SUFFERING AS A DOORWAY TO UNCONDITIONAL LOVE AND GOD
Suffering is often seen as an obstacle, something to be avoided, fixed, or transcended. But what if suffering is not a mistake? What if, instead of being the thing that pulls us away from love, it is the very thing that opens the door to it?
There is a love that does not barter, does not cling, does not falter. It does not need us to be free of pain before it embraces us. This love does not require us to be healed, whole, or even at peace. It is vast enough to hold our suffering exactly as it is.
Many spiritual traditions speak of love as the essence of existence itself. The Christian mystics knew this well. They did not see suffering as something to be rejected but as a sacred fire—one that burns away illusion and reveals the presence of the divine. St. John of the Cross called it the dark night of the soul, a passage where all we thought we knew dissolves, and something deeper emerges. Meister Eckhart spoke of letting go of everything—even our ideas of God—until only pure being remains.
The mind cannot grasp this, and words cannot define it. Yet the soul knows.
In our most broken moments, something luminous moves through us. When we stop resisting suffering—when we stop trying to escape it or justify it—we begin to see that it is not separate from love. In fact, it may be the very thing that leads us into its depths.
Compassion is born not from pity, but from seeing—seeing the whole of life, the rising and the falling, the breaking and the mending, all held in love. As we soften into this recognition, suffering does not necessarily disappear. But something shifts. Instead of drowning in it, we find ourselves resting in something greater, something that has been here all along.
Perhaps this is what the mystics meant when they spoke of surrender. Not a passive resignation, but an opening. A willingness to be undone.
And in that undoing, we find what was never lost. We find love. We find God. Or perhaps, we find that they were never two.
——————————————
The heart is a many petaled flower That sits in the center of your chest Feed it with love and it grows Deprive it of that goodness And it dries up. ------------------------- Our suffering is not a mistake— it is the doorway to a deeper awareness, to the fabric of existence itself. Some may call it love, some may call it God. But in the depths of surrender, the two are one. ----------------------- Don’t let the love affair You have with existence Turn sour or die Keep it fresh Dance and sing To your lover Weep your tears of sorrow And offer life Your sweet and tender joy It is over in a flash Love it in all its shades. ------------------------ Fall in love so deeply With your existence That everything Melts into you. --------------------- Shed this ego skin It’s a lie masquerading as truth Let go of all posturing And pretending to be someone Just be the openness you are And let the love flow through. --------------------- The evolution of human consciousness From fear to love From conditioned action To unconditioned awareness And from separation to union Starts with each of us Not somewhere else. --------------------- There is a secret gift in your darkness But you must get right up close to it To receive it. --------------------- Don’t worry About becoming An enlightened someone It’s a fruitless endeavor Be concerned only With unbecoming Who you became. ---------------------- To love in the midst of fear To be equanimous in division To be silent in the middle of the storm We are each called to be greater than ourselves But we easily shrink back into our smallness. ------------------------- Wisdom comes When the realization Of the impermanence of all things Really sinks in And brings with it A great humility.
Thanks for reading.