As I observe myself and others, it's quite evident that we have created our lives to avoid suffering. There are many ways to relieve/postpone/disguise the suffering. Drugs, alcohol, food, cigarettes, adventures, meditation, hate, anger and even love and marriage are very prevalent methods. So all keep us from the basic truth: 'Life is suffering.' Several times when I was tired or sick with no one to help me, I remember saying to myself, 'This is why people stay married, they will never have to feel the lonely desolation I am feeling right now.' And I was willing to feel the anguish of the helplessness. I've always figured, you won't get the highs if you don't take the lows.

This week I took it as a project to see how many times I found my mind and body racing away to some pleasurable experience. What were they running from? They were running from a basic feeling of suffering, in a greater or less degree. What happens when I agree just to feel the suffering that was being given to me? Aside from the expansion resulting from acceptance of 'what is,' this week I experienced a short-term benefit too.

At a public hearing, I presented facts and figures concerning pollution in my community that I had been preparing for two years. Next day I woke up with a raging fever and chest cold. I needed a rest, so I took the folk advice that fever is good for you'it'll burn up the virus or bacteria. Last night I literally suffered from the heat of my own body and was drenched for hours. I could have gotten up and relieved the heat with a shower or with a fan, but I burned through it and let it be. Sometime in the middle of the night I woke up and the fever was gone.

I can distinctly remember an incident when I was about eight years old, I had the thought, When I am 12, everything is going to be perfect for me. I was actually hoping, I'm suffering now, but I won't have to when I am older. Well, that was a joke, yet I think I still innately have that thinking pattern to some extent. Often unconsciously my motivation is the same. 'When I do this, everything will be perfect.' 'If I do that, everything will be perfect.' Obviously, when I am in that mode of thinking, I never have a chance to realize the perfection in the here and now.

However, sometimes the universe speaks to us loud and clear. Yesterday, in spite of feeling so lousy, I had to pick up some groceries. I walked by a car with a bumper sticker that said, 'An angel is watching over me.' Thinking of the success of the environmental hearing, I said to myself, The whole heavens must be watching over me. Just as I had that thought I looked up and saw a huge rainbow in the sky. I have not seen a rainbow for years. As a matter of fact, I was lamenting recently, 'Where are all the rainbows?'

So suffering is just suffering; it's neither more nor less. If I accept suffering, I experience a broader, more complete spectrum of life that allows me to accept myself and others more. I see everything is perfect'just like I wanted it to be!