gospel of Thomas 58

Jesus said, "Blessed is the man who has suffered and found life."

It's a rather mixed blessing, isn't it? One who has suffered – in what way is that a blessing? It is a blessing only if it has led one to find life. And this is almost always the way we come to find life: through suffering first. And it's easy to see why this is so. If we are not suffering, if we are living in our illusory world, created by our own egoic mind, if we are living that way – as most people do – and are happy, if we are not suffering, there is no impetus to change. There's no reason to search for any other way of being. We can live out our life in that illusion, as long as we are not suffering.

But of course, illusion almost invariably leads to suffering, sooner or later. Whilst we are living our life based on incorrect beliefs – mostly unconscious ones at that – we are vulnerable. At any time, existence can show us that our beliefs are incorrect. Reality does not match those beliefs. That's why they are incorrect: they are false. And yet we can build a huge edifice of our personal life based on those false beliefs. And with so much investment based on them, we are very reluctant to let them go, even when events in our personal life are showing us that those beliefs are not tenable.

And this is suffering, this is the cause of suffering: when reality is not in alignment with our beliefs about the way it should be. Something has to give. Usually, we cling on to our beliefs. And we try everything we can to force reality to fit with those beliefs. But whilst the two are not in alignment, we suffer.

And when the suffering is great enough, then there is enough energy, enough momentum, to change who we are, to change our beliefs about life. And that is the journey – that is the spiritual journey – to discover the truth, by letting go of our beliefs; to come to live in the rawness of reality as it is, without this comfort blanket, a false belief of illusion.

This is the process of finding life, of becoming alive, truly alive. For the first time in years, for the first time since we were a tiny baby, we are coming back to our true nature, and the true nature of existence. With this we feel alive in a way that is not possible when we are living out our life in illusions.

But the way, the way to find this life, is to suffer, and to look into that suffering.

Jesus is not the only master who has commented on this. The whole teaching of Gautam Buddha was based on suffering, and the cessation of suffering. How do we go beyond suffering? And the Buddha concluded, it is our cravings, our desires, and our illusions that hold us in suffering. To go beyond suffering, requires us to drop those cravings and desires; to drop that whole way of being in the world.

And here Jesus, in this very short saying, is really pointing out the same thing. The way to find life is through suffering, and looking into that suffering. But remember, if you do that, if you use your own suffering in this way, to find the truth about life, then it is a blessing. So I agree with Jesus when he says, blessed is the man who has suffered, and found life.