Questions About Pain and Suffering
“Pain is like guilt, or shame. There’s goodness in guilt and in shame, only for some moments, enough for you to realize from within your relationship with knowledge. You realize something that you know.
When you are real in that pain, ‘real’ as in you are letting in the intimacy of being, and you’re letting that intimacy of being have feeling and have thought, have your seeing, then your pain soon turns to joy.”
Latest YouTube Video on Pain and Suffering
Freed From the Burden of Your Pain and Frustration
November 2, 2018 @ 7:15pm
Frustrated by a lack of understanding, this questioner feels he’s not getting the help he needs to connect with his heart and the honesty John speaks of. By way of a simple metaphor, John illustrates the way out of frustration into surrender.
Latest Podcast on Pain and Suffering
John de Ruiter Podcast 583
Finding the Golden Thread Between You and a Difficult Parent
September 22, 2014 @ 7:00pm
This conversation opens up the difficulty of being with an angry father who still triggers your painful past. Is it okay not to see him, or is there another way forward?
Latest Transcript on Pain and Suffering
Sweet Forgiveness: When Openness Is Your Love
March 29, 2023
Q: I want to clear up something with my father before he dies. I know the difference between being open and closed, but when I step into my parents’ home it’s very hard for me to stay open. It’s as if I step back into the child that sees a lot of abuse … my father constantly devaluing and psychologically mistreating my mother. I feel it all. It’s sometimes possible to remain open but I find it hard not to judge his anger.
John: While you experience that, sweetly forgive him.
Q: It’s easy to do here, but in the moment …
John: That’s where it matters.
Q: And that’s where I can feel frustrated because I know it matters.
John: When you’re frustrated, sweetly forgive yourself.
Q: I understand, but I seem to get amnesia in the situation. Out of the situation I know again. It’s a miracle when I can stay open, and I have had beautiful meetings with them. There is both judgment of him and of myself in this.
John: Both are false.
Q: I see that. It feels like having an apple in your hand and forgetting how to drop it, while knowing that’s what you need to do. With my partner I find it quite easy to see when I hold onto something, and I can soften and drop it.
John: Like opening and softening in the midst of really little things, the tiniest little things that annoy. If you open and soften and you live opening and softening in the really little things – things that are so small that it hardly would draw your attention – then you will easily open and soften in the really big things.
It’s you opening in the little that really does it, because that means that openness has you, that you don’t overlook it in the little things. When it is your love, you’ll be it in all of the really little things.
Q: In most situations I can at least reopen myself if I notice that I get tight, except with my parents. The opening is so small compared to in all other situations in my life.
John: Open to see everywhere in your life where you tighten. Open to see it where you’re not used to seeing it. Where you’re not used to seeing it will be in the really, really little things.
