Do we get more out of suffering?

[APeacefulWarrior]

In my own work digging into my head, I find it's often quite productive to take the attitude of a three-year-old: Keep asking "why?" and don't stop until you hit a brick wall. Accept whatever answer comes.

Like... One of the hardest things for me is getting past certain feelings of inferiority/inadequacy, and learning to accept that the Creator accepts me, as it were. I was raised in the US South, so I think a lot of that neo-Puritan self-hating vibe got into my head that way. I find it much better to think in terms of energies and karma, yet there's still a little demon called "Sin" riding around in my psyche and I can't entirely seem to shake the l'il bugger off.

(At least not yet...)

So one of my biggest blockages is a lack of love of self that then blinds me to the love I receive from other-selves and, of course, the higher selves. However, I am at least aware of this distortion, so I can keep poking and prodding it and asking "Why?" over and over until I can dig down to the root of it. I just have to keep learning to accept that I'm NOT being judged for my failings and I only fail myself if I cover them up out of fear. (And it took a whole mess of "Why"s just to get to this point.)

Find a distortion. Ask why. That'll probably lead to more distortions. Ask why some more. Eventually, you might come to a primal distortion that, if you can work out why it's there, will untangle many of the "sub-distortions" that spawn from it.

A cliche (but still common) real-world example might be a woman who ends up in a string of abusive relationships and eventually figures out that it boils down to daddy\acceptance issues. Once she figures out that she dates a-holes because her dad was an a-hole and she's still trying to gain a love from him she'll never actually receive, she can get past the primal distortion and, in turn, almost always starts dating better people.

Distortions are complicated self-reinforcing things that like to create new distortions to justify their own existence. That's why I find "Why?" to be the best tool for finding their roots. No matter how high the distortions have built themselves up, the Truth is still at the bottom, if you can dig down to it.