Question: You've said our lives don't have to be painful if we learn to pay attention when there's no pain, and I understand that intellectually. How do we learn to pay attention without pain? Can we ever live in perfect peace? If, as you say, things are far less cruel on this planet now than thousands of years ago, and if we continue moving in a positive direction, can this planet eventually be the paradise it has the potential to be. Or MUST there be pain for growth? In short, can this world ever be a 'garden of Eden'?'
Aaron: It would first be useful to ask how you define Eden. By this term do you picture a totally painfree environment where all is provided in abundance, where there is never anger, never illness, never any discomfort of any sort? How can this be? Within the limits of this physical environment, the rain that allows food to grow to abundance also may be disturbing to those who wish for sunshine. Had you in mind a planet where it only rains over growing fields, perhaps only from 11 P.M. to 5 A.M.?
Your suffering is created by your conflicts and struggles with pain and all else that arises in your lives.
I do understand what you mean by Eden, but I am not certain that you do. The question must be raised, once there is self-awareness, can there ever be total freedom from physical, emotional or mental discomfort?
Defining Eden in a more realistic way, can your earth ever be free of war, of starvation, of disease, of the general suffering of human beings. I answer this with a resounding YES. It is indeed possible. Will you still be able to learn? Again, YES!
You must come back here to the difference we've often talked about between pain and suffering. Pain is just that - pain. It is the physical hurt of the injured or ill body. It is grief at the loss of a loved one. It is the ache in the heart when one sees the effects of pestilence, war and famine over the earth. Yes, pain hurts!
Your suffering is created by your conflicts and struggles with pain and all else that arises in your lives. It grows out of resistance to life. Let us use an obvious example here of something that you cannot avoid as long as you are human. No matter how advanced your medical technology, no matter how far you move beyond war and disease and even accidental death, no matter how long you are able to extend the human life, there must still eventually be an end to that life.
For most of you, the idea of this inevitable death causes suffering. Does your Eden include eternal life? Might you not grow weary of this earth or this body and long for change? Would your Eden include the miracle of being able to move into a fresh new body, to return with your loved ones to a new learning situation. But my dear ones, that is exactly what you have been given.
Does this opportunity to leave the body and continue on your path need to cause pain? Does it need to cause suffering?
When you struggle with what arises in your life, there is suffering. You want to control it and cannot. You feel helpless and angry. Here is a major source of your suffering. Can you imagine growing old peacefully, knowing that the time for an ending of this physical existence approaches, and not needing to struggle with that fact?
As long as you are human there will be emotions, no matter how evolved you become.
Take this to the other areas of your life. Can you imagine being at peace even with the knowledge that there is not perfect agreement between you and another being. Can you accept that there will be differences as long as there is self awareness and free will. Your neighbor wants to plant a row of lilacs between your properties as she has a great love for this shrub. You want to plant evergreens. Need this lead to anger and then to suffering?
