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I think there are different answers for different people regarding suffereing.

Some are suffering due to being trapped by prior choices made ignorantly or naïvely. Not just in this life with the consequences of drugs, poor diet, kids and marriage and divorce, etc. but prior lives and the major mistakes made there that still carry effects here.

Some are suffering as an accepted risk of coming here into this lower realm to try and help others out, which means facing many of the same problems they are.

Some are suffering because they lost too much of their light/intuition/self-ness when they became overwhelmed by the amnesia and challenges of being here.

And some, which may include some of the above as well, see suffering as a faster and deeper way to change one’s being and imprint wisdom versus just learning it mentally ‘in a book’ in the higher nicer planes.

I think the issue is that fundamentally, this world does offer the pathway of growth and learning through suffering, just a going to a gym and transforming your body is done through suffering, but there’s no guarantee that you won’t get injured or fail to learn or make a bigger mess or get tricked into adding on extra suffering that you don’t actually need.

So it’s a gamble when we come here. The payoff is we come away stronger, wiser, and more profoundly understanding of self and others and the multiverse. The risk is that we forget who we are, betray ourselves, fall for deception, and get stuck in pointless loops of needless suffering.

Maybe the situation is comparable to movies. Why would anyone go watch a movie about drama, suffering, and adversity? Why not watch a movie that is happy and pleasant from start to finish? Why pay money for stress and tension? People might say, well it’s just a movie and in the end you walk out and you’re fine, so there’s no harm in some tension and release. Your higher spirit would say likewise, it’s just a temporary incarnation into the physical illusion and your consciousness is indestructible so there’s no harm in 70 years of tension and release.

Originally, maybe there was little or no risk. Maybe the only resistance was being in a physical body that ages and needs to be fed and sheltered. But the laws of physics and etheric and astral dynamics that make this restricted “game board” possible, lead to their own problems over time, and beings came about (or possibly invaded from another dimension) who hijacked this place. So now it’s a higher risk endeavor, with higher reward as well, but it can go very wrong.

I believe that the control system, the deception, the trickery—that it’s one half of what’s going on here. The other half is indeed the spiritual playground and gym and school. Both co-exist, and we walk a knife’s edge in life between these two.

The price we pay is through our own soul energy and suffering and time. The reward we gain—ONLY IF WE MAKE THE RIGHT CHOICES—is accelerated growth and wisdom.

The fact that we do grow in life, and that we’re not born as blank slates but have subconscious strengths and weaknesses gained from prior incarnations, and that our lives can have an invisible ordering to it like the hand of destiny that takes us along a positive trajectory… that all shows that this place isn’t solely an energy farm or prison. There’s also a positive layer, but as mentioned it isn’t guaranteed that we actualize that part.

Can someone be tricked and forced into coming here? Yes. Is that the only way someone can come here? In my opinion, no. But I do believe our choices carry binding consequences and if they are big enough, we can die and are forced back into a body at some point to balance the equation and finish things out.

So overall, I think suffering exists for a number of reasons:

• It increases self-knowledge, through how you chose to handle and endure it. Sometimes, bearing suffering with dignity gives meaning and purpose even when all else about the situation seems hopeless and pointless.

• You have to apply your strength and will to get through it, and that’s an act of consciousness overcoming matter and the world. The latter tries to crush you under its weight, but you’re pushing through despite that. Downside is, you can become calloused and hardened and therefore lose a connection with the heart (or ‘inner child’) as a result but hey we’re reborn as fun little babies so apparently the crotchety hardened crust falls away.

• It expands our capacity for what we can endure and do. If we’re in the mission/business of helping others, being discerning and tough lets us do that under conditions that would make younger/weaker souls buckle and run away. That means we can help in ways they can’t.

• We pay the price to the Matrix, in the form of our energy, to be here and do what we need to do for our own reasons. It’s like paying rent or a theme park entrance fee. No doubt, suffering feeds various negative forces. And often we pay more than we get in return. But as mentioned, if we can do it with dignity and courage and get strength, wisdom, or some other positive thing out of it in the long run, then it balances out in the end.

So I feel we just need to be smart and make informed choices to minimize suffering, and if we have to suffer, then do it bravely with determination, and squeeze everything we can out of our experiences in terms of wisdom and character gained.

Tom Montalk - https://montalk.net/about/143/e-mail-qa