Recently I had a disagreement with a friend in recovery about the concept of suffering. In his spiritual background, which is Buddhist, he feels that while pain is mandatory, that suffering is completely optional. With the spiritual background I grew up with, which is Christian, both pain and suffering are a part of one’s journey to grow closer to God. While I can’t honestly say whether one is more true than the other, what I do know is that I’ve actually practiced both philosophies and each have worked for me at various times in my life.
There actually was a time that I fully believed that suffering was totally optional. During that period, I can safely say I didn’t have too many difficult things going on in my life. I was earning a good living, my health was pretty much intact, and I was quite physically active with sports to keep myself in shape. For what things that did arise during that time that could have brought me suffering, I was able to channel them into many different facets and in doing so, kept it mostly at bay.
But over the past five years, I’ve gone through such incredible pain that all those facets I once might have delved into to prevent me from suffering have become next to impossible to do. Now I bear the brunt of so much pain on a daily basis without many outlets to tune it out that I am finding I’m suffering a lot more. That’s in stark contrast to when all this began when I still had much of that Buddhist philosophy working and felt that suffering was indeed optional.
Lately, I have been suffering quite quite a bit, none of which I believe is being caused by my own actions like much of it used to be in the past. And I continue to do my absolute best to put one foot in front of the other each day to keep going. But is the suffering I’m going through now still optional? Is there truly some switch that I can just turn off and deal with all my pain but not suffer from it? I don’t know.
What I do know is that I am suffering…a lot actually, but I continue to turn my will and my life over to God and seek comfort from Christ to get through it every single day. So I’ve come to the conclusion that maybe spiritual philosophies work for people depending on what they’re going through at any point in time.
For my friend who has his own set of life circumstances going on, his Buddhist philosophy of feeling that suffering is optional is working for him. As for me, seeking Christ and God and continuing to go through the pain and suffering I am going through is doing one good thing for me. It’s helping me to draw closer to my Higher Power, which is something I was so far away from before all this suffering began years ago. Nonetheless, I’m sure more will be revealed on my spiritual journey with whether suffering truly is optional or not, the longer I remain on firm spiritual ground… 🙂
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson
