Why is there so much suffering?

WHY'S THERE SO MUCH SUFFERING?

AND WHO'S TO BLAME FOR IT?

...and if there is a God why does He let it happen?!

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What if everything happens for a reason?

Mark Anders in 'Conversations With Naboth' provides the following summary:

Nothing is coincidence.

All-That-Is, or Consciousness, is in a perpetual state of balance. Homoeostasis is achieved by the constant exchange and balancing of energy created by every living and non-living thing.

With regard to human beings, every thought, action and deed contributes energy to the balance of the All That Is.
Our subconscious steers us through our life by putting us in the right place, at the right time, to do the right thing, to create the right energy, to create the right balance. All the things that we do are necessary to All That Is, or we wouldn’t do them.
Sneezing, coughing, laughing, eating, sleeping, watching TV, running a marathon, running a bath, scratching an itch, saying something nice, saying something horrible, making things, breaking things, behaving well, behaving badly, winning, losing, living in peace, living in war, Fighting for freedom, fighting to enslave. All are absolutely necessary to create the appropriate energy, and all happen for a reason.
The reason is Balance.
We all react in ways which are individual to ourselves. To see someone starving may create sorrow, anger, or indifference. All these emotional energies are needed, as well as the energy of the person who is starving.
This is perhaps the hardest truth to accept, but that energy itself is appropriate and needed. Bearing that in mind, we ‘choose’ the life we are going to live, an overview that we appear to lose conscious awareness of once we are here.

(Conversations With Naboth: A summary by Mark Anders. 2012)

WHAT ABOUT FREE WILL?
That ‘everything happens for a reason’ seems, at first reading, to be fatalistic - do we have any choice in the matter? If it’s all done-up and dusted then aren’t we just zombies at the mercy of our sub-conscious?
In the quote above Naboth claims we choose the life we’re going to live, so, I guess, free-will is a concept we have to imagine as being multi-dimensional where some choices can be conscious but others will be taken, not only at deep levels of our unconscious, but also before our consciousness focused in this present dimension. Certainly our scope for choice is broadened when we are aware of our thoughts and feelings, and also with self-knowledge we become adept at directing our Will to Power constructively.

‘You must be the change you wish to see in the world. If you want to stop terrible things happening in the world first stop them in yourself. If you want peace and joy then find them in yourself’.

The implication of Gandhi’s message is that you’re already effecting the world - it’s just that you could also be in control of the way you effect it. He’s also implying that you and the world are undivided. If we agree that consciousness is the ground of all being then we must conclude that mind and matter are two faces of the same coin. Out of consciousness you create your personal reality, so: Your body is your personal sculpture - it reflects your mind. The culture that you belong to is a sculpture created by everyone in it – it reflects the consciousness of your society. The world is sculpted jointly by all conscious entities and reflects the splendid evolution of mind and matter over billions of years. Seen in this light we begin to recognize the extraordinary power of imagination and how we all have a part in creating reality.

Cartoon of self-sculpting manequin

So next time you ask,‘Why is there so much suffering?’… You may find the answer in yourself

@2019 David A Leach | Designer: David A Leach (davidaleach@hotmail.co.uk)