What Causes Suffering What causes suffering? It is really quite simple.
Suffering occurs when we are disconnected from Self.
The Self contains essential qualities of Love, Oneness, Merging, Trust, Knowingness, Abundance, Empowerment, true Value and Worth, and so on.
The qualities are essential, authentic.
They cannot be understood, only experienced.
The ego frantically tries to mimic essential qualities but they are far beyond ego's capabilities.
Essential qualities flow through the Self from All That Is.
The ego's existence is based on separateness.
As such, it is cut off from Source, the very Source from which Essential qualities flow.
Suffering occurs when there is this disconnection from Self.
The ego tries to mimic Love, but is only capable of co-dependency.
The ego tries to mimic Abundance, but is only capable of greed.
It tries to mimic Merging and Oneness, but turns it into fear of loss.
The essential qualities of the Authentic Self are energetic in nature.
In Toltec terms they lie just beyond the 2nd attention.
Essential qualities can be access through energetic processes.
However, the best way to live in essence is to live from the Self that we are, versus the layers of ego that surround Self.
There comes a point on one's spiritual path when they have tasted the Authentic Self.
One has worked diligently to peel off the layers of ego.
They have connected with Self.
However, it is fleeting and one becomes lost again in a fragmented self, or self-image - the false personality where ego resides.
When one is disconnected, it is near impossible to recall the Authentic Essential qualities of Self.
After a substantial amount of work on healing and growth, one knows sufficiently what is Ego and what is Authentic in Self.
One knows they always have a choice - to choose a fragmented self or false self-image, or to choose an Authentic aspect of Self.
If they choose the false self, they inevitably set themselves up for suffering.
Granted, in the short term, sometimes choosing the false self seems to give them a temporary fix of fulfillment or happiness.
But, as it is not Authentic, it soon passes only to be replaced by suffering.
Essential Qualities run far far deeper than a temporary happiness.
What will you choose in each moment? Will you choose the old, habitual ways of false self-image, or will you choose an Authentic aspect of Self? Will you continue to choose suffering, or will you choose, Love, Fulfillment, Bliss, Freedom - essential qualities that exude from Self?