Use your suffering to enhance your spiritual awareness

In a scene from a movie that I was watching, a young woman struggling with her life’s issues and internal demons asks her mother: “Mom don’t you sometimes wish you could change some of the things you did in your life?” Surprisingly the mother responds “No, never. Every experience that I’ve had has shaped me and made me into who I’m today. There is nothing I would change.” Such profound wisdom can only come from someone truly satisfied with who she is despite having been through a lot.

Acceptance of one’s own responsibility for life’s issues is an important step in transforming one’s life. Pain and dissatisfaction are an impetus to the need for transformation.

Buddha’s saying ‘life is suffering’ could also be interpreted this way: The real purpose of life begins only when one embarks on the path of truth, for which the initial stimulus invariably comes from suffering. The intention is not to glorify suffering, but to realise that if we do not pay attention to suffering, it happens over and over again. If one does not attempt to avoid pain by distraction or get numbed by it, it can become the harbinger of the beautiful journey of self- discovery. We should use suffering as an opportunity to cultivate spiritual awareness. If we are suffering and want change, we must seize the moment. Reflect, meditate, ruminate and enquire deeply. It could become a state of empowerment: one could have a more meaningful life.