A Reality Void of Suffering

Written by Mathew Naismith

To most of us it would be utterly impossible to create a reality void of suffering, that is our first mistake because nothing is actually impossible. We should ask ourselves here, what really creates suffering?  Most of us would mention numerous physical & mental causes which seem to have no end but that isn’t really the case at all.  What actually makes us feel we are suffering?  Perception believe it or not for example if everyone in the world couldn’t perceive suffering would we be suffering?  Believe it or not we wouldn’t be.  Are we truly suffering if it’s only a perception/presumption?

 Let’s look at this in a different judgmental way; a child in the west has their Xbox taken from them, are they truly suffering if we compare them to a 3rd world child in hunger? The answer is of course no but they perceive they are now let’s compare this reality to a much more chaotic reality, are we suffering? The answer of course is no. We presume too much because we don’t sit within our quietness enough. Suffering is only in our perception of suffering no matter what we are going through, this concept of course will be quite hard for most people to swallow mainly because our controlling egos tells us otherwise.  

What has the controlling ego got to do with seeing others suffer? What are we doing when we see others suffer? We are actually judging someone else’s suffering compared to ours otherwise you would perceive anyone suffering believe it or not. We should ask ourselves here, what does judgment denote & the answer of course is usually a controlling ego however judgement doesn’t always denote a controlling ego either.  

So making judgement & comparing oneself to someone else who is suffering is this denoting the ego being in control? Yes, for the main reason we see ourselves better off. It’s funny how the controlling ego is so well disguised at times which I have called in past posts the hidden ego.  It is extremely hard for an emotional human being not to allow this to happen, I still today make such judgement however I am now aware of it.  

There is another problem in perceiving suffering, when we perceive such suffering we are actually unintentionally manifesting what we see as suffering, the more suffering we see/feel the more suffering we will perceive & inadvertently create.   Our whole reality is created by our perception, at the moment we are focused on the perception of desires we live for/of desires which supports the current system of existence, consumerist materialism.  If we had no perception of our desires there is no way consumerist materialism could exist & that alone would create quite a different reality to what we have today.   

Using myself as an example again;  I’ve endured a chronic injury since I was 6 yrs old, I am now 50 yrs old & yes this chronic injury also came with chronic pain.  I’ve noticed the only time I am suffering  is when the controlling ego comes into play, I will see other able people & compare them to me & all of a sudden I am suffering , as soon as I make such judgement I’m suffering however when I’m not in judgement I’m not suffering. To an able body person I am suffering but to me I’m not when I’m not in judgement, funny that isn’t it!! This all comes down to perception that can be & most usually is controlled by the controlling ego; it’s the controlling ego that gives us suffering.  It’s extremely hard not to see others less fortunate people as suffering but like I said this is denoting the ego being in control & we know how destructive the ego in control can be.  All we need to do is be aware of the controlling factors of the ego & yes we can create a reality totally void of any suffering if we want to perceive so!!