How much suffering is too much suffering? Many people accept a person or animal may be in so much pain that they themselves are forced to allow/enable the death of the one who is suffering.
The anti-natalist movement has taken this to the next level and has concluded that it would be better if life ended completely, since the extreme suffering of so many cannot be justified. My response here explains that the concerns about extreme suffering are valid, but that the solution is radical change & not total death.
This is a response to some thoughts shared by @dannyshine on this topic :)
From the moment we are born, we tend to feel discomfort and pain. For some of us, this pain begins before birth and may include psychological, emotional and physical pain - often of a kind that we do not even register fully consciously. Some have even concluded that 'life is suffering' - though this is often mis-attributed to Buddha, who actually said that "Unenlightened life is suffering".
Buddha prompted people to look within and to learn essential lessons that keep balance and which can end suffering. Having studied this in depth, with an open mind - I have concluded that Buddha's teachings were not fully accurate, but that I agree with the overall gist that suffering can be ended through enlightenment. As with all such challenges, we need to be very clear about the definitions involved in order to attain useful understanding.
Key Definitions
You may hold different definitions for the following ideas. These are just my definitions, upon which this article is based - so it is important that you take the time to read them if you are to appreciate what I am saying here.
Life:
A process of expression, through form and motion, of both our own individuated essence and also the similar essence of an uncounted number of other beings. Forms of life can vary wildly, but they all share one thing in common - they vibrate.
Death:
The ending of the vibration of the essence of a previously living being. This may only extend to the physicalised parts of the being (e.g. the human body) or in some cases may also include non-physical parts too (sometimes referred to as a person's spirit and/or will).
Suffering:
The experiencing of things which the individual does not want to experience.
Pain:
The feeling experienced when an individual exceeds one of their own limitations. This may include psychological, emotional or physical types of pain. Sometimes pain can be a guide to expansion, in that it can be triggered in a controlled way. Sometimes pain can signify a huge problem as it can relate to extreme and life-threatening dysfunction.
Balance:
All parts and aspects of a being/body/system are in harmony and are not overpowering any of the other parts/aspects.
Consciousness:
'Noticing' and having previously 'noticed' things. The more capacity for consciousness we have, the more we can notice, the more we learn and the faster we can evolve and improve our reality.
Unconsciousness:
The absence of noticing and the absence of capacity to learn, change and evolve.
Will:
The part of a living being that feels, expresses as emotions and that can connect deeply to the true essence of things in life. We feel repulsed or attracted to people, experiences and ideas as a function of our own will.
Denial:
The rejection and refusal to accept the existence of an idea, feeling or other 'thing'. A 'thing' may be in motion and may truly exist, but for our own reasons we prefer that it does not exist and try to block it out. Rather than accept its existence and seek to learn in order to transform the situations, we can instead blank out the thing in question and even intend to do it harm - these are forms of denial.
Denial of Denial:
People are often in denial of denial itself, which can mean, for example, that they deny that they hold certain beliefs, patterns, preferences and feelings and then also deny that they are denying these things. Denial of denial completely shuts the door to change, since the person is now unaware that they are denying things.
Light:
The word 'light' is used routinely in life, from spiritual texts, to physics and on to mundane conversations. In the context of this article, I am referring to light in the sense of it meaning 'understanding' and also 'consciousness' in place of unconsciousness. We 'shed light' on a topic and aim to become 'brighter' as a result.
Dark:
The absence of light, which in the sense I am using 'light' here, implies unawareness, delusion, unconsciousness and inability to act with power. If we are 'in the dark', then we can feel lost and have no way to find our way to solutions and improvement.
The Origin of Suffering
I have no doubt that the level of suffering on Earth, including both humans and non-humans, is so vast that if any single person were to experience it for even a fraction of a second, they would die from shock immediately.
There are numerous causes for us having experiences that we don't want to have. In order to grasp such an immense subject it is necessary to be able to define the origins of our universe and to identify why things are as they are. Despite claims to the contrary, this is possible and has been done - not by physicists so much - but more by the beingness that was present at the inception of this universe - sometimes called God or spirit..
We were all 'there' too - however, we mostly have epic memory loss.
The full explanation of this story covers thousands of pages and is not found in any religious books. However, just know that it exists and I am referencing it.
A key part of the explanation of how the universe was created includes the understanding that God itself was initially unconscious and was not, as some believe, an auto-omnipotent and all-knowing being that cannot make mistakes. The universe is effectively made 'of' God and so everything within it is a reflection of the possibilities within 'the one'.
I personally prefer to use the term 'the one' in place of God, but don't have a problem using the word 'God' either. There is a need to recognise, though, that everyone has their own definitions for the word 'God' and we may not entirely agree on the meaning.
Prior to the inception of this universe/creation, there was formlessness - no planets, no stars and not much at all. An un-individuated continuum of energy. There wasn't much to suffer, but then there wasn't much to do or experience either. Gradually, the unconsciousness stirred and 'the one' started to notice more about itself - learning and awareness began here.
There were parts that didn't like being aware and preferred being in a twilight state and dream-like state of unawareness - but the draw of increased awareness was too powerful for that to continue for long.
The process from this condition to the state of a fully manifest universe is long and contains many details. I would need 1000 pages to explain it here, so I won't try. The key point is that along the way, errors were being made and ideas were being formed that were judgemental in nature - they were not based in absolute understanding and were essentially guesses that were held as fact.
When actions are taken without complete understanding, there is a chance that outcomes will be problematic. If we learn from the process, then there is a chance there will be no problem and any imbalances can be corrected. However, if the nature of our mistakes include the blocking out and harming of key parts of ourselves, then there is a chance we will not be able to come into balance. This is what took place.
'The One' rejected its own feelings simply because it didn't like some of them. Anger and fear were judged in many ways, including that they were enemies and threats. The avoidance of real feelings is a problem that has plagued us all the way through the expression of this universe. This is the root cause of the existence of psychopathy and the heartlessness which we see reflected all across the Earth.
Rejection of emotionality and, by association, the rejection of free will - has its roots here.
Every time any 'one' blocks out and does not fully accept a real feeling, they add to this already huge problem. If you cannot feel your real response to something, then you cannot really know whether it is for you and whether engaging with it will increase or decrease balance.
The denial of real emotions is itself a dangerous imbalance that leads only to more and more imbalance.
This, then, is one of the primary causes of suffering.
Far from the common interpretation of Buddhism which claims that 'desire is suffering', the reality is that it is the denial of desire that is at the root of suffering. A huge blunder!
In our own lives it is possible to experience and understand how we cause ourselves problems if we pretend we don't feel as we really do feel. We might see someone stealing our favourite 'thing' and then pretend that we don't feel bothered by that, instead of allowing our anger to protect us and to motivate action. Avoidance and disassociation of this kind might seem ok once or twice, but over time we will lose a lot of power and we will not feel good or enjoy life much.
Training self to disassociate and 'detach' from the material world is another popular strategy to try to deal with this situation. The result of this is further disconnection from real feelings and a gradual loss of even more power.
The only people that can be said to benefit from this approach are the gurus and religious leaders who get rich from teaching it and the evil do-ers who are more than happy to take this dis-owned personal power and to use it for their own ends.
Instead of wearing a robe and decrying the people 'out there' who all seem so evil - wishing 'if only they were more like me' - perhaps it is more opportune to re-examine your own involvement in this situation and just what exactly is happening with all the essence and energy that you hide away from internal acceptance, movement and consciousness.
In any case, the point here is that acceptance of our own will enables movement, change and transformation. Denial of our own will causes energy to freeze, patterns to lock and change to slow down to a near standstill.
This is the actual state of our universe, since the 'energy that creates worlds', aka 'God' literally did deny the will and has caused creation to almost die/freeze through lack of change, evolution and movement.
This is essentially the original cause for the vast amount of suffering on this planet. Many people live in the same way themselves, adding constantly to the suffering - whereas others have taken different views and attempted to solve the problem themselves. Some want to heal the Earth and some want to destroy it.
A key point here is that the same intention that originally wanted to shut down free will, emotions and movement - is the same intention that wants to end all life now.
There has just been enough experience at this point for this energy to try to justify total destruction, but leaving out one key point - the immense suffering was CAUSED by the energy that now wants everything to die. Death dealing denial was the thread that ran right through this process and continues here now.
Personal Responsibility, Free Will & The End of Suffering
So from the above text, it is possible to begin to appreciate that our situation is not the result of an omnipotent God who just happens to be evil enough to want to force huge suffering onto 'his beloved children'. It is also clear that the suffering is not purely the result of 'ignorant children who won't do as they are told'.
The reality is that the cause of our suffering is ignorance and error that has led to imbalance. Some of this has taken place within us as individuals and some of it has taken place on other dimensions of self, which have the capacity (when balanced sufficiently) to literally manifest an entire universe.
If you want to say here that the universe is actually random and there is no such cause or will that runs through everything... You are welcome to provide a proof that random exists at all - I am not aware of one.
So, with all this in mind and heart - allowing it to sink in to your feelings... What next? How do we heal, balance and evolve?
This is the topic I have mainly written about for 20 years, since receiving loving light directly into me from God a long time ago in the relative sense.
Healing, balancing and evolving are a trifecta of intentions and energy movements that reinforce each other and that propel us in the direction of our own well-being. They can also be applied to the Earth and the 'Mother nature' herself.
The key essences of healing/balancing/evolving now are to:
- End all forms of denial.
- Accept all of self, including unconditional acceptance of emotional movements. Real emotions need to be felt, but also allowed to vibrate in the body as movement and/or sound. This is almost never done by most people and takes some time/processing to achieve.
- Understand that suffering and death are not inevitable, they are the result of longstanding denial.
- Clear out judgemental thought patterns that prevent right understanding and that hold truth away. Judgements claim that 'X is Y', but without really knowing - they mislead and weaken us.
- Allow your heart to balance thoughts and emotions in a loving way. This can lead to personal healing on all levels.
Whether you have had enough experience to recognise the accuracy of these ideas or not - I want to point out now that these apply not only to the healing of humans, but to animals too. Through the freeing of our own will, a vast array of new possibilities become apparent that were invisible previously. It is important that these include the 'voiceless' animals too.
The cause for the existence of animals and humans is a long story that goes beyond the scope of this article. However, it is sufficient to point out that animals and humans are both spirits with particular forms and patterns. Not only are animals sentient, can feel, have desires and often share very similar genetics to humans - we can actually communicate in real ways - in 2 directions.
See this documentary for more on this:
Typically, animals are physicalised reflections and embodiements of the same electromagnetic soul essence that makes us up as humans. However, they tend to be smaller soul fragments of a being that was once much larger and more whole.
Denial has caused fragmentation over a very long time period, so that now we have a vast number of tiny fragments and slightly larger ones that reflect the basic patterns of sentience but which lack the power to change their reality in significant ways.
This loss of power has opened the door to the mass predation that people often refer to as 'natural'. However, this is far from natural. It is not natural for any being to abuse and pray on others in a heartless way.
The word 'Nature' originates in the French word 'Natir', which means 'birth'. What is natural is simply that which was present at birth - however, evolutionary process was present at birth too, so there is no real singular state which we can call 'natural' other than 'being alive'.
If we consider that in the most zoomed out view - ALL IS ONE - then all predation is 'the self' attacking itself. The eating of animals is like a form of auto-immune illness, where the being is destroying itself due to an unconscious and erroneous definition of what is taking place.
The patterns found in animal predators that lead them to appear to be entirely dependent on killing others are similar to the patterns found in human serial killers which 'science' claims 'cannot be healed' because the real causes cannot be found.
The real causes of psychopathy and animal predators can only be found in the unconscious self and the only way we can reach these parts is through sustained intentions to heal, balance and evolve as individuals - allowing the unconscious self to become conscious and for very deeply held patterns to finally shift.
Summation
Whether you are open to these ideas or not, you can probably agree that it is very challenging to cover the ground here in such a small number of words. Almost regardless of what I write here there will be people wanting to shout at me in response to various aspects. The longstanding denial of real emotions means that these topics can be very triggering.
I feel I have achieved some degree of my original intent here to nudge people who have concluded that 'life is suffering and therefore we should end it' to reconsider that perhaps there is another way to view the situation.
It is absolutely correct that the state of imbalance and suffering on Earth has reached the point whereby the will to live is fading away for many who are here. Those who refuse to heal must be allowed to leave us as that is their intention anyway. However, they must not be allowed to take the entire creation with them.
Make no mistake that on the extreme end of 'anti-natalism' is the kind of psychopathic energy that actively wants and even plans to kill everything, everywhere. That is another long story which I will not go into here!
Suffering can end and it is not necessary for creation to stop. In truth, the movement of the will and essence that has been involved to create this universe is such that if the universe ends, there will be no healing and no possibility of any creation in future. Effectively, the death of this universe means the death of everything, everywhere. There remains enough will to live that this cannot be allowed without over-riding significant numbers of beings.
Please let me know below or in private messaging if you have any questions/comments.
May loving light guide the way.
Wishing you well,
Ura Soul
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Thanks for your thoughtful response to my challenge. Although I originally challenged you to rebut antinatalism, I don't 'identify' as an antinatalist as such. in fact, I am not sure whether there is an 'I?' However, I would call myself a radical sceptic - one who attempts to remain as open as possible whilst remaining very sceptical. Reading your article and the books you sent me, brings up a huge amount of doubt and skepticism. I used to be into all sorts of schools of thought, especially New age thought. But I have become very skeptical over the years about it all and reading your article (which was beautifully written and presented) just sounds like woo woo to me. I don't really care about philosophising about 'getting rid of the world' (like Inmendham does - the creator of the term 'Efilism' which is Life spelt backward) because thankfully I have no power to do so, so its all hypothetical. The question I have had for 8 years since I came across 'suffering based ethics, is simple. What possible justification can there be for creating and form of sentient life, given the risk of intolerable suffering and the guarantee of a great deal of suffering and death, especially when there are already millions of children and billions of adults who so desperately need our help?
Prevention is superior to a cure which is why I question people creating new life. the best way to prevent cancer is to desist from bringing someone into existence who can experience cancer. I salute you for not having brought new people into existence and thereby preventing possibly millions of your descendants from unnecessary suffering and death. I also agree with some of the points about denial vs feeling feelings as a way through them and i agree that once we are here, it is wise to maximise the experience we and others have. i just cannot for the life of me see how someone wise, humane and compassionate would take such a huge and unnecessary gamble with someone elses life by creating them?
Тhis post is a valuable resource. Thank you.
You are welcome, thanks!
For me, a simple answer to the question of how much suffering is too much is given by animals I have loved. I had a cat that adopted me in Texas, and we lived and traveled together for 15 years. He became ill and was unable to eat, despite his best efforts. When I took him to a vet, I was told he had cancer in the bones of his head, and his jaw could no longer serve to feed him. I then began to feed him with a turkey baster, and, while he did not like the process, continued to desire food enough to tolerate it. After a year, however, he began to refuse food.
That was when I realized he had suffered enough, and did not want to continue to live. I have been unwilling to eat, even for extended periods of time, once going 30 days without eating. I eventually became willing to eat again, as the grief had been wrestled into something I could accommodate. In his condition he would not make it a month without food, but after several days I became convinced he was certain in his decision, and I was unwilling to force feed him.
That is my answer: when an animal refuses food determinedly for an extended period they clearly do not want to continue to suffer anymore. This cannot be determined for them, and certainly not before they are given the opportunity to decide for themselves. Anti-natalists are intolerably arrogant, and consider themselves all the god anyone or anything should be availed. I have no respect for that conceit, nor those that have it. They are not only incompetent to determine whether the lives of others are worthwhile to them, they are incapable to understand all the ways in which life enables us to benefit from it. I am certain none of us is, and for this reason will decide for myself what I will bear and what I will not. I clearly have the responsibility to daily continue my life in constant danger from all that would take it from me, and that authorizes me to do so.
Thanks!
Thanks for sharing here. The will to live will absolutely leave us if we do not find the ways to address extreme imbalance. Unfortunately, the longstanding gap between the conscious self and unconscious self means that not only are both we and the animals stuck in a death grip until a bridge is built within us between our parts, but this therefore means that 'authorised healers' are in no better a condition.
I advise all people to consider just how many humans ridicule the idea of a utopian existence and anyone who seeks to imagine or discuss it. There is no possible way of optimising life without first imagining the possibility. Given that we all co-create the reality on Earth, it takes only basic logic to realise that we are being largely hindered by the futile beliefs which say that seeking to improve the situation is impossible or counter to the real goal.
that is probably the best definition of pain i have ever read. exceeding our own limitations.
we have to get with the pain and emotions that come up in us. they might be far bigger, archetypal questions that still need solving, and now is simply our turn as we find ourselves here. we are materializers, crystallizations of the entirety at the place we each find ourselves. and we are remembering.
the new era i feel will be kind to those who worked on themselves now. cleaning up the confusion and chaos within in order to being order and inner strength outwards into "the world"
what a magnificent trip it is
blessings dude
Thanks, I can't take credit for it - as far as I am aware it came from God.
Yes, my understanding is that not that many beings will survive this ongoing process, but those who do will be able to experience unprecedented beauty, freedom and grace on Earth - as was intended all along.
that sounds great.
let's see it.
soon.
i very much agree with this view.
excellent, thanks for being you!
Given that words limit us, you put together a fantastic piece. Here's the punchline:
Understanding and innerstanding our multidimensional aspect is a huge task. Becoming the observer of self is necessary to regain harmony and balance in a dense 3D realm reigned by duality. You touched upon a plethora of aspects that go beyond quantum entanglement, which one can only experience (know, feel by opening the heart); that again requires opening up to infinite possibilities, something very hard to grasp for a brain / mind-driven individual. I love to look at things from different perspectives. I like to look at Earth as a training field for the brave. It's a harsh environment, yet the experience in this human avatar offers tremendous growth opportunities.
What's your take on the Metatron cube (as I saw you used its image)?
It is key to be cognisant that every thought that we think is a for of 'ink' (the-ink) within reality that can literally vibrate into experience outside of us. So stillness and zero is valuable - however, this must also not come through self control and limitation of felt vibrations. There is a need to allow emotion, while stopping thought - at least to discover and unlock some truths.
Earth is apparently the only focal point for will essence in the entire creation - which explains her diversity as compared to the other planets. This is why Earth is so fundamental and why our actions now determine far more than we know consciously.
Metatron and the related sacred geometry is a very large and complex topic. As with any of these topics there are a diverse range of views that span the full range from: "metatron's cube is the basis for life" through to "metatron's cube is pure evil".
I don't personally view it as evil (this idea is based on thinking which claims that Phi and other dynamics that are clearly present through physical reality here are themselves based on incorrect logic and are the cause of death).
For me it is simply a pattern which is very interesting to explore and which contains within it the ratios and constants which we also find throughout the entirety of our natural world. Clearly it is very significant and needs to be understood. I recommend the books 'The ancient secret of the flower of life' for a deep dive into the topic if you haven't already come across them :)
I was really interested in your personal "spin" on the Metatron construct. The perspective of the Metatron Cube being a fail-safe mechanism is particularly interesting. I've been digging into the Fibonacci and Krystic mathematics, the Merkaba field, the Krystal spiral, and other aspects/constructs. You never stop once you go down the rabbit hole ;) I'm a huge fan of Ancient Egypt. I never bought into the mainstream narrative. What we call mystery school is more real than the illusionary game we're so plugged in.
Aha ok, yes, it is the Krystic group that is claiming that Phi and Metatron are evil. They call the flower of life 'the daisy of death'. lol.
It's a huge topic and one that we would all do well to study, though, it is absolutely a rabbit hole of epic proportion!
not anding denial yet.