Man was made for Joy and Woe
And when this he rightly knows
Through the world he safely goes
Joy and Woe are woven fine
A clothing for the soul Divine.

William Blake

No human being experiencing life can deny that human existence is replete with suffering. To live is to suffer, to suffer is to live, to undergo, to experience, to bear it, feel its pain and pleasure, joy and woe. All this is part of the human experience. When we acknowledge this to be so, and accept it, and stop trying to escape from it, or deny its reality, we become aware that is serves a purpose, a purpose that is alluded to in Blake's poem above.

Suffering is a universal reality on this level of existence, and is addressed quite specifically in The Work. Here we find different types or levels of Suffering.

At the level of ordinary existence much of the Suffering we experience is Unnecessary. Each and every one of the obstacles to Higher Consciousness creates and supports Unnecessary Suffering. Worry, our Identication with the negative Imagination we have concerning the future; Inner Considering, wherein we fear other people and what they think of us, are but a few examples of the Unnecessary Suffering we create at the level of ordinary life. Suppose we agree to do something with someone or for someone simply because we want to please them. So, when they ask us, we say "Yes!". Yet this yes is not a true reflection of our desires. We internally, secretly, wish to say no. We have said yes simply to please the other person. We Inner Considered and then Lied, not expressing to our friend or relative the true nature of our feelings.

Now what ensues? The time approaches for us to carry out our yes, yet being Identified and unwilling to recant the lie, we become angry that we will have to do something we didn't want to do. We experience a Negative Emotion for not having properly fed ourselves, and we frequently project that Negative Emotion onto our friend or relative. We're angry at them for making us do something we don't want to do. We're caught in a vicious cycle.

What have we done to the person we love. We've Lied to them, practiced deception by not sincerely expressing our feelings, then we projected a destructive emotion at them, all because we Imagined that we would please them by doing so. Is this what we want to do in the name of love?

It begins to become evident that we have a responsibility to ourselves and our loved ones to sincerely express our true feelings. If another person truly loves you they will find your no quite acceptable.

This is an example of Unnecessary Suffering. Consider that, if most of our waking life is spent in the Second State of Consciousness, where to some degree the totality of our existence is filled with Imagination, Identification, Negative Emotion, Inner Considering, Lying and Unnecessary Talking, then our level of Unnecessary Suffering must be massive. The logic is inescapable. We can begin to see from this simple deduction that Unnecessary Suffering is a surface beneath which there exists another reality. If our awareness is filled with all the dramas of Unnecessary Suffering, we will have no ability to perceive the even greater drama lying beneath this surface. Thus all our work to expose these obtacles in operation within our psyche goes to dissolving the veil of Unnecessary Suffering that stands between us and a direct perception of Truth.

This brings us to real or Necessary Suffering. Life is indeed, as Blake's poem suggests, composed of the dualities of Joy and Woe, gain and loss, life and death, pain and pleasure, happy and sad. These are the necessary experiences of life. They come to all of us, whoever we are.

All our Unnecessary Suffering was a Buffer to a direct experience of Real Suffering. A Buffer is a partition or wall, a deadening, absorbtive device that softens the shocks of life. Our inner world is partitioned off with Buffers so that the contradictions living there can continue to co-exist. This is how we became many 'I's. In the beginning of life, all was simple. We percieved the truth and expressed it directly. As we matured, though, it began to be less and less acceptable to directly express the truth. As we began to develop a False Personality, it became necessary to erect these inner walls, or Buffers, in order to contain the contradictions that developed. If all our Buffers were removed in an instant, we would literally go mad. We would not be able to handle the awareness of these massive contradictions that exist within us.

The Work requires courage and is dangerous. There are no guarantees. We must find the courage to take down the walls and face our contradictions, face our Real Suffering. To do this requires that we release, or sacrifice, our imaginary picture of ourselves, our False Personality, and construct a True Personality that will protect and nurture Essence, allowing it to mature. Only through Essence can we experience Real Suffering. Through this process, we begin to discover, as an experience, not as an idea, or theory, the truer meanings of life, which are both personal and universal.

We begin to see the larger picture. No longer can we easily accept the petty Identification of the moment in place of the true Scale of life. If life is truly designed solely for my personal evolution, whether or not I happen to be aware of it, then the fact that at this moment the roof of my house has a leak, is a realtively less important fact in this larger picture. I then deal with it as part of the day's mundane business, giving it the proper attention, knowing that it is designed into the plan for my personal awakening process. I will then cease suffering Unnecessarily, experience the pain of loss it entails as part of the Real Suffering of life, and use this Friction to accelerate my spiritual growth.

The right use of Friction is an essential ingredient in the process of Awakening. Shakespeare wrote: "Sweet are the uses of adversity." Friction, adversity, pain, resistance, difficulty, these are all part of the human experience. They are inescapable. All our attempts to escape the inescapable comprise our Unnecessary Suffering. In doing this we overlook the obvious. The heat of Friction is the very thing needed to ignite the fire of consciousness. We would have to invent it if we already didn't have an abundance of it. Once again we see where The Work overturns life's values. In life without The Work, we seek to aviod Friction. In The Work, we learn to embrace Friction. It is the challange of life which, when met, causes us to become stronger, more powerful, more alive, awake, and vivid. We can verify this. It is not a theory. It is a fact.

As we reduce Unnecessary Suffering and come more into direct contact with Necessary Suffering we come under a different influence. Ouspensky identified three different influences which are available to us and simply labeled them influences A, B, & C.

A Influences are the influences of life, the tuggings of the Illusion. Money, power, and sex, security, escape from pain, success, fame, fortune, possessions, recognition, all are influences which produce Unnecessary Suffering. They hold a shiny promise which, when attained, does not fulfill itself. What seemed substantial is, in the experience of it, empty, devoid of meaning. As we work to diminish the obstacles to consciousness we diminish Unnecessary Suffering and reveal the illusions produced by A Influence.

B Influences consist of the remainants of conscious teachings. The Christian religion is a remainant of the teachings of Christ, for example. All literature that concerns itself with such teachings or approaches to the concerns of philosophy and metaphysics can be considered to be manifestations of this influence, including this book. Once something is written is ceases to be the Truth of the moment. It ceases to be alive. It is frozen. The more antique these remainants are, the more translated, intrepreted and manipulated they become, leaving further and further behind the original intent of the teaching. The pure Truth of the teaching is diluted and entire parts are lost, or distorted and twisted from their original intent.

None-the-less, B Influences are higher than, and do not come from, life, A Influence. Each one of us who has come to read such a book as this, has accumulated a certain amount of B Influence within our King of Hearts, the intellectual part of the Emotional Centre, and have formed what The Work calls a Magnetic Centre. As it forms and grows, it hungers for more B Influence, looking for the missing pieces to some puzzle of which we have a vague awareness. We discover as we proceed that there is something missing in this influence, so, we search for more to fill in the gaps. In the process we may be unaware that this accumulation of ideas is but a preparation to meet an even greater influence, Influence C.

C Influence is a living teaching transmitted directly word of mouth by one who is already living the teaching. It stands in the ancient tradition of orally transmitted truth that extends like a living chain back into history all the way to the beginning of human life on earth. It acknowledges and connects to the fact that there exist forces outside of life that are concerned with the spiritual development of the souls that are currently occupying physical bodies.

It is C Influence that fills in the blanks, the holes left in B Influences. Connection to C Influence is a break through for one who is hungry for the answers to the questions that life poses. It marks the end of seeking and the beginning of Work.

So, we work against Unnecessary Suffering and leave behind A Influence. We come into contact with Real Suffering and begin collecting B Influences. Then, finally, we contact C Influence which brings with it the necessity of Voluntary Suffering.

Our initial contact with C Influence brings with it a tremendous influx of new knowledge. As we begin to apply this new perspective to our daily life, we begin to see the need to make certain payments. We may see that to proceed we will need to give up certain ways of being to make space for this new influence. This is the beginning of Voluntary Suffering. It can not be described any more directly here because the specific nature of Voluntary Suffering is unique to each individual traveler. Remember, this is the Way of Understanding. You, and you alone, with the guidance of a teacher, will determine your course and its requirements.

Voluntary Suffering entails working against the machine, doing what it does not want to do. It is the beginning of Doing. The machine does not want to face its weaknesses. It prefers to hide from them, to Buffer them. The machine does not want to acknowledge it is not unified, that it has no Will, and cannot Do. The machine prefers to remain comfortable, while The Work is specifically designed to create discomfort, to embrace Friction rather than deny its existence or avoid it. To confront our weaknesses, acknowledge the existence of our Buffers, profoundly realize that we are asleep, requires a deep commitment to Voluntary Suffering. Through this act of Will, and only through it, will we find the opportunity to master the machine, develop integration or unity, and become Doers. Then we leave behind ordinary reality with its three dimensions and penetrate that fourth dimension that is always there, waiting for us, in the Eternal Moment.

Exercise 1: Unnecessary Suffering: Exercises are meant to enable us to verify ideas, to see them in action. Some substantial part of our inner world is convinced that what The Work describes as Unnecessary Suffering is what life is all about. Ouspensky said we will gladly sacrifice anything but our suffering, refering to our Unnecessary Suffering. Verifying Unnecessary Suffering requires that we begin to examine the results, the outcomes of the processes of Imagination, Identification, Negative Emotion, Inner Considering, Lying and Unnecessary Talking. What happens when we Lie to ourselves, when we give our power away to others? What happens when we fail to perceive the truth behind the veil of an imagined reality that we attach our identity to. Look for this in your own life. See how we suffer when we are "disillusioned".

Exercise 2: Buffers: Remember, everything is a process. Although we do have seemingly permanent structures established within, they each operate in the moment. Their outward manifestation into physical reality may take the form of various types of addictive behavior, or may be as simple as having an itch. Ever notice how your machine may, for instance, produce a cough at precisely the moment a potentially important truth is being uttered by someone else. Or we will be distracted by something superficial in the midst of a deep conversation, effectively deviating the discussion. Develop an awareness for those little distractions that mask the transitions from one personality to another, that prevent the entry of information disturbing to our imaginary picture of ourselves. Notice how good we are at rationalizing our weaknesses, explaining them in such a way as to excuse them, to make them all right so we don't have to work on them or even look at them. These are just a few ways that the process of Buffering takes place.

Exercise 3: Necessary Suffering: Here we move into intent, the intent to face our lives more directly, to begin to consciously acknowledge the truth of our existence, to see our disunity, our sleep, our mechanicality, our imbalance. There is great power in confessing our weaknesses to ourselves. It difuses the hold False Personality has upon us. Alcoholics Anonymous meetings begin with the admission of alcoholism. The Catholic Church has confession. These are tools that serve the same purpose, to reveal to ourself our situation, to see ourself as we are, not as we imagine ourself to be. Work every day to see deeper into the processes that prevent our accessing the Eternal Moment.

Exercise 4: Scale and Relativity: Learn to step back in the midst of your daily involvements and see them from a larger perspective. How will this event appear to me ten years from now, or even ten days from now. Work to see the Friction generated by your everyday life as the process whereby your evolution is being accomplished.

Exercise 5: Friction: Our attitude toward Friction is of central importance. In the lower states of consciousness we have the aim to avoid Friction. We must develop an attitude that appreciates Friction for the opportunity it gives us to work. We normally expend a great amount of energy avoiding or resisting Friction. This is futile and drains us of our vital force. By embracing Friction we face our lives directly with the positive emotion that all adversity that comes to us is designed to further our spiritual development.

Again, realize that this is true whether we're aware of it or not. By being aware of it, we accelerate our development.

Exercise 6: Influences A,B & C: Look at your life from the point of view of seperating the influences within it. "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's" instructed Christ. This is a reference to A Influence. Notice the tuggings of career and family, money, success, possessions and the demands they make upon your sense of identity. Notice too the influences that have drawn you away from the allure of A Influence. You would not be reading this book if they did not exist within you. Then look for the direct intervention of the invisible world in the seemingly coincidential events of your life that have led you on to the pursuits of more esoteric matters, what is called syncronicity.

Exercise 7: Voluntary Suffering: As you proceed in The Work you will begin to observe what supports your personal illusion. You will discover habits, patterns of behavior, ways of percieving the people in your life that are the underpinnings of False Personality. With this new awareness comes new responsibility. New choices become available. Start putting obstacles in the path of your habits, start resisting their momentums. This will offer new material for observation and new opportunities for Self-Remembering.

Practical Wisdom ©1993-2001 James Westly

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