Quaremead, Ugley, February 16, 1946
COMMENTARY ON GIVING UP ONE'S SUFFERING
You have often heard before that the only thing that we can sacrifice
in the Work is our suffering. The Work teaches that we have to have a
new kind of suffering not based on our ordinary mechanical suffering.
All change in oneself can only take place by giving up what one was
and becoming something different. To change oneself means to become
different. I cannot change myself if I remain the same person that I
am mechanically. Therefore in order to change I must give up some-
thing, sacrifice something. The idea of sacrifice runs through all
esotericism. It is quite obvious why. The reason is that you cannot
change yourself unless you give up or sacrifice something that you are at
present. It has often been repeated in this teaching that change of
Being means that you must alter something in yourself, in your Being.
You cannot be what you are and at the same time change. Change of
Being always involves giving up something and so sacrificing something
in your Being. And the Work says that the first thing that you have to
sacrifice—and here I may say emphatically the first thing—is your
ordinary mechanical suffering. Now unless you see what is meant here
you will not start the Work aright in yourself. You will begin from your
own ideas of what you have to sacrifice or give up and that will be no
good and will lead to no results. A man, a woman, must give up their
suffering and sacrifice that first of all, because this can lead to a change
of Being. For this to happen one must be able to see through self-
observation what one suffers from.
I remember that Mr. Ouspensky spoke very early about this
question. He said first of all that everyone without knowing it has
fallen into typical forms of suffering from which they derive self-
justification—namely, they justify their suffering and so take it for
granted as part and parcel of themselves. He called it a kind of thing
that you drag behind you all the time or push in front of you. He
described very clearly in words that I have not remembered enough
how people arc chained to this suffering that they have accumulated
according to their own ideas of life and how it has treated them.
He said: "All this suffering belongs to the side of Personality." He
said: "People suffer uselessly but cling to their suffering. People have
not found life to be what they supposed it would be and instead of
seeing their forms of imagination and their acquired attitudes to life
they only think they have real, genuine suffering and so feel in con-
sequence that no one really understands all that they have been through,
and so on. Everyone," he said, "is dragged down by this acquired
suffering from which come all internal considering and account-making.
All your internal considering and account-making," he said, "is
based on this acquired suffering which people value very much."
He spoke about the impossibility of escaping from the Personality with
its acquired attitudes and buffers save through a force entirely new
that can destroy all this litter, this useless mess in ourselves. He said:
"We have to begin to think in a new way both about life and about
ourselves and this is only possible when we feel a new force entering us
carrying with it new ideas, new ways of taking in things. The redemp-
tion from suffering is difficult but possible, whereas in life it is impossible.
When you begin to understand this Work and all that it teaches and
compare it with what you are you will understand what I mean. You
will see how what you are is quite different from what this Work
teaches that you should be." Mr. Ouspensky used here a phrase that
I always remember. He said: "When you begin to be alongside this
Work and become conscious of what you are like through self-
observation you will see how you are not like this Work, how your
Being does not correspond with it." People asked: "Then what should
we do?" The answer always was: "You must remember yourselves
and the first thing you must give up is your suffering." I think he meant,
as regards the latter part of what he said, that as long as you carry
your suffering with you you cannot do the Work. You have to give
it up—that is, you have to sacrifice this strange thing in you that is
the basis of all internal considering and account-making. On another
occasion Mr. Ouspensky said: "No one can reach a higher level of
Being unless he gives up his present forms of suffering." At that time
he was talking about our idea of justice and was emphasizing how what
we call justice has nothing to do with justice. He said: "Justifying
yourself is always from your own idea of justice. For example, every-
one justifies their negative states." He meant that everyone has a
sense of what is justice for them and finding that life does not correspond
to it they cling to this sense of what they think should be justice for
them. Consequently we justify our negative states, our internal con-
sidering, and our account-making, and if we view the whole thing from
the Work point of view we begin to realize that we cannot justify
ourselves on our own ideas of justice. We have to act from another
sense of justice. Suppose you talk wrongly in this Work and you are
brought to the point of having to confess that you have talked wrongly,
you will find that you always justify yourself on the basis of your own
ideas of justice—personal justification of yourself. And behind that
will lie your suffering which springs from the idea of justice that you
have acquired and imitated. This has to be broken by something higher,
by some higher form of what is justice. You may say to yourself:
"Towards life I am quite right in feeling injustice but towards the
Work and its ideas I cannot say the same thing." In the Work we are
under a new discipline, a new sense of justice—namely, of what is
right, of what is just, from a higher level. So we have to learn to serve
another set of ideas quite different from those we have acquired from
life. Mr. Ouspensky said: "We are like monkeys. A monkey can
justify himself in terms of being a monkey, but we are trying to become
human beings and can no longer justify ourselves in terms of being
monkeys." He constantly emphasized that we are being taught in
this Work ideas and self-discipline which were not necessary in life.
He said: "We are trying to obey higher laws—i.e. we are trying to
become conscious people so that we can live amongst conscious people
and learn how to behave amongst this higher level of Beings. This
Work comes from conscious people."
Now to return to this question of the first thing that we have to
sacrifice—namely, our mechanical suffering—it is quite clear that
first of all we all have to become aware of what forms our mechanical
suffering takes. Unless we are conscious of a thing we cannot sacrifice
it. You cannot start from something that you are unconscious of. The
Work is to increase our consciousness of ourselves, of our state of Being.
No one can work on his Being unless he is beginning to observe what his
Being is like. The Work says that everyone as regards Being has his or
her own form of suffering, of negative emotions, of grievances, of sad
thoughts and feelings, and so on. This applies to everyone. There are
no exceptions. And this thing in ourselves we are told to sacrifice at
the very outset of this teaching. Therefore it is very necessary to try
to observe one's form of suffering.
You may ask: "What are these forms of suffering that we have
to sacrifice?" There is the suffering of man towards woman, of woman
towards man. For example, a man may feel that he has never met the
woman who really understands him. Or he may feel simply that he
has never been properly appreciated or given a chance, and so on.
Or a woman may feel that she has never been married—or that she has
never had any children—or that she is always having children—and this
is her suffering. Then take all the mechanical forms of suffering that
arise from feeling that you have never been understood by your parents,
your husband, your wife, or your children. I think it would be im-
possible to enumerate all the forms of suffering that people form in
themselves and cling to as the most valuable things in their lives.
And it is exactly this suffering derived from life and all its awkward-
ness that has to be sacrificed. And here I would remind you of what
was said recently about 'if only': 'if only I had been given a better
chance,' 'if only I had had a child,' 'if only I had met the right kind
of person,' 'if only the war had not broken out when it did,' 'if only
I had not invested my money in German marks,' 'if only I had been
taller,' 'if only I had not got the face I have,' 'if only I had more money,'
'if only I could meet better kinds of people,' 'if only I had had more
sympathy in all my troubles'—this 'if only' is connected with all your
mechanical suffering that has to be sacrificed. Another form of suffering
is a sense of failure. The strange thing is that this can be enjoyed. A
person having made no real effort in life may fail and in a curious way
enjoy his failure, or a person may think he has done his best to make
relationship with someone who is difficult for him and having failed
to do so may enjoy his failure. This curious form of suffering cannot
be gone into in this paper. As I say, this is a very curious form of
suffering whereby some people adapt themselves to life by being failures
and liking to talk about it. But in such cases you will always find that
they have some form of pride or vanity that makes it possible for them
to pretend that their failures are genuine, falling back on the feeling
that they are or could have been successes at something else, especially
if they have pride in their social position, birth, or something of the
same kind—i.e. in something purely negative, not really themselves.
I have sometimes thought that this is the most difficult form
to deal with when people admit failure, holding always secretly on to
something else. This is a spurious kind of suffering. At the same time,
it must be seen through and sacrificed. Behind it lies the sacrifice of
pride and vanity. But this example only shews how extraordinarily
insincere people are with themselves and how self-deception makes it
possible for them to carry on their lives. We do not see the other side
of the whole matter, the dark, unaccepted, unacknowledged side, but
that is why the Work says that uncritical self-observation lets in a
ray of light into this dark side which stands in the way of all individual
development in everyone. We are all frauds, but we do not see through
our fraudulence and in the Work we must begin with this. All our
mechanical suffering is fraudulent only we will not admit it. Fraudulent
suffering is the keynote to what we have to sacrifice. Real suffering is
utterly different and always opens us to a higher level: fraudulent
suffering closes us. It is extraordinary how a moment of real suffering
makes everything false fall away from you and at such moments you
understand quite plainly what this Work is about, but fraudulent,
self-invented suffering comes between us and Higher Centres—that is,
between us and the voice of the Work that is always speaking to us,
and which we have to learn at first from outside, from a teacher, and
after a time can begin to hear speaking to us inside.
The extraordinary thing is that you meet people very often who
deny that they have any kind of mechanical suffering. They are
usually very self-complacent people and quite dead in themselves,
and yet if you are clever with them you will soon find out that they
have their private forms of suffering derived from life. Now it is a
very good idea to try to observe your typical forms of mechanical
suffering and here it is a good thing to try to observe your phantasies
—i.e. the passive work of the imagination in you. I remember once
being very much struck with the idea that at least a million people die
every week and probably far more and that many of them think that
they are going to a better place. They are all full of their own personal
problems, their own grievances, their own suffering on this Earth.
How many of these people do you think—suppose that you were some
kind of Being on a higher level who had to direct them to different
places in the spiritual world—how many of these people would strike
you as not being of the ordinary type? Would not each one of them
come to you complaining—i.e. bringing to you all their mechanical
sufferings, grievances, all these questions about how someone did not
say Good-morning to them, and how many would come to you quite
clean, without any grievances, without any sufferings from the Earth,
and when asked what they wanted, would answer, not that they wanted
justice, but that they wanted to know more and be more and under-
stand more. This vision impressed me very much and made me think
very deeply about what I might be under these circumstances. We have
often spoken about forgiving debts and about how it means cancelling
complaints against others. All our Earth-problems are of no value at
all at a higher level of Being, and our work is to cancel our Earth-
problems, our Earth-suffering, our internal accounting, our negative
states towards others, our grievances towards others, our dislike of
others and our hate of others. Otherwise we are earthbound and so
like those monkeys of which we have spoken. Do you think this is a
very harsh idea? I fancy we can gain some idea of what all this means,
even from life. If you want to reach a higher position in life, can you
bring your grievances in all the time, your personal, petty problems,
in view of the position that you wish to reach?
Mr. Ouspensky once said to me: "People do not understand that this
Work is about going somewhere and that it lays down definite instruc-
tions as to how you can go there, provided you work on yourself, and
that therefore, as a person advances, the Work changes for him."
He was talking to me at the time about something in myself that was
holding me up and he said: "Don't you see that it is nothing to do with
me, this, but that it is in yourself, and that as long as you do not work
on it and try not to identify with it, it will always hold you back?"
He said: "You object to these people, but they are you and you are
them." Naturally at that time I did not see that this was part of my
suffering. I did not realize that this was one of the meanings of giving
up one's suffering. On another occasion he said to me, looking at me
sideways: "Why do you enjoy your negative emotions so much?"
And I always remember not exactly what he said but this look he gave
me sideways. It was, in fact, through this look that he gave me that I
began to observe that I did enjoy my negative emotions—that is, my
mechanical suffering. I suppose that by now many of you begin to
understand how much you enjoy your negative emotions. The Work
says that to reach a higher level of Being there must be no negative
emotions and that the negative part of the Emotional Centre must be
destroyed in us. Otherwise, if with our present forms of suffering
Higher Centres came they would simply intensify everything a thousand
times. On one occasion I heard G. say: "We must destroy our Emotional
Centre." Being still very young in the Work I thought what a terrible
thing this would be and how harsh and cruel everything would be if
one's Emotional Centre were destroyed. When I became older in the
Work I realized so very clearly what was meant. Our Emotional
Centre, as it is, is nothing but self-emotions with the resultant negative
emotions arising from them. The purification of the Emotional
Centre must, practically speaking, destroy the Emotional Centre
in us as it is now, with all our little personal, sensitive, difficult reactions,
our little personal feelings about everyone, our bundle of sensitive
likes and dislikes—in short, our very small petty emotions, that we
have as long as self-emotions govern us. When you begin to serve
this Work really you have to lose these petty, daily, small self-emotions
and you can only do so by realizing that the Work is much bigger than
you. We spoke about this recently in connection with the realization
of Greater Mind. You have to serve the Work and not yourself. The
Work must not be a function of yourself but you must become a func-
tion of the Work.
What does serving the Work mean? It means obeying what the
Work teaches you. It was said recently at a meeting that you must
understand that serving the Work means serving it psychologically,
to begin with. Suppose that you were about to pass on some un-
pleasant scandal and you suddenly remembered yourself in con-
nection with what the Work teaches and did not pass on this scandal,
knowing that to do so is mechanical and that it would only do harm
—then you would begin to serve the Work. Or suppose that you wish
to be negative because someone has not treated you in what you think
the right way according to your own form of justice and you remember
yourself and do not react mechanically, then you will be serving the
Work. To serve the Work means to obey what it teaches you to practise
on yourself. You want to be gloomy and moody, to object, and so on,
and you observe your state and begin to separate from it—then you are
serving the Work. And in so doing you are giving up some of your
mechanical suffering. Or suppose you are about to pass into one of your
typical force-losing states of worry, of complaining, of being upset
about everything, of disliking everything—suppose that you observe
this and cease to identify with it because of the feeling of the
Work in you—then you are serving the Work psychologically. You are
beginning to work on yourself, you are beginning to see what the Work
means in yourself. You are beginning to obey something that is not
yourself. All this belongs to giving up your suffering. But to work on
your typical forms of suffering, close and sincere observation of your
Being is necessary, and directing the Work on to those places in your
Being through the light of self-observation, and trying not to go with
these reactions, not to identify with them, not to put feeling of 'I'
into them, and the more you value the Work in which higher meaning
is something above the meaning of life, the more will the Work help
you to overcome your mechanical suffering.
|
|
I identify in more ways than I can say with *both* contexts from which you're each expressing, in your own words and in the words of others who, miraculously, seem to voice our own hearts...
kemokae: My understanding is that there are divine/soulgrowth timings in which it is quite appropriate to sacrifice oneself in service to others in all manner of ways...and divine timings in which it is quite appropriate to draw boundaries that reflect how crucial it is to, from a flight-attendant's speech (for want of any better analogy), *SECURE ONE'S OWN OXYGEN MASK BEFORE ATTEMPTING TO ASSIST ANY OTHER PASSENGER WITH THEIR OWN, EVEN A CHILD'S*...
Ryan, My own process in all its audacious complexity and intensity has indeed concentrated down into, just as your post echoes, *the CHOICE* of WHEN I will be proactively able TO RELEASE all unconscious/subconscious/cellular-memory ATTACHMENT to despair and panic, to hopelessness and terror...
Life and Death are potent terms, are they not?
Chiming in circumstantially along with today's Inner Experiences, one of our neighbors was found passed away this morning. His sister shares they'd spent the weekend together, and that today he'd had a doctor's appt. to check out heart symptoms. Paramedics say he passed this morning, of a heart attack.
Also today, within a profound session w/my beloved energyworker friend, I discovered just how much an energy I can only characterize as *deranged Warrior energy* had been running certain unconscious patterns in me, lifelong from before birth...opening up pathways for bringing these energetics into unconditional-love embrace and, thus, release...offering me unexpected opportunities for engaging an entirely-different context of life experience -- not only saving/redeeming my life, but fulfilling an ancient soulgrowth intention I'd almost given up on...............
I've heard/read it expressed within many Buddhist teachings that surrendering one's suffering and, specifically, the energy of *despair,* is one of the last, most difficult thing to real-ize, humanly...
God/ess Speed All who reach for it...
|
|