Every person, at some time or other, undergoes painful life experiences. Pain and suffering are universal human constants. For those who suffer the deep pains of the heart it is sometimes helpful to remember the suffering of the rest of humanity. On the most basic level one fifth of the worlds population or about a billion souls suffer from hunger and malnutrition. Many of the women and children of the world suffer from repression and sexual abuse. And hardly a soul escapes the pain of misunderstandings and the feelings of separation that comes from the hardening of the heart.

     No one really enjoys the pain of suffering and most are anxiously trying to escape through many of the ways currently available in modern society. But it is impossible to grow or change unless we embrace the darker side of our consciousness. Real growth and change almost always involves some sort of conscious suffering because the problem almost always lies inside of our own self. Anytime that we are threshed out on the floor, there is something that we are not seeing, something to learn.

     For most enlightenment, or the kingdom of heaven, or images of angels and divine beings, offer a vision and the promise of suffering and pains permanent end. Advanced beings never seem beaten or depressed by life's difficult tests. But that does not mean that they will not scream and howl at the loss of a loved one. The conquest of suffering does not mean that we will never ever feel pain. It just means that we will know what to do when powerful feelings and thoughts overcome our inner peace. People love to create fantasies and project their ignorance into what they themselves have never experienced and religion offers a convenient, well travel door for this type of avoidance activity. Yes new levels of awareness await us. Yes we can rise above the endless suffering that so many people feel. Yes there is a state where life is enjoyable and we can laugh and relax and be happy with our own personal destiny. But this is not a perfect state and not easily arrived at either. Remember Adam was in the garden and even he did not have a perfect time with things. Difficulties are always there to challenge us no matter how much we evolve our soul. And we never are meant to stop growing no matter how close to God we feel or think we are. Evolution stops for no one.

 
     Suffering offers us opportunities to grow but we normally don't want to look at it that way. Love is such a mysterious force and it gets us into trouble almost every time. It take us into places that are fraught with danger. The pathway of the heart is not for timid souls for once we open the heart we make ourselves vulnerable to the cosmic spirit which wills us onward and upward to purify our love.

     The rejection of our love and one's deep being is an essential problem that leads most people away from the risks that living in the heart can entail. Love is blind to all the risks but the head is not. That part of ourselves that wants to avoid all necessary suffering is the same side that secretly is afraid of rejection and of being alone. Open hearted people suffer more simply because they are open to feel more. There are people who seemingly have their hearts open and appear to be happy all the time but they do not open themselves up to the tides of change and growth. There is usually some secret pride or lack of vulnerability that will catch up with them sooner or later. Suffering is central to spiritual evolution if we concern ourselves with the heart, which is the doorway to our deepest beings.

When we touch upon the full truth of who we are,
which is what the heart represents, the truth,
we meet both the positive and negative sides of our nature.

     Heart oriented people suffer more because they make themselves more vulnerable to seeing their most basic flaws and mistakes. Our pride is always hoping to look a little better than we actually feel and it is this pride that separates us both from the pain, the heart, and any real growth in our beings. Pride protects us from pain because locked up behind our pride are our vulnerabilities; our imperfections, errors, blindness, selfishness, insecurities, jealousies and aggressiveness. Rare is that person who has enough heart and love of truth to look directly at their own blindness. But there is a special type of spiritual pride that makes us extra sensitive to every mistake we make because our self image or self concept is damaged by our impurities. This type of spiritually proud are very ego sensitive, they feel a pain every time they do or even think anything "wrong." This is not necessarily bad because the ego sensitive person grows the fastest.

     On our individual life journey's we naturally go through many trips fall into many traps. The issues surrounding the heart, issues of love, are painful. Many people are afraid to risk opening to the deepest feelings of the heart because the predominant experience of life, on the heart level, is the hurting of love. The head never really allows the heart to love. The head never really goes deep into the experience of love. The heart on the other hand dives deeply into things saying "I am going to do this even if it kills me." To one with an open heart the warnings of the head are useless. We know what we should do, ought to do, want to do with our reason but the heart persists until the end. The heart represents what we love and what we love to do so it is natural for it to have this do or die attitude about life and about what it loves and cares for. Ask most any mother how they feel about their children and what they will do to protect them.

     There is in everyone of us is a child who wants to love and be loved. When we have love, nothing else seems to matter. But so many people have been so hurt by love that they end up closing down their cardiac center altogether and thus seem immune to the storms that revolve around love issues. They may be very nice and sweet, but their tendency is toward the mental and they disdain the emotional or feeling components of an open vulnerable heart. The nature of life in our society has forced most people to retire behind walls of emotional scar tissue. At the other end of the spectrum are the very emotional beings who are so identified with their emotions that they become self-obsessed and on a never ending treadmill of suffering.

     To open to our pain is to open to our vulnerability. In reality, this is the easiest and quickest way to expand our capacity for love and joy. That is why the most open beings never seem beaten or depressed by difficult life circumstances. They have learned to take the hardest knocks because they have not avoided the arduous aspects of life. Love is not always playful with those who consciously seek the light.

     It is well known that the heart can bleed like no other part of the body can. When the heart encounters reality on this planet it suffers. The karma of all beings on this planet is to incarnate into the terror of separation. As babies and children we were totally vulnerable and unable to protect ourselves from others. The heroic challenge on this earth is to reopen to the totality of our hearts after it has been closed. This is difficult when everything in modern society works against this.

     Fear operates most powerfully to choke off  love. Our entire sense of security often rests on our attachments so we desperately fear the loss of what we are attached to, secretly fearing that emptiness which is loss. We control our love objects thinking that this will make us secure. We want what we want, never letting things be what they are, always wanting things to be what we want them to be.

Love is the basic feeling of being secure.

     When people run after romance they are secretly seeking experiences of being. Everyone wants to know and feel their being. But anytime we are suffering there is something that we are not seeing. Our hearts ultimately want to feel One with everything yet we suffer every time we separate, even if it is into the romantic cocoon many call love.