Infinity and Paradox

CHAPTER XVI: SUFFERING — ENTRY XVI.8

“Your resistance is your cage.”

This may be a precise diagnosis of the human condition, particularly when viewed through the lens of non-duality.

To understand this principle, you must first distinguish between two distinct experiences: pain and suffering. Pain is a physiological or situational occurrence. Suffering, however, is the psychological tension that arises when you mentally oppose that reality. By analyzing this distinction, the mechanics of the cage become more understandable, offering a hopeful pathway toward liberation.

When you encounter a difficult circumstance and instinctively push against it, you create a duality. There is “you” and there is the “unwanted event.” This internal friction is the definition of resistance. It is the act of saying “this should not be” to a reality that already is. Because you cannot change a moment that is currently unfolding, your opposition has nowhere to go. It reflects back upon you, and tightens. The cage is not the external event; it is the wall of “no” we build around ourselves.

This realization is profoundly hopeful because it shifts the locus of control. Suffering is the surplus energy generated by fighting the inevitable. When you stop fighting the presence of pain, the pain remains, but the suffering dissolves.

Breaking the bars of this cage requires a shift into radical acceptance. This is not a passive surrender to injustice or a lack of ambition; rather, it is a clear-eyed acknowledgment of the present moment’s validity. From a non-dual perspective, you are the totality of the experience, not a victim trapped within it. When you drop your resistance, the boundary between you and the universe softens. You are no longer a small, frightened entity banging against the walls of the cage; you are the vast space in which the experience occurs.

The reality is that the sensation of freedom is always available, located in the cessation of inner conflict. By recognizing that your resistance is what gives the “cage” its solidity, you can choose to withdraw the energy that sustains it. As you align your internal state with the reality of the present, the bars vanish. You find that the universe is not a place where you are confined, but a seamless expression of existence. Without the friction of resistance, you are free to navigate life with a clarity and lightness that was previously just not there.

Your liberation is not found by changing the world, but by dissolving the “no” that keeps you separate from it.

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