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The World's Greatest Lie: That Suffering is Normal · Spiritual Sense: Practical wisdom to quiet an overthinking mind and recharge your soul

• 0:00
  Speaker A: Do you like to suffer? We've been told that we have to suffer, that suffering is normal, that everyone suffers. And that's just how it is. That's kind of the programming that we have. You're not good enough. You know, this has gone wrong. There's no choice. If this thing happened, I should always have to feel this way. And so there's huge amounts of suffering going on. And in this episode, we're going to discuss whether suffering is actually normal and if there's something we can do about it. And what can we do about it, and is there another option for us? Because life is going to throw things at us. We are going to have challenges. There is going to be strange stuff happening. How are we going to manage it, and what is our alternative way of living? So welcome, welcome, welcome to the podcast. I'm brother Michael and this is Shireen. Sister Shireen. We've been meditating for 30 years or more. Each.
• 1:03
  Speaker B: You're dating me, Michael.
• 1:06
  Speaker A: 30 years. She's the real deal. Yogi.
• 1:10
  Speaker B: You're dating me.
• 1:13
  Speaker A: Oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear. Not causing. Not causing suffering, am I? Oh, dear. So let's get into this. The reason we're doing this episode is because Shereen and I were having a conversation about what to talk about. And she was basically saying that considering all this spiritual technology, all these different things that completely change people's lives, why is it that people are still suffering, Right? And because there's options. You want to tell us about that? What was your thought process around this?
• 1:43
  Speaker B: I've been thinking the last few days that every single soul on the planet Earth, we have everything we need to be completely content, happy, fulfilled, satisfied. We have the spiritual technology to feel that way, to be happy. We have all of the tools we need to feel happy, every one of us, but we are not, right? And I was thinking about starvation, right? Like physical starvation. You know, there are many countries that people are starving because of war or whatever it is going on, you know, environmental conditions. Whatever is going on, people are starving. Is that necessary? Like, you go into the grocery store or even like someone recently came back from a cruise, right? And they were saying that the worst part of being on the cruise was the amount of food that gets wasted. And so there's so much food, right? So much food everywhere, right? In the US there's so much food. But some places in the world, people are still starving, which is not necessary if you really think about it. It's not necessary. Why are they starving? Because of, like, forces greater than themselves, right? You know, governments are not getting along. This one is happening. That's one happening. Some force greater than the people is deciding, okay, these people are going to starve. And so what is it about our lives that when we have everything we need to be happy, why is it that are still not?
• 3:46
  Speaker A: It's a very deep question, isn't it? I remember many years ago I was thinking about this exact thing because I, I had attained everything that I thought I wanted at that time in many, in physically speaking. And I remember walking on the beach and it was just pristine. It's pristine Hawaiian beach and just beautiful breeze and the ocean was just lovely and the sun was coming up. But internally I didn't feel happy. And I was thinking like, what is going on here exactly? And of course I know better because I know I'm a spiritual being and it's an inner game really. But I was just noticing this feeling of unhappiness or discontentment. And the only conclusion that I could come up with is that there must be some actual addiction to suffering. I'm actually addicted to suffering. So even though, even though, all the conditions are wonderful and even though I have spiritual knowledge and meditation practice, even then there was still an addiction to suffering. I think I've overcome that addiction to a large degree since then. Thank goodness.
• 5:02
  Speaker B: Thank goodness.
• 5:03
  Speaker A: Thank goodness. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. But I, but I remember at the time thinking this is a bizarre situation, just like noticing. So it's not like, I mean, some people, they actually don't have any idea about any of these spiritual things. They don't do meditation, they don't know anything. So that's a different problem. Like they need to be first of all educated and you know, initiated into higher level things.
• 5:27
  Speaker B: Everyone, right? Everyone.
• 5:29
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 5:30
  Speaker B: Not you. I'm not talking about you. Not.
• 5:33
  Speaker A: Well, I mean, I mean I have to study regularly to remind myself all these things, so. But it's interesting. Is it? So let's say someone does know about these things, right? And they're still suffering. Then what's going on with that.
• 5:49
  Speaker B: They haven't deeply accepted? You know, it's only on an intellectual level. The other thing I was thinking about last few days is not only why is everyone, why is even one person shouldn't be suffering really? Even one person. My compassion is going out to these people, right? I'm not talking about places where you have no control. You know, war is going on, this is going on. Okay, I get it. But let's take most of the world where war is not going on, right? In those places, like, why? And we can't say, oh, if this situation changes, then I'll be happy. If this happens, then I'll be happy. Because. No, you won't really, because you've really hardwired yourself to think differently than, you know, think in terms of suffering, something else will come up that's not right to your liking. Something else will come up. And nowadays I always feel, oh, if you, you know, especially people who have spiritual knowledge, right. I think when things really go wrong, what are you going to do if you're going to be so upset about it now? Right?
• 7:09
  Speaker A: Oh, my God. They. They didn't have my special oat milk at the store. It's just devastating.
• 7:14
  Speaker B: Right? Right. Or like my grade A maple syrup instead of grade B. Or I don't know what. What the deal with all the choices are. But anyway, so I feel that we are not experiencing. You asked why spiritual people, people who know their souls, who know all of why are they suffering, is because they're not experiencing. They are not experiencing their divine nature. That is the root of all things. Like, you know, in our last episode, we spoke about gratitude. I feel to be grateful you need to first understand you're a spiritual being and really be grateful for spiritual things right before you are grateful for physical things, spiritual things. And for this episode, I really feel to understand why you need not suffer is you have to understand your divine nature, right? Not only you're a soul, but as a soul, your love and your peace and, and your joy. And you're pure. And that is who you are. That's your original nature. And even if I know these things, but I'm not experiencing love, or I'm not experiencing peace or I'm not experiencing joy, Then there is suffering. And I feel this is double whammy, right? Suffering is double whammy because it's not only that you're suffering. Like, let's say some situation has happened and you're suffering because of that situation, but also you're not experiencing the highest qualities, right? It's like two things are happening. Or you could.
• 8:57
  Speaker A: And then you might feel bad about the fact that you're not feeling it as well.
• 9:00
  Speaker B: Then it's a third level.
• 9:03
  Speaker A: I should know. I know better. I know better. I should be feeling better about this and I'm not. So then it adds another layer, you know, and then, oh, I shouldn't feel bad that I'm not feeling bad. And then it just goes on and on. It's true. It's true. It has to Become an experience theory itself. Knowledge itself is just the first step. And it doesn't do us any good unless it goes into the feelings and into the experience. And to me, it seems like there's two fundamental things related to suffering. One is resistance increases the suffering. So if I don't like something and I resist the thing and I don't accept it the way it is, and I think it should be different and it should. It's wrong the way it is, then that initial suffering is now amplified proportionate to the amount of resistance that I have. And it can get out of hand. So it's something that's not even a big deal, can start to spin out of. Out of control and. And then that can take a while to reel it back in again.
• 10:07
  Speaker B: Right. You know, one of the things I really feel about being divine, right. Is that not only this deep acceptance that you're divine, but like each of the qualities, let's take peace, right? There is a way you can experience peace. There is like a method to experience peace and to experience sustainable peace, like inner peace. Not just the peace that you go for a walk and watch a sunset. Not that kind of peace, which is peaceful and which is nice, but really deep inner peace. There is a way. And so once you start experiencing these things, then you notice that the suffering actually is a messenger. It's giving you a message that you're not doing what you, who you are, you are not. It's a case of mistaken identity. And it's trying to tell you this is your true identity and you're not being in your true identity. But we forget that. We forget that it's giving me a message. Right? It's like the post, the post postman, post carrier. Right. Mail carrier. The mail carrier comes to give me a letter instead of me opening the letter and seeing what's in the letter. I'm busy getting worked up about the mail carrier.
• 11:46
  Speaker A: Right?
• 11:47
  Speaker B: Right.
• 11:48
  Speaker A: So I need gender neutral mail carrier.
• 11:51
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 11:52
  Speaker A: So no one gets upset.
• 11:53
  Speaker B: And then because they are both kinds of, you know, before they were maybe only postmen. Now they're postwoman till our male career is a post is a is lady. And so anyway, the. If I want to not suffer, right, I need to understand the message that suffering is giving me. And the message is not, oh, no pain, no gain, work harder. That's not the message. Pick the right, you know, you have to get the right. You have to be tuned in to get the right message. And I feel the fundamental message the most, the message that is, it's giving is that you are a divine being, and the more you stay out of your divinity, the more you don't accept it, the more you don't experience it, the more you're going to suffer.
• 12:54
  Speaker A: Mm. Yeah. So it's a very important thing to understand, isn't it, that any suffering is a messenger. And. And it's a good thing because if we didn't suffer, we wouldn't get the message. Like physical pain, for example. So, like, I was recently working on some hardcore AI, you know, marketing stuff that was really heavy duty, like mental and eye strain. So I'm looking at all these documents and my eyes were really hurting, and I'm like, oh, my God. Because it's like thousands of thousands of words and all this complicated stuff. So the pain, physical pain in my body is telling me, look, this has got out of hand. You need to look out into the mountains, into the sky and into the distance and take a break. This is not a good way of going about things. If I ignore that, it will just get worse and worse and worse and worse and worse, and the pain will keep going higher and higher and higher. So any kind of pain is a message, but a lot of the stuff at the root of it is that we've forgotten who we are and what's really life's all about.
• 14:03
  Speaker B: Absolutely. Life is a game. And you're divine.
• 14:06
  Speaker A: It's a game.
• 14:07
  Speaker B: You can make it. You can make it simple. We can actually finish the podcast. Your life is a game. You're divine. You accept no suffering. But deeply, you have to experience it. Deeply, you have to experience it.
• 14:20
  Speaker A: Yeah. So it's interesting to think about this. So any suffering that we have, there's the physical thing, like maybe eye strain or like you haven't eaten enough or you're thirsty or, you know, something went wrong in your life, whatever it is, right? There can be a mental, emotional, physical, financial relationship, pain, right? There's all these levels of pain, isn't it? Isn't it amazing how much pain there could be? Like there's long, long, long lists of different types of pain that we could potential, and each of them has a message connected to that pain, which might be a practical thing that we can do, but then if you go deeper, it all comes back down to being asleep. Spiritually.
• 15:02
  Speaker B: Some pain, maybe not. Michael. I had a friend who had cancer, and then it metastasized to the bone. Was very painful.
• 15:14
  Speaker A: I'm talking about suffering, though, isn't it? Pain and suffering is different. Like the body's definitely. If It's. We all have various situations that are very unpleasant, but there, even in that situation, there is some awareness. When we're aware of these deeper things, it gets less, doesn't it? The pain, the. Not necessarily the pain, but the. There's. It's like meaningful suffering, you know, rather than meaningless. It's a different feeling about it. I experienced this in different situations when I've been very, very sick and, and where, where I can actually reach a place where the pain hasn't gone away. But it doesn't seem as bad because I'm aware of myself as watching it.
• 16:17
  Speaker B: Yeah. Thankfully, in modern, you know, modern medicine really helps in some cases.
• 16:25
  Speaker A: Yeah. Hurry for morphine and whatever else if it comes to it, you know, so. But most of the time these, these various things that we're suffering from, there's some physical stuff, like serious cancer that's like a really extreme end of the spectrum which has to be treated respectfully and in the right way. And then there's all these other things that we're dealing with, less serious on a regular basis. A lot of the suffering is like comparing ourselves to other people, getting caught up in stuff, watching the news and getting worried about things that we can't change, you know, and all that sort of stuff, rather than stepping back and taking responsibility for our life and what we can.
• 17:12
  Speaker B: So what do you think about, like, let's say, relationships. I'm in a bad relationship or someone I loved is really broke my trust or something, and there's a lot of suffering. What do you say with that?
• 17:35
  Speaker A: Well, it comes back to whether we accept reality is trying to help us or not. Because in, in all these situations, there's hidden benefits, isn't there, if we're willing to find them. But if we're not willing to find them when we don't believe there is any benefit, then it's. Then it's just pain and more pain and more stress.
• 18:02
  Speaker B: Right.
• 18:03
  Speaker A: But like, I can say from my own experience with relationships that anytime I've had any issues, if I'm staying unconscious, then I blame the other person and. Or, you know, whatever, whatever. And there's all this story and all this stuff going on and it doesn't get anywhere. But if I am willing to, like, have a good look at myself and look at the situation clearly, then I can think, what's the message here? What is this trying to tell me? What do I need to learn? And for me personally in that situation, a lot of the time it's just learn to accept people are the way they are because once I can accept them as they are, then a lot of the stress just disappears because it's normally my resistance to and reaction against and trying to change the person and thinking they shouldn't be like that, they should be like this and why didn't they do this and why did they do this? So that's all my expectation. But if I say everyone's doing whatever they're doing, what am I going to do about it? What's my highest self respect and what do I need to change in myself then, then I feel fine, you know, then I can start doing something about it. Sometimes it's taken me a while to get to that point though.
• 19:22
  Speaker B: Perfectly honest, right. What I've noticed is let's say if I'm going through something physically, right, very challenging, like cancer or something like that, it took a while to understand the blessing. It took a while to understand what is the blessing in that situation. But most other times you can get what is the blessing in the situation sooner, right? And I feel if you not to suffer, right? Because there is a blessing in a situation, in any situation, anything life has to throw at you, they are hidden blessings. They're totally hidden blessings. And to find those hidden blessings, don't like start peeking at it and thinking, oh, where's the hidden blessing? You might not know what the hidden blessing is right now, but, but know that there is a hidden blessing and the blessing will come to you. So it took a while to see. I'd like look back in hindsight, oh, that was the blessing, right? Even in extreme things like cancer, that was the blessing. I knew what the blessing was not when I was going through it, but later I thought, oh, that was the blessing. And I feel that the suffering would have been much less if I just knew that there is a blessing. Don't worry about it. There is a blessing. And that you know that I will come out of it hundred times better than I when I went into it. And there is a blessing and there is much less suffering.
• 21:07
  Speaker A: Even if we don't know what it is. Just, just kind of coming into that feeling that there's definitely a blessing, blessing, blessing. This is, this is trying to help me somehow this situation. Because this is what I've noticed in myself is that the, the amount of resistance I have to whatever is going on leads to greater amounts of pain. And even if I don't know what it is that's going to be good about this situation, that doesn't seem to have anything good about it. If I Genuinely, genuinely, genuinely. Except that there has to be benefit. Then I start to feel better, even if nothing else changes, right? So, you know, that reduces the sorrow I feel.
• 21:56
  Speaker B: All of us, right, in the world, we are participating in shared reality. I'm here, everyone's here, and there is a shared tacit reality. I'm not even talking about, oh, I'm looking out and I see a tree, right? And you see a tree. And is that shared reality? Is that real or not? Of course there is a tree, and we all know there's a tree. But I'm talking about a much more subtle layer of shared reality where we accept certain tacit agreements about what is and what isn't. And one of the tacit agreements about life, right, that everyone seems to accept is no pain, no gain. You know, life is hard if you, you know, challenge, you know, difficulties are part of life, all of those things, right, you're given this, this kind of agreement that everyone agrees on. These are the things. But actually that's not true, right? Life is a game. That's the truth. So suffering that I have to suffer on some level is like a big lie. And life is a game. And I'm divine and I'm peace and I'm joy. That is my core nature. That is the truth. And so just because everyone is participating in this shared reality of life is suffering, that doesn't mean you need to do it.
• 23:47
  Speaker A: Exactly. And I'll give a story about this from someone. I'm going to try and keep this somewhat confidential, but basically it's a situation where somebody, someone died. And the person who died was actually a seriously problematic person who caused terrible sorrow to large numbers of other people, right? So was a real troublemaker. And the society we live in is programmed, everyone, that if someone dies, you should be grieving and be upset for a certain amount of time, you know, and in some cultures, they actually prescribe being sad for like a year, all right? Or morning. Like in Japan, they're supposed to spend a whole year in a different house and mourn for a year, right? And there might be even longer amounts in other cultures, I don't know. But. So there's. There's this expectation that you should be upset. And of course, if someone. If you love the person very much and you miss them, then you probably would be upset, right? And that's understandable. But in this case, it was actually a huge blessing that this person had died because now that person's not wrecking their life on a regular basis. And so I talked to someone and, and it was like how I said, how are you actually feeling about this situation? And oh, you know, I could tell there's a conflict between what society expected, oh, I should be so upset, and the actual feeling, which was, which was relief. You know, it was almost like coming out of jail. And so this person could have unnecessarily gone through a pretend grief experience for a certain amount of weeks or months or just, just accept the fact that there's no need for that.
• 25:37
  Speaker B: Right, right. Or when people say, don't talk ill of the dead. Right. Like, why not? No, we shouldn't talk ill of anyone living or dead. But why just didn't, why just dead people. We shouldn't talk a lot. Yes.
• 25:50
  Speaker A: Yeah. So a lot of this stuff is like culturally programmed sorrow that you, you have to suffer, you should be suffering, you know, if this thing happens. And there's even, even the words, you made me feel that you made me angry, you made me do this, you know, and so this is, this is like a massive cultural brainwashing going on on so many levels. These are just a couple examples. But we live in a world where we're expected to react and we're expected to get upset, we're expected to mourn and expected to do all these things. And if you don't, then you're actually considered a bad person who is somehow a bit off and guilt tripped into it to, to having to, you know, put on the show. And, and many, many, many businesses are relying on suffering and causing suffering, isn't it? If you think about it, yeah, it's.
• 26:46
  Speaker B: A good business model.
• 26:48
  Speaker A: It's a good business model. Keep everyone sick and make them compare themselves to everyone else and feel completely inadequate all the time, miserable, not good enough. And then buy a bunch of stuff because then hopefully you'll feel better. But that's not enough stuff because you always haven't got this new thing that's just come out because you're not good enough yet and you're inferior, so you better buy that thing as well. And so, so we live in a world that's just like constantly like promoting sorrow and then giving these little things that you can purchase to try and get out of it, but not really long enough to get another one. What a disaster.
• 27:25
  Speaker B: I know, right? Oh, like these tacit understandings we, we absorb from the society we are living in, we can break free and really break free. And break free doesn't mean that you just, often you go off into the. Somewhere else. But break free means that mentally you watch it as a detached observer, the whole thing, and you are free. And then you come back into it as a divine being and serve the people. Because everyone really is looking for someone to model good behavior, right? You could be in that situation, let's say this person died and you could be the person who's respectful about the death, not talking ill. You want to talk ill? You could, but let's say not talking ill, but you're respectful, but you keep your cool. So what you're doing is you're not leaving the situation, you're not going off and whatever, you know, you're not doing all of that, but you're being respectfully detached. And that is modeling good behavior for everyone. That person created havoc. They will also learn how to be respectfully detached.
• 29:00
  Speaker A: Yeah, these are totally different paradigm awareness practices because we do live in a very unhealthy, mad world that causes sorrow, promotes sorrow. And also the other side of the whole suffering situation is that we can get sympathy by being a victim and by suffering. So that's another reason that it can carry on for a long time. Because if I'm having a hard time and then I could gossip about about it with somebody else, oh, poor you, poor you, poor you. Then it has a whole conversation around it and why it's not my fault and why, you know, it's someone else's fault and why I'm such a, you know, having to put up with all this stuff and it just goes on and on and on and keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. So there's another way. We can just say, no, I've had enough of this. I need to take complete responsibility for my life, my mind, find the benefit in these situations, realize that I'm safe and secure because I'm a spiritual being.
• 30:06
  Speaker B: And realize I'm divine. I'm divine. That is the truth, right? There is no business model around you realizing your divine. There's a whole, you know, whole industry around your, you need to suffer. Is there an industry around you? You are divine now. So no one's going to promote that because you are divine. We are all divine. That is the truth. Suffering is a lie. The truth is your divine. It can't be, oh, I think I'm divine and then I go do something and then I self sabotage and do all the other things. No, it has you slowly start learning to live with your divinity.
• 30:58
  Speaker A: We have a taste, a taste for higher consciousness and then we don't like all that unnecessary sticky business. You know, I think in essence we have to make a decision that even though life was going to have pain in some form because we're in a body and there's probably things are going to happen, but we don't have to amplify that pain by our reaction and our resistance and our negative thinking around it, that that's really the choice. We're not saying that there's never going to be any issues that come up in your life because that's absurd. Life, life's going to definitely throw things at us. One of the things I thought was funny in these spiritual teachings that we learned from Raj Yoga is that Maya, negativity and challenges are definitely going to come to everybody. Right?
• 31:54
  Speaker B: Right.
• 31:54
  Speaker A: So not is it like may they come, Maybe they know we are guaranteed, guaranteed to have things come to us in our life, guaranteed. So that's, that's like definitely potential for suffering is going to come to all of us. So once you accept that, then you know what kind of situation we're in. Right? We're guaranteed. Then the only question is, well, how am I going to deal with it when it does come? Is my reaction. I'm a victim, it's not my fault. Blaming, complaining, reacting, stressing, having gossip conversations about how awful it is. Or am I going to say I'm a spiritual being and I'm, I'm okay, I'm a divine being and what am I going to do about this and how is this beneficial for me? Why does this come and what can I learn from it? How is this good for me in some way? And my personal feeling is the faster I can get to that, the better it is because I get regular challenges in various ways and situations in my life and people and situations that I don't particularly want to happen. And what I can say, the progress I've made personally is that the amount of time it's taking me nowadays to, to think what is the benefit has reduced. So in the past something bad would happen. So called bad. And I would say, oh, this is terrible. Oh, how could this happen? Oh my God. Right? And I'd be going on and on and on about it in my head for quite some time. And, and then after I'd suffered enough, I'd say, okay, there must be benefit in this. And I try and do, you know, it's. And so, and now I'm like, as soon as something happens, I'm almost immediately. But sometimes it might be like a few minutes or even hours and sometimes it might be a couple days. But like, where's the benefit? Where's the benefit must be benefit. And that gap, I might not even find the benefit right away, but the gap has been reduced. And ultimately, at the highest level, we constantly are looking for the benefit all the time in the moment, again and again and again and again and again. And the benefit might just be, let me do deeper practices that might be the benefit. There's no other benefit, but let me at least wake up to who I am and that's enough. So. Freedom, freedom, freedom.
• 34:28
  Speaker B: Also, you know what the moral of this episode, if you want to talk you love the dead, go ahead there.
• 34:40
  Speaker A: You, you can talk to ill of the dead if you want. It doesn't matter if you're going to talk ill of the dead, you can talk ill of the living as well. But it's up to you what you do.
• 34:53
  Speaker B: Right? You have our permission to do so. Yeah, maybe not Michael's permission.
• 34:59
  Speaker A: You don't have my portion, but you have Shereen's portion if you have to. But, but you know, in this situation, like this person who, who died was for years and years and years causing terrible, terrible sorry to large numbers of people. So if, if something awful, if something awful in your life is removed, then it's time to celebrate, not to grieve.
• 35:27
  Speaker B: Absolutely.
• 35:32
  Speaker A: So anyway, let's have a blessing.
• 35:36
  Speaker B: All right. Introversion.
• 35:40
  Speaker A: Introversion.
• 35:42
  Speaker B: You've cultivated one of life's greatest gifts, the ability to relish your own company. Your inner landscape, rich with beautiful thoughts, brings you joy. Your peace radiates from within, showing you've truly learned to appreciate yourself.
• 36:07
  Speaker A: Read it again. Let's have another round.
• 36:09
  Speaker B: You've cultivated one of life's greatest gifts, the ability to relish your own company. Your inner landscape, rich with beautiful thoughts, brings you joy. Your peace radiates from within, showing you've truly learned to appreciate yourself.
• 36:31
  Speaker A: That's lovely. So thank you for being here. Thank you, Shereen, for your wonderful presence.
• 36:40
  Speaker B: Thank you, everyone.
• 36:41
  Speaker A: Be happy. And we, as always, we have all these free meditations and books and trainings and lots of great stuff that has taken us years to put together. So you might as well check it all out. There's a link. It's all free, free just for you, from our hearts. So there's links below these episodes. Check it all out and may you be free of suffering and have a wonderful life. Talk to you soon.
• 37:07
  Speaker B: Thank you.