There is a German word that wonderfully expresses the non-specific discontent that gets us on the right track towards awakening or even a more, dare I say, authentic life where conditioning-riddled decisions, opinions, and actions are no longer the norm — Weltschmerz (literally “world-pain”).
It’s a deep sense of sadness supported by a sense of futility. It comes with the realization that the world can never satisfy the never-ending expectations and demands of the mind.
And although this is primarily your individual experience, you also recognize that it is universal though most often suppressed by artificial layers of meaning and purpose.
A philosophically inclined individual might quickly dismiss this as useless self-defeating nihilism. But nihilism is just a label we slap on ideas so that we can reject them and move on. Thus, nihilism becomes the term to reject thoughts and ideas that lead us to the inner void.
In one point, however, is the philosophically inclined individual correct — self-defeating.
If we’re interested in removing the layers of conditioning, then defeating the self we must. But for this task defeat really means surrender. After all, you are the one being defeated, at least the one you think you are. Resisting this process just unnecessarily prolongs your suffering.
This is not to say that suffering is the bad guy.
Suffering (=emotional pain) cannot be avoided, and it offers an excellent opportunity to investigate what the heck is really going on. In fact, without suffering you most likely wouldn’t be interested in changing anything at all. You wouldn’t be reading this and that would make me sad.
So, don’t waste your suffering by trying to escape it, by trying to find a culprit, by avoiding personal responsibility, by putting yourself in a victim position.
Suffering is your good friend.
From the beginning, suffering has had nothing but the best intentions for you. Suffering rouses you from your sleep and allows the first inkling of rays of sunlight to reach your sleepy eyes.
Don’t ask why you’re suffering. There is no answer to why questions; all we can come up with is how answers.
Ask who is suffering, but don’t expect a concrete answer. Well, actually, you might think you get a concrete answer, namely “I.” But “I” is as far from concrete as anything can be. What is “I” but a thought — a thought that labels a sense of aliveness? But why do we think that this aliveness is personal?
Before we venture down into a philosophical circle jerk, let us determine what the asking of who? is good for.
It’s about recognition — the recognition that suffering arises as an appearance without a sufferer. There is no difference between suffering and sufferer. And I don’t mean there is no conceptual difference but no actual experiential difference.
Look at your direct experience.
Can you draw a line between sufferer and suffering? Can you find a difference between the sensation of emotional pain and the one who is experiencing the sensation of emotional pain?
Spoiler: No, you can’t because there is none. Sufferer and suffering are nothing but thoughts that label sensations. But reading this spoiler probably won’t be enough.
You have to look for yourself. Do the math. Look dispassionately like a scientist observing an ant colony. Get the magnifying glass and, instead of burning ants, burn the non-existent veil of differentiation.
This recognition is so ordinary and obvious. The only way we can miss it is by not looking directly at it and having others convince us over years of conditioning that the opposite is true.
This is not a way to suppress emotional pain or to say that it’s bad or wrong.
But a lot of emotional pain arises because we believe ourselves to be someone we’re not. When we believe ourselves to be powerless separate individual selves in a hostile world interacting with other separate selves, some of which are more powerful than we are, how can we not suffer and struggle?
But don’t let these words be your guide, be your own guide. To be an efficient guide for yourself, first, you must be something else, and that something else is ruthlessly honest.
What this entails is admitting to yourself that you’re suffering. Become aware of the Weltschmerz hovering above each of us like a black cloud.
No matter how nice your life might be by all conventional standards, no matter how many cars, houses, lovers, and other indicators of prosperity and success you call your own, deep down there is an inner dissatisfaction directed at nothing in particular, or perhaps everything in particular.
Start there.
Embrace the fact that, perhaps, you’re not okay, and that, perhaps, it’s not enough to try to convince yourself that it’s okay to be not okay.
What if it’s not? Wouldn’t it be nicer if you knew without a doubt that everything is okay, instead of double thinking your way to not-okay-ness being okay?
Maybe you don’t mind a prison cell as long as you have all the comfort and security you want and the freedom to paint the walls in nice colors. If that is so, there is nothing wrong with it. Nothing. I mean it.
But if these all so familiar prison walls are so repulsive to you that you feel like tearing them down, well, then maybe, you might want to admit that you want to leave and then muster all your courage to break through these walls. And these walls are nothing less and nothing more than the fixed beliefs you have about yourself and the world.
You have gone from sitting comfortably in your nice cell to becoming the protagonist of a prison break.
Pretty cool considering that it all started with a little suffering.
Luka
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