Pain is Inevitable, Suffering is Optional

Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.
Suffering – feeling so sorry for ourselves, wallowing in the pain, dwelling on it, chaining it to the past and future, holding on to it, glorying in it, being a martyr – is a choice. Haven’t you experienced this in your own life? Check it out – pain is inevitable, suffering is optional. The pain ends, but the suffering goes on, and on, and on.

Ernest Holmes, founder of Science of Mind, SOM, wrote, “The world is beginning to realize that it has learned all it should through pain and suffering…. The Universe does not demand suffering! Suffering is man-made, through ignorance [of the phenomena that what we place our intention on is what we get]. Someday we shall decide we have had enough suffering.”

You can not find the light by analyzing the darkness. What manifests is what we place our intention and focus upon. The pop idea, deep in our psyches, that suffering evokes evolution, is as ineffective and perverse as the idea that violence can bring peace, or lack can manifest plenty. It’s time to stop justifying pain and suffering as a necessary ‘evil;’ neither is necessary, nor evil. Until we come to that realization, it will continue to be easier to witness, experience and condone the unthinkable than it will be for us to enter the kingdom of truth. If you always do what you always did, you’ll always get what you always got. Doing the same things and expecting a different result is a good definition of insanity.