http://www.selfremembering.org/
“Everyone
suffers, with or without a school,” Robert Burton has said. “We are
trying to use our suffering, rather than being used by it.”
Year
after year, Robert Burton’s students have come to him with their
questions, their problems, their protests. Year after year, with
unfaltering patience, he has taught that the only true solutions to any
perceived “problem” lie in our efforts to self-remember and to transform
our suffering. However justified one’s complaints, however unjust the
events of one’s life, one has no choice but to embrace them all. This
wider acceptance is the key to the actual transformation of negative
emotions into higher consciousness, which creates the capacity for
selfless love and is the true meaning behind every spiritual teaching.
What the individual gains through this process may then be radiated
outward for the benefit of others. “There is a secret,” Robert Burton
said once, “that is almost too sacred to tell. The secret is: what one
gains, all gain.”"
I absolutely love this post. I find it to be very affirming to me personally. In about a month it will be two years since I lost my mother to a heroin overdose. Within these past two years I have transformed from my suffering. I became at peace with my mother's addiction and truly focused on the love I have for her instead of the anger and hate. I also channeled my suffering to help others, I have managed to meet the senator and speak on a panel about opiate addiction along with raised over 400 dollars for a halfway house that my mother once attended. I could have chosen to mope or follow my mother's path due to the suffering she caused me, but I chosen another path, and transformed my suffering to do thing in memory of her and to help me grow as a person.
ReplyDeleteThis is a great message. I've learned in life that you always have to see the positive in every negative situation. It doesn't matter how long it takes to get there, you just have to be able to see the good in the bad.
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