| Letting Go—What’s Suffering Got to Do with It? In my search for concrete tools to discover my True Self, I went back to the wisdom of our Jewish roots. In Brian Yosef-Schachter-Brooks’ book, Kabbalah for Beginners, Brooks says that our suffering has a purpose. Suffering invites us to awaken to the Divine as the source and nature of our Being. It’s the kick in our holy rear to let go of our false self and discover our True Self in God. It’s not that God causes the suffering. We suffer due to false perceptions of ourselves. We’re crippled by free-floating anxiety that tells us we’re not okay, there’s something wrong with us. We’re fractured. Filled with confusion and fear, we look to other people’s applause to validate us. We strive to excel at home or work, hoping we’ll feel good about ourselves once we accomplish the next goal. But if we don’t believe it ourselves, another person cannot convince us that we’re okay. They can’t tell us who we are. Until we awaken from the illusion of our false self, suffering continues because we haven’t embraced this simple fact: “I am as God created me. I am perfectly human just the way I am.” Until we discover our True Self in God, a stream of misery ripples through our daily lives trying to get our attention. Once we identify the false self as the source of our misery, then like reaching for Neosporin and a band-aid to heal a wound, we seek Divine healing.
We call out to the Creator, “Help! Tell me who I am!” We seek God’s grace to dig into the depths of our core identity and discover the true source of guidance and restoration. As we lean into the Source of our Being, layer by layer we let go of our false selves, and unearth an ever-deepening relationship between us and God. We discover our Divine nature. With God’s help and guidance from a spiritual mentor, eventually, we will rise and proclaim, “I am the Divine Essence of God.” Or as Meister Eckhart says, “We are not God, but we are not other than God.” Brooks writes, “To get free [from our suffering], is to recognize our Divine nature, to receive the true knowledge [wisdom] of God, not as a mere idea or belief, but to know experientially what we are beneath our thoughts and feelings.” Our life’s goal is to remember who we are, to embrace and love the unfolding of our Divine nature with all our soul and all our might. Isn’t that what Jesus had to do in the midst of his suffering? He had to get free from what the world told him he was or was not. He had to silence the conflicting thoughts and feelings of fear and doubt. He had to enter the quiet and listen to the Father’s voice of love that told Jesus who he was. He had to push beyond his insecurities and seek Peter’s wise counsel to confirm that he was indeed the Messiah. As he discovered and embraced his identity as the Divine Essence of God, Jesus accomplished his purpose—he uncovered his Divine nature, the Divine nature that gave Christ the strength to suffer, die, and rise again. | 
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