Oh Yes, Absolute Freedom From Suffering is Actually Possible
Tags: Spirituality, Spiritual Growth, Freedom, Wisdom, Life Lessons

So, ABSOLUTE Freedom From Suffering huh. That should be the goal. The absolute goal. FREEDOM.

If you are doing something right or making mistakes, you have to be free from it. We have an imperfect mind and body, so mistakes are inevitable. It’s our nature. We learn by mistakes.

In fact, let me rephrase that, “We learn by correcting our mistakes”. That seems politically more correct.

Asking “THE QUESTION”

The right or wrong is in the mind. The question “Who Am I?”, should be questioned again and again and again, until you are effortlessly stabilized with it. Don’t ask this question just to get it over with, because then you will be trapped.

Don’t ask this question in a way that you want an answer to this because if you want an answer, you will only get the answer which will be based on your prior knowledge about it.

Whatever you understood so far will be the basis of your so-called imaginative answer to that pertinent question and you will be over it. Let it just sink deeper and deeper into you and keep it in like a mantra. This is the only way to get complete freedom from SUFFERING, once and for all!

The most important thing to understand is, to walk down this path, you need to have INFINITE patience coupled with absolute enthusiasm. The lack of either one would spoil the whole deal!

Photo by Iva Rajović on Unsplash

Accept The Reality

We are all involved in “what should be” and “what shouldn’t be”, instead of “what actually is”, which is the biggest reason for one’s suffering.

If one’s thoughts and actions are aligned with reality, then there is no way of making you suffer.

Now, one is the objective world (aka the materialistic world) of what you see. The other is the subjective world of the seer (the real you).

The one who is seeing (seer) is the more important one because based on how you see things, you feel happy or sad or any one of the hundred and twelve other emotions.

The seer is bigger than what he sees. That’s the main objective here that I am trying to explain, to put it simply. You can see things much much bigger than your body, which means you are bigger than what you see.

(Now don’t be an idiot and start measuring your body with buildings physically; we are at a level deeper than that.)

SEE VS SEER

So slowly and gradually our minds will start expanding and our understanding will begin to deepen.

You will realize you are not just what you SEE on the mirror (body), you are the SEER. The seer has a choice for what he wants to see. It’s the seer’s wish to be affected or not by what he is seeing. Just a slight change in the line of thinking and everything changes. The seer can start seeing the negative situation as a positive one to stop it from affecting him.

The real happiness comes where there is no bondage of any kind whatsoever. The tool to help you reach there is asking the question I have been emphasizing about. People who have been on this path tend to sometimes run away from this question. Once you look deep within, you will know exactly what I am talking about.

Introspection will lead to Self-Realization

Don’t ever get stuck in a comfortable position. The moment you got some comfort, you get stuck to it. Well, let me tell you these comfort zones are just temporary escapes from the most important discovery of HUMANITY.

Photo by visuals on Unsplash

What you are and what you are not must be absolutely clear

Keep Yourself Healthy

And because it’s so important for this question to get attention, you need to keep your body fit otherwise it will draw all the attention to itself and will keep you from asking the real questions.

Your mind should also be free from triviality and baseless desires. Financially also you should be secure at a certain level to not worry about it all the time.

If you actually want freedom, then you gotta design your life intelligently — your health, your line of thinking, your relationships, your financial conditions, etc.

Your whole life should be designed in such a way so that you can stay with this “question” for the rest of your life until the question dies itself.

Nothing is Conclusive in this World

What happens in this world is that you choose a profession say doctor, so can you now ever say that you understood the whole medical field?

Of course not! It’s not conclusive, something new will keep on coming and you will keep on increasing your knowledge. The same goes for every field.

What science doesn’t know yet, it will come to know about it in the future, which again one has to learn about. So it’s basically a never-ending process. This is the objective world because it’s inconclusive where you have a finite time to learn about infinite objects.

Understanding the subjective world is real intelligence. The subject from which everything exists and depend upon, and to realize that subject is the real “me”. This is the only thing in the world which you can call conclusive or ultimate.

Only the Knower of Self can cross the ocean of Suffering

You can call it the truth or self or God, it’s the same thing. People are just looking for temporary pleasures all their lives so that they don’t have to face permanent suffering. But as you can see, it doesn’t make sense.

Everything around us is changing all the time. Our own thoughts, actions, feelings, emotions, situations, etc. Now, there gotta be something that isn’t changing. Without having something that’s not changing, how can one see something that’s changing? A movie hall has to have a screen that is fixed in one place to see something that’s changing.

If the screen also keeps on changing then how will you watch the movie?

Photo by Erik Witsoe on Unsplash

This ever-changing world is dependent on something constant just like the movie screen, which is why you can see the change, which is why the change is happening in the first place. Savvy?

The Thing That Doesn’t Change

When you dream, it comes and goes. You know that what you saw in the dream wasn’t actually happening to you. This itself is a big realization. Now the body’s also changing. Every second million cells form and die. So why are we saying that we are this body?

It’s the same thing as a dream. When we are not what we see in the dream then why do we say that we are what we are when we come out of that dream? Food for thought.

We don’t think like this and this is the biggest issue — we are not inquiring. We are not understanding that whatever’s changing is dependent on something.

If I am changing, then what is the screen which is fixed on which this body is changing? And am I really what is changing? What if I am that screen that is constant and never changes?

That means there is something here right from your childhood that didn’t change a bit and is knowing and observing all the changes happening to you. Something is definitely there, that saw the situation in your childhood and is currently seeing the present as well.

There is a Link that’s Connecting Everything

There is some kind of substrate (the substance on which an enzyme acts) — the thing on which the whole of humanity is acting.

This is like peeling an onion, which will unfold layer by layer. The problem here is that I am saying all this from a different standpoint, and you are receiving it from a different one.

So different people will comprehend it differently. Some will go like, “oh that means whatever I am seeing here is again a dream, I have been living in a dream within a dream”. No, this is no inception going on.

An Example Will Make Things Simpler

To simplify it even more, let’s just compare our body to a camera.

What if I start seeing things through this camera (the body), without recording it, which will ultimately result in no memory (memories are the basis on which we think).

Photo by ShareGrid on Unsplash

All the duality, of what’s good or bad, is based on these memories only (recordings). But it is also true that without memory you can’t think about anything or speak anything. You will start feeling thirsty, but you will forget that it is water that will quench your thirst!

So, getting attached to the Memory is the problem, not using it

Memories are the reason for all our desires, feelings, and emotions. We love and hate according to our memories. It won’t be entirely wrong to say that memories are the reason for our suffering.

But like I said before, getting rid of it is not the solution, then what is the solution? Let me ask you a question before that, what happens when you are in a deep sleep state?

For instance, If you have been given anesthesia and you are undergoing an operation, you don’t feel any pain, no matter how serious the pain is because you are not connected to the body for the time being, which is exactly what happens during deep sleep.

That means you were not in the instrument (body), but at rest. While you are sleeping too, you kinda leave your instrument, all your 5 senses, for a while.

You stop reading the signals you get from your senses. If you hold on to even one of them, then you won’t be able to sleep. The more tired you are the faster you fall asleep because you don’t want to think at that point or use any of the other senses. And when you go into a deep sleep, voila! You don’t feel any of that tiredness.

What Happens While We Sleep?

So, what was there during that time period? If you say you don’t know, then you are saying it from your mind. But what was there actually?

Don’t get entangled with your own thought process. Talk about what you experienced. They both are different; one is knowledge and the other is experience.

Even if you say, “nothing was there” then this itself means that there was something or someone who experienced that nothingness. But the question is, “who was it”? During sleep, you just watch, like a camera that is seeing things but not recording anything.

You are the one who is aware of the outside world, the dream world, and the experience of the absence of both the worlds.

THE GAP/SPACE

If you look closely in your mind, then you will see that sometimes there is a gap between two thoughts. So, where were you in that gap? Nowhere, right? This is the experience of being blank for some time. Now, this is called a real experience, not any beliefs.

Take another example; let’s say you went to a forest at night, and there’s a rope hanging from a tree, and you saw the rope, but not clear since it was dark. If there wasn’t a rope in the first place, then it wouldn’t be a problem, but it is there. Since you can’t see that properly, you assumed that it’s a snake instead of a rope and are now afraid.

Photo by Carson Greenhalgh on Unsplash

On the other hand, another guy who visited the forest also looked in the same direction but he’s under the misguided interpretation that it is a gold chain hanging down the tree and wants to grab it at any cost.

Desire and fear are the two things that drive 99% of all the human’s actions in his life. If he sees the rope as it is, and not just see but realize that what he’s seeing is not any different from him. Then he is actually awakened.

Once you are free from all the desires and fears then and only then you are actually FREE from everything. Then only you can take some next-level actions. Even if you fail, you won’t suffer because your actions were not based on some materialistic desires.

The TAKEAWAY

Most of us struggle to gain freedom from suffering, stress, anxiety, depression, and fear. The main reason is that our laziness gets the better of us and we never get to the bottom of the problem. We are just trying to rectify the effects and not trying to understand the cause.

So, if we go down this path, all we will find is temporary happiness and in return, we will get permanent suffering, because here, our happiness is based on something that’s changing all the time. Everything is changing so rapidly in this world that to get absolute freedom from suffering, we need something that remains constant or is not changing at all.

Photo by Frank McKenna on Unsplash

We need to let go of our so-called identities. Our bodies, emotions, feelings, desires — everything is temporary and isn’t gonna last. Hence, as long as we are attached to the impermanent, as long as we extract our happiness from variables that are changing, suffering is inevitable.

We can get freedom from suffering and be in everlasting joy only if we see it as a fact, not just as a theory but at an experiential level, that we are the constant that never changes — we are the screen that is fixed — we are the sky that doesn’t go anywhere, unlike the clouds that keep on coming and going.

THAT IS THE ONLY WAY.