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True Purpose of Suffering

Just the other night I was doing the second Telling of a new series I started. The topic of this series is "On Death" and that night I spoke of the states of suffering in the human dimension after (or right before, depending on which way you are going) the abyss of forgetfulness (or after rebirth). One line of the Telling had me saying "there is nothing but god under this hat" (a Toltec tribute to El Salahi). In a brush stroke of this Telling, we went through the encounter with suffering through self division and identification with parts of our experience in the human dimension. After that, the unending stream or karma starts by the struggle of the mind to achieve, obtain, secure, and, in short, to make the external world conform to our ideas of "what should be." In other words, the pain of division is increased by the drive of a divided mind to make its maps (what I want) stand for reality. One part of our divided self wants something (to hold on to a girlfriend, to feel safe, to be rich, to be respected, etc.), and it projects a map (an idealized but self-centered universe) unto the unknown territory of our experience as eternal beings. Eventually, this map collides with reality and we suffer. The suffering leads to more searching, more doing, more grasping for external satisfaction (which is never coming because the root of the suffering is not the external circumstances, but our own division, wants, and continuation with this unending karmic stream). To add to this madness, we not only have one divided personality but a whole assembly of entities inside, each one trying to satisfy their own wants without regard for the others--much less for the magical interests of the unified being.

In this second Telling I'm summarizing, we saw how the striving for external satisfaction of wants continues and increases as karma is accumulated, until the time when learn to move inside and seek not to attain and become, but simply learn to sit with the pain, the suffering, the loneliness, the violence, or whatever internal condition we find in our human incarnation. We sit with it, the horror of our internal situation, without trying to alleviate it by external means, but simply know it, feel it, and allow the reality of our inner state to flower inside as we work to balance the totality of our experience (inner and outer). As we approach a state of balance, the inner condition we all try to alleviate (by incurring more karmic debt), can more easily and elegantly remain within us. The objective here is to hold this pain of division and know it as a reflection of our own consciousness, a projection of our state of manyhood below the Abyss. By holding it through our activities (internal and external, ordinary and magical) we begin to unify all these opposites. In fact, when we manage to stop directing all our attention, consciousness, and energies towards Yesod and Malkuth and learn to harmonize these currents internally, we create a harmonized vehicle that can contain the essence of our internal suffering. This internal suffering then can grow and flower into its true and intended outcome: the Soul of a complete Being. A Star at the center of its Universe.

This is, of course, a balancing act. As with every balancing act, the balancing is attempted, the currents redirected, the dross burned, then the balance begins to falter and we start all over again. Process is repeated over and over until the process of balancing and inner directiveness itself is internalized and made into a habit. Then, we have a chance to see our universe as the harmonious interaction of the inner forces that inhabit us, the gods. These gods, of course, are the tyrants that direct our activities and proclivities when there is no harmonizing force directing the gods themselves. Each god wants to be king of the hill and seeks to work through our malkuthian vehicle to establish his and her own rule. Other parts of us then plot and fight for this rule. It is by bringing into play our Star, that Will that becomes the center of gravity around which all our planets (gods) revolve. Then, and only then, we have created a true system within us; a harmonious universe where the gods act in their proper orbit under the guiding light and gravitational pull of the Star. At that moment, I can say that "there is nothing but gods under my hat."

 Koyote the Blind

Koyote the Blind is an Hablador (Master Storyteller) in the 9th century Toltec tradition. He is also the one responsible for bringing the Aka Dua to the public in the Western Hemisphere. The Tequihua Foundation has attempted to assist him in this task.

www.tequihuafoundation.org