A human being is willing to give up anything but his suffering. It is the last thing he wants to lose because it provides him a false sensation of security, consistency, and unity. If we want to advance in our work of transformation, we must leave our unnecessary suffering. On the other hand, another type of suffering exists that endures in us and that is useful for the inner growth: voluntary or conscious suffering. It is important to know how to differentiate these two types of suffering.
From the point of view of our work, if the aim is to awaken, then unnecessary suffering is something that impedes our development or, at least, does not help us much. On the contrary, conscious or voluntary suffering is always useful.
Unnecessary suffering:
This type of suffering often has to do with internal consideration and identification. For example:
1.
Your favourite team loses in a championship.
2.
You have made a mistake and you feel really bad.
3.
You have ended a relationship and you become attached to the memories
of the moments that you
lived together.
4.
Somebody has told you something that you do not like.
5.
You have drunk a lot of alcohol, even knowing that later you will feel
bad.
6.
You do not obtain something that you want.
In all these cases, you are identified and what is needed is to leave suffering behind. It is this kind of suffering that ties you to self-compassion, to internal consideration which impedes growth.
Voluntary or conscious suffering:
Voluntary suffering in not about whipping yourself, or subjecting yourself to painful experiences, it is not about penitential fasting. These are valid methods for some religions or paths, but they are not what we use on ours.
Conscious suffering is useful for your immediate aims. For example, you have to cross through an area full of people and you think that they are going to look at you. You could choose to go down another street and try and ignore your shame, or you can use it as a technique of self-observation and non-identification as well. Another example could be, you have bought something and when you reach home you notice that it is faulty. Unnecessary suffering would be not to go to change it out of fear about what they could say to you or out of shyness. You might complain to all your friends and be really upset about it, suffer over it, yet do nothing. A less mechanical suffering, a voluntary suffering would be, in this case, to go to change it or to complain in spite of what could happen or what people might say, observing everything that happens within you, receiving the impressions and working with the inner states.
Small situations of this type happen continuously throughout the day, situations that become clear opportunities for self-observation. For example, the other day I wanted to buy a calendar. In the shop I went to, I couldnīt see any except some free ones at the counter. I wanted one, but what would they think if I just asked for a free one and did not buy anything? "What a cheapskate!" I thought. In this situation, to ask requires a certain degree of suffering, certain humility and acceptance of what you are.
There are all kinds of opportunities for voluntary or conscious suffering. This type of suffering is about seeing yourself as you really are, warts and all. Until you see where you really are, you cannot begin to move to a better place.
