God is here, suffering with us now

Transcending ourselves in pain

Oct 20, 2023

A Money and Money reader (thank you, Barbara) sent me this documentary a couple weeks ago. The subject of the film, a recluse living in Hawaii after a career in physics, Michael dispenses spiritual wisdom like:

"What the whole culture needs right now is how to find wealth without needing to exploit everything."

But what caught my ear was at 14:17, where Michael talks about swimming into and being stung by a legion of highly venomous Portuguese Man o’ Wars.

Michael says he was able to survive because something opened in him and he could feel his pain as a portal to all the people in the world who had ever been tortured, to all the suffering of people and other beings. In other words, in his pain, he was able to transcend his ego and find compassion (compati- to suffer with) for everything and everyone who has ever hurt.

In another part of the documentary, Michael says:

“There is two strains of spirituality. One of them is loving everything that is beautiful and positive. But the other one is in transcending that and seeing everything as beautiful and positive”

I believe that is true. And it’s hard to accept. With that has happened in Israel and Gaza, it’s been hard for me to think about anything else these past two weeks; indeed it feels unfair to think about anything else. All the people being tortured. All the suffering of people and other beings that has happened. All the suffering that is going to happen.

Years ago, my spiritual director Jack Kennedy told me a story when I was going through a difficult time. He told me about another one of his other directees, who had something unspeakable happen to her. In session with him, she asked, in her agony: “Where was God when that was happening? Where was he?”

Jack said he sat with her in silence and with her grief. After a while, he said what I think in retrospect the truest and wisest thing he could have said: “I don’t know.”

He said, “I don’t know, but I think he was there with you, suffering too. And he is here, suffering with you now.”

Buddhist teacher Tara Brach writes about her deep despair after a painful breakup. The entire essay is worth reading for anyone who has suffered (i.e. all of us) but here is a snippet:

Even though it seemed like just another idealistic notion, I remembered that at times in my Buddhist practice, I had experienced suffering as the gateway to awakening the heart. I remembered that when I had remained present with pain in the past, something had indeed changed—I opened to a more spacious and kind awareness. Suddenly I realized that maybe this situation was about really trusting suffering as the gateway. Maybe that was the whole point—I needed to stop fighting my grief and loneliness, no matter how horrible I was feeling or for how long it continued. Only by experiencing the pain fully could I deliver “these fragments, my life” into Kwan Yin’s boundless compassion.
I recalled the bodhisattva’s aspiration: “May this suffering serve to awaken compassion.”
…
The more fully we touch our pain and longing, the more fully we are released into boundless, compassionate presence. Resisting pain only serves to solidify the notion that “I” am suffering. When we perceive pain simply as pain, rather than “my pain,” and hold it tenderly; we are no longer the beleaguered, suffering self. The fear, shame, grief and longing no longer feel like a mistake or an oppressive burden. We can begin to see their universal nature: this is not my grief, it is not my fear, it is not my longing. It is part of the human experience and being willing to hold it tenderly is the doorway to compassion.
A beautiful Sufi teaching shows us how our pain is not personal, it is an intrinsic part of being alive:
Overcome any bitterness that may have come
because you were not up to the magnitude of the pain
that was entrusted to you.
Like the Mother of the World,
Who carries the pain of the world in her heart,
Each one of us is part of her heart,
And therefore endowed
With a certain measure of cosmic pain.
Our sadness, fear and longing are universal expressions of suffering that are “entrusted to us,” and they can be prayerfully dedicated to the awakening and freedom of our hearts. May this suffering awaken compassion. May this suffering awaken compassion.

The more fully we touch our pain and longing, the more fully we are released into boundless, compassionate presence. Yet in modern life, we spend so much time, money, and psychic effort avoiding our pain. Buttressing our defenses from it. This is the ego. But to accept the cosmic pain entrusted to us is to open ourselves up to God.

Don’t run away.

Where is God now, with everything happening in Israel and Gaza? I don’t know. My hope is that God, or Spirit, Kuan Yin, Mother of the World, or whatever holy name you find most resonant, is here, witnessing and suffering with us now. But my hope is that we can open ourselves and suffer with everyone in the last two weeks and in the weeks that will unfold ahead. We have to suffer with. Don’t run away. That is our spiritual task. As readers know, I believe that heaven isn’t out there, it’s a place we build here by how we treat each other (including with our money). But so is hell.

In God’s compassion, in our compassion, may we transcend ourselves.

Perhaps it’s the only way.