Gaping Hole in Law of Attraction Thinking: Suffering from Positive Actions
Frankly I’m fed up with saccharin, pseudo-spiritual talk that leads people to imagine that getting what you want is the aim of spiritual life. That’s just marketers playing off your ego.
Why do these representations bother me? Because they feed illusion. Spirituality is about
encountering and embracing life in its entirety, not about insulating ourselves from life and turning the universe into a wish-fulfillment machine.
Am I saying desire is wrong? Not at all. Desire drives experience. Desire launches us into the learning ground of life.
What I am saying is that all of life is spiritual when we bring ourselves to it with full, open attention.
Quit telling everyone who is in pain that what they are experiencing is because of what they have been thinking. Yes, it IS true! So why do I say to stop?:
- Such statements usually involve judging others for experiencing things we do not actually understand ourselves.
- What usually happens next is that we scan our surface thoughts and try to control them instead of engaging in authentic self-exploration.
- These trite statements usually imply that if we have any troubles we are somehow spiritually inadequate: We are ‘supposed to’ be able to control life better so we do not create and experience discomfort.
Please consider the following:
Discomfort is guidance. It leads to insight. Yes we also learn through joy, but duality and polarity of experience are part and parcel with the way the universe is constructed, and function to bring about awareness. Not denial of what we don’t like. Awareness. What makes experience positive or negative depends less on the experience than the use to which we put it.
There are two main types of suffering:
One type is caused by action that does not work with the natural laws. Pain from inappropriate eating or from harming others is necessary feedback, if we are to honor life.
The second type of suffering comes from exceptionally positive action. Examples:
- Intensive spiritual work can bring about extreme symptoms as our bodies, emotional life, or life events go into upheaval from rapid change.
- Prayer, like praying to be of service, can place you in painful and difficult circumstances, both to serve, and to develop the compassion and insight that prepares you to do so.
- When you cleanse the body and become ill during detoxification.
- Coming clean by beginning to be authentic in relationship may be initially frightening and painful but leads to much deeper intimacy.
The most spiritually advanced beings I have known do not have perfectly smooth lives. They deal with the intense issues and dramas of those they serve, and the process is not always easy on them. They may indeed feel bliss even at the same time, but this does not mean they do not experience discomfort. They just don’t make their discomfort into a big deal.
If you know what someone is creating from the depths of his or her spiritual purpose and process, go ahead and tell them what they are creating. If you do not, please avoid confusing or shaming people with trite comments that imply that they must be in error if they are in pain.
Please comment below, and pass this post along to those who may find it useful.
Isn’t it interesting how almost all things come down to paying attention? And how pervasive it can be to go on ‘automatic pilot’.
Thanks T!
Yes Leah, it’s fascinating. Almost everything in self-development and on any genuine spiritual path come down to attention–Waking Up! Being aware and Remembering (ourselves, and to Be aware) are absolutely central. Practices for developing almost always if not always require learning to be attentive in new ways; opening.
It strikes me how much pain and suffering is experienced due to mistaken notions. Mistaken notions that “your spirituality is a measure of getting what you want,” or that “discomfort and suffering are simply negative.” Our culture appears rampant with mistaken notions. Notions of intrinsic, egotistic separation. And also, still prevalent notions of individual and national “manifest destiny.” These notions are leading our species to extinction.
Teresa, thanks for addressing the mistaken notions about spirituality. Spiritual “notions” tend to have significant impact. They may lead to joy, love and liberation; or to thousands of years of religious wars and atrocities. (or catholic unworthiness or caste debasement)
Your blog entry has literally led me to spend hours today thinking and writing about pain and suffering. I guess because I think it is central to humanities future success or failure. Currently, global economics is forcing more and more billions to greater austerity. Future trends and analysis point to much worsening conditions of limiting energy, food and resources. The list is huge, climate changes to catastrophic continental shifts. Will we generally respond to our pain and suffering egotistically, with personal avoidance and denial, or will we respond collectively, with sympathy and altruistic sacrifice. Will suffering be fearfully fled or courageously faced? My life experience has taught that suffering fearfully fled only begets more suffering.
As you said, spirituality is “encountering and embracing life in its entirety.” That discomfort is guidance. That suffering is complex; I might add, that suffering may even be “god given.“
(a means to lifting our selves out of our small, self serving agendas.)
As an artist, I hope your work, and the work of many others, helps humanity choose a higher understanding of suffering. Or put more positively, choose Love. Then Earth Universe may look forward to a more dynamically balanced, Beautiful outcome.
Thank you Jim for your reflections on this topic.
Pain and suffering are probably the hardest thing we humans have to manage. When they occur they challenge our belief systems. They can even uproot established belief systems if they are intense enough and go on long enough.
How many time have we heard, “If supposedly God loves humanity, how does he tolerate . . . ?” Many leave religion unable to come to peace with questions like this. Many suffer horribly and get cheap platitudes instead of viable spiritual guidance.
Blaming ourselves or others for “creating” suffering offers, perhaps, a view in which we have some responsibility instead of being victims of God. Sadly, this blame does not alleviate the suffering.
As a healer who works with people with a wide variety of belief systems, I find that serving others requires honoring their core truths rather than telling them what to believe. Exploring and grappling with our actual beliefs and bringing them into alignment with our real experience and our intuitive understanding is an important process. This process stands outside of cookie-cutter belief systems. Paradoxically, the results of this highly-individual process of personal and spiritual development are spiritually more-mature individuals who have more in common with one another at the end of the process than they or their beliefs did at the beginning. The more we develop the closer we are to the One.
In Service . . .
Hi T,
This posting gave me an “a-ha” moment. For years, I’ve heard about various popular/new age/spiritual groups that talk about being able to bring ones’ “wonderful” thoughts and/or desires into reality. I’ve never quite felt comfortable or aligned to their energy,and I’ve actually been drawn to actively AVOID these groups.
This posting helped me understand why I have always felt this strong need to AVOID these popular, “new age” approaches.
Thanks for your comment, Dear One.
Every belief system has positive offerings, and problems that occur as we apply it into our daily lives. These problems may originate from the way the original text has been popularized, rather than from the initial truths the system was based on. Even with the purist of Truths become altered through interpretation and re-interpretation. The understanding that gets passed from mouth to mouth begins to take on hopes, fears, issues, and judgments that the original text may have been free from. Religious or spiritual concepts, out of context, have been used to control the mind of the masses for millennia.
We live in an interesting age in which the dissemination of these concepts is no longer centralized. In other words, the concepts are passed along by individuals, not just churches or gurus. This gives the individual much more freedom of belief. It also dilutes the teachings and gives us each the ultimate responsibility about how to manage our spiritual lives. Great discernment is called for in this environment.
It is my aim not to criticize these systems or case doubt on their core Truths but to support spiritually viable application into daily life. Toward this end, each of my posts invites deeper consideration of these issues with the goal of developing discernment. The truly discerning and reflective individual is in a position to benefit from any source of real insight. S/he will learn to take the parts that work and let the rest pass by, or be inspired to go to the sources of the teachings that are most attractive.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to spell out my intentions more clearly.
A person who wants to can (mis)use any truth, no matter how pure, in order to bludgeon, manipulate, or seduce another person out of health and away from clarity.
And any person can fall into the trap of misinterpreting, misunderstanding, or misutilizing any truth, no matter how pure, in order to bludgeon, manipulate, or seduce him/herself out of health and away from clarity.
Truths, beliefs, religions, all can be tools in our individual efforts toward acquiring greater awareness. We human beings wish sometimes desperately for things to be simple, and so we sometimes try to reduce all truths and beliefs to simple platitudes. An understandable gambit, given how incredibly hard it is to learn and to grow, to accept the pain that comes along with those processes.
Having struggled a lot with the topic of this post, I feel its truth keenly, and am grateful for the compassion and love that you bring along with the passionate knife you wield, Teresa.
Dear Mary. I was just writing about some of that in a new book I have started, and was ready for a break when your comment came in.
The hardest part is that they may be sincere in intention to serve us while all of this is going on. Blind spots can blight the actions of those with beautiful hearts, as well as those who connive.
Thank you for your comment.
~ Your Loving Surgeon of Soul
Thank you Teresa! I find the trivial interpretation annoying and the judgmental aspect cruel. I appreciate your passionate and wise treatise!
Thanks Teresa for posting this and your other topics noted above. Reading this and other posts works as a type of daily meditation.
This post helps me realize that the Work for my transformation rests on my shoulders. It makes it possible and real. The quick answer of Wish Visualization techniques have never really worked for me. In the ’70′s there was a fellow in LA named Reverend Ike. His thought was to get your treasure in Heaven NOW! So, he helped people pray for their Cadillac today. At least he was honest about it.
The wolf of treasures on earth is always set to devour our efforts and intentions. It is so attractive and straight forward to ask for manna on earth. But, the good of pleasantry is the enemy of the better.
It is worth it to keep working inwardly, a moment at a time as noted by Leah above, it is always about paying. Not dollars but attention. That type of payment does pay returns they are secure and sure, but, have patience dear friends we are worth the wait.
Teresa, thank you for reminding us of the good work ahead!
Great post David. You’re so poetic!
Your comment about the “wolf of treasures” brings up for me a certain sadness.
I feel sad when I see sincere people working hard to make life more meaningful and connected, aiming toward spiritual Work, but confused by “trivial interpretation” (thanks Melinda) into chasing the carrot in front of the donkey instead. I want to see people’s efforts bear real fruit! This is the passion behind my posts.
Thankyou for your words and thoughts. Indeed it seems to me that true spirituality means being able to live on the edge of discomfort, as what is unfamiliar and therefore gives us space to evolve always feels somewhat uncomfortable.
What an entirely wonderful comment. Thanks. Purely quotable!
Thank you Teresa for having the heart and the foresight and, dare I say it, the courage to write it as it is. I have felt this myself for a long time but because of others’ needs to create a ‘perfect’ pain free world and existence in the name of spirituality, I have often questioned my own ability to get past the pain, and have felt ‘less than spiritual’ as a result. In the end, it is about listening to oneself. Today, i realised that I am my/the only truth, I am my/the only reality, I am my/the only God, as you are your/the only truth, reality, God etc ie I create my own reality by being my own reality – and if that involves pain as it does joy, then so be it
Thank you again. You echo what i already knew x
Dear Mel,
I actually have tears in my eyes reading your comment. You speak to the reason why I write much of what I write, and so few seem to find themselves willing to comment. Knowing that people are out there actually responding helps greatly with my willingness to continue to this labor of love.
WE SO need confirmation of the truths inside. I find the so-called spiritual context that denies discomfort damaging and distracting for those beginning to develop into their genuine wholeness and holiness. The ability to accept and sit with discomfort instead of trying to escape it is a core spiritual skill. It helps people move beyond trying to escape and deny into deeper realms of inner experience and outer expression. This is of paramount importance.
I’ve got several posts about using pain, dis-illuionment, betrayal, and/or discomfort for spiritual growth. To find them you’d scroll down on the main page to the numbers, and go back to older posts. Also, the Inner Work Series might be right up your alley.
All Good Wishes, Friend, and feel free to stay connected.
Teresa