Why does Life Give You Painful Situations & People?

Get Freedom from Karma and Suffering

Apr 02, 2024

Note: In this post, if the word “God” doesn’t resonate with you. You can replace it with the words Being, Self, Universe, or Infinite Intelligence.

The Suffering will Leave You once it has Finished Teaching You

It will not go away until it has taught you what you must learn. The situations and people that trigger you are the messengers of unhealed parts within you. We encounter them repeatedly because the universe wants us to become conscious of our unhealed parts so we can heal them in light of our consciousness. They are not there to comfort you. They are there to make you destroy all that is limited in you. In a way, these trials and tribulations make you realize your true nature, which is pure awareness that is limitless and expansive.

How is the World Helping And Teaching You?

Suffering brings Awakening. Sometimes, the world will teach you to love by giving you hatred, to be kind by being cruel, and to be conscious by manifesting unconsciousness. Be aware when you’re going through pain and suffering. Surrender to the wisdom the universe is trying to teach you.

This is the miracle of Surrender: In every person or situation that appears “evil” or “painful” lies a seed of greater good for you. This powerful blessing reveals itself to you when you surrender to inner being and bring inner acceptance to what IS.

That’s why Jesus said: “Resist not evil.”

“Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at the moment.” – Eckhart Tolle

Karma: The Key to Freedom from Suffering

Who decides what kinds of trials and tribulations you must face? Your allocated karma (Prarabdha Karma) is responsible for that.

We will talk about two kinds of karma to understand why we face painful situations and people repeatedly.

1. Accumulated Karma

Accumulated Karma (Sanchita Karma) is the sum of one’s past karmas—all actions, good and bad, from one’s past lives. It’s a kind of vast storehouse where all our past life karma is heaped and accumulated.

2. Allocated Karma

Allocated Karma (Prarabdha Karma): Allocated Karma is that portion of the accumulated karma responsible for the present birth (mind-body). Allocated karma can’t be avoided or changed, it is only exhausted by being experienced. Allocated karma are the pre-destined life situations and people you must encounter in your present life. It can be good or bad! In simple terms, it’s paying for your past deeds. Allocated Karma only acts on outward activities that you do with mind-body. Once you surrender and abide in inner being, allocated karma stops operating on you. This means once you ARE being, whatever happens to mind-body doesn’t affect you.

Allocated karma will act on you in the form of your life situations till you die. Whatever people and situations you have to live out is due to your allocated karma. That includes everything you were handed over to you by the universe: Your family, neighborhood, spouse, children, people, situations etc.

So if allocated Karma is our destiny, How Can We Change The Destiny?

If allocated karma is your assigned destiny in this present birth, then the non-doership (resting in being) is your powerful Free will. Free will is also the divine will. Once you surrender your mind to the inner Being, the divine will activate, and now the universe will use your mind-body to fulfill its purpose.

It sounds almost paradoxical. Non-doership and Free will. Let me explain. Your Free will is to be conscious and act from your being. Whenever you surrender and act from being, God is taking charge of you, and all the allocated karma dissolves, and with that, all your trials and tribulations stop. Hence, by being a Non-doer, you surrender your will to god.

Doership is simply acting from egoic consciousness. Non-doership is acting from Being-(God) consciousness.

Resting in Being (Non-Doership) is very Active and Dynamic

Contrary to our understanding, non-doership is NOT passive. Non-doership that is abide and rest in being is a very active and dynamic practice. Just to BE and stay as being is the “highest kind” of doing. As abide in being, will undo most of your UN-essential doings that suck your life out.
Please understand that nothing is left undone once God takes over your mind-body instrument. You will attain liberation even while engaged with the world. It’s a practice where God uses your mind and body, and all things are getting done without unnecessary mental analysis and judgments.
God is No-Thing and he does nothing, yet he leaves nothing undone. The ordinary man is always doing things, yet many things are left undone.
Don’t ask anything from God. Just pray this, “Oh God, Make Me Your Own, Do As You Will. Use me for your purpose.

Once you are Being and cease to exist as mind-body, you will find that the painful situation changes itself without your reaction. “Being energy” makes you vibrate at a very high energy level.

Painful situations will not surround you and affect you at this higher energy level; instead, you’ll attract new circumstances that will help you in your spiritual evolution, which reflects this higher frequency.

Non-Doership: Surrender To Being and Have Total Freedom From The Karma

Allocated Karmas are only applicable and act on you as long as you believe yourself separate from the Being(God, Self, Atma). As you are not conscious of inner Being and only have mind-body awareness, you will pass through a series of pre-destined activities and experiences, all of which are the consequences of previous birth acts and thoughts. In that way, you are bound by destiny.

For a person who lives from ego, every act and experience in his life is determined at birth. He also has the greatest freedom to surrender to being and realize Being. However, when one realizes the Being, there is no separate person with mind-body left to experience the consequences of actions, so the whole structure of karmic laws becomes redundant. Then he will be free from allocated karma as Being (God) is the doer, and no person is acting and experiencing.

Whenever we act as the doer, we are in ego-consciousness. If you want to be in ego consciousness, you must experience and live your allocated karma. Or you have the choice to surrender to being and absolve all your karma.

Two Spiritual Principles To Attain Liberation While Active in The World

Let me confess this..

After my spiritual shift in 2008, it took me few years to integrate the awakening as I experienced a non-enduring awakening and my journey was going towards enduring awakening. One spiritual principle my dying ego always rejected is the principle of non-doership. Firstly, my mind always wants to take ownership/doership for whatever it wants to do, create and experience. And secondly, my mind felt that if we accept that we are non-doer, then hiding behind this non-doership, we would do all kinds of wrongdoings.

In my experience, two principles intensified my spiritual awakening and liberated me even while I was engaged with the world: “resting and abiding in being” and “non-doership.”

Principle#1 Resting and Abide in Being

Once your surrender is complete, your mind will transform into being itself. Now, Being-the God itself has access to you. You are NOT the doer now, but God is the doer through you. Now the universe will act through you to manifest its purpose. Non-doership is the most important spiritual truth, and it absolves you from all the allocated karma. But your surrender needs to be genuine, as you will find out if it’s not genuine.

Principle#2 Non-Doership: The Art of Making The Real Change

If you want to change the preferences of your life. You want to change your country, circumstances, career, living conditions, and relationship for your betterment.

The only way to let God act through you is by non-doership, surrendering your mind to being, and letting the infinite intelligence work through you.

This is how Infinite intelligence works through you once you surrender to being

It allows and accepts what it IS!
If those life situations are not suitable for your spiritual evolution, they will be changed effortlessly without the involvement of unnecessary mind judgments.
If acceptance and change are NOT optimal options for you, infinite intelligence will remove you from the situation.

Hence, a real change occurs through non-doership in which only God is the doer.

Don’t Run Away From Life or Act From Unconsciousness

You will always suffer if you run away from your life situations, relationships, and challenges instead of letting God work through you by surrendering to Being.

If you run away instead of “turning inward,” you will attract the same situations and circumstances elsewhere.

Running away is never the answer. Turning inward and abiding in Being is the answer. Contemplate the changes you have done in your life with stressful struggles. See if it is true what we already learned above!

True Surrender: To Realize God, You Need To End All The Relationships With God

True surrender is going beyond worshipping God in a subject-object relationship. Surrender is only complete when the one who imagines themselves to be separate from God has ceased to exist.
God is within us as Being itself! Any relationship with God (devotee, worshipper, servant, etc.) is illusory. True devotion is resting and abiding in being, in which all ideas about a relationship with God have ended.
It simply means that any personal god, whether he is Jesus, Mohammad, Buddha, or Krishna, is within us, and we are that. That’s what Jesus meant when he said, “Be still and Know That I am God”.
Enlightenment is the total acceptance that everything in the world is happening according to God’s will; through which person it happens is God’s will; how each happening affects you is also God’s will.

Dissolving Dysfunctional Mind’s Conditioning

Once you surrender to Being, you will transcend those old mind conditioning that attracted those painful experiences as your mind merges into Being. The base metal(mind) will transmute into gold(Being). Those experiences can be your dysfunctional marriage or career, family problems related to your children or parents, health issues, etc. Your old relationships will change for the better, or they will not be your reality anymore. Your suffering had a purpose. Because of that suffering, you are awakened now by abiding your mind in being.

If you surrender to the fact that the universe is here to make you awaken instead of happy, then your interactions with the world become a sacred spiritual practice that leads you to spiritual awakening, which is the primary purpose of your life

-Aby Vohra