learn how to go through?  Richard Rudd in "The Gene Key", talks about the process of allow, accept, embrace. 

Allow - We have to delve into the shadow self and give it room to be seen.  Give space to all of the suffering we have experienced.  To acknowledge and breathe into anger, fear, anxiety, trauma.  You don't have to like any of these feelings, but you have to allow them.  The ego, wants things to stay the same, to remain in what it perceives as comfortable because it is what we have always known. It will try to distract us away from these feelings.  To keep us safe by pulling us away from our shadow self.  We have to remember that even when the danger we face is real, the fear we feel is a choice. Ego is a process, not an intrinsic reality. When you can sit with your feelings, go through them, without allowing the ego to distract you, then you can start to crack open the seed of change.

Accept - As you allow your feelings to come to the surface, you eventually start to accept them.  Again, you do not have to like or dislike them, they just are. Change will not happen immediately.  It is like planting a flower.  A tiny little flower of self-love, self-worth, forgiveness.  As acceptance deepens, the flower grows.  Creative energy begins to flow and you start to feel empowered.  No longer a victim.  Edith Egar says,  "Victimization is Universal, victimhood is optional".  As we learn self-love and self-worth, as they take root, we can move beyond victimhood.  We start to see the possibilities of what is on the other side of suffering. 

Embrace - The shadow self  is accepted by you.   There is no part of you that wants any  of the suffering you have endured to be any different.  You begin to see the gifts of your experience.  You can forgive yourself and others and move past the parts of you that you were ashamed of or felt the need to hide.  You step into your power, your grace.  Suffering is grace. 

When we go through the process of allowing, accepting and embracing, we start to see that we have always had everything we needed.  Like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, who was given a path to follow, the Yellow Brick Road.  A path that took her through all of her deepest fears.  A path that she believed would lead her home.  With each obstacle or disappointment she found a way through. 

Her biggest flaw is that she was looking externally for someone, the Wizard,  to "fix" her situation.  As she is bemoaning the fact that she may never get home, Glinda reminds her that she has had the power she needed all along.  But she also states that Dorothy would never have believed in that power if Glinda had told her she possessed it at the beginning of her journey.  She had to discover it herself.  She had to go through the suffering and learn trust in herself, in her resources.  Her internal resources, not the illusory and external power of the Wizard. 

The only thing I have done perfectly in my life is survive 100% of everything that life has sent my way.  I lived through my suffering and I am still standing.  But surviving is not thriving.  In order to thrive, I have had to process each event and find the grace in all of them.  I have not been as perfect in the processing piece.  That is more of a lifelong endeavor.  What I am learning here, the realization that going around my grief is what is keeping me in it, has been transformative.  Understanding that life didn't happen TO me, but FOR me.  How that has shaped me.  What my Yellow Brick Road has been.  And how I have grown as it opened before me.  Learning to trust my resources, my ability to move through life and be grateful for all parts of it….that is grace.  That is how I will get home.