If spiritual counselors, teachers, and mystics all tell me that “suffering” is a catalyst for a spiritual “awakening”, then why isn’t it comfortable for these experts to re-frame this as a spiritual “

Some possibilities (as pure speculation):

1) Perhaps they’ve overstated their case. Suffering ***may*** be an opportunity for growth. It also may be just plain old run-of-the-mill suffering that every human being has to deal with as a feature of life on Earth, or it may indicate some underlying condition that requires conventional medical treatment, or it may simply indicate situational conditions that can and should be remedied, or it may be the consequence of arbitrary events that have no intrinsic meaning at all. But shoehorning ALL suffering into the context of being an “awakening catalyst” is a bit…well…presumptuous IMO. Thus assigning some external spiritual agency to such conditions or events would, I think, be uncomfortable…since it wouldn’t make a lot of sense in these other instances.

2) They may not have specific discernment into your situation, but are instead stating a general principle, and are trying to avoid influencing you to externalize your own agency. In Western commercialized cultures, it has become second nature to give away our own agency in favor of external solutions. “The Devil made me do it” is really no different than believing wearing a particular brand of clothing or cologne/perfume will result in finding the perfect romantic partner. In the context of healing arts (inclusive of conventional medicine), when a client refuses to take responsibility for their own well-being and prefers to project healing power onto their physician, practitioner, drug, supplement, magical object or whatever…then the healing process has been sabotaged. No real healing will take place (other than the placebo that results from the client’s investment in the external solution). This is a real problem right now in capitalist society. So perhaps — consciously or unconsciously — the folks you are consulting are trying to steer you away from this particular addiction to externalization.

3) In the U.S. at least, one of the consequences of the widespread abuse of “New Age” approaches to wellness has been a mistrust of externalized spiritual agency of any kind. There have been too many abuses by gurus, mediums, psychics and the like asserting knowledge of spiritual causality purely for personal profit or celebrity. Thus attributing anything to a conscious spiritual intervention smacks of “woo-woo” in a bad way for most people who have either been conned or deceived…or who are aware of these deceptive practices that have occurred in the past. Personally, I don’t have a problem framing things this way when it is warranted, though I am still very cautious about leaping to that conclusion too quickly.

4) You and the folks you are consulting with may just be misunderstanding each other.

My 2 cents.

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