God's got some 'splainin' to do
Spoiler alert: You won't like the answers
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"When I get to see God face-to-face, I have a lot of questions," a friend of mine remarked the other day. Those questions all revolved around the issue of human suffering – why God allows it and why God won't stop it.
I admit, I've had the same thought that God's got a lot of 'splainin' to do when I leave this bodily world and no longer see through a glass darkly. There are those who have tried to answer this question about suffering and why it happens to us. The Buddha, of course, concluded that all of life is suffering. If you're here, incarnated in a body, get ready, suffering is on its way. The only way to avoid it is to rid yourself of desire. Or, as A Course in Miracles puts it in Chapter 16 (There is no evidence that Rumi ever said this, despite the Internet's insistence): "Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it."
Hindu guru Paramhansa Yogananda speaks of life as a play, with God as the playwright. Kriyananda writes in The Essence of the Bhagavad Gita: "A playwright knows that actors portraying both good and evil are necessary in his story." Without the presence of what teacher Asha Nayaswami calls, "God's rowdy children," a play would be terribly boring. We're in this world to learn lessons – to heal any karma we've created in this life or from prior ones (if you're given to believing in reincarnation). Either way, this life is our classroom and the world around us merely the scene and stage on which we act out our lessons.
God creates characters that appear both good and evil in this play of life and as Kriyananda explains, God knows that a good villain "will only make the conclusion of the story more beautiful." On our stage right now are some incredibly convincing villains, who have struck fear in our hearts. As Yogananda once said, "The villain is needed in a play, to make us love the hero." (Which is to say – to help us reject the ego as our driving force and instead seek to connect with our higher, Divine Self.) Villainy, though, is needed, even within our own hearts, Kriyananda adds, "to bring one to the point where he realizes that doing harm to others never succeeded in bringing him happiness; nor was there any real fulfillment for him until he'd learned to offer up his ego to a more expanded peace and harmony." (p. 117)
Truly, I hope that this is what is happening within the hearts and minds of God's rowdy children that we consider villainous in our own time. They, hopefully, are learning that their creation of suffering for others – and in turn, for themselves – in this world will never lead to their ultimate happiness, even as they play their villainous parts well in this lifetime.
I doubt this explanation for suffering would satisfy my friend. There is another answer, as Kriyananda writes: "The little child cannot know why the [parent] must leave home daily to work. He has yet to achieve an adult point of view." Indeed, our childish, egoic thoughts are nothing like God's, so understanding the Universe's idea of how things should be is beyond us.
Still another answer is given this way by Kriyananda: "The scriptures say that God created the universe 'in order to enjoy Himself through many.' Certainly, the Lord does not enjoy the fact that His creatures suffer! His enjoyment, then, must come (outwardly) from seeing every story come at last to a happy ending as His human creatures attain final release, one by one, from ego limitation in infinite bliss. He wants us to merge back eventually into his ocean of Satchidananda" (which is "ever-existing, ever-conscious, ever-new Bliss"). (p. 204)
Honestly, I doubt any of these explanations would satisfy my friend but as my momma always said, "Life isn't fair." The reality is, we've chosen this time and place as our classroom – even if we don't fully understand how all this works. Asking why all the suffering around us happens and persists is to miss the point of being here. Should we work to alleviate suffering? Of course, but we should only do that in ways that are truly effective – by going within first and learning our own lessons, dispelling our own karma. It is only the self-realized person who first alleviates their own root of suffering that can truly help others ease – indeed to be free – from their suffering.
That isn't a satisfactory answer either. Here's the thing, though; there never will be a satisfactory answer. The ego makes sure of that. If the ego can keep us worrying about suffering – that is to say, if the ego can keep us suffering – then we'll always be too busy suffering to find the cure. We think the advice to go within is an instruction to withdraw from the world, to be indifferent to suffering.
On the contrary, going within is the only way to be free from suffering. Because if you free yourself from suffering in the only world you CAN control (the one within), then you end suffering without, because if no one suffers within then there will be no suffering to project onto the world.
The ego KNOWS this is true, which is why it will never ever accept a spiritual solution to what it insists is a bodily problem. This is the truth of the matter: We are all energy. Therefore, suffering is created whenever we use our lifeforce – our energy – to worry, to be selfish, to be greedy, to blame others for our perceived problems or shortcomings. We project that inner disturbance outward, and we produce suffering all around us.
On some level, we all know that going within is the only acceptable answer, but we love the ego's world so much. It's so much easier to blame others for the suffering we see. It's easier to seek to dethrone despots and wage war on "those evil people" we see around us than it is to fight the battle against the ego within or own heart and mind. The truth is that the inner battlefield frightens us more than actually taking up arms against our bodily neighbors.
This is why saying, "The only way to gain freedom from suffering in the world is to end it within first," is not a satisfactory answer. We, like Arjuna, in the Bhagavad Gita, who faced a battle against his kinsfolk, are loathe to fight the inner battle. We love our ego (it is, after all, an integral part of us) and though it is the source of our suffering, conquering it feels cruel, because it is a part of our inner family.
How, then, do we defeat the armies of egoic suffering within ourselves? We stop listening to the voice for the ego that demands God explain why the world is such a terrible place. Instead, we listen to what A Course tells us in Chapter 5 is the Call for Joy that we all have within us. A Course explains that when the ego was created (it came to be when our higher divine Self entered the body, and it allows us to exist in this bodily world), God planted within it a Call for Joy. This Call for Joy is the same as that ocean of Satchidananda – that "ever-existing, ever-conscious, ever-new Bliss" – that the Holy wants us to merge back into.
When we listen only to this Call for Joy, A Course says, "the ego always dissolves at its sound."
This inner battle with our ego does not have to be won by doing violence to ourselves – by using the force of our will to overcome bad habits or our selfish or hateful thoughts or actions. Instead, all we must do is listen for the Call for Joy, to hear it instruct us on how to remove the barriers to Love that keep us locked in ego consciousness.
How do we do that? It's a matter of devotion, according to A Course as well as the Gita. Right now, I would say the majority of us are devoted to the needs and desires of our ego. We seek self-satisfaction in things of this world be they possessions, power, wealth, respect, or a good reputation. Everything in life is transactional, as the ego seeks its next brief hit of happiness before moving on to the next scheme.
If we shift our devotion, however, away from ego and to the Spirit, we can begin to remove those barriers that bind us to egoic fear and let Love prevail instead. How? By becoming what A Course calls, "wholly helpful."
As Kriyananda puts it, when we embark on a spiritual path, it "imposes also the broader responsibility of helping others spiritually: One should not live for himself alone." (p. 206)
I'm reminded of the Netflix series, "New Amsterdam," a hospital drama where the new medical director is seen as unorthodox – dangerous even – because his guiding principle is one question: "How can I help?" Indeed, some of his ways of insisting on helping seemed to create more chaos and suffering than his solutions alleviated. That fact holds a lesson we would do well to learn.
Asha Nayaswami, in one of her talks, describes how she inserted herself into the lives of her aging parents with the good intentions of helping them as they faced mental and physical decline. Eventually, she realized that her "help" wasn't helpful at all. Instead, she was preventing them from doing the necessary work in this classroom of life to heal their own karma.
This is the lesson she learned: If we take over for someone and prevent them from suffering, are we helping them? If karma is an unlearned lesson and life is bringing a lesson to someone and we interrupt it, are we really helping? We're all here to repair our karma, to learn lessons so we don't have to repeat them.
Often, in attempting to "help," we may be interfering with a lesson that needs to be learned so someone else's karma can be healed. It doesn't mean we don't seek to help, but we must allow people to go through the lessons they need to learn. Perhaps a key to understanding when it's appropriate to help is to ask ourselves if we're stepping in and taking over for someone who has not sought our help, or if we're responding to a true call for help. Commandeering another person's life (even if they allow you to do it), is probably the big red flag that you're interfering with a valuable lesson they need to learn.
As Asha explains: "If the result of this suffering is that this person will come to know a freedom and a power and a happiness that they would never be able to reach if they didn't face into this karma, accept what they have to learn and learn it, would you want them not to have that opportunity to learn?"
This way of living would definitely not satisfy my friend's search for an explanation for suffering. I can hear her protest: "If we can prevent suffering, isn't that what we're to do?" Maybe, maybe not. We cannot end all suffering in the world (unless, of course, all of us end it within first, but that will obviously take time and devotion). Maybe being "wholly helpful" simply means that we be there to support others, to be with them as they endure their hardships, to hold space for them. But we should not attempt to prevent them from going through the lesson – the suffering they must face – because we may be hindering them from healing that karmic wound once and for all.
This is a difficult lesson, but one we must all learn. Suffering happens, and we can do little to stop it unless we are willing to do our inner work – to fight that inner battle with our own egoic forces by hearing only the Call for Joy. It is that call that gives us the strength to fight the ego and the wisdom to know how to be wholly helpful to others around us while not hindering their spiritual growth through the lessons they're here to learn.
This is a delicate practice, but we can only be wholly helpful to others when we have been wholly helped ourselves by going within and becoming devoted to listening only to the Call for Joy. The wisdom of discernment only comes through our deep inner work. Asha would not have realized how much she was harming her parents by trying to take over their lives if she had not been doing that inner work of listening only to the Call for Joy.
"The world is very tired," A Course reminds us in Chapter 5, "because [this world] is the idea of weariness. Our task is the joyous one of waking it to the Call for [Joy]. […] What better vocation could there be?"
This is our job, then, our role in this play of life, says author and teacher Michael Singer: "Your consciousness has a part to play in this universe. But it's not to get what you want. It's just to sit there and say, 'How can I help? How can I serve the moments unfolding in front of me?'"
Every moment needs us, Singer says, to leave it better than when we found it by hearing the Call for Joy within in. "If every single person," he says, "brought their love, their beauty and their openness to the moment unfolding in front of you, you'd be beyond heaven."
This, then, is how we alleviate suffering, by accepting our role in this play of life to always be "wholly helpful" in each moment, answering the Call for Joy, and not interfering with the lessons of others, but being that presence of Love as they attend to their own healing. However, if all of those explanations of suffering still leave you unsatisfied, then maybe Swami Sri Yukteswar's answer can help. He said of suffering: "Leave a few questions to be answered by the Divine."
So, perhaps my friend is right that the only time we'll get a satisfying answer to the question of suffering is when we see the Holy face to face.
But if we spend our time now, here in this bodily world, listening to the Call for Joy that teaches us how to be wholly helpful in each moment, alleviating the suffering we're called to alleviate, and holding space while others work out their own karma, I suspect we'll already know the answer.
Music for the Journey:
“The Play” - Peter Mayer
And when I think of all the roles in this production, all I know
Is I'm in the cast, but could it be, I'm also in a front row seat
To sit in my amazement, gazing, to ooh and ahh and sigh and say
My, what a wonderful playUpcoming Speaking Gigs:
September 1, 2024: Clayton Memorial Unitarian Universalist Church - Newberry, SC (in-person only)
Past Guest Speaking Gigs:
This is the sermon I delivered at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Charleston on June 23, 2024, entitled, “Pink Paradise: How Barbie Can Renew Our Hope for the Future.” (Beth and I perform my song “Native Word” following the sermon.)
Looking for a guest speaker at your spiritual community? Contact me!
About the Motley Mystic:
The Motley Mystic is an online community for people who have realized that the truth speaks with many voices. There is no one religion, philosophy, institution, or dogma that captures the whole Truth and nothing but the Truth. No one needs to swear allegiance to one line of thought or belief to discern Truth, because Love is the only thing that’s real. That’s what we explore at the Motley Mystic - all the tools and strategies we need to remove our barriers to Love and live fully as our true Divine Self.
Candace Chellew is the founder of Motley Mystic as well as Jubilee! Circle, an interfaith spiritual community in Columbia, S.C. She is also the author of Bulletproof Faith: A Spiritual Survival Guide for Gay and Lesbian Christians published in 2008 by Jossey-Bass and the founder and senior editor emeritus of Whosoever: An Online Magazine for LGBTQ People of Faith. She is also a musician and avid animal lover.