Suffering is defined as impaired well-being. The opposition of suffering is happiness.
Suffering may be a consequence of illness. It can also occur without simultaneous disease.
It can excist to a pronounced degree in a person with perfect bodily health,
excellent socioeconomic status and an enviable family.
Or can be completely missing in a person with multiple diagnoses and a body in deplorable condition.
Disease may include: Pain and / or impaired functioning.
Suffering does not need to occur.
Suffering occurs through the claim: "This is not how it should be!"
"This is not how it should be!" is a thought.
I want to claim it is the most devastating thought in our vocabulary.
The person who pronounces this sentence presupposes to have constructed reality,
and now observed a dysfunction, which he had not programmed into the whole.
It is to confuse reality with wishful thinking.
When we claim "It should not be like this!" and truly believe it, and think we are right,
then we also have the right yes, even the duty to feel indignation, disappointment, anger, despair, etc.,
when Realism behaves in such an 'incorrect', disappointing way .... Right?
That is suffering.
Suffering is the distance between reality and wishful thinking.
Where these completely coincide, suffering has no place.
When we observe the thought: "It should not be like this!"
Then ask the question: "How is it in reality?"
The answer will be unconditional: "It's the way it is!"
If we are stubborn with: "It's so, but it should not be!"
let's take another turn to see if insight can emerge:
Everything that's happening has already happened!
You can not change anything that has already happened.
You can not change the story. Get unsaid what you said yesterday.
This is also a well-documented scientific fact.
(First law of termodynamics)
The physical laws governing the universe do not allow this.
Consider for a moment how much time and energy we spend twisting
and turning how we should have acted instead. Completely meaningless!
We could not have acted in any other way than exactly as we did! How i know?
Because we acted precisely as we did! That was how reality played out.
Have you ever been able to change something you've already done?
Have you heard or read about anyone who succeeded?
Now, we can argue that we need to analyze the past to learn from it
and certainly it is important, but it's not quite easy to include those lessons in our experience library,
and this process is not necessarely accompanied by suffering.
Disappointment is by definition .... unfulfilled expectations.
Disappointment can never happen without unrealistic expectations.
- the expectations that were not met, were apparently not realistic! ...
How I Know? ... Well They were not met!
Does it mean that you should not have expectations? That one should not try to stay healthy?
That you should not hope for cure and recovery if you get sick?
No not at all.
Do what in the world you know and believe in.
Look for all the help you think you can get,
from anywhere, anyone you trust or believe in.
Actually, we mean, "I wish it was different!" instead of "This is not it!"
To get a different development in the future we may have some influence.
It may go our way, depending on what decisions or actions we get started today.
But first: Fully accept that Right now Everything is excactly the way it should be.
And, when you start to plan for the future, always try to follow the reality that hides
somewhere behind all your wishful thinking.
REALITY, thus: WHAT IS.
Nothing, which cannot in any way be manifested in our consciousness can have any existence for us.
Everything we percieve is filtered through the limitations of our sensory body,
which in addition are discolored by upbringing, cultural, religious, political 'education'
We 'interpret' our perceptions with our limited intellect modified by the luggage
of experiences we had through life, a ton of different emotional preferences, etc.
What penetrates all these filters is OUR reality.
There are not 2 people who have the same view of 'reality'.
Not two persons have exactly the same filter.
No two persons have the same 'brain' to organize and interpret.
Everyone however, has a true picture of their own reality, just because:
'Everybody' is the creator of his own reality.
Therefore, 'your' reality can not be directly compared to 'mine', in any hierarchical or value-based manner.
Nobody sees reality as it is 'In reality'.
We all sit in the same cinema, looking at the same manifestations on the screen
- but we all see different movies.
The one who has the most realistic image corresponding best, with the 'real' reality .... lives the easiest.
... crashes least with reality.
Crashing with Reality is the foundation of suffering.
Crashing with 'others' realities can be fatal.