Pain & Suffering Are Not The Same

a message from Neale Donald Walsch

Last week in our ongoing series on The Holy Experience we defined it as that moment when nothing has changed, but everything is different.

Now this does not mean that we should ignore all suffering, look past all of another's torment, and proceed as if nothing bad is happening in the world. Quite the contrary. All of the circumstances on our planet, all of the conditions of Life, are placed BEFORE us BY us (remember always: we are acting co-jointly; there is only One of us) in order that we may decide, express, and experience who we really are in relationship to them.

Thus do those who suffer, and those who end the suffering of others, both experience Who We All Really Are.

I believe this is exactly what is happening here upon the earth. I believe that everything that is happening is happening perfectly so that all of us may awaken. I believe that many Souls are doing what you and I would call suffering and dying, so that all of us may have awakened, within, the Divine qualities of compassion, caring, forgiveness, understanding, patience, love, and, most of all, the Unity and Oneness of Life.

To the unaware observer, this may seem like a cruel way for Life to inform Life about Life through the process of Life Itself. Why should people have to suffer in order to demonstrate to themselves or others Who They Really Are?

That is a salient and important question. It is a question that every thinking person must ask if these spiritual understandings are to have a leg to stand on.

The answer is found in Conversations with God, which tells us that, in fact, people do not have to suffer in order to demonstrate to themselves or others Who They Really Are. Suffering as a means of producing such demonstrations is, it turns out, a choice.

Perhaps it is a choice that is made for emphasis, so that the Demonstration will not soon be forgotten. I do not know. I do not know the agenda of an individual Soul. I will agree that it is not a choice that most people make consciously. At the Conscious Level of Creation, most human beings would not choose to suffer. Yet CWG tells us that we are producing our reality at four levels of creation: Conscious, Subconscious, Superconscious, and Supraconscious.

It is within this larger context that CWG informs us that pain is an objective experience, and suffering is a subjective one. Pain is a physical phenomenon, and suffering is our thought about it.

Put another way, pain is simply pain, but if we make a judgment that it is not okay, not welcome, not acceptable in favor of a larger good, then it becomes suffering. Yet if we make the opposite decision--that it is okay, that it is welcome, that it is endurable for a larger good--then our suffering ends, even as the pain goes on. Nothing changes, but everything is different.

There even come times in the experience of many when pain can actually be celebrated (believe it or not), changing its very definition from suffering to joy.

Anyone who has had an aching tooth pulled and endured the machinations of the dentist and the injection of Novocain, knows exactly what I am talking about. Many women who have given birth have lived this experience.

It is when we make this shift that we move from Survival to Celebration. From then on, nothing can touch us in a negative way. This understanding truly can "deliver us from evil. For thine IS the Kingdom, and the Power, and the Glory forever. Amen."

Is it not written, "Ye are Gods"?

And we will continue this extraordinary discussion next week in this space.

 

Hugs and love,

Neale

© 2012 ReCreation Foundation - http://www.cwg.org - Neale Donald Walsch is a modern day spiritual messenger whose words continue to touch the world in profound ways. His With God series of books has been translated into 27 languages, touching millions of lives and inspiring important changes in their day-to-day lives.