If you ask anyone what is suffering? they would simply say that it is something that’s caused by or is a result of negative events that happen in our life. However, this is not so, because in actual sense suffering is never what happens, it is how you feel about what happens in your life. We must understand that suffering is a feeling and our strongest feelings are nothing but our emotions, and when emotions get negative, they give pain. So, in simple words, suffering is our resistance to our negative emotions and to our pain. It’s a pain about our pain.

We all experience pain in our day-to-day life because it’s inevitable and it is a part of being human. However, how many of us have pondered over this philosophical question of life – “What Causes Us PAIN?” or “What is the Cause of Our Negative Emotions?”. Our pain might stem from losing a dear one, losing our job, a bad break up, a fatal accident or undergoing any other kind of trauma or situation. However, when we hide from facing or accepting the reality, we create suffering. Therefore, it should be clearly understood that we are the sole creator of good and bad in our life and hence it’s futile to blame others by saying things like -- It’s not fair, why Me? this shouldn’t have happened with me at least or I can’t bear this anymore! etc...

There is a deep instinct in most of us to fight the pain we experience deep within, however in most cases it backfires and we end up experiencing double pain. The reason behind this is our tendency to avoid and, in some cases, hide our pain or pretend that it isn’t present. Deep within we might ruminate about our suffering, without doing anything about it because of our stubbornness to accept it openly. A wise person would instead accept the reality and become light instead of getting heavy on mind because accepting simply means that you stop trying to deny your reality and you acknowledge it because sometimes accepting the painful emotions can reduce our suffering, because we are no longer running from them or pushing them away. It however does not mean that you approve of a situation or that you don’t want it to change, it’s all about reducing our own suffering, so if you have been hurt by someone, it’s best to accept that YES you were hurt and then move on with your life rather than pondering over why, how, what…. Remember! To forgive or not is each one’s own prerogative, but acceptance is necessary for moving forward in life or else we would get stuck up in a quagmire of waste thoughts. Once we accept reality, our anger tends to decrease and the painful situation loses the power it has over us. There is no denying the fact that emotional pain is an intrinsic part of all our lives, however, we create needless suffering when we don’t accept reality. When we practice acceptance, we let ourselves to move on, we open the door to freedom and we take steps to improve our lives. Most of us may find it hard to accept the reality and still prefer to wait for time and situations to change, however in doing so, we forget that time does not heal everything, but acceptance will heal everything.

(Writer is a spiritual educator & popular columnist for publications across India, Nepal & UK. Till Date 8500+ Published Columns have been written by Him)