If the meaning and purpose of suffering is revealed only in the ever-increasing willingness to endure it, those of us who would learn that lesson have work ahead of us. Patient endurance will take time to form, and it will cause short-term emotional upheaval–so as people formed at the foot of the Cross, followers of the Teacher should start with a few basic commitments. Because we, Christ’s students, want to absorb pain’s lessons: we make a decision to let our suffering cause personal brokenheartedness instead of retaliation. We commit to the reduction of suffering, knowing how much fun our anguish is not. Under no circumstances should conflicts be artificially multiplied so that lessons can be taught–that would be a sign of spiritualized ego–but when suffering happens, it can be skillfully employed to draw us closer to the one, within, who is capable of quietly bearing it. These commitments set boundaries on a learning process that, regrettably, is often spicier than anyone on earth has a taste for.
Suffering can come from loss, it can come from chronic illness or trauma stored in the body. Or, we can simply find ourselves in a time where, though personally aware of the cost of our own manipulations, we are surrounded by people who unquestioningly manipulate to get their needs met–perhaps even gaining by it while we continue to live with loss. To function on a daily basis, we maintain egoic distance from suffering by judging and analyzing it. But learning with the suffering Christ asks that we be quiet, commit to actually feeling the physical and emotional pains in the body, minus the noise of examination. At the end of it, there will be an opportunity to speak compassionately to the body and let go. We will be able to sing the hymn “ But the pains which he endured Alleluia, our salvation have procured Alleluia.” Those who raise their voices will no longer doubt where their redeemer is.
Suffering initiates a grieving process that renders the things we’re attached to less appealing. This is long, slow and depressing, but also the vehicle of the various dark nights. The things we once desired lose their lustre. Emotional skill is necessary here: it is a positive thing to see the sadness and depression creating non-attachment in real time. Each attachment we face is one less time we need to return as someone else’s “Christ in stranger’s guise”--hastening the day when “the Christ within” will ascend to the Father, forever dissolving into cosmic consciousness. But until then, a carefully tuned ear will begin to hear echoes of the gospel story about the pharisee and the publican: and it is right to be wary.
As a way of connecting with the benefits of ongoing sadness and depression, practitioners may hear themselves saying “thank God I don’t need what others need.” One who has undergone the dark night of the senses simply finds himself collecting less stuff. But listen: the temptation is real– to wax cynical out of secret jealousy, to judge those still capable of enjoying what we no longer can. It’s our job to focus the mind on where our enjoyment actually is–in the renewal of our spirits–and actively root for those who take enjoyment where they can. Snacks are tasty, toys are groovy, human connection is freaking amazing. Cynically judging these things in others--well, this is ego, attempting to retrench.
If we’re careful: eventually, the emotional character of suffering shifts. Honest grief begins to take the place of “comparative desire.” Incarnation shows itself to be a Cross, on which all who live are suspended: between uncomfortable vulnerabilities, on one side, and, on the other, the humiliating hustle to get survival needs met. No one on earth is capable of that–and when we see our incapacity plainly, we pray “I am sorry for what I numbed myself with when I couldn’t be poor and vulnerable.” We sit in our suffering as the publican sat in the temple, saying “Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.” To our surprise, such shifts in perspective can even change how physical or emotional pain feels in the body. The sensations are just as intense, but the intensity is less painful. The cross feels different when you stop wiggling against the nails, and condemnation feels different when you find the voice that says “Father forgive us–none of us knows how to do this!” After that, snacks are tasty, toys are groovy, human connection is amazing–and we may perhaps rediscover our fascination for them.
Sex, breath and physical sensation, to say nothing of concentration itself–these are, all of them, intense teachers. On a worldwide religious stage, tantric teachers suggest that physical sensations themselves can free us from ego. (And in fact Jesus’ genius may be precisely found in challenging how attached we are to “selflessness being blissful” making nonself accessible to the vulnerable and suffering.) Famous teachers like Ram Dass said “there isn’t a lot of room for ego when you’re just breathing in and out.” Buddhists who work with the levels of concentration called the jhanas report that thought of self is suspended as our capacity grows to let go of pleasure and willingly embrace pain. In summary, to paraphrase the Trappist monk Thomas Keating: “there is a level on which pain is pleasure and pleasure is pain, because we are grounded in divine love.” Despite how the lesson challenges attachments, the prospect of robust acceptance is real: so it qualifies as a “lesson that’s part of the curriculum regardless of how miserably difficult it is.”
You have heard it said “play stupid games, win stupid prizes.” Amen I say to you, suffering is one such game, and humility is one such prize. Even the most diligent practitioners will hang their heads, in the end, and say “I’m sorry for the desires I hid behind because I was having trouble being vulnerable and feeling sensations and emotions.” The psalmist said “Have mercy on me God have mercy, for in you, my soul has taken refuge” This points us in the direction of “the Christ within” who can physically bear the intense feelings we cannot. And indeed, though both the sensations of the body (and the emotions they cause) whether blissful or painful, are intense–full acceptance is a source of protection for those willing to feel them. The psalm continues “In the shadow of your wings. I take refuge, till the storms of destruction pass by.” Even if suffering stinks, it is possible to appreciate it for the breaks it affords selfishly oriented thinking. Without forming a morbid attachment to suffering because of it, we may find ourselves praying that “things that orient us away from ourselves” increase.
And listen, listen: we do NOT need to content ourselves with being in physical or emotional pain because of its lesson value. Half of the curriculum of suffering is “what do you do with difficult emotions and sensations once you’ve felt them fully?” It is the function of emotional and physical suffering to free us from ego. After it’s done so, though, if we’re to avoid retrenchment in resentments, ego energy needs to find expression in prayer for others. Jesus didn’t stop at “if this cup cannot pass unless I drink it, thy will be done.” On the other side of taking one on the chin, he prayed “father forgive them.”
Even on a level of sensation, we need not content ourselves with discomfort. Those who are so chronically ill that the drugs stop working go to psychologists trained in pain management– they’re taught to encounter their pain deeply and release it, growing in speed with the internal skills. One of the lessons of mantra practice is “the feeling of sound is more effective than coping mechanisms to relieve stress and release pain.” Let’s unpack this for a minute.
We know pain and trauma causes hyperfocus on the body. Psalm 22 says “I can feel all my bones.” This is incredibly negative as we are first becoming aware of the volume of trauma we carry around. But it doesn’t stay that way. After a while that hypervigilance–once we’re safe enough to allow it to rest from perpetual engagement– becomes energy for highly focused intent and attention. We can kick in as needed, even when we’re averse to the work at hand, concentrate despite things that would once have distracted us. Transforming pain uses all of these skills. A great deal of pain’s discomfort isn’t due to the physical sensation, it’s due to our desire to avoid it, the suffering we’re creating by our judgment of it. Looking our own pain in the face is kind of like emerging from under the covers when there’s a ghost in the room. But on the turbulent sea of Galilee, when the disciples thought they were seeing a ghost, they heard “take heart, it is I, do not be afraid.” Looking our own pain in the face is gross, the way it would be to look at someone we love being beaten horribly and crucified. But the disciples eventually did so, and recalled Zechariah’s words, saying “you shall look upon him whom you have pierced, and mourn him as one mourns an only son.” Again, when Moses nailed a serpent to a pole–strikingly paralleling Christ’s elevation on the cross, Exodus says “all who look at it will live.”
It is the same with physical and emotional pain, the same with the darker parts of our psychology, the same with the annoyingly persistent sinful and suffering world. The Spirit’s energy is subtle and small by design: we can’t both be present to suffering, while also trying to examine or control it. But Christ returned as a stranger so that we would see all suffering as his. Here’s a list of everything we’re told to see as Christ, so extensive it’s exhausting: bread, wine, sheep gates, shepherds, light, clear paths, vines, and life itself. Christ is literally present in the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the homeless, the sick, the imprisoned, the naked. The Spirit says “you can spend your energy doing intellectual work, trying to figure out if what you’re looking at is Christ and what your obligations are. Or you can just stop judging, proclaim everything to be Christ, and commence to all the bits that involve rejoicing.” As we realize that all suffering is Christ’s and grow in our willingness to host that pain in our own bodies: we understand why the epistles exhort us to “always carrying in the body the death of Christ so that the life of Christ may be made known in our mortal bodies also.” If the Spirit’s energy were too insufficient, in fact, to simultaneously “be who we think we are” and also show devotion to Christ, we should throw off self like the tight garment it has always been. Everything left, in us and in the world, would be Christ, risen indeed.
Francis of Assissi, whose suffering was so great he physically manifested the wounds of Christ, famously stripped in front of his bishop and advocated “following the naked Christ nakedly.” This falls short of justification for showing up to dinner parties in our birthday suits–but it can and must do heavy lifting to inspire us to utilize our suffering in a particular way. Seized by Roman soldiers, an unnamed disciple wiggled out of his clothes and fled Gethsemani naked. Amen, I say to you: this moment is Gethsemani. What need have any of us for the garment of self? Let all who have ears listen, because our suffering’s whispering an answer. "None at all!" Can you hear it? None at all.
