Healing from Within

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Everyone Suffers But Let’s Choose the Best Way

• November 15, 2021
• William Arntz
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Welcome to Healing From Within with your host Sheryl Glick author of the newest book in the trilogy, A New Life Awaits Spirit Guided Insights to Support Global Awakening and like her esteemed guest William Arntz author of How to Suffer in 10 Easy Steps and Producer of the film What the Bleep Do We Know has explored the human and divine aspects of our energetic being to understand how to best deal with creating or manifesting a purposeful and joyful life journey.

Thank you for joining us on Healing From Within and I must extend a lovely hello to your wife Deidre Hall a former guest of the show who discussed the book you both created The Not So Little Book of Surprises which sits on my coffee table, as it is so extraordinary and beautiful. For listeners to hear the show Deidre and I shared please go to the radio page of my website www.sherylglick.com MARCH 2019 SPECIAL EDITONS.

As listeners of Healing From Within are well aware, Sheryl and her guests share intimate stories of metaphysical origins in the hopes of answering questions such as “Who are we?” “Where do we come from?” and “What lies beyond this physical world and life?” As spiritual beings having a physical life our duality sometimes makes it hard to pay attention to our inner wisdom and remember the outside world is not the source of our happiness or unhappiness. The question of how to create or manifest our best lives has always been the quest for spiritual minds to investigate, and for self-mastery of emotions, another great search for truth, and perhaps the only way to find truth.

In today’s episode of Healing From Within, we will discover how Willian Arntz, as a Research Laser Physicist, was able to explore spiritual life alongside scientific and physical life. Because the fact of the matter is, Arntz lets us know suffering is inescapable, inevitable and quite inconvenient, but we must learn to work with. Like they say, you can run, you can hide, but life will find you and the sooner you face your challenges, the better we all are.

William tells us something of life today and what is most meaningful to everyday life experiences.

William says “There are three main factors in how things work here in this life that set things up to deliver a life of suffering to everybody on the planet. They are duality, entropy and belief. Duality is what philosophers call the inescapable name of the game on planet Earth. The world of suffering is defined by the two-some-ness that we find ourselves in, yin/yang, hot/cold in/out right/wrong good/bad yes/no me/them ..the whole twosome dance: Without these opposing forces, there would be no physical world at all including no female/male pleasure/pain and life and death. What would life be like if there were no two, no opposites, no polarity, no me/them just a Oneness of All: just a non-ending merry go round. Not much to suffer about in that picture.

It’s not like duality has just been discovered. We’ve been dealing with it from the beginning. Thinkers throughout time and space have wrestled with the question of how to deal with the dual nature of reality. The “Golden Mean” suggested by Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and their students were extremes between the two poles of a given issues the extremes were to be avoided. An example of their thinking is courage: too much courage is reckless, too little courage is cowardliness. Therefore, courage is the “Golden Mean” between recklessness and cowardice. It is in striking the perfect balance between all opposites that beauty and virtue and less suffering are to be found.

In China, Confucian and Taoist philosophers taught “The Doctrine of Mean” as the way of the superior man. Therefore, the superior man cultivates a friendly harmony without being weak. How firm is he in his energy? He stands erect in the middle, without inclining to either side. Again, extremes are to be avoided. Let the states of equilibrium and harmony exist in perfection and a happy order will prevail throughout heaven and earth.

The Middle Path as the Buddhists called the solution to duality, or the path to enlightenment, was between the addiction of self-pleasure and the addiction of self-mortification. In this doctrine, Buddha gives the means for enlightenment and the end of suffering…be neither attracted nor repulsed.

William goes on to discuss Entropy- The End of Every Thing. Entropy also known as the Second Law of Thermodynamics states that everything in the Universe eventually moves from order to disorder, and entropy is the measurement of that change, the measurement of the randomness or disorder in a system. Entropy is inevitable!

This is a set up for suffering. Everything goes away. Loss is the destiny of this world. No matter how many riches, contingency plans, and vitamin supplements you have, the finale of the movie of you in this world is the same: dust in the wind.

Non Attachment is one of the ways of living philosophies and religious beliefs designed to deal with the train wreck at the end, and we learn nothing is permanent, which is a sobering thought and, yes, it causes suffering.

William continues on to talk about Beliefs- Your Personal Setup/Worldview. There is yet another suffering setup and that is your personal relationship with suffering itself—a relationship based on what your underlying ideas or beliefs about this life experience are. This collection of beliefs, ideals, wisdom and experience, is collectively known as your worldview. Seemingly, people who have these worldviews might suffer more than people who perceive the world in a different way.

Here are some of the more popular worldviews regarding suffering:

If I suffer enough God will forgive me.
If I suffer more than enough, I will forgive me.
No pain, no gain.
Suffering is good for the soul.
It’s my karma.
If it’s not happening to me, it’s not my problem.

I am being tested as to my worthiness. “What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.” (Nietszche)
Fate is fatal—nothing you can do about it.
William describes why he calls suffering the “Gorilla in the Room.”

William wrote, “If you ignore (aka are unconscious of) the Gorilla, you will stay in the darkness.” The only way to the light is being conscious of the big ape. And not only does that point a way to move beyond suffering, it also suggests that the suffering itself is what will service you getting to the light. I mean, if you’re going to suffer you might as well get something out of it right? As the famous German philosopher Fredrich Nietzsche put it, “To live is to suffer. To survive is to find some meaning in suffering. To which I may add: To flourish and not merely survive is to make suffering your bitch.” So invite that ugly brute into the room of your awareness. I can’t say what to do when the Big Hairy One is there. But it will change things. Plus you may get a bottle of Chardonnay out of the deal.”

William tells us what inspired him to write How to Suffer in 10 Easy Steps. This book does something radical, it does not promise you a better life. It tells you how to work with the one you’ve got with the highs and lows…especially the lows. You may learn how to own your sadness, how to wear pain like a new designer t-shirt, how to wallow in self-pity like a pig in mud. Because the fact of the matter is suffering is inescapable. William tells us his wife inspired him to write the book when she said, “I just want to lie here and suffer.” In that moment, she invited the Gorilla of Suffering into the room of her awareness and stopped pretending it wasn’t standing there, kicking her in the back. She not only became aware of her suffering, she publicly admitted to it. Even more stunning, she admitted to wanting to embrace it.”

Sheryl says she believes as souls having a physical life, the greatest gift of this life is to feel and embrace all emotions, know and survive all emotions, and then find those that serve us best, so we can eliminate the fear of life, and know the best of all experiences, which is simply to love, even in the face of self-doubt, loss, pain of sorrow for all things to come and go, and then we have new opportunities to feel different emotions. The key to successfully experiencing and surviving all emotions from the negative to the positive, is to embrace it, know it, but not to stay in the energy of that emotion for too long.

William discusses with Sheryl why he takes a humorous approach to a serious, sad subject. Sheryl says, “Perhaps, it is not a sad subject, just the reality of a physical life which can be no different, because of entropy, human nature, and the reason a soul chooses to experience these challenges in the first place. So by accepting that no experience we have is a sad subject, we already become the victor of any challenge. So finding humor, often alleviates pain and suffering, making a realistic assessment of what can transpire in no other way but the way it does. Since Sheryl knows Consciousness and the essence of our individual soul memoires survives physical death, it is, for her, less stressful to deal with the challenges of physical life. We may not like it, but must allow, accept, and surrender to “all that is” as we know all things are transitory and moving through our emotions and difficult feelings, leads us to new opportunities to experience other attitudes and viewpoints, so the theme should be “Don’t get stuck.”

William expresses that there seems to be a satirical look at self-help books. Perhaps, self-help books often don’t work because people are invested in their pain and suffering. Take for example the ultra-marathoner that William describes. They run over a hundred miles without stopping and are on their feet for 20 plus hours. They suffer. And yet they do it. Why?

Ultra-athletes willingly put themselves in extreme situations that would cause most people extreme pain and suffering. But for the athlete, because of their underlying beliefs and values—their worldview some believe in “no pain, no gain.” Some believe they can prove themselves by enduring what few people can. Their relationship to suffering itself affects their experience of it. The pure “suffer more” crowd, is into suffering for a variety of reasons. For some it’s about eventually getting pleasure out of the deal; Examples are…Why are you hitting your head on your locker? Because it feels so good when I stop.

William lets us know that suffering may not be avoidable. But, it is possible with attitude and courage, resilience and awareness, of both your spiritual qualities or energy, that you do have ways to self-soothe situations, and pain, thereby lowering the level of suffering which often is a choice, not a reality. If nothing is done to address the suffering, then it will loop and loop, become a consistent attitude or pattern which colors how you view life. It becomes a habit, the habit of suffering. In order to break the pain/suffering cycle there needs to be an energetic input. The input can be intention, learning, awareness, will power, frustration or commitment. In other words, something from outside the cycle has to come in to break it. Once the cycle breaks, there is every hope that the pain and depression will go away. Change the pattern, change the thoughts to do things in a new inviting way, rewrite the story or script with a happier ending.

In every chapter about The Pseudo Science of Suffering, William tells us about details for readers to create their very own Sufferometer.

Let’s take the next step to understand a left brain, quasi-logical cause and effect, analysis of suffering. The most obvious event that triggers suffering is pain. People often refer to pain and suffering as if it’s one and the same thing. But it isn’t. When pain ratchets up to the point where a bunch of things come into play say with a back situation—you can’t go to work, you can’t tie your shoes, hell you can’t even wipe yourself as any movement is painful—something happens. As pain increases there comes a specific point where it’s just too much. This is called the Threshold of Suffering. When you hit this threshold of suffering you abandon all attempts to ignore the discomfort and give yourself over to being miserable. And push through it when you eliminate the suffering you can eliminate the pain Our thoughts are that powerful. So lean into the moment and eventually conquer the pain thereby conquering suffering.

William would like readers to take away with them after reading How to Suffer in Ten Easy Steps that this is a book about nearly everything. Yet, the one unavoidable thing we all do – suffer—has been woefully ignored. Furthermore, the alleviation of suffering is the hidden drive behind so much of what everyone does. Find love—so you won’t suffer loneliness, create riches so you won’t suffer lack. Talking about suffering is a taboo, yet, we know that hiding a problem only makes it worse. How to Suffer in 10 Easy Steps takes the taboo head on with humor, insights and wisdom of the ages.

Sheryl tells a story of when she was a little girl and cried up to the heavens and asking “Why did you drop me in this place?” As an empath and intuitive, Sheryl knew even then, that within much of what she was suffering, barely scratched the surface of our magnificent potential to experience all emotions and triumph over them. Many of the authorities or grownups Sheryl encountered, were simply not behaving in the most loving, intelligent fashion, for it seems they had fear, anger and often scolded others. It may have been done to protect, but often it just discouraged spontaneity and the divine spirit or soul of the child. Maybe they had no learned how to understand suffering as we are discussing here. But, suffering like life, is an opportunity to know yourself, the physical and spiritual aspects of life, gaining new perspectives, attitude and fortitude, as we use the inner wisdom of intuition and soul personal power to transform all suffering or challenges, while simply allowing and accepting life as it is, not perhaps as you want to make it.

We thank William Arntz author of How To Suffer in Ten Easy Steps for sharing ideas of different philosophers, religions and self help authorities, as they seek to understand the duality of life in a physical sense and transcend that reality by allowing us to experience pain and suffering as a natural state of the human condition, while offering hope that it is indeed just an opportunity to learn grow and appreciate life more.

In summarizing today’s episode of Healing From Within, we have taken an internal deep look at a topic which affects every human being, but is often not thought of as necessary and unavoidable fact of life. Looking at it from a new perspective as William has, we can find ways to discover benefits in all experiences good or bad, and find ways to transcend the challenge with courage wisdom and a realistic view of who we are as spiritual beings having a physical life. William describes Catherine, an ancient visionary in the Middle Ages, who devoted her life to God and suffered greatly as that was her chosen path to God.

William writes, “Apparently Catherine is not done with her investigation into suffering. While visiting the Basilica of Saint Domenico, my wife Deidre who like Catherine had been having visions from a young age turned to me and said, “Catherine is here.” Standing in the middle of the Basilica, Deidre, myself and our unsuspecting Italian tour guide, felt a surge of electricity as all our hair stood on end. The guide stuttered, “What is going on!?” “Catherine wants you to know that suffering for her was a valid pathway to God, but that was then, this is now. Suffering such as was in her time is now no longer a pathway.” The pathway now is to move to the End of Suffering. It has served it’s purpose.

Sheryl like Deidre, as an empath and medium, has seen, felt and sensed extreme emotions by people around them and understand that healing, suffering, lies within our soul energy of love, compassion, acceptance of the uniqueness of life, in its Oneness.

William and Sheryl would have you in a world where there still is injustice, oppression, disease, a misguided thought of death, there is also hope, renewal and the path past apathy and non-caring, to create thoughts and solutions to end fear, suffering, and to not only accept the reality of life, but find gratitude for the eternal energy of continuous change and personal self-development. We are here to feel and to find what is good within us. We hope you begin to move past suffering to embrace joy.

Sheryl Glick, Host of Healing From Within, invites you to visit her website www.sherylglick.com to read about and listen to leaders in the metaphysical, scientific, spiritual, psychological, medical, education fields, as well as the arts and music search for ways to improve the human and divine condition, seek love and find peace in being. Shows may also be heard on www.webtalkradio.net and www.dreamvisions7radio.com