Why Must We Suffer - Shamala Tan, Spiritual Coach/Healer

The very first thing we must get right within our own mindsets when we are suffering is that it is not personal. I know, this sounds oxymoronic, because the experience of suffering is really so personal!

We feel so attacked by life, by people, by circumstances and everything around us. 

Why do I say not to take it personally? We suffer to acknowledge several things -- to acknowledge our humane-ness with the rest of the human race, and to develop the ultimate superpower of compassion. 

For many, when they view this and perceive this from the ego-mind, they see the quality of compassion as a weakness.  I don't blame them, because if they have not perceived compassion and doesn't understand compassion, they will get caught in the vicious cycle of life of suffering. And compassion feels like the very last thing available.

Yet, suffering is life's way to get us to experience humanity in humane ways, and then ultimately compassion. 

Suffering is a state of mind, and not what is happening to us. We can have everything we want in life, but if we are suffering in our minds, our emotions, all these material things have little power to get us out of suffering. 

So why do we need to develop this humane bit and then compassion?

As much as we would like to believe that we can thrive well alone, the human race is meant to function as a collective. We do have the hive DNA encoded within us. Everything we do, if done in groups or in a hive have significantly more power. We go further, always, as a collective. 

In order for the collective to work well together, and to synergize, we must have the ability to empathise and in the higher sense, as we evolve have compassion for each other.

Compassion to me is a higher vibrational frequency of understanding and it is embedded in our cells, our emotions, our beingness. Only when we have experienced life and related to another person with the same kind of connectedness and treated them with the humane touch that we can earn this ability to have compassion. 

Empathy is one step before compassion. We can all start with empathy, which is usually in our feeling nature. 

I once dated a low-level narcissist, who insisted that I cannot understand how he felt. Even though I felt his suffering in the very core of my being, in my cells, in my body and in my chakras. And when I said that I understand and know how he felt, he insisted that I do not. Why did he insist that I do not understand, it's simple: it is because he has never experienced the level of empathy in his life for someone else, the way I have experienced it. This was in truth an incredible opportunity for him to turn things around, to develop an open heart, to develop humane-ness in his humanity, and he would see and realise that his suffering will cease because of this. BUT because he is a low-level narcissist, he was not able to get out of his own self-focused perspective of his suffering and that opportunity to go deeper and fuller as a person was lost. 

I, in turn, suffered in this experience too, because I have never felt so lonely in that relationship where there is no human-ness connection and inevitably the relationship had to end. 

I share this experience because all of us have had opportunities like what I described above where we have been given opportunities again and again in life, to connect much deeper within ourselves to experience our suffering differently. To turn things around and realise that the very thing we feel victimised by is the very thing that can free us. But when we get so caught up in our suffering, feeling like our suffering is unique to us, that we are special and the only ones suffering this way, and absolutely no one can experience it the way we do, we will hang on to suffering even at the cost of freedom. Because our ego mind wants us to feel special. 

Isn't that interesting? How we sabotage ourselves over and over again, suffering in the process. 

So in your suffering, whenever you start to feel alone and that no one else understands you, have the awareness to know that you are trapped in your own ego-mind. And that you must find the strength to reach out and get out of the self-created hole and prison, only then will your suffering cease. Your suffering is a wake-up call to connect back with the hive, where your burden will ease. 

I hope the opportunities presented in your life will help you to develop the ultimate superpower of compassion.

(I will share about the energies and vibration of compassion in next week's article.)

©2021 Shamala Tan

Let me know how I can assist you if you have any questions [email protected]
Shamala Tan is an author, spiritual entrepreneur and healer. Her work focuses on transforming the lives of others on the spiritual, emotional, mental and earthly level.

One of her success stories as an author is to being featured alongside New York’s bestsellers Sonia Choquette, Robert Allen, Arielle Ford, Marci Shimoff as well as Christine Kloser in the book Pebbles In The Pond.

Shamala’s clients include small business owners, holistic practitioners as well as those seeking to find more significant meaning and value in life. Shamala offers laser coaching to her clients on a one-to-one basis or in a group environment, offline as well as online.