There is a subtle difference between suffering and affliction.
Affliction is a form of suffering arising out of fundamental misconceptions – such as the belief that each individual is ultimately separate and disconnected from the other. Afflictions take the form of entangled anger, hatred and jealousy.
These emotions, when hidden, repressed or denied, become unconscious or entangled, leading to the harming of ourselves and ill-intention towards others.
Embedded in every affliction is suffering. Many root causes of suffering are an integral part of the miracle of creation. For example, the suffering of grief or loss, the suffering of separation, the suffering of transience or the suffering of illness and death.
In the denial of suffering we become caught in afflictions, which create more suffering. When we are able, through inner softness and an attitude of tenderness or care, to allow the feeling of suffering into our experience, the surrender can bring an alchemy. In this, suffering transforms to passion – a passion to be of service to others, and a passion to be of service to life.
It is not for nothing that the root words “suffering” and “passion” are synonymous.
If we are free of mental agenda, which is so often an agenda based on the belief in inherent separation, then this passion is free to rise from the pit of our internal emptiness towards the heart.
Here, passion becomes compassion. Through the eyes of compassion, the “other” is no longer perceived as a cause of affliction but as the same self in different form. Different forms are able to support each other within the unity of the whole. We are truly one family, precious to one another precisely because of variety, the subtle differences or spaces between us. We can be together in the passion of life, (even with the ones we considered enemies), through allowing the inter-dependency or non-separation of all forms of life.
The more we move with compassion, the less we believe we are separate or isolated, the less we suffer the fear that can only arise out of a belief in separation, and the more our so-called “enemies” evaporate as a composition of particles formed by our own imagination.
This is why, when suffering knocks at the doors of the heart, broken and crying in pain, we need to let those doors swing open and welcome her into the warmth, even if our private comfort zone seems to be (for a while) disturbed.
