But there is another way of looking at the truth. This way says that God is all Love, all Compassion. Why should we need suffering in order to think of Him? If He is really all Love, if His very nature is all Love and we pray to Him to give us suffering so that we can think of Him, then we are approaching the truth in the wrong way.
Why do we experience suffering? In this world we are always consciously or unconsciously making mistakes. When we consciously make mistakes, we are quite aware of it. But unfortunately, we do not see the millions of things that we are doing wrong unconsciously. These unconscious mistakes manifest themselves in the physical world and the results come to us as suffering. In the case of ordinary unaspiring human beings, after tremendous suffering, sincerity dawns and the soul leads them to knowledge and wisdom. If people who repeatedly make mistakes have sincere aspiration and want to know why they are suffering, then the soul’s light comes to the fore and tells them. If we are spiritual people, consciously we will not do anything wrong, but unconsciously we do many things wrong. We can prevent unconscious mistakes only through our aspiration, prayer and meditation. If we aspire, then God’s Grace and Compassion protect us.
There is something else that we have to know about what we call suffering. Often we think of God, pray to God and meditate on God and then we see that all sorts of problems arise in our life. Some disciples have said to me, "I was very happy until I entered the spiritual path. I thought when entering into the spiritual path that I would have more happiness, more joy, more bliss. Now what is all this? I am getting more suffering, more frustration!" I tell them, "You created God according to your own fancy. You imagined that God should be this or that." If we are really sincere, we should go deep within and see whether we had these difficulties before or not. We did have the same difficulties before we accepted spirituality, but we were not aware of them before. Spirituality is the path of awareness and consciousness. After we accept spirituality we become aware of every thought, while before we accepted the spiritual path, we were not aware of our thoughts. Previously, many things were happening to us, but we were like a solid wall and were unaware of these things. But now, as seekers, we are affected whenever a good or bad thought enters into our mind. If it is a divine thought we are happy. If it is a wrong thought we are frustrated and disappointed. This is the result of our spiritual awareness. If we are sincere with ourselves, we come to realise that we have always had the same difficulties, the same sufferings, but previously we were not conscious of them. We were stupid and we did not know. Now we have become wise. We have become conscious and we know what is happening.
Again, we have to know that when we enter the spiritual life, the hostile forces attack us. Before, when we lived in ignorance and were a slave to ignorance, ignorance let us sleep. As long as it had us under its control, as long as we were wallowing inside it, it did not disturb us. But when we enter the spiritual life and try to escape from ignorance, at that time ignorance tries to hold us down. So sometimes the seeker will find he is having some difficulties at the beginning of his spiritual journey that he did not have before, but as he progresses, these difficulties fall away.
God does not want suffering for human beings. He is our Father of Love. When we go to our Father, we don't have to cut our arms or our throat. We will go with all our love because He is waiting for us with His Love. If we say that we have to suffer in order to go to our Father, that is stupidity. God, our Father, does not want our suffering.
But when suffering does come we have to feel that even in this suffering there is a divine intention. If we really aspire, suffering itself will give us a real experience which will make us feel that we are nearer to our goal. But we should never find fault with God because of our suffering. It is we who have invited suffering through our conscious or unconscious mistakes. When suffering comes to us, we have to pray to God to free us from this suffering. We have to know that suffering is not our goal; the goal is Delight. When we have penetrated into the suffering, when we have gone beyond the suffering, we see that it becomes Delight. And then we can remain in that Delight which is inside the suffering.From:Sri Chinmoy,The illumination of life-clouds, part 1, Agni Press, 1974
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