I say often that thinking is the cause for all emotional suffering. To state it even more accurately, it is an absolute association with thinking that causes suffering.
The process of suffering works this way: A thought comes up — sometimes the thought is triggered by an external event, sometimes it comes from nothing at all in particular — and the thought says, essentially, that things are bad. The person experiencing the thought wholly identifies with it, in other words considers it to be coming from “me”, and accepts the thought as accurate.
A source that one considers both legitimate and absolutely credible states that things are bad. So, things are bad. It’s a natural response that suffering would follow from this.
But there’s a problem with logic happening here. Thought is not actually a product of “me” — it is a product of the ego. And the ego is not an accurate representation of “me”. The ego is an aspect of the self, but it is a small and dysfunctional and toxic aspect, and also completely unnecessary.
The ego is a creation of the advanced human intellect, which was too advanced for its own good and so believed itself to be independent and apart from the collective being. The ego was born from this misguided notion, something that would speak and act to the idea of being separate from all else, and would compare against so-called others as better or less.
In truth there is one self, one enlightened consciousness, that creates forms of itself to go forward and experience being conscious. From their advanced intellect, humans have the capacity to be aware of being conscious. Other forms are simply conscious and lack the capacity to be aware of it. They just are.
Humans can know that they are.
But this advanced capacity, so that consciousness can be known, has been enormously misused by humans. They are now the least aware forms of existence. The majority of them trudge through the life experience, completely run by their ego and so stuck in suffering themselves or causing suffering for others.
Wanting is an indication of this.
Humans as a whole want enormously. They want this or that, and much of what this or that is relates to materialism (with perfect physical capacity being close behind). But to want is, on its face, an indication of being incomplete. It is dissatisfaction. I would argue that dissatisfaction itself is suffering, but there can be no argument that it is a doorway to suffering.
Even people who have enormous amounts of material goods or have optimal physical capacity want… what they want is more. With so much wanting among them, can it be realistically denied that humans are — generally speaking — in a suffering state? But why do humans suffer? Perhaps they suffer because they really don’t have enough.
No. As I’ve said, people who have enormous amounts continue to want. Think of your favorite celebrity millionaire. Are they operating from an entirely satisfied state of being?
Certainly not. It cannot be so then that having enough inherently eliminates suffering.
Humans do not suffer because of external events — such as not having enough — they suffer internally. They suffer because the ego, product of the advanced human capacity, has come between them and the genuine reason for advanced human capacity: to know the state of consciousness.
Know consciousness — as it was given by enlightened consciousness, also referred to as God — and suffering genuinely stops.
How to know consciousness? End the ego’s primary method of operation.
Thinking.
