News from Peace Begins With Me

Of the many newsletters I have written over the past two years, none has elicited as much response as my recent account of my journey climbing Mount Kilimanjaro. In my February newsletter I wrote, "As I stood on the steep slope, fatigued to exhaustion, chilled beyond belief, overcome with nausea and dizziness, I came to an important conclusion - I had suffered enough."

Those words seemed to have resonated with many people. I received numerous emails and messages from individuals who benefited from the realization that each of us creates our suffering by the thoughts and expectations we hold that are out of alignment with reality.

Spiritual teacher, Eckhart Tolle, writes about the importance of suffering in his book, The Power of Now. Tolle describes how suffering is often the path through which we come to our enlightenment. Tolle uses the Christian expression, "the way of the cross" to describe individuals who found God through their deep suffering. He explains however that, "strictly speaking they did not find God through their suffering, rather, they found God through surrender - through total acceptance of what is, into which they were forced by their intense suffering."

The fact is suffering is valuable. It is through intense pain and suffering that many of us overcome our resistance to what is and arrive at a place of surrender and acceptance. Tolle explains that the worst thing in your life, your "cross", can become the best thing to happen to you by forcing you into surrender. You surrender because you can't stand the pain of suffering anymore. What happened to me on the slopes of Kilimanjaro was surrender as a result of intense suffering.

I also experienced surrender 20 years ago when my resistance to my son's disabilities and fragile medical condition caused such deep suffering that I could no longer continue down the same path. I was forced into acceptance - into accepting that my son was disabled and might die at any moment. This surrender allowed me to relinguish my attachment to my stories of how my son's life should have been and instead make peace with what is. The surrender allowed me to "fall in love with the son I have, rather than the son I don't have".

Tolle suggests that until recently suffering was the only path to enlightenment. In our state of unconsciousness it was only through intense suffering that we could realize our resistance to reality and chose again. The good news, according to Tolle, is there are an increasing number of humans today whose consciousness is sufficiently evolved to no longer need intense suffering before they realize enlightenment. They don't need to experience years of pain and agony in order to reach peace and joy. All that is required is the willingness to accept responsibility for their suffering and choose to end the suffering.

In my seminars I regularly invite participants to play with the idea that they are one hundred percent responsible for their thoughts, feelings, and behaviours, including their suffering. This means they can no longer say, "You make me happy" or "You make me angry". Taking one hundred percent responsibility means accepting that "I make me happy" and "I make me angry".

At a recent speaking engagement in Richmond, BC a gentleman approached me after my presentation. He shared with me that he and his wife heard me speak about taking one hundred percent responsibility at a talk they attended two years ago. His initial reaction was that I was one hundred percent full of nonsense. However, after the talk his wife asked that they experiment with this idea of taking one hundred percent responsibility. He admitted these last two years have been the best years of his life. He now realizes that the way he had been living previously - projecting responsibility for his thoughts, feelings, and behaviours onto others was the nonsense.

Are you ready to end your suffering? Are you willing to take one hundred percent responsibility for creating your suffering? Are you ready to choose peace and joy, regardless of what life offers? If not, what are you resisting? What if you surrendered and accepted? Are you ready to set down your cross? I hope so, because you deserve to experience abundant peace and joy.

Cheers,
Ted