Share the Spiritual

Today, I’d like to talk about the emotional suffering that so many of us have been grappling with of late. Right now, the human experience is asking each of us to grow through our deepest personal issues because we are spiritually evolving. As such, we are feeling long buried pain so that we can shift our beliefs. Our emotions allow us to see the limiting beliefs that we’ve been holding so that we can begin to heal them. When we do, we experience profound spiritual growth.

In my own life, this transformation has not come easily. Despite my supportive loved ones, some self-inflicted misery has left me feeling utterly alone, with no one to help me but myself. But that is the point, because only I can help myself. Only I can provide the love that my soul yearns for by accepting myself completely.

Acceptance is what allows us to grow, and to grow is why we’re here. When I give myself the love that I’ve been missing, I end my suffering. I transform myself at the core.

Emotional suffering means acting separately from love. It withholds love from ourselves by believing in its lack.

So often, we try to find this love outside of ourselves rather than recognizing the divine within. Our suffering worsens when we try to resolve things by justifying, explaining, or defending ourselves instead of opening our hearts to heal.

But who can blame us? Suffering has been taught to us as a means of control. It is caused by the hierarchy we’ve been raised to revere. We have been trained to value the injustice of superiority and to hold onto our egos so tightly, all to keep domination going. In fact, we fight to maintain separation instead of recognizing our eternal light.

Suffering is this resistance, and physical pain demonstrates it so well. Amidst my own physical pain in life, I have noticed that when I fear it and fight it, the worsens dramatically. When I hold onto the injustice of my pain, my body tightens with suffering. Yet, when I simply accept what is happening without attachment, the pain immediately begins to lessen. I can feel my energy become unblocked and begin to move more freely. Then, I simply have pain, but I no longer suffer. See, if we can feel what we feel without judging it, we experience it fully and then allow it to pass on by. By doing so, we dramatically heal.

As the title of this post implies, humor can help us to do this. It can lighten the seriousness of human suffering and replace it with an awareness that is cathartic. But of course, in the midst of deep emotional suffering, such lightheartedness can seem impossible. At some point as humans, we inevitably find ourselves saying, “God, please take away this pain because I can’t bear it any longer.” And this is the valley of the shadow before spiritual rebirth.

Fittingly enough, the cartoon exclamation “Sufferin’ Succotash” comes from “Suffering Savior,” and those words could not be more appropriate. The heart-wrenching story of the ultimate savior Jesus shows us how to overcome our suffering. And I believe this is exactly what we’re here to do.

We are each going through personal resurrections of our own right now, and in order to relieve our suffering, we must act with the love that we already are. We must stop forsaking ourselves and humanity with judgment and recognize our own divinity, thereby accepting our true selves at last.

It can be quite an adjustment to realize that we don’t have to suffer or feel guilty for being here, and that we don’t ever have to earn love. My greatest wish for each of us is to remember this and the sublime perfection we are. As I’ve done this on my own journey, I have found myself shedding tears of joy for monumental growth. I am grateful for this dramatic, human opportunity and the metamorphosis of my burgeoning soul.