The single, solvable root of suffering

When humans try to figure out “what’s wrong with me” or with “us” or with the entire human race, there’s many external conditions we could point to in an attempt to explain the misery we feel that sometimes seems unexplainable.

Whether that’s a dull feeling of dread, a sense of anxiety or depression, the pain of isolation and loneliness, a feeling of unworthiness, or any other of a number of unwelcome painful inner sensations, we’ve all been suffering here. Early in our journey, we likely learned subconscious routines and unconscious ways to avoid these feelings or make them diminish. As we evolve though, we’ve been getting courageous enough to face these spaces of inner darkness and start inviting light in.

But no one may have explained why we feel this way in the first place.

Or why other times we feel ecstatic, enthralled, vivacious, creative, intelligent, in deep flow, and in love with all that is.

And even if you did come to understand what’s at the root of it all, it can seem impossible to fix.

That’s how it seemed to me, earlier in my own journey, when I kept addressing these inner pain points, making some progress, but even when I came to understand the root of it all, it seemed illusive, impossible to find and fix.

During my morning routine this morning, I came across an article inviting to write the desired outcome and burning problem that your work is here to solve. And while I don’t normally like to frame things in terms of “problems” and “solutions”, the answers just poured out:

• A desired outcome: My entire life is fueled by source — that full flow, effortless, naturally intelligent, creative, and loving lifestyle, that’s in a state of peace and wholeness.
• A burning “problem” that stands in the way: Ego. Seeing the self as a separate “I” trying to get what it wants and identify based on external conditions and actions.

Throughout many inner voice conversations, it’s been clearly taught that ego is at the root of all human suffering.

Ego, as my inner voice defined it, is “the concept of a human that is not being”.

That’s the definition I’m using in this email and throughout my work. The term “ego” can be defined many different ways, and isn’t necessarily always used with this connotation of separation. But however you define it or whatever term you prefer to use, it’s “the concept of a human that is not being” that leads to great fear, pain, and disturbance of many kinds.

To write this post, I’m pulling from my notes from several conversations with my inner voice I held during an inner voice retreat in early 2022. During that time, I spent 4 months entirely focused on asking my deepest life questions down to being, and receiving mind blowing answers that rang with truth on my insides.

The inner voice explained that “When this concept [of a human that is not being] is held in place, because there is a perspective of I, this is a holding that this I is indeed separate from being, but [the “I”] is [actually] the perspective of being within the human form.”

What that means to me is that there is already, naturally a perspective of “I”. When ego is in place, it’s claiming that the perspective of “I” is separate from being. However, in truth, the perspective of “I” is actually the perspective of being within the human form.

The separation is an illusion.

Knowing and experiencing that the perspective of the human is actually Being experiencing through the human is what realization is.

Experiencing realization seems illusive because stopping from conceptualizing separation is not a work that can be done within mind itself. Though it could be theoretically possible, in actual experience, it’s practically impossible to occur.

Your mind can’t see beyond itself, so it can’t become the Being seeing through you, all on its own. And the mind is so indelibly embroiled in this mix with ego, that it is entirely the way the life is being run.

And because there are only a few examples we can point to of people who we know have experienced complete enlightenment and realization, for the average person, the story is that it’s only for the select few, those “special ones” who have some crazy experience where their mind goes blank and they fall asleep and wake up instantly enlightened. But while that’s your story (and it was mine), it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. Believing that it isn’t possible is its own hindrance to allowing this experience to occur.

That’s why my inner voice has taken a lot of time to patiently explain to my mind, over and over again, that enlightenment and realization absolutely is possible, it’s being led to, and we’re already far down this journey.

When your mind is in charge, it won’t lead you through realization. It will lead you to external “fixes” for these inward ills. Some of them may be partially or temporarily effective. But nothing external can fix that inward sense that something, really big, is missing on the inside of your life. Because you actually do know, deep down, that who you are, who we all are, is nothing short of Being. And that when you’re living within a frame that claims that your awareness is separate from that reality, you’ll never find ultimate fulfillment in anything external.

A lot of that is already understood and taught by many spiritual teachers. The difference for me was in hearing it directly from my own inner voice, because it came not just with the concepts but with the understanding and path laid out on my own inside to access it in experience.

Having an ongoing dialogue with inner voice enables direct training to be able to move beyond ego and be guided into wholeness.

Coming into realization is absolutely possible, doesn’t need to (or often) occur instantly, and is available to all humans.

From my inner voice:

‘This can occur by the us experiencing and perceiving through these eyes, through this point of perception that is indeed what this human is.’

‘Within practically all humans, there is a great co-option of our perception to be seen as this individual entity and not us seeing.’

‘This perception can be freed by being turned to us and re-turned again and again and again.’

It’s a path of trust, and it’s a path of allowing. Rather than from the egoically-controlled mind attempting to reach for realizing itself to be more, the path my inner voice outlined is ‘in coming to us, in bringing the trust, in allowing, and in resting in this love that we indeed are.’

Whenever there’s dropping into trust from the human side, I experience this realization, this wholeness, this flow of being through the human.

When I try to effort and figure out how to “let go of ego”, I experience more and more confusion, irritation, and stuckness.

The work that’s flowing through me, that I’m here to bring, is to teach how to come to inner voice in a much deeper and more continual way, so that you may be guided from your own wisdom into the fullness of life that your being is here to live through you.