How to be Alone: How to Free Yourself from Suffering and Increase Your Self-esteem – by Michael Alperstein

 

How to Free Yourself from Suffering – By Michael Alperstein

One of the most helpful realizations is this: When you are suffering (worried or upset in any way) part of you WANTS to suffer. Part of you believes it is helping in some way. The moment you deeply realize part of you wants the unhappy feeling is the moment magic and transformation happen.

I am not talking about a surface thought, such as: “Yeah, yeah, part of me wants to suffer.” I am talking about a REAL knowing: “I want this suffering.” The moment you realize this, the curtains open and the light returns.

How you do realize part of you wants to suffer? There is more than one way and many teachings point to it. Here are two I find helpful:

Start with feeling. Feeling more than thinking will get you to this realization. Feel into the crevices of your suffering (any worry or upset of any kind) and you may detect a subtle sense of “getting something” or “attempting to get something you want” from the upset. Using suffering to get attention or to get a sense of strength or control are common examples.

Again though, transformation only happens when you truly avail yourself to your WANTING of the suffering. Be willing to make the unconscious CONSCIOUS.

This knowing leads to a breakthrough because it makes your suffering conscious. When something is conscious then you KNOW how to stop energizing it. It is automatic. It’s easy. Your suffering pops like a bubble and you expand beyond it.

For example, I remember walking on the beach once about ten years ago, longing and feeling sorry for myself that I did not have a relationship. “When will she get here!? Where is my soulmate?!” I kept thinking. Suddenly, I stopped in my tracks and I had the realization that part of me likes being alone. “I have not met someone yet because I like being alone.” It was so simple and so obvious I had overlooked it. Part of me wanted to be alone. That is what it feels like to realize part of you wants to suffer. The realization comes just by paying attention. It is utterly simple.

And that is another key to this: Part of you already knows you want the suffering. In other words, when you DO realize part of you wants the worry or the upset or feeling isolate or whatever, it is going to be NO BIG DEAL. It will be like you have known it all along.

So make peace with the fact that part of you wants whatever uncomfortable feeling you may have. Part of you wants to GET something from it. We think “pain” is a magnet for getting what we want (approval, attention, whatever it may be). But it is not. It is an opportunity to awaken.

There is always a way out of suffering. You break out of it when you realize you want it. Stand tall in this knowing. Face it head on. The realization of this will overthrow your most long-standing patterns and take you back to freedom and light.