On the Nature of Sin and Suffering

Did you click through and read the Snoop post about suffering?

It can be pointless or meaningless, in which case it doesn't help anything. In fact if you aren't actively working to contextualize your life then you won't make any progress toward anything, that's just living animalistically. But if you can find meaning or purpose in suffering then it becomes transformative. This is something I know from experience and have seen countless times in other people, going both ways.

If you blame other people or circumstances then all the suffering becomes meaningless. It's necessary to take responsibility for whatever part you played and not just project or scapegoat. Anyone who does that is increasing their shadow (unconscious identification) and actually making themselves less aware and less mature. It's necessary to go the opposite way in order to create meaning and purpose in your life.

And of course not all suffering has any meaning or is your fault. But often it is, at least partially. It's vitally important to accept that, to fail to do so is a stubborn childish attitude that prevents growing up. And to a large extent psychological growth is just another name for growing up and taking responsibility.

Even when suffering isn't at all your fault it's still important to search yourself, to see if there's some way in which you can see this as a growth experience. Otherwise you're prone to go the other way and develop a habit of blaming others or refusing to take any responsibility. That's a bad habit.

There are things that happened in my life when I was young that I got really hurt about and blamed other people for a long time. I built a narrative around the idea they had treated me poorly and I was just a victim. The problem with that is, if you place all the responsibility on somebody else, then you can't fix the problem. The only way to fix a problem is first to see it as something you can do something about. That means at least partially taking on responsibility. If not for the original event, at least for trying to fix it.

Later I was able to change the narrative—I found ways in which, not only in spite of the problems, but actually because of them, I had learned things and developed abilities that I wouldn't have otherwise, despite the fact that at the time I was angry and hurt. Sometimes when you manage to recontextualize things it changes your entire worldview. What once brought only anger and resentment can bring growth and peace. But it requires switching from an attitude of "Look what you did to me!" to "Look how I've grown and changed as a result of what I went through."

And of course you can't always do this immediately. Especially if you were young when it happened or if it really hit you hard emotionally, it can take years (decades?) to get over it and see it in a more mature way.

This path isn't for everyone. How did he put it, the way is hard and the gate narrow. A large majority of people remain emotionally immature through their entire lives. And I don't claim to be extremely mature, I know in some ways I still need to shed the light of conscious awareness into dark corners of my mind. It's an ongoing process and you see-saw your way through it. You get better, you fall back on bad habits for a while, and then you get back up again.

Another way to look at it—an easy, comfortable life doesn't cause growth. Quite the opposite in fact, it at the very least hampers growth and most likely causes regression. Growth only happens in challenging situations. Hence why schools must challenge students' minds and physical education must challenge their bodies. Without challenges life becomes pointless and static. Challenge is a form of mild suffering.

Nobody is recommending cutting off a leg, but if you want to develop some leg strength you do need to exercise them, which causes temporary discomfort. Exercise works through a process of catabasis followed by anabasis. Catabasis means destruction, and it causes anabasis, which is growth. You destroy muscle fibers and that forces them to regrow, and just like with broken bones, it grows back thicker and stronger than it originally was.

This makes a really good example for how you must go through the fire in order to forge yourself. This is true psychologically as well as physically.

Sacrifice is a form of voluntary suffering. You say we don't need to suffer in order to learn—try telling that to a kid who really doesn't feel like going to school today or doing any homework. That's suffering, it's sacrifice of today's pleasure or comfort so we can reap the benefits of an education in the future.

Suffering doesn't mean only absolute catastrophe (from the same root word as catabasis). It also means those little discomforts and displeasures we must endure in order to improve our lives. That's really all I'm talking about, though when you develop the proper attitude toward suffering you can also apply it to the bigger examples.

Even when it has no meaning and doesn't improve you, to face suffering with a good attitude is a growth experience.

But that's not the kind of suffering I was referring to in the above blog post. Since these posts are about psychological growth, I'm talking more about mental/emotional suffering and sacrifice.

"There are no great villains in your life to blame [...] No great enemy you have to defeat."​

Now you're agreeing with me. This is what I'm saying—don't blame other people or circumstances, it just creates nonexistent monsters. Most of the things we fear or hate are imaginary, created by our own minds.

I like the way Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said it: "If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being."

"You don't have to fight the devil to find Jesus."​

Wait wat??! Um... yeah, you kinda do. The devil in your own heart, which is what he was always talking about.

@Chromewriter thank you for giving me the opportunity to discuss some of these peripheral ideas. And the really cool thing is, this is setting up beautifully for my upcoming posts about Shadow work.

A really good analogy I've heard that helps contextualize this is the idea of the 4 ancient elements as transformative stages of spiritual development.

Earth is the ordinary base level, the ground of your being. It represents the physical world, the ego, your body, etc. It's the material level of life.

Water is the second stage or level. It represents emotions, especially powerful ones. Water can soften the ground, it can erode even rock, and it can reshape the face of the earth. I've seen flash floods reshape the ground drastically. Longstanding trees can come down because the ground they're rooted in becomes mud. Streams become rivers, rivers become deluges, cars can be swept across what are normally fields or parking lots. I saw (the aftermath of) a group of trees whose roots must have been tangled together slide down a hillside hundreds of feet, so they began near the top and ended up almost at the bottom, all tilted but still alive and growing.

This is analogous to what sustained powerful emotion can do to you, psychologically speaking. And it's only when the ground of your ordinary being is softened up that it's capable of change. That change can be for the worse or the better—that depends largely on how you contextualize things.

Air and Fire are the higher stages, fire referring to the celestial fire of sun, moon, stars etc, and to the tendency of fire to always strive powerfully upward. Any of these elements can be extremely destructive, but they can also be beneficial, and in fact all of them are necessary for life to exist at all. You need air, water, sunlight and earth for anything at all to grow. These things behave like pagan Greco-Roman gods in our lives—they can be capricious and destructive, but if you show the proper attitude (worship) toward them (align yourself with their transformative purpose) then they work toward your growth. It's when you fight against them they seem to be devils.

This is like the movie Black Swan, where Nina needed to get in touch with her sexuality and aggression in order to dance the part of the Black Swan in Swan Lake. She was immature and naive, and each time she started to experience her sexuality or aggression she saw it as something dangerous or monstrous. It was her shadow, and at first her attitude toward it was fear. But she was able to develop and when she accepted it as castoff parts of herself and welcomed them home, she integrated her shadow and it caused growth. Of course in the end she died, but I see that as the symbolic death of her White Swan self, her naive immature former self.

Yeah, I'm going by the Buddhist idea, which sees suffering as a spectrum all the way from mild discomfort up to intense agony.

@Foxxx Oh yeah, it's all too easy to take things for granted! Even after you go through a lot of crap and learn some new ways of dealing with the world, as soon as you're back on your feet you can just forget it all in a matter of weeks. Then life will keep plunging you back into it to remind you of the lessons (if you're lucky)

@RMBROWN You definitely get it!