identifying cause/s of unnecessary suffering?
 

Hello all. I am wondering if fellow forum users may also share the opinion that by using the growing understanding of behavioural psychology it becomes possible to trace the line of cause and consequence backwards in order to establish the root cause/s of unnecessary suffering?
By unnecessary suffering I mean suffering inflicted upon those who suffer through no discernible fault or action of their own making.
What need powers the motivation of those apparently content to behave in a manner which causes suffering?

petex

I try to work out the causes of my own suffering.

Hello Honza.
Your chosen way is in some respects similar to advice regarding an aspect of self awareness offered in different circumstances to a physician--know thyself.

Also-- I think the symbol which you include in your posts has an important role to play regarding self awareness, for when understood as being of the whole the symbolism of the heart serves as an anchor point helping to stop self awareness crossing the fine line into addictive self fixation.

I do wonder if those of the many millions of refugees currently displaced and suffering in our midst have the energy, time and support required to think of such matters. It seems more likely that our reaching hands and hearts will be of greater help in such circumstances. petex

The conflict lies between believing everybody is inherently responsible for themselves or we are victims of circumstance.

As a sharing of thought:-

I think that a certain critical measure of a sense of personal significance in the eyes/arms of another/others during infancy is essential for subsequent psychological, emotional and physical well being. Such a sense provides an affirmation of being, a stable foundation upon which self identity may be constructed.

If this need is not provided for by means of loving care, nurture and wise guidance in infancy then the mind so deprived seeks to provide for "itself" this necessary sense of personal significance. It seems to me likely that this process will result in "self centred" behaviour. Given the circumstances, what other choice does the developing mind have? If this is the case then there is no blame involved for that mind, no finger pointing--simply consequence.

One of the consequences--I think-- is that the focus of the energy required of the mind in seeking to provide for itself this compensatory sense of self significance is so great that it creates the experience of being as an experience of separation--constantly trying to get in, rather than as an experience of inclusion--naturally in.

Here, I think, is the root cause of unnecessary suffering--both to the deprived mind and to others. A suffering which I think inevitably continues whilst the deprived mind is unable to see what it truly needs and what it truly is.

What it truly needs has to be offered, not taken, not stolen. If and when this happens, when this is offered, this is when the need becomes fulfilled.

What is one of the remarkable aspects about the process of loving is that the nature of loving is such that it provides for both lover and loved simultaneously. When offered it provides not only for the recipient, but also for whoever offers--I think. petex

Fixation on and identification with the mind and ego seems to be one cause, in my opinion. I heartily recommend The Power of Now and A New Earth, both by Eckhart Tolle.

As far as I'm concerned both the mind and the ego are integral parts of my self. I embrace them.

Wise loving nurture does not demand
That we should ever change.
Yet in such embrace
We are transformed.
Soft strong love--
How strange.

petex

All forms of suffering are unnecessary.