Lesson 2 – The Root of All Suffering

What is suffering? What happens exactly when we suffer?

I’ll get into this later, in later lessons. I’ll get into the dynamics of it, the mechanics of it, the energetics of it. But basically, suffering is the difference you feel between the vibration, the state of your True Self, and the state or vibration of your positioned self. By “positioned self” I mean your lower self or your physical, mind-based self, your personality self, your I-Am-This based self. Whatever you want to call your sense of “I am this individual.”

You cannot not have the core frequency of who you truly are. If you have placed your positioned self far removed on the frequency scale of what is possible, far out of sync with the true natural frequency with which you are already always inundated—in other words, the further away that positioned self is removed from your True Self—the greater the amount of suffering you will experience; the greater the degree of pain that you will experience.

Why Desire Is Not the Problem

Often, people equate suffering with desire, with passion, with wanting things. But this is a great misunderstanding, even in spiritual teachings, even by very clear-headed spiritual teachers. I’ve heard them say, and proclaim, that desire is the cause of all suffering. This is simply not true. It is not true. It is completely, mechanically not true.

Desire does not have an ounce of suffering carried with itself. It doesn’t carry any suffering; it doesn’t contain any suffering. The problem is not desire, the problem is the idea that lack exists. So, what is the core root of all suffering? It is the idea that lack exists. It is the belief in lack.

When a desire comes up, we often think, “Oh, that equates to pain because I can’t always have what I want. And if I can’t have what I desire, if I have so much passion for something, but that something is lacking, that something is not here, then I suffer, then I hurt, then I feel pain.” We have just very bluntly called desire “the source of all suffering,” when actually, desire is the source of our connection to our True Self.

This is a grave misunderstanding and I won’t allow any concessions on this idea. Desire is not the cause of suffering. Desire is actually what will liberate you. Desire is actually the solution; not the cause, not the problem.

What is the problem then? When a desire kicks in, when you are activated, when your Higher Self communicates to you, when your True Being’s frequency starts to pour through your body-mind experience—that is great, that is what aligns you with your True Self. It’s perfect. It is the solution to all suffering. But what happens is that we filter that desire through an idea of lack. We believe that we can’t have what we desire, it is not possible, it is not here, it is lacking, it could never completely come to fruition, and so on.

We believe in lack of possibility and perhaps in lack of worthiness, as in: “Oh, I’m not worthy of wanting this or of getting what I desire. I’m not worthy of becoming the type of being that I desire to become. So many things have inspired me, but I am not worthy of these things!” So, we believe in a lack of worthiness, a lack of possibility, a lack of well-being, or a lack of the presence of the thing that we desire. Those are all lack beliefs, and they have nothing to do, mechanically speaking, energetically speaking, structurally speaking, with the energy of desire.

Desire itself is free. Desire itself is passion. Desire itself is our telephone line to our Higher Selves. It is the frequency we experience when we are really excited; when we are really passionate about something.

So, let desire be your savior. Let it not be your obstacle. What is your obstacle? It is the idea that lack can exist. It is believing in the thought of lack.

Don’t try to negate or suppress your desires. To do so is very, very, very unhealthy because that is the sole reason why you are here: to desire, to create, to come forth, to express, to seek out, to discover, to share. All these things are based on your desire; there is no other way for you to know what you are supposed to be doing here. There is no other way for you to know who you are—except through desire, through resonance, through excitement, through ecstasy, through passion, through creativity, through inspiration.

Honor desire and dishonor the idea of lack. Stop believing that lack exists! We will get more into this later on, but it is very crucial that for now you realize lack is not something that exists and that is exactly why it hurts. If lack did exist, it would feel good to believe that lack exists because it would be true. You see, suffering is caused when we believe in something that is not true; when we position ourselves removed from the true frequency of our Being.

When we believe in lack in any form, we contract, we feel pain, we feel hurt, we suffer—precisely because it is not a true fact of Existence. It does not exist. It doesn’t matter what the scenario looks like. It doesn’t matter how your parents taught you to label that experience. It doesn’t matter how the people around you would label that experience. Lack is a fundamental impossibility. Everything is possible except for lack.

So, when you believe in lack, you are carrying with you a vibration of impossibility, something that does not compute with the true frequency of the nature of Reality; of your True Self. Hence you suffer, hence you feel pain, hence you struggle, hence it is all hard and difficult and painful.

If you remove the idea that lack can exist, you will cease to suffer. That’s right. If you had no lack belief whatsoever, whatsoever, whatsoever, it would be absolutely impossible for you to psychologically suffer—absolutely impossible for you to psychologically suffer.

Challenges would still be present; you would still be challenged. You would still be brought to the edge of your experience so that you could continuously expand your horizons of what is possible and of who you truly are and of what you are capable of and of what you desire to create. And you would still generate contrast in your life between what you prefer and what you don’t prefer. Those are amazing tools to fine-tune your vibration, your positioned vibration, so that it is in complete alignment with your true vibration. But again, without lack, there is no psychological suffering.

Stop Taking Your Cues from Physical Circumstances

One thing that often trips us up, and often generates in us the idea that lack can actually exist, is our tendency to look outward, to look at external circumstances. We look at physical reality and then, based on the objects we see, it is very tempting to say, “Well this object is over here; it is not over there. It is in my hand; it is not in your hand” or “It is in your hand; it is not in my hand.” Based on physical, linear reality (which is only one slice of all the infinite parallel realities that co-exist within this single moment); based on just one slice of physical reality, we determine if we are lacking something or not.

Physical reality has a purpose; it has a story to tell. Yes, we could conclude that there is the lack of an apple over there because I have the apple over here. I just moved it from your hand to my hand, so now you are lacking the apple. This is a very basic example, but this is what we constantly do—we constantly refer to our physical circumstances, and based on that, we determine if we are lacking something or not. This is a crucial mistake.

Our focus should become more and more non-physically-oriented. Why? Because non-physical reality is much more closely aligned with the clarity of the Truth of the nature of Reality.

The more physically-oriented you are, the more you are focusing your consciousness on this very thin, limited physical slice; this one single configuration of energy that co-exists with all the other infinite possible configurations of realities. Then you let this dictate your reality. You have based your reality on just this one physical slice that contains only so many objects; on this physical reality that says if I give this away to you, then I start lacking what I just gave away to you.

Physical Reality Inspires the Idea that Lack Is an Actuality

Forgo your focus on physical reality a little bit more, if you can. Don’t take your cues from your circumstances. Don’t look at your circumstances and then, based on that, believe that something is either lacking or present.

Know that on a non-physical level, on an Existence level, on a timeless level, all possible realities always already exist; they co-exist. Whenever you shift your frequency, you are literally shifting realities. When you shift into another reality, suddenly there are two apples. Suddenly, an opportunity arises that you could not have conceived of in the other reality, but because you actually tuned into the truth of your Being, the abundance of your Being, you were not lost in taking your cue from physical circumstances. You were not limiting your focus down into lack. You were not suffering, because you did not perceive any lack. And if you don’t perceive any lack, you can’t suffer.

In that state of freedom; in that state of love and abundance, you shifted your positioned self into an alternate (even physical!) reality that suddenly does offer the things you desire. And this is simply because you maintained your happiness, regardless of circumstances, regardless of what your physical slice may have indicated, regardless of how other people told you to define your physical circumstances.

Circumstances Don’t Define Lack—We Do!

Circumstances don’t define their own lack; we do that. In other words, if you give your apple away to someone, then you could tell yourself the story that you are lacking an apple because you just gave it away to another person. The circumstance itself is not telling that story. If you give your apple away to someone else, it does not mean you are lacking an apple, unless you say it does. It is whatever you say it is. And however you choose to define your physical reality is how you will experience your physical reality.

If your definitions are always rooted in the idea that something is missing, something is lacking, something is imperfect, something is wrong, something is off, then you will generate a whole lot of suffering for yourself because you are placing your positioned self outside of your true frequency self. You suffer because you feel the distance; you feel that you are removing yourself away from Home, so you start longing to come back Home.

So, whenever something happens that seems to indicate lack, apply the idea of seeing past your own label into the actual Presence of that moment. See if the apple is speaking to you saying, “Oh, now I lack your hand,” or, “You no longer own me, you no longer have me.” Is anything in that physical scenario indicating to you that there is a lack of something? If you were to be completely mentally silent, meaning not a thought, not a word in your mind, would you still experience lack when someone steals your apple, when someone steals your money? With zero thoughts, would you still experience lack? Would you still experience suffering? You would not.

I am not saying the answer is to have no thoughts. I’m simply showing you that the example of no thoughts shows us that our entire experience is generated by the way we define what we see.

Circumstances don’t define their own lack, we do. What I’m saying is that, even in your physical circumstances, even when things seem to be lacking, you can turn a definition around, you can see that it is not actually true. It is not “a given” that there is lack. If there was, you would be lacking things all the time. Because right now you are “lacking” a fork in your hand, but you are not defining it that way, you are not suffering because you don’t have a fork in your hand. Why? Because it is not relevant. Why? Because it is not meaningful to you at this moment to have a fork.

So, why would you define the things that are meaningful to you as lacking when they are not physically present in that single slice of one of the potential realities that you could choose from? Why would you focus in on that limitation? Why would you focus in on that physical idea that something is lacking?

When infinite realities are lacking right now, you are not aware of the endlessness of All That Is. But that doesn’t make you lack anything. It simply means that your present circumstance is the relevant chosen option for you. But essentially, structurally speaking, that does not imply lack. And that means, this vital fact means you don’t have to suffer over anything unless you want to.

Again, desire is not the problem. Desire and passion, even the desire for things is not the issue. The issue is that we define lack when no lack is possible in Existence.