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It Hurts More, But Bothers You Less
The theory implies that death simply does not exist. It is an illusion that arises in the minds of people. It exists because people identify themselves with their bodies in the first place. They believe that the body is going to perish, sooner or later, thinking that their consciousness will disappear too.
— Anna LeMind, B.A.
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I’m still not terribly familiar with (Ken) Wilber’s work, but in the clip he very eloquently addresses the paradoxical relationship between (A) spiritual enlightenment as a realization of perfect peace and (B) the heartbreaking compassion that expansion of consciousness brings in for the suffering of all beings in our world. He does this with a very simple phrase: he says that as you awaken, that suffering “hurts more, but it bothers you less.”
“I don’t know anyone who has simply resolved that,” Wilber says of this paradox. “And I don’t think you’re supposed to… And we have to give ourselves plenty of room to both feel absolute perfection in everything that’s arising, and yet see one person starving and you will start crying so hard it will kill you. And if you’re not doing both, you’re doing something wrong.”
— Caitlin Johnstone
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