The Profound Purpose Behind All Suffering
The Pain of Heartbreak
“I’m not really feeling it anymore. Let’s just be friends.” is along the lines of what my high school girlfriend said to me over the phone when she broke up with me.
In one sweeping instant, my heart shattered.
I was completely blindsided.
I thought she was the one. I saw the future with her.
The plan I had for my life had completely disintegrated, just like that.
I weeped for many hours in the coming days, and I could not stop thinking: Why? Why would she do this? We were meant for each other. We were perfect for each other! How could she?
For the life of me, I could not accept the reality that she did not want to be with me.
And so I fought the reality, doing everything I could to “fix” it, making it what I wanted.
For about a week after the breakup, I kept trying to convince her that we should stay together.
And when she blocked me on social media, I was sent into yet another spiral.
I don’t want to live if we can’t be together, I thought. She is my other half.
In the peak of my turmoil, I truly believed this and contemplated suicide (not very seriously) at times.
I remember my dad took me to go see the movie Dunkirk in the theater to help get my mind off it.
And to this day, I could not tell you a thing that happens in that movie because the entire time I was in the theater I was staring blankly at the screen hating myself and my life and wondering why this girl did not want to be with me anymore.
I even made new Instagram accounts so I could try to DM her and tried to get my friends to send her the messages I wanted to tell her.
And being the good friends that they were, sensing that I was becoming increasingly unhinged, they basically said “Bro, you got to get over her. We’re not going to do that.”
When the new school year started about a month after the breakup, I was still hoping that we would end up together, that somehow this was all a mistake and that things would correct themselves.
It took a few months into the school year and her getting a new boyfriend for me to finally accept that we were not going to be together again.
It was a tough pill to swallow, but, in retrospect, it brought much needed peace to my life in that I stopped fighting reality and was finally able to accept that our relationship was history.
The Aftermath of Heartbreak
There was still much unresolved in my mind, but, in a way, it was a relief to just accept reality and to stop being at odds with it.
I spent much of that school year very depressed as I had picked up core beliefs that I was weak, not “man enough”, and just overall a worthless human being.
These beliefs became deeply ingrained into me, I thought that this was just the way I was.
I had little to no drive or motivation to better myself and my situation, and during the peaks of my depression the suicidal ideation would return.
It was not until near the end of the school year that my mental health started to significantly improve and that I started to put myself and the relationship in a healthier perspective.
At some point while I was still in high school, I was riding passenger during a long car ride through the mountains near Lake Tahoe.
I saw a video on my Instagram feed that completely changed the perception of myself and the relationship I had been in.
The short video started with a question that piqued my interest: “Are you in love or are you just infatuated?”
The video essentially described love as accepting and embracing the person for who they truly are, not just what they can do for you.
Infatuation was described as a fantasy, a temporary and intense admiration for a person and what they can do for you.
At first I was in denial, thinking No, I definitely loved her. I was not just infatuated. I know love when I feel it.
But my mind would not stop thinking about this distinction, as I kept returning to watch the video occasionally.
I started to think: Damn, maybe I was just infatuated. I’m not sure if I ever even saw her for who she truly was. After all, we were together for less than 3 months.
And I realized, gradually, that I never had actually seen her for who she was, and thus I could not say I truly loved her.
This was because, at the time, I had little interest in seeing her for who she truly was because I was obsessed with and fixated on what she was providing for me, which was mainly a strong sense of self-worth.
To use a more colloquial term, I realized how “whipped” I was.
And so, through all of my suffering, I came to the realization that I was terribly reliant on others, especially romantic partners, in order to feel validated and whole.
I knew that if I wanted to feel better in the long-term, I had to continue developing an intrinsic sense of worth, and start uncompromisingly working towards the things that mattered to me.
I started dressing in a way that felt more authentic, got into lifting weights, started reading personal development books, cultivated my interest in psychology, philosophy, spirituality, and politics, explored altered states of consciousness, all of which inspired me to use my life to become a transformer of society.
While the change was far from night and day, now, several years later, I look back on that past self as if he lived an entire life ago.
Never again could I put so much energy into being shallowly validated from others.
Not that I live completely free of this need, but my internal metric of success and the way in which I derive my self-worth has shifted dramatically.
While I was at the peak of my turmoil, I remember my mother telling me something along the lines of “You may not be able to see it right now, but you will learn from this, become a better person, and even be grateful that this happened.”
This was far from what I wanted to hear at the time, but looking back on it her words are so true.
My profound inner growth would not have occurred had I not undergone this intense suffering.
Within 2 years after the breakup, I had started labeling the event as “the most significant moment of my life” and “the turning point of my life” (for the better).
Really, the suffering was a wake up call.
A wake up call that the way in which I was creating meaning and deriving a sense of well-being and wholeness was not healthy, and that changes had to be made.
And slowly but surely, my rigid ego became more loose, I started to flow through life more and more, and suffered less as a byproduct.
Even when I was suffering, I would find moments where I could take a deep breath, zoom out, see the full picture, perhaps even laugh along the way, and ask the most important question that needed to be asked, which is, what is the lesson here?
And through it all, I was eventually able to see that there is an immense beauty behind suffering.
It is only through suffering that you can escape the chaos created by one state of mind and move to a higher, healthier, more holistic one.
Suffering is the Byproduct of Finitude
Joy and pleasure, along with pain and suffering, are part of the natural ebb and flow of being a human.
We seek joy/pleasure and avoid pain/suffering because we live as a self.
The self, which we can also call the ego, is the conceptual identity that exists within our minds.
At the base level, the self believes that it is the body, and so it does what it must in order to keep it alive and well.
But as humanity has developed, the self has increasingly come to inhabit the mental plane of existence in regards to one’s identity, self-esteem, and status.
Beliefs and desires such as “I am a good writer. I am beautiful. I am fit. I am a computer scientist. I want to continue this relationship. I want to make x amount of money per year.” are all statements of the ego/self.
And because the self is finite, that is, it desires certain things over others and believes itself to be this form and not that form, it suffers when reality is at odds with who the self believes it is and who it wants to be.
In short, you suffer because you desire the reality to be some other way than what is now.
It is common for humans to be distraught with the extreme suffering that occurs in both their own lives and the lives of the collective.
Something such as a heartbreak triggered by a breakup or sudden death of a loved one can radically shake one’s sense of reality and leave them disillusioned with existence.
Thinking about the collective suffering of humanity’s past and present with all the wars, genocides, racism, sexism, or any other atrocity you can think of, leaves many wondering why a world that allows such suffering would even exist at all, leading the most disillusioned to view human existence as a prison of suffering.
My reason for writing this post is not to justify any suffering that is inflicted on others, but simply to bring awareness to why we suffer and how it is only through hardship that we can learn anything at all and thus become a more conscious, loving species.
The Profound Purpose Behind Suffering
I like to use the analogy of the ego as being a stack of Jenga blocks.
Pull out a block that the self is highly dependent on, the whole thing comes crashing down, and all of a sudden you’re in deep suffering and turmoil, wishing things would go back to the way they were before.
For me, this was my ex-girlfriend suddenly and unexpectedly breaking up with me, for others it could be the death of a loved one or their home burning down in a fire.
Whatever the suffering may be, for those who have had their house of cards that is the ego collapse, I guarantee you were able to rebuild that house into a much greater house than before.
A more durable house. A more compassionate house. A more wise house.
These are precisely the three primary benefits to suffering, as suffering increases:
Resilience
Compassion
Wisdom
A baby comes into the world kicking and crying at every minor inconvenience because they have not yet built resilience to suffering.
Thus, a large aspect of child development is simply building resilience to suffering because minor inconveniences happen every day and adult life will demand that you work through it.
Are you also aware of how young children can be very selfish?
Young children can be major assholes because they have little to no capacity to take on the perspective of others. They have an impulse in their consciousness, and they immediately want it gratified without a second thought.
Thus, a major aspect of child development is being able to recognize their own suffering in other people so that they can start acting in more compassionate ways that do not make others suffer.
A leap in a child’s development would be to share their toy with someone else because he recognizes that both want the toy, and both will be sad if they don’t have the toy, so in order for them to both be happy they need to share the toy together.
All, and I repeat, ALL, human development stems from the ability to inhabit more and ever-deepening perspectives.
And then, with this ability to inhabit various perspectives at once, we are able to make wiser decisions in accordance with the well-being of the whole.
But no one is born fully developed, this development can ONLY occur through suffering and hardship.
Think about it, if everything was perfect and we experienced no hardship, why would there be any reason at all to change?
The Beauty Behind Suffering
It is only through suffering that our beliefs, identity, ways of thinking, behaving, and relating to the world come into question.
Most people do not recognize that we are standing upon the shoulders of giants.
Giants who, as a result of suffering mightily, have learned lessons and transcended their old ways of thinking and relating to the world, so that you can be sitting here in the comfort of your own home, on your device that connects you to literally the entire world, without a single worry of where your next meal is coming from or who might be coming to invade your village.
In present day 2023, humanity is living in the safest, most peaceful, well-off time in all of history (and it could be sooooo much better lol).
If you don’t believe me, go incarnate in your next life as any human prior to the year 1950.
While our current world is far from perfect, the reality is if you’re living in a more developed country, then you live a very comfortable and secure existence relative to other regions and time periods.
This is only possible through the incredible amounts of suffering that our ancestors endured, and the lessons they took from them.
“No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.” - Albert Einstein
Let’s take a (extremely brief) trip through the development of humanity.
A few thousand years ago, in a world that faced incessant tribal and factional warfare, it was primarily monotheistic religion, the belief in an all-knowing and all-loving God that was able to unify these warring tribes and end the suffering they had created.
Of course, this religion caused new problems and eventually science, rationality, and reason made a stand against the massive amounts of suffering that was caused in the name of religion, and sought truth and understanding through empirically verifiable evidence.
And now, in the aftermath of the most brutal war in the entirety of humanity’s history, along with the realization of the repercussions that have come about through centuries of racism, sexism, classism, and nationalism, a new consciousness has been born.
This world-centric consciousness is defined by togetherness and harmony, seeks to liberate humanity from greed and dogma, create equal opportunity for all, and works towards the well-being of all life-forms.
Think: The 1960’s counterculture movement, hippies, climate change activism, Black Lives Matter, present-day liberalism, Spiral Dynamics Stage Green and beyond, etc.
Now, this new consciousness is not perfect, and generates new problems of its own.
But this world-centric awareness is exactly what is needed to tackle the problems humanity faces in the present day, which is precisely why it has emerged.
Do you now see how higher consciousness (world-centric) emerges from the chaos that lower consciousness (ego-centric, nation-centric, religio-centric) causes?
And I emphasize once again, this emergence can ONLY occur through suffering and hardship.
The Deep Cost of Running Away From Suffering
It seems interwoven into the fabric of life that greater levels of peace, harmony, love, and intelligence lie on the other side of suffering.
Again, in looking at history, this is fairly obvious.
My hope in making this clear to you is so that you are better able to take an optimistic approach towards suffering and maintain a growth mindset even through the most difficult of hardships.
Because when you do the opposite, and double down on your defense mechanisms, deny reality, bury your traumas, and numb yourself with distractions and substances in order to escape reality, you are not only harming yourself further in this process, but are also not able to integrate the lessons that need to be learned.
Suffering occurs because you are in conflict with reality, and how do you ever expect to resolve this conflict if you deny, repress, distract, and numb yourself from its existence in the first place?
These strategies can be useful in the short term, but if you use them for too long you become ripe for accumulating a mental illness.
If I kept blaming my ex-girlfriend for my suffering (and I did for awhile), I would have never been able to become aware of my lack of self-worth and reliance on romantic partners to fill that void, and thus would have never been able to rise above the level of consciousness that had created that internal conflict.
So when you, my friend, are suffering, remember that you are on the training ground for your own self-transcendence.
It is only through suffering that you can transcend the chaos created by one state of mind and move to a higher, healthier, more holistic one.
So rather than running from suffering, becoming disillusioned by it, I encourage you to face it as wholeheartedly as you can.
Ask yourself questions like: What is the lesson here? Why am I reacting this way? What would Love do right now?
The answers may take time to reveal themselves, but if you are able to lean into the suffering and feel it fully, in time, you will be a transformed human.
Conclusion
There is a deep knowing in my heart that reality is completely, COMPLETELY perfect.
This does not mean that we do enact our will on reality and seek to influence it in the way we best see fit, for our will is an aspect of reality that is also perfect!
And this does not also mean we do not question our drives, motivations, and desires that make up our will, for this questioning is also part of the perfection of reality!
My point is that it is all PERFECT. Never doubt doing what feels authentic to you.
Sometimes this knowing becomes dampened through various factors that occur in my life, but through meditating and getting outside in nature I can always feel it again to a degree.
No matter how deep the suffering, how difficult the situation, it is all part of the perfection of God, correcting and constructing herself so that she can know herself again, in all her glory, as PERFECT, INFINITE, ETERNAL, and as the CREATOR.
(God has no gender by the way, I just like to shake things up in my writing).
Humanity will continue to suffer for thousands of years.
It very well may take extraordinary catastrophes for our species to finally awaken out of the slumber we’ve been in for our entire existence.
But every individual has a choice to either run away from suffering or to dive into it wholeheartedly and feel it fully until it exhausts itself.
This “exhaustion” of suffering occurs when the limitation of the self responsible for the suffering finally gives way, moving one into a more expansive and holistic way of being.
You can accelerate this process through:
Meditation
Contemplation
Conscious psychedelic use
Stream of consciousness journaling
Therapy
Getting a Life Coach
Any other activity that increases awareness/mindfulness
My Offers
That’s all I have for today guys.
If you resonate with what’s being said here and would like some guidance in areas such as: working through suffering, crafting your life vision, living your life vision, and cultivating mindfulness, I would highly recommend booking a coaching call(s) with me.
If this resonates with you, head to the “Coaching” tab of this website.
With love and intention,
Wyeth