There were
times when suffering was considered good because it served a higher purpose,
later heavenly happiness. From another perspective, it would be a more comprehensive happiness because it
would last much longer. Not illogical, just one-track.
For behind
the perceived disharmony of suffering there are also immediate harmonies: Beneath sorrow lies love, financial narrowness
cries out for spiritual agility, and in sickness there is the silence to
recognize new things. It is only when we do not want to admit it, when we deny
the higher harmony of the whole, that we are seized by despair.
This does
not mean that we would not suffer otherwise. Suffering is real. But behind it
is now the comforting ocean of the larger context in which everything makes
sense, even if we do not (yet) fully understand it. If we did, we would even
consider it possible that we voluntarily created such a painful experience in
order to understand a higher value.
What does
"higher value" mean here? On the one hand, there is inner value, when
we realize that we need to reorient ourselves spiritually and mentally, and
that this serves the development of our true, more comprehensive self. On the
other hand, there is value to others, whose interrelationship with us enters
into our self-definition and from which we derive our individual values.
Although the conscious community is
rather shallow compared to the whole
movement that fills our awareness, the inner values are individualized social values because they arise from
the unlimited interweaving of the subconscious.
That's why
we almost all understand – but in individual ways – what love is, or
compassion. Or the pursuit of excellence. And we feel that fear and anger also
serve a higher purpose as long as we do not separate them from it. Once we
realize that, we experience them as less unpleasant. We can accept, understand and release fear. We
can transform excess anger into creativity.
Many people
accept a lack of happiness and even suffering in order to realize a higher
ideal, even on a small scale. Even if it is only an impulse that is difficult
to describe and promises little joy in the future. But only if they feel the meaning. Meaning, then, is the feeling
of value fulfillment.
Happiness
comes when we are also in harmony on
the surface – with people, ideas, nature, ourselves. A deeper truth, however,
is a higher harmony because it
connects many more perspectives in the background. It takes little account of
our superficial feelings. However, it brings a sense of value fulfillment when
we engage with it. And so it is
always meaningful.
Of course,
one could say that the meaning of life is above all experience. In the broadest
sense. Or that everything is perfect by nature. In the highest sense. That
can't be wrong if you look at it from an awareness of divine abundance, which
enriches itself with everything possible by multiplying itself. It is also the
ultimate consolation when nothing else meaningful seems to surround us.
Here and now, however, we
may wish for a little more "intervention" from above, a superficial
harmony. We ourselves are creatures of higher perfection and can therefore
creatively strive for our own well-being. But as soon as we renounce the value fulfillment for the
sake of superficial happiness, we rob happiness of its foundation. And we do
this now, even if we do not feel it clearly
until later.
This text is an excerpt from the book
Truthfulness. The Consciousness that Creates Reality
