Suffering: The Catalyst for Spiritual Awakening

Psychological crises are no stranger to anyone. They're what send us to the therapists and the psychologists, and they're what often times result in diagnoses that are never truly explained as much as they are treated with side effects that are only suppressed instead of investigated.

Depression. Chronic anxiety. Schizophrenia. The words that become the definition of our problems, the cause for our suffering, the stigmas we are unwillingly given.

But why are these crises which link us to these stigmas happening? What are they caused by? Why do we experience them? Often times we find out or are told that they are caused by trauma; by our mind and body responding to the events that have happened or are presently happening to us. Other times, it is our mind/body response to something that goes against what we want. Heartbreak, abuse, grief. We don't want to experience it.

It is naturally assumed the drugs help, that therapy helps, that maybe going outside more helps, etcetera etcetera. And while these are definitely helpful in certain cases for some, they do not fully heal us. We will likely be working at the "problem" (a.k.a the depression/anxiety/trauma) for the rest of our lives and never figure out why we experience them.

What psychological suffering is really trying to tell us is that, spiritually, we need to wake up.

And don't get me wrong here. It is important to seek help during a psychological crises. But what I think we never get the chance to see or understand most of the time, is that we can do something about the suffering, that it's actually trying to tell us we are missing something, that we need change, and there is something very wrong. Suffering is not natural. It is created by our reactions to what happens to us, and those reactions come from our identification with form (external circumstances) and form, at its core, is not reality in its entirety. The external reality we experience, in truth, it is an illusion.

A way to elaborate using another word: "maya" in Advaita Vedanta philosophy, is the physical and mental reality that our everyday consciousness has become entrapped in, and sometimes, in extreme cases, obsessed with, where we only focus on the physical and mental and fail to realize anything else but. "Maya" is truly temporary, an illusion, a veiling of the true, unitary Self--the Cosmic Spirit also known as Brahman within this same philosophy.

Still, nothing would exist without this illusion if you think about it. Consciousness would not know itself without it, therefore, we would not be self-aware without it. We would not have suffering without it. However, when we become so entwined with the physical and mental, psychological suffering will occur, inevitably. And so, what the suffering is trying to tell us, really, is we are too focused on the mental and the physical, and we are not seeing the rest of what reality is: the truth of how we are actually more than the physical and mental, and that even more, we are one with everything around us, and we are one with the universe.

I know that phrase be so hard to grasp. What does it mean, exactly, to be one with the universe? How can we be so sure that we are something like that? What if we are purely just random form that came about by chance?

What if that's exactly the idea?

Look outwards. The universe is so creative. It is so intricate and infinite and amazing. Aren't we, if we allow ourselves to be, and if we realize our fullest potential, just the same?

We are the force of the universe, the Creator, in physical form, conscious of itself. We can look out and recognize all of it. And if we really look, we can see that we are one with it, part of it, an expression of it.

This, explored, ends psychology suffering, because within realizing it, we can see that we are not defined by our thoughts, by the mental. We are more than the bodies that help us experience this temporary reality. And if you keep looking within, you see that there is an observer that knows this, that really, as you learn and explore, knows all. You've always known that you are one with everything around you, including other people, as other physical forms fall into that "everything." And when you truly realize this, allow it to shift your understanding, you realize you are one with life, because you ARE life.

Psychological suffering is the catalyst for spiritual awakening because it is your the universe/your higher self/you telling you to wake up.

So, wake up, and let yourself see the entire truth of the nature of reality.