Or to be deserving of abundance or worthy of enlightenment.

If any ‘guru’ or belief-system tries to convince you otherwise, please embrace your self-loving boundaries and run the other way – fast!

Because suffering is no longer a prerequisite for evolving as a spiritual being or embracing personal joy. We must stop glorifying drama and trauma as the only path to Love.

Most of us experience challenging situations that test us – sometimes a little and sometimes to the edge of breaking – and these most certainly affect the person we become. For those who embrace and transform their pain, they do indeed offer a perspective and connection that can sooth, empower, and heal others.

But to claim that strength and wisdom can ONLY come from those who have suffered sets up a very limiting possibility from which we can live in the world. It leaves us asking How do I know if I have suffered enough? What is the barometer and who am I comparing my pain against to see if I’m worthy yet?

The belief system that we can only grow through suffering also ignores other sources of wisdom:

• what we have experienced and learned in previous lives
• divine guidance from sources other than our own physical experience
• our ability to empathise with others without having to suffer through the same ourselves.

I used to believe in absolute duality, that we cannot know cold without hot, up without down, happiness without sadness… but I know now that it doesn’t have to be that way. These beliefs – so ingrained in many of our cultures, religions, spirituality – once served a purpose of creating contrast as a way for us to understand certain energetic concepts, especially at a time when humanity felt itself separate from Source/God and undeserving of Love.… but that time has passed. We have found our Divinity-Within and know there is an alternative for those who want to take a path of greater peace and ease, because we already ARE Love.

So, if you stand in the possibility that you no longer *have to* suffer in order to ‘deserve’, how different would life look?

What happiness would you call forth right now?

What abundance would you readily allow into your life?

What enlightenment would be yours to claim, just because?

© Artemiss Keyhani, 2019
Photo: Artemiss Keyhani