People ask, “Why is there so much suffering in the world?” The Enlightened Ones state that the suffering does not come from the world, it is created by man. It arises from wrong beliefs and faulty vision. The root cause of all this is ignorance of one’s true blissful nature. Due to lack of awareness, one does not identify with the real Self and ends up suffering.

Suffering Due to Faulty Vision

Suffering is because of your wrong choices. When your choices are based on faulty vision, needless to say, you suffer. Your consciousness is like a blank paper on which you write and endorse joys and sorrows. The world is only a mirror that reflects your vision, a canvas upon which your beliefs paintthe portraits of heaven and hell. It is your inner state that determines your perception of every event. When you are elevated and have a positive outlook, you see no injustice or suffering in the world but happiness all around. And when you choose to have a negative outlook, you see only sadness in the world. You even experience the same event differently when you are in different states of mind and hence sometimes you suffer, while at other times you enjoy. Therefore, unless you change your beliefs and transform your outlook, you will continue to suffer in the very world where others rejoice.

Joys and sorrows are mere mental projections. However, when you stop projecting them on the screen of the world, you become free from the vagaries of life. When you transcend all such forms, you attain eternal peace.

The Bondage of Beliefs

Many people feel elevated after listening to spiritual discourses. They feel they have finally understood what they need to do in life. At the same time, they also complain that they are bound by external circumstances and therefore cannot make headway towards this goal they so desperately want to achieve. In reality, they have not actually comprehended what they have heard. If it was truly their goal, they would not complain of being bound. For the passionate ones, there are no obstacles. Shackles are only in the mind. You are always free to make choices, yet you believe yourself to be bound by someone outside of you. This false belief itself is your shackle.

In his memoirs, Gurdjieff writes about a tribe living in the Caucasus mountains. They lived a life of hardship. It was necessary for the men as well as the womenfolk to work all day. They had to leave their children at home unattended. For the children’s safety, they employed a trick. Before they left, they drew a line around the children, telling them not to cross it, and even if they tried they would not be able to. This was so deeply ingrained at such a young age that all the children played and moved in their limited space only. Gurdjieff, when passing through this region, was surprised to see that not just the children but also the youth, when put in the boundary of a drawn line, were not able to move out of their restricted area. They experienced an invisible wall stopping them and pushing them within the demarcating line. This wall is the wall of beliefs.