WHY WE SUFFER AND HOW TO STOP IT explained by Hans Wilhelm

Hi, I am Hans Wilhelm. Today I want to speak about suffering because many people believe that life on Earth is suffering. But is that really true?

To find the answer we have to step back from the tapestry of life and look at the big picture. Only then can we find the answer what life is all about and why we are here. In this video I will also give 4 practical steps of how to transform and stop suffering.

But first the big picture: As we have seen in my other videos, our true essence is Spirit. We are spiritual beings who came from the Pure Heavens our true Home and are now on our journey back. To accelerate our spiritual progress many of us are given the unique brief opportunity to incarnate to planet Earth which the mystics call a schooling planet for souls.

But as we all know - it is a tough school not for the fainthearted. So here we are: a soul still in the spiritual realm. To enter the Earth school we have to put on a physical body, which we can compare to a school uniform.

They come in many colors, shades and styles. Like in any school or college our stay here will be very fleeting and limited to an average of less than 30,000 days. This explains why nobody stays here on Earth forever - because it is a school.

And if we make a mess of our life here and don't want to learn we may have to come back and repeat our attendance which is called re-incarnation, the being born again into the flesh. It is as simple as that. We are here to spiritually grow so that we can eventually return to our true Home, the Absolute Reality.

Not knowing this or denying it can cause confusion, loneliness or hopelessness, despair, or depression. When we have forgotten who we are and why we are here, we suffer. Any form of growing usually means a certain degree of discomfort.

We either learn through insight or through pain. Comfort and growth don't go together. And we are totally aware of this fact as souls before we incarnate.

Before our birth we are actually shown the difficulties or challenges that we will be facing in our future life by our spirit guides in our life's plan. Furthermore, we full-heartedly agree to them. So, what are these adversities, these challenges?

They are firstly environments and situations to help us grow and develop a certain desirable quality, like love, kindness, compassion, patience and so on. For instance, if we wish to become more loving, we may consciously choose to incarnate into a very unloving family so that we can develop our love muscle so to speak in an opposing challenging environment. But then there are also other challenges or road-blocks that can make our school years very difficult indeed.

What are these challenges? They are nothing but our own self-made karmic burdens that have not yet been resolved and are now coming back to us. Like everything else, these are energy vibrations that we have caused by thinking, speaking, and acting against the law of Love.

They are temporarily stored in the repository stars and planets of same vibrations and which will be coming back to us as karma in our new life here on Earth. All these blows of fate, illnesses, accidents, losses, and other hurdles are karma. That is what some people call fate or destiny.

But we must not forget that we are the sole originator and creators of them, not any God or other powers. We are facing our own creations from our past which are now coming back to teach us Love. Other possible challenges that we may encounter are all the new mess we may be creating in our new life.

For instance, medical science tells us that about 95% of all illnesses are caused by an unhealthy lifestyle. That shows us that we are the originator of our challenges but never the victim of them. We all have been given a free will with which we decide if, how and when we will overcome and clear up these obstacles and become a master.

That is our choice and our growth process. Do we become bitter or better? The main reason why we are here on Earth is to clear up our mess with our free will and become totally free again from anything that is not love.

But here is the big problem which is at the core of our suffering: Every time we incarnate onto Earth, we are completely forgetting who we truly are - that magnificent, eternal spiritual angelic being. We also forget our close connection with our creator and the reason and purpose of our earthly life. Why this is so is explained in my video "Why we don't remember past lives".

This is from where all our suffering comes from. This forgetfulness unfortunately causes us to falsely identify with our physical body, our school uniform instead the soul that we are. And our ego also identifies with our body and is therefore dreadfully afraid of death.

The fear of death causes an existential suffering in many of us. Our ego doesn't know that death is nothing but graduation from our Earth school term. Our ego wants comfort and fears death, and its favorite defense is our intellect.

It uses the intellect to exaggerate anything that could somehow threaten our comfort zones or our life. It judges, condemns, schemes, cheats, and lies. All our worries, anxieties, fears, self-pity are artificial constructs of our intellect, our egoic mind.

Totally blown out of proportions and therefore are highly dangerous to our health and well-being. Here is an example: For many the fear of a dentist visit is far bigger than the actual pain we might encounter there. This distortion applies to almost everything.

In life physical pain and challenges are unavoidable but suffering is always, always optional. All suffering comes from our ego's distorted interpretation of the situation or pain. It goes something like this: Whatever we think determines how we feel.

Happy thoughts, happy feelings. Bad thoughts bad feelings. Our egoic mind continuously interprets the life around and in us.

No wonder, our emotions go up and down all the time. So when some big challenges happen. In our life, like a loss or an accident, then our ego goes into hyperdrive and fills our brain with an avalanche of thoughts of fear, despair, guilt, worry, and anything else to keep us unhappy because that is the tool of our ego to manipulate us.

That is our suffering. It's all in the brain. A confused mind.

"Confusion is the only suffering," Byron Katie would say. But underneath it all there is the foundation of everything, that is Intelligence which is the opposite to our ego's intellect. See my video on this.

Intelligence is always at peace. It always knows why we go through this challenge and that absolutely everything that is happening happens FOR us and not TO us in this Earth school. And there is nothing to fear.

Ever. Everything is here to help us and assist us in our walk Home - including this challenge, this obstacle. Therefore, Eckhart Tolle has this powerful advice for us: "Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you have chosen it.

Always work with it. Not against it. This will miraculously transform your whole life.

" What we resist, persists. As we have seen before, we actually have chosen and agreed to it prior to our birth. So why fight it now?

So, the first step could be to work with our challenge instead of fighting it. Much of our suffering is merely resistance to accepting what is. In exploring our suffering, we come face to face with ourselves.

Where have we violated others, ourselves, our spiritual principles? There are no accidents. It helps to fully understand the law of cause and effect or sowing and reaping.

For many this is very hard to accept. Taking full responsibility could therefore be the second step. By taking full responsibility we clear up what we know we did or said by regretting it from our heart, asking for forgiveness, making amends, and no longer doing these mistakes against others, ourselves or even against our own body or mind.

To explore the source Christ gave us the following guidance in His book The Great Cosmic Teachings, "If you are suffering, then feel in the suffering why you are suffering. Let the sensation and thoughts of the suffering come, for they speak their language". Within each one of us is the Christ Spark, the transforming power of all negative energy into positive Love energy.

You may want to watch my video on the Christ Spark. Let me summarize: Our harmful challenge, experience, or situation can cause in some cases physical pain. But it never causes suffering.

Suffering only comes from our mental interpretation or judgment of the situation. All the fear, the guilt, the worry, the shame and so on. Furthermore, the painful experience is usually in the past and it is over and done with.

Unless we keep it alive by thinking and thinking about it constantly. It is only our confused mind that gives us the suffering. Nothing else.

We may not be able to change what has happened to us but we can always change our attitude about the experience. For instance by carefully looking at the situation and finding the positive component. From the spiritual teachings we know that there is a positive part in everything which is God or Love.

Nothing can exist without this positive energy. God Spirit is like a canvas, the foundation on which our illusionary temporary world is painted. For instance, we can ask ourselves, what are the positive aspects that I am learning or gaining through my situation or suffering?

May it be more compassion, slowing down my hyper-active life, reevaluating my goals and purpose in life and much more? Is it an opportunity for me to reflect about my life or my behavior patterns? When we replace, "Why is this happening to me?

" with "What is this trying to teach me? " everything shifts. Every suffering contains many positive outcomes and discoveries.

Finding the positive elements in our situation could be the third step. Can we find examples why our present situation is actually serving us on our way Home? Having discovered the positive elements in our situation can lead us to the fourth step: we can now even become grateful for our lesson.

I always think of Hellen Keller who was born blind and deaf, yet she could say, "I thank God for my handicaps. For through them, I have found myself, my work and my God. " Are we worse off than Hellen Keller?

Our unique challenge may have made us more softer, kinder, more forgiving, more compassionate and more humble or even much stronger. Gratefulness is one of the most powerful forces that uplifts our mood and changes the pattern and repetition of our destructive thinking. How it actually works in our body and mind you can see in my video on Gratefulness.

Is there still room for suffering when we remember who we are, why we are here and why we face our challenge? For instance, if we remember that an illness is nothing but an outflowing of our karmic burden, a becoming free again, then everything shifts. Everything is here to teach us Love.

I suggest you subscribe to this channel and then we will meet again in my next video. Thank you for watching.