Greater clarity on pain and suffering and the need for such catalyst

[yossarian]

You must consider this deeply.

Why MUST I consider what you say? Are you the messenger of ultimate truth then? I am openminded and I consider everything that comes my way. That's where we might differ. I have only working theories, and it appears you have beliefs.

Please forgive my sarcasm—I only mean to inject some snarky humor. I really don't resonate with "absolutes."

Sorry, I didn't mean it like that. You are perfect as you are and there is nothing you must or mustn't do.

The way I meant it was as a quote from the Zen Buddhist Musashi Miyamoto who would end every lesson with "You must consider this deeply." By this he meant that the attempt at teaching/learning won't be successful without "deep" "consideration" of the train of thought. "Deep", in this case, meaning one pointed and focused and mulled over.

Well, I don't, and have never, contended to be so enlightened as you apparently are. I can agree with part of the above. I agree that I suffer when I see suffering. But you are leaving out the ideas of compassion and empathy.

My compassion is for you, because, in my lived experience today, I encounter you who is suffering in a spiritual/psychological way. You also suffer in a way that I am very familiar with, having been there myself just a few years ago.

The difference between my suffering then and my experience now is indigo ray activation that calls down a "great pitch of light" which tells me of the One Infinite Creator.

You feel your compassion flowing out to reach the suffering animal. As your love/light reaches out to the suffering being, you begin to hear the rushing of water, a crack of golden light breaks from above, a beam of radiation falls on you. It is warm, intelligent, and peaceful.

The beam does not fall on the animal--it falls on you. The animal stops wailing and raises his head to look into your eyes. He is no longer in pain. He has the face of the Creator. He smirks at you with deep love and understanding. The animal was the Creator all along... in your compassion you were loving the Creator, which was beautiful.

This is the view I see from indigo ray when becoming the Creator. Your example of animal suffering is perfect for exactly the reasons you give: there is no way animals deserve it. There is no karma here. There is no justification here. There is no fairness here. There is no way to rationalize human cruelty toward animals.

Yet... strangely... with indigo ray activation and the disciplines of the personality... a great pitch of light falls on your head and in the most incomprehensible suffering you discover purpose, meaning, and the love of the Creator. You are overcome with faith and belief that the Creator's infinite compassion would never forsake any animal. Though you witness unjust suffering--the Creator whispers to you that it can't be true and you believe. There is something you don't know. The animal is the Creator and is with the Creator. The Creator cares infinitely for the animal and will never and has never abandoned it. There are no mistakes. The scene can't be other than perfection.

How, from this perspective, should we relate to the animal? What should we *DO*? It says to love them. To care for them. To be there for them. To help them in whatever way you can imagine. As you have been doing.

Yet, strangely, at the same time, it says they are perfect, you are perfect, all is perfect.

Are you trying to say factory-farmed animals or starving children don't suffer? When I watch a person or animal crying out in horrible pain, yes, it makes me suffer too. But I can't be so glib as to look upon them and say, la la la, it's okay, it's the OIC's game and that makes it all right. Screw the OIC then. I get the idea of oneness, and manyness, and experiencing all there is—but in my mind these are intellectual considerations.

You are polarizing service to others. You suffer to love the animals. As Diana, the Roman Goddess of wild animals, would. Your compassion is beautiful and my eyes tear up. Beautiful.

See? I'm not very enlightened. I really do not like this new agey talk about how everything is perfect and okay as is. It's not okay. And no matter why I'm here, I still take issue with suffering. Even if I'm a wanderer to spread light in darkness, why would I be doing that? Because it's perfect here?

You made it perfect when you cared. It could not be perfect without you caring. You are involved in the scene.

When a great pitch of light is cast over your head, you will still care just as much, and your anger will still be there, but now that anger too will have a pitch of light above it, speaking of the Creator in the anger.

To me, your above ideas are mostly intellectual statements, and I can imagine being so advanced that this whole place is seen from a different perspective. But being here in the trenches is another situation. Unless you really are so advanced, you can watch a starving child die trying to crawl to a food wagon for a handful of rice, and feel nothing but love. If you can I envy you. I'm not being sarcastic; I wish I could really feel that way.

Only sometimes. I experience both sides of this issue.

Don't misunderstand me—I do understand the idea of "the pure witness" and I can, to some extent, maintain that stance with humans, who are the creators of their own species' sufferings and collective consciousness. Where it really breaks down for me, as I alluded to in my original post, is when humanity's need for suffering and the complications of self-ceneteredness bleeds out into other species (including the planet). That bothers me. And I don't have to like it.

"And I don't have to like it"

This is what polarizing further STO looks like. Passionate devotion, love, self-sacrifice, even to the point of shouting at the Creator, all for the sake of the vulnerable.

The topic of the thread is "clarity on the meaning of pain". Clarity undermines illusion, but it is illusion that helps us to polarize. So we come back to the meaning of pain... the meaning of pain is to serve as catalyst for polarization and for the Creator to know itself.