Yes to all this, except one, and I am being selfish here: "Choose the meaning you make from difficulty, deciding that the pain was worth what you learned." My pain is centered on the early deaths of my two sons, 31 and 45 when they died. Their deaths have created spiritual, emotional, and physical pain. Their deaths have not been "worth" it, and I will not accept that phrase until God herself tells me to. But as you say, it has broken me open to find new ways of being that are uplifting for others, and beneficial to me as I walk through the rest of my life without my boys. The fear of suffering is the fear of death, our only certain outcome in life. I accept that I will die, just as I accept that the luscious coconut pie that I blew $38 on last Saturday will soon be gone. I am still cherishing every morsel even so.
Thank you so much for this and for all the generosity of your writing! My personal take away: to great the pain with presence rather than proliferation. ❤️
Thank you, Rob! I have avoided the word suffer because of the negative connotations. But your teaching here makes a distinction that is really useful. My experience with "midwifing" the deaths of my husband and mother in the same year taught me the wisdom of allowing my heart to crack open as a way to soften myself and allow love to flow in and out more freely. That definitely is useful suffering! I am more openly myself after that year, if that makes sense. Blessings to you from my terraphilic corner of Substack!
I'd like to add something of my own personal experience around suffering in case it is helpful for someone suffering from addiction as I did for many years: a major turning point for me was a moment of clarity in which I realized that I had spent most of my life blaming *others* for my suffering and that I had actually been actively, if unconsciously, causing not only the vast majority of my own suffering, but also needlessly inflicting it on those around me. Taking responsibiity for my own suffering was the most compassionate thing I could do for myself -- and everyone else I was interacting with. I had alienated virtually everyone else by this point. All my self-destructive energy was being projected onto the world around me and I had to recognize that I was literally killing myself rather than facing the truth. I was 53 years old, so this was close to two decades ago. It's never too late to find peace and joy in life, and not all peace and joy is spiritual bypassing. Much experienced as suffering can be let go of. I've also found true love three times since, and although they all have died, I had never even experienced it to that point.
Rob, not only are your weekly readings highly accurate and have been such for me and my partner over many years, and that today (03.26) is our 10th anniversary as a couple, your post on suffering is especially poignant - given what we are personally going through right now, besides highly valuable and informative for me (us) during these topsy/turvy times.
Where deep work containing immutably buoyant joy is my chosen, mandatory path in this moment!
I thank you so much alongside my Guides and Allies/Universal Flow and Divine right order, while consciously being in alignment with these truths.
When I woke up in the morning and opened your newsletter, I knew there would be meaningful messages for me on suffering. Facing a big wake up call that it was time to make a couple of changes that I have resisted for years, I welcomed the words from Sharon Salzburg “to have compassion and courage to change the conditions that support our suffering.”
Your most honorable Wayshower Masterclass Mr. Brezsny,
I have had the honor of reading you, as a Scorpio with the birthdate of 11/13/1975, for three decades. The amount of spiritual nourishment and guidance that you have provided for me is beyond infinity’s ability to fathom itself.
I humbly offer you my most recent post. I hope that you enjoy. Bless you for all that you have done in my life so for. Long may you reign!
Bless you for taking the time. This might be the most beautifully surreal moment of my present incarnation knowing that you have read anything that I sent….
The astrological frame for this is Saturn-Neptune. Saturn alone is the first kind of suffering Brezsny names: the resistance kind, the hardening, the no. Neptune alone is also the first kind: the bypass kind, the dissolving-into-fog, the escape. Both planets unintegrated produce more suffering, just from opposite directions.
Saturn-Neptune CONJUNCT (which we just had perfect at 0° Aries on Feb 20, 2026) is the second kind. Limit consciously dissolved. Discipline that knows when to surrender. The aspect itself IS Brezsny's "art of suffering better" rendered as planetary geometry.
The 36-year Saturn-Neptune cycle starts at exactness and runs forward. Whatever you're learning about suffering right now is enrolled in the longer arc of that cycle. The teaching unfolds across a 36-year curriculum.
Rob, when we met about 15 years ago, I asked you about the “smart suffering versus stupid suffering.” You are explaining it so much better now! Keep up the good work 💙
've just spent the greater part of a decade+ digging myself out of an existential hole in which non-dual teachers made the agreed-upon decision…across the *FULL* non-dual teaching spectrum to place the *ENTIRETY* of the burden for their lies-and-deceptions on these shoulders…and the shoulders of my family literally ripping my family apart…silencing me (under a death threat) for a decade+…to ensure those lies would *never* become public knowledge.
This criminality has been described as a ‘Soul murder’ akin to being ‘buried alive.’
Those are absolutely accurate descriptions of the *feeling* of what occurred here.
There has been *zero accountability* and no one who said “this is not right.” Not a single one in that entire tradition.
Now at seventy-five I find myself with a family separated and, by far, the vast majority of friends in the non-dual space who have split the scene upon my reporting…a reporting which was utterly necessary for my own self-respect, for my family and for the actual Truth of the situation.
The utter weight of that ‘cosmic betrayal’…and the feeling of the realization that those teachers essentially and *quite literally* took this life ….lands in my heart and mind on occasion with FULL-FORCE.
It's the feeling of what has been described as being “buried alive.”
“Let the hurt send you looking for those who will accept you instead of hiding from those who reject you.”
Here’s the art: using suffering as an opening rather than a closing, a bridge to connection rather than a wall of isolation.”
“Strong people alone know how to organize their suffering so as to bear only the most necessary pain.”
One of the wisest things a friend told me when I was in the mire of carrying the weight from those teachers. She said, "It's not our job to feel deeply the darkness that others have projected upon us."
Instead it became my job to actually report on it — “choosing the meaning we make from our suffering.”
THAT was a saving grace…as have, in large part, your words.
Thank you always Rob…heading over to Explorations of Your Long-Range Future: RealAstrology.com
Yes to all this, except one, and I am being selfish here: "Choose the meaning you make from difficulty, deciding that the pain was worth what you learned." My pain is centered on the early deaths of my two sons, 31 and 45 when they died. Their deaths have created spiritual, emotional, and physical pain. Their deaths have not been "worth" it, and I will not accept that phrase until God herself tells me to. But as you say, it has broken me open to find new ways of being that are uplifting for others, and beneficial to me as I walk through the rest of my life without my boys. The fear of suffering is the fear of death, our only certain outcome in life. I accept that I will die, just as I accept that the luscious coconut pie that I blew $38 on last Saturday will soon be gone. I am still cherishing every morsel even so.
Your message reminds of some 12-step wisdom I have written on a note for daily reminder:
We can choose to experience the pain of growth or the pain of decay; it is a choice you make daily
Love this! Thank you! Put it in my calender, plan to keep moving it forward 😊
The same planet, Saturn, rules suffering and wisdom. The two go together.
Thank you so much for this and for all the generosity of your writing! My personal take away: to great the pain with presence rather than proliferation. ❤️
Thank you, Rob! I have avoided the word suffer because of the negative connotations. But your teaching here makes a distinction that is really useful. My experience with "midwifing" the deaths of my husband and mother in the same year taught me the wisdom of allowing my heart to crack open as a way to soften myself and allow love to flow in and out more freely. That definitely is useful suffering! I am more openly myself after that year, if that makes sense. Blessings to you from my terraphilic corner of Substack!
Loved this.
Excellent 🙏🥰
I'd like to add something of my own personal experience around suffering in case it is helpful for someone suffering from addiction as I did for many years: a major turning point for me was a moment of clarity in which I realized that I had spent most of my life blaming *others* for my suffering and that I had actually been actively, if unconsciously, causing not only the vast majority of my own suffering, but also needlessly inflicting it on those around me. Taking responsibiity for my own suffering was the most compassionate thing I could do for myself -- and everyone else I was interacting with. I had alienated virtually everyone else by this point. All my self-destructive energy was being projected onto the world around me and I had to recognize that I was literally killing myself rather than facing the truth. I was 53 years old, so this was close to two decades ago. It's never too late to find peace and joy in life, and not all peace and joy is spiritual bypassing. Much experienced as suffering can be let go of. I've also found true love three times since, and although they all have died, I had never even experienced it to that point.
Rob, not only are your weekly readings highly accurate and have been such for me and my partner over many years, and that today (03.26) is our 10th anniversary as a couple, your post on suffering is especially poignant - given what we are personally going through right now, besides highly valuable and informative for me (us) during these topsy/turvy times.
Where deep work containing immutably buoyant joy is my chosen, mandatory path in this moment!
I thank you so much alongside my Guides and Allies/Universal Flow and Divine right order, while consciously being in alignment with these truths.
When I woke up in the morning and opened your newsletter, I knew there would be meaningful messages for me on suffering. Facing a big wake up call that it was time to make a couple of changes that I have resisted for years, I welcomed the words from Sharon Salzburg “to have compassion and courage to change the conditions that support our suffering.”
Your most honorable Wayshower Masterclass Mr. Brezsny,
I have had the honor of reading you, as a Scorpio with the birthdate of 11/13/1975, for three decades. The amount of spiritual nourishment and guidance that you have provided for me is beyond infinity’s ability to fathom itself.
I humbly offer you my most recent post. I hope that you enjoy. Bless you for all that you have done in my life so for. Long may you reign!
https://knowego.substack.com/p/i-wrote-this-it-help-check-my-privilege?r=7x2z89&utm_medium=ios
Bless you for taking the time. This might be the most beautifully surreal moment of my present incarnation knowing that you have read anything that I sent….
The astrological frame for this is Saturn-Neptune. Saturn alone is the first kind of suffering Brezsny names: the resistance kind, the hardening, the no. Neptune alone is also the first kind: the bypass kind, the dissolving-into-fog, the escape. Both planets unintegrated produce more suffering, just from opposite directions.
Saturn-Neptune CONJUNCT (which we just had perfect at 0° Aries on Feb 20, 2026) is the second kind. Limit consciously dissolved. Discipline that knows when to surrender. The aspect itself IS Brezsny's "art of suffering better" rendered as planetary geometry.
The 36-year Saturn-Neptune cycle starts at exactness and runs forward. Whatever you're learning about suffering right now is enrolled in the longer arc of that cycle. The teaching unfolds across a 36-year curriculum.
Rob, when we met about 15 years ago, I asked you about the “smart suffering versus stupid suffering.” You are explaining it so much better now! Keep up the good work 💙
've just spent the greater part of a decade+ digging myself out of an existential hole in which non-dual teachers made the agreed-upon decision…across the *FULL* non-dual teaching spectrum to place the *ENTIRETY* of the burden for their lies-and-deceptions on these shoulders…and the shoulders of my family literally ripping my family apart…silencing me (under a death threat) for a decade+…to ensure those lies would *never* become public knowledge.
This criminality has been described as a ‘Soul murder’ akin to being ‘buried alive.’
Those are absolutely accurate descriptions of the *feeling* of what occurred here.
There has been *zero accountability* and no one who said “this is not right.” Not a single one in that entire tradition.
Now at seventy-five I find myself with a family separated and, by far, the vast majority of friends in the non-dual space who have split the scene upon my reporting…a reporting which was utterly necessary for my own self-respect, for my family and for the actual Truth of the situation.
The utter weight of that ‘cosmic betrayal’…and the feeling of the realization that those teachers essentially and *quite literally* took this life ….lands in my heart and mind on occasion with FULL-FORCE.
It's the feeling of what has been described as being “buried alive.”
“Let the hurt send you looking for those who will accept you instead of hiding from those who reject you.”
Here’s the art: using suffering as an opening rather than a closing, a bridge to connection rather than a wall of isolation.”
“Strong people alone know how to organize their suffering so as to bear only the most necessary pain.”
One of the wisest things a friend told me when I was in the mire of carrying the weight from those teachers. She said, "It's not our job to feel deeply the darkness that others have projected upon us."
Instead it became my job to actually report on it — “choosing the meaning we make from our suffering.”
THAT was a saving grace…as have, in large part, your words.
Thank you always Rob…heading over to Explorations of Your Long-Range Future: RealAstrology.com
Warmly…
~Leslie@ Integrity in Truth:
www.integrityintruth.com
…and on Substack:
https://leslieread.substack.com/publish/posts/published