Pain is Inevitable. Suffering is a Choice.

There is a thing that is said in the spiritual community. Pain is inevitable. Suffering is a choice. I never understood it. Until now. Something has shifted within me in the past week. The changes have brought new awareness.

It started with a few more rounds of purging and healing. And then I felt frustrated and fearful about my current situation. I communicated both to Spirit, in detail and with emotion. Then I released attachment to it and walked away from the energy.

After a break and some rest, I experienced a moment of expansion that helped me understand that pain is inevitable, and suffering is a choice. And that it only applies when there is awareness and conscious choice.

Pain is Inevitable.

This week, while standing at a bus stop, I realized that I had been suffering my entire life. It just clicked in my awareness. I saw the full picture of my life all at once. No judgment. No illusions. No attachments. No expectations.

It was the awareness that I could not have controlled what I experienced in my life. I could not control how people treated me. It was not my responsibility that the people around me could not love me the way I needed to be loved.

I was shown my sensitivity and trauma response of over giving. How it began with the people around me who didn’t know how to love. They were acting from their own wounds and trauma.

People hurt me and those younger versions were wounded deeply. I thought they meant what they said. I felt their words. I felt the pain they inflicted. My sensitive nature absorbed all their abuse.

Most of my life I have felt the pain of neglect. It had been so pervasive throughout my life that I only knew to neglect myself. I didn’t know love. It was a painful existence.

The human experience is full of stories of pain. We all experience challenges. And we all experience the worst life can throw at us. We all make mistakes and sometimes our lives take unexpected turns.

Which is what is meant by pain being inevitable. We are human. We have emotions. We feel pain. Pain is inevitable.

Suffering is a Choice.

In that same moment, at the bus stop, I saw my suffering and I saw the cause of my suffering. Illusions, attachments, and expectations. My life was built on these ego mind structures.

They were built in ways and for reasons I no longer remember. My sense is that they were helping me move through the pain. But they kept me from seeing the truth and prevented me from being in the present moment.

I suffered because I wanted the illusions to become real. I suffered because I attached myself to energies, people, places, and things that didn’t reciprocate, didn’t care, or didn’t serve my needs. Everything and everyone disappointed me because no one, not even myself, could live up to the expectations I had imagined.

Recently, the months long late-stage spiritual awakening purging has been clearing out those old structures. It was only after healing and releasing much of it that I realized how many illusions, attachments, and expectations I had created for myself.

Letting go of the illusions, attachments, and expectations has been an adjustment. It is also part of my practices. Awareness means that I can spot them when they appear, and I can continue to deconstruct them.

Knowing the cause of suffering – illusions, attachments, expectations - has freed me from suffering in a way. I am conscious of the cause of suffering and can now choose better.

Not a Conscious Choice.

In that one moment at the bus stop, it all became clear to me. I had felt pain, and I had suffered, but it wasn’t a choice. Not a conscious choice. I wasn’t aware of the choice.

We don’t choose to feel pain. The pain is part of our human experience. Spiritual, emotional, physical - there are infinite ways for us to experience pain. It is as inevitable as life’s challenges.

We don’t actively choose to suffer. No one wants to suffer. Suffering is only a choice when we have the awareness of what is causing suffering and choose to remain unchanged.

When we have awareness that the way we live our lives is causing our own suffering, then we can choose to live without suffering. It is only when we are conscious of it that we can either choose the suffering or choose change. Suffering then becomes a choice.

Choosing Another Path.

My life has been one of pain. I felt it and it changed me. It changed how I moved through the world and my life.

To move through the world in pain I created an entire structure and way of thinking. I learned to diminish myself because of how people treated me. I tried to fit into places and spaces that didn’t want me. I knew no better.

I clung to my belief systems because I didn’t know another way. I suffered because I was unconscious of the infinite possibilities of life. And unconscious of the Divine light within me, my soul.

My spiritual awakening has allowed me to heal and tear down the old mindsets and structure of illusions, attachments, and expectations. They were the ego trying to live the life it chose. I am now consciously choosing a different way to live.

It is time for me to tear down the life that my ego built to live the life my soul was sent here to live.

It is time for me to step into the life that spirit has been guiding me to my whole life.

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I’m grateful you’re here. I love you.

Be well, beautiful soul,

Nikki