Crossing the Abyss: Pain & Suffering

I want to share a realization I had when I was quite young.

For a long time, I was doing everything in my power to bring as much happiness, joy, and peace into my life as possible. I focused heavily on what we would call positive emotions. But what I didn't realize at the time was that by doing this, I was subconsciously turning away from pain, suffering, sadness, and despair. I avoided them. I blocked them out. I tried to experience them as little as possible.

Paradoxically, the more I tried to avoid these emotions, the greater their effect on me became.

Eventually, this avoidance led me into what I refer to as my dark night of the soul, a period that many young men encounter on their own version of the hero's journey. It was in that deepest, darkest place that I had a realization that changed everything: if I changed my perception of pain and suffering, they would lose their power over me.

Instead of fighting pain and suffering, I began to approach them differently. I started talking to my shadow, to what some might call the devil within. I chose to stop pushing that darkness away and instead began to love it.

The reason I did this is simple: the darkness is just as much a part of me as the light. I cannot remove a part of myself from my own foundation without weakening it. So when I noticed situations ahead of me that would clearly involve pain or suffering, I had a small internal conversation. I would say:

"I see the order for pain and suffering. I'll take two, please. And thank you."

Over time, as I truly began to believe this, something remarkable happened. The pain and suffering that once felt unbearable no longer held the same power over me. Not because they disappeared, but because I stopped resisting them. I no longer felt their full force, because I wasn't bracing against them. In some strange way, I even began to look forward to them.

I realized that pain, suffering, and despair are just as important as any other human emotion. Without them, we would never fully develop our consciousness. We would never become fully developed human beings.

Growth doesn't come from comfort. Growth comes from moving through difficulty.

I eventually discovered that my relationship with fear followed almost the exact same pattern.

I lived with a constant sense of fear... fear that the world would end, fear that something would go wrong, fear that when something did go wrong, I wouldn't be able to handle it. At the core of it all was a deep fear of losing everything and being forced back to zero.

That fear had power over me, until I decided to step directly into it.

When I finally did, I realized something surprising: what I was afraid of didn't actually exist in the present moment. The potential reality I feared might exist someday, but right now, the only thing I was afraid of was fear itself.

Fear is a mile wide, but only an inch deep. You don't truly understand that until you take the first step into the abyss... into the unknown...and realize that you are still standing.

There's a phrase repeated many times in the Bible (they say 365 times): "Do not be afraid." I believe it appears so often because, at the deepest level, we truly have nothing to fear.

Every experience we go through in this life is placed in our path for a reason. Whether you see that as divine, psychological, or simply part of being human, the result is the same: all experiences grow us. Especially pain and suffering, and especially the act of overcoming them.

This brings me to a principle from the Kybalion — the first of the seven Hermetic principles:

"The All is Mind. The Universe is Mental."

This principle ties directly into everything I've shared. When I found myself in deep despair, overwhelmed by thoughts and emotions that felt unbearably heavy, I didn't escape by denying them. I escaped by changing my internal state.

By consciously introducing courage, willingness, and acceptance, positive states of being. I was able to transmute the experience itself. Just like magnetism or electricity, these forces pulled my consciousness out of a negative pattern and into a new one.

Pain didn't disappear. But it no longer defined me.

What I've discovered through lived experience is this: by changing our perception of pain and suffering, by understanding why they happen and how we respond to them, we can move through even the darkest circumstances and come out the other side transformed.

Just like everything else in life, this too shall pass.

Pain and suffering are not punishments. They are invitations, opportunities to find meaning, growth, and depth in this existence.

Even when it doesn't feel like it in the moment, it's happening for you.

I love you.