There are many accounts of people who say they have found God
through their deep suffering, and there is the Christian expression
“the way of the cross,” which I suppose points to the same thing.
We are concerned with nothing else here.
Strictly speaking, they did not find God through their suffering,
because suffering implies resistance. They found God through
surrender, through total acceptance of what is, into which they were
forced by their intense suffering. They must have realized on some
level that their pain was self-created.
How do you equate surrender with finding God?
Since resistance is inseparable from the mind, relinquishment of
resistance — surrender — is the end of the mind as your master, the
impostor pretending to be “you,” the false god. All judgment and all
negativity dissolve. The realm of Being, which had been obscured by
the mind, then opens up. Suddenly, a great stillness arises within you,
an unfathomable sense of peace. And within that peace, there is great
joy. And within that joy, there is love. And at the innermost core,
there is the sacred, the immeasurable, That which cannot be named.
I don’t call it finding God, because how can you find that which was
never lost, the very life that you are? The word God is limiting not
only because of thousands of years of misperception and misuse, but
also because it implies an entity other than you. God is Being itself,
not a being. There can be no subject-object relationship here, no
duality, no you and God. God-realization is the most natural thing
there is. The amazing and incomprehensible fact is not that you can
become conscious of God but that you are not conscious of God. The
way of the cross that you mentioned is the old way to enlightenment,
and until recently it was the only way. But don’t dismiss it or
underestimate its efficacy. It still works.
The way of the cross is a complete reversal. It means that the worst
thing in your life, your cross, turns into the best thing that ever
happened to you, by forcing you into surrender, into “death,” forcing
you to become as nothing, to become as God — because God, too, is
no-thing.
At this time, as far as the unconscious majority of humans is
concerned, the way of the cross is still the only way. They will only
awaken through further suffering, and enlightenment as a collective
phenomenon will be predictably preceded by vast upheavals. This
process reflects the workings of certain universal laws that govern the
growth of consciousness and thus was foreseen by some seers. It is
described, among other places, in the Book of Revelation or
Apocalypse, though cloaked in obscure and sometimes impenetrable
symbology. This suffering is inflicted not by God but by humans on
themselves and on each other, as well as by certain defensive
measures that the Earth, which is a living, intelligent organism, is
going to take to protect herself from the onslaught of human
madness.
However, there is a growing number of humans alive today whose
consciousness is sufficiently evolved not to need any more suffering
before the realization of enlightenment. You may be one of them.
Enlightenment through suffering — the way of the cross — means to
be forced into the kingdom of heaven kicking and screaming. You
finally surrender because you can’t stand the pain anymore, but the
pain could go on for a long time until this happens. Enlightenment
consciously chosen means to relinquish your attachment to past and
future and to make the Now the main focus of your life. It means
choosing to dwell in the state of presence rather than in time. It
means saying yes to what is. You then don’t need pain anymore. How
much more time do you think you will need before you are able to
say, “I will create no more pain, no more suffering”? How much more
pain do you need before you can make that choice?
If you think that you need more time, you will get more time — and
more pain. Time and pain are inseparable.