Giving Up Your Story of Suffering

Life is hard. No doubt about it — it certainly is for most people, in one way or another. There are always challenging situations that arise in relationships, work, finances, health. It’s something we learn to expect, believing it’s just how life is.

If you’re on a spiritual path, and especially if you know you’re an ascension lightworker, your life has likely been even more challenging than that of most people you know. You’re not only having to resolve your own karma you’ve brought in — you may have also taken on ancestral or collective karma. None of it is easy, but it’s what many lightworkers have contracted to do.

So, yes, your focus needs to be on healing the woundings and traumas you’ve experienced, both in this lifetime and in past lives. And you need to concentrate on waking up spiritually, despite the hardships and suffering. It’s what your true work is, and what you especially have to concentrate on now, as the ascension process amps up ever more intensely as time goes on.

Identifying with Your Story

But the question is: Are you identified with this story of suffering you’ve been living?

Is this who you keep believing you are? Despite all you have experienced in waking up to the reality that you’re a spiritual Being, a Soul, Pure Awareness, or Source — do you, on a daily basis, continue to act as if this limited human being, living a challenging life on planet Earth, is who you are?

Are you still identifying with the problems in your relationships you need to heal, your painful or aging body, your inability to really manifest what you want in life? Are you still believing at times you are the sum of all your painful experiences from childhood, your financial challenges or the failed marriages you’ve endured?

Secondary Gains

No matter how awake you are and how much healing you’ve done, it can still be difficult at times to let go of these sticky third-dimensional identifications. This is especially so, if you have, over the years, developed what’s been called “secondary gains” attached to your painful experiences. Secondary gains are somewhat positive experiences we end up seeking when we can’t seem to manifest what we really want in our lives.

One of these secondary gains might be the compassion, attention or respect you receive from other people when you tell them about the kind of suffering you’ve endured — or the incredible things in life you have managed to accomplish, despite all you’ve suffered.

If you’re suffering and don’t know how to stop, at least you can have these empathic and awe-inspired responses that seem to help you go on.

But guess what? Those warm and fuzzy responses from others simply serve to strengthen your need to continue suffering. They help to bring on even more experiences of suffering, so you can continue to receive these responses. That’s the way the Law of Attraction works. A focus on suffering – even on healing it — can attract continued suffering to you. It can be very tricky.

 Identification with your Story

But the main thing to realize is that if you are somehow still identifying with your story of suffering, you are keeping the story going. No matter how you may have forgiven your parents, your children, your friends and spouses who have betrayed you – and even forgiven yourself through years of healing — you may still be believing that this is who you are: someone who has suffered greatly, but is now healing or has been healed.

Perhaps you even believe you gave up your story of suffering long ago, realizing it’s not who you are. But is that story still in your field? Do you still share it with people new in your life? Do you still feel a need to connect with people who understand suffering the way you do?

If so, you probably have not yet truly let go of this story of suffering. And to truly wake up to who you are on the most profound level of your being, this is necessary. It’s not easy — especially if you’re in the middle of a heart-wrenching situation or chronic physical pain. And many lightworkers are these days: all unresolved traumas and woundings are now surfacing from the unconscious in order to be dealt with and released.

Letting Go of the Story of Suffering

And yet, you can learn that, even in facing and attempting to heal all hardships you may be experiencing these days, you can still give up your identification with the one who is suffering through these experiences.

This doesn’t mean abandoning this lower self; it doesn’t mean discounting it. Just the opposite, in fact: it requires being totally with it, with great compassion, and a willingness to keep moving through whatever is arising.

And this is the key: you are with this suffering self — you are not identified as it. You are identified with a higher Self, a wiser, more awake Self, who is watching the suffering – and who is able to assist and compassionately guide the self in pain through the healing process.

There is love for this one in your heart, and light and clarity in your mind. You understand that it’s an opportunity to learn and develop your inner strength and power. And you know that whatever is occurring is temporary.

Perhaps even more important is if you can approach the current suffering without the baggage of all the past suffering dragging behind you, you will find that your current situation is not so difficult to navigate. You’re in the moment, clear and new, looking at something that looks challenging, because it always has been before — but maybe now no longer is. This approach opens you up to new ideas, new solutions. And is ultimately vastly freeing.

How to Do It

But how to really do this, how to actually let go of the story of suffering? Just saying you’ll do it, or thinking you can, through intention, doesn’t really accomplish it. You can start with this, but there must be constant attention to this resolution, constant attention to your thoughts and words and actions. Your sense of identification as the third-dimensional human being is profoundly embedded in your consciousness.

One way to approach this challenge is to begin by actually writing out your story of suffering — all the slings and arrows you’ve received, starting in childhood, all the way up to current day. You can do it in sentences or in bullet points. Take some time to develop this — remember the major hurts and injustices, especially those you have felt self-pity about. If shame or guilt or hatred arise, feel the feelings — and then go on. Write it all out. The story deserves to be told in full, this one last time.

Perhaps take a few days to read it over and maybe add some points. Allow, without judgment, all emotions that arise. Make notes of certain woundings you perhaps still need to focus on healing and put these notes aside for now.

At some point, when you feel you have gotten down at least the highlights of all of it on paper, it is time for some ritual to release it all — such as burning it or tearing it up in tiny pieces. Or, if you’re really into rituals, you can create a more elaborate one that will impact you deeply. Do this with great love and compassion for yourself.

Experiencing the New You

If you are truly tired of your story of suffering and have a deep conviction to let go of it, these kinds of actions will be very powerful. You’ll find that your suffering will ease. You’ll feel free, like you’ve embarked on a whole new journey, with a whole new perspective.

You will probably find you still have to closely watch your thoughts and emotions — and even your sighs and grumbling, as you react to on-going challenges in life. Habits can hold on.

And you’ll have to watch for any lingering need to attain secondary gains through sharing about your suffering experiences when you’re with friends and family. You can still share about what’s going on — but beware of the old habit of identifying with these things that are occurring and as the one who is suffering.

You can decide, instead, to identify with the one who is healing and has wonderful stories of healing to tell. But in the end, do you even need to be identified with any story at all? Even a positive one?

Do you even need to be that person who no longer has a story?