One old thought pattern I've found to be a bit persistent is the idea that some degree of unpleasantness in life is somehow necessary - the old 'you must struggle/suffer in order to grow/accomplish want you want' type scenario. Or even if it's not necessary, it's unavoidable - bad things happen to everyone, right?
And, like everyone, I'd prefer to avoid painful experiences, but at one point in my Abraham work I even uncovered a belief that if my life becomes really great on every level, then something bad will happen, to 'balance' things out. many people have this fear of 'waiting for the other shoe to drop' - if they don't allow things to get really good, then they won't have to endure them becoming really bad afterwards.
Now, thanks to Abraham, I really do realise that all that is nonsense; suffering is never necessary. If there is no assertion, but only attraction, then we are (or potentially are) 100% in control of every experience that comes into our lives. Therefore, if we don't wish to have experiences that are (by our own definition) unpleasant, we don't have to. We can create lives that are 100% to our liking. Just because only a tiny percentage of people realise this, and even fewer put it into practice, doesn't mean it can't be done, or is somehow inappropriate. On the contrary - it's totally appropriate that we should create our experience to our liking. That's what we intended when coming here!
So, what about contrast? On one recording I heard a person complaining about how little time she has to enjoy her manifestations before she 'has to' experience the 'painful contrast' again, and IMO, that kind of experience of contrast is not necessary. Sure, as Abraham points out, contrast is necessary in order to inspire new desires. But contrast simply means 'variety'. It doesn't have to mean 'things I really dislike' or 'painful suffering'! And it is never imposed from outside ourselves, or and is never something that has to be experienceed in a particular way.
To help clarify this point, I have identified four general types of contrast/variety (this is just one way of looking at the issue of course):
1. A simple preference for one type of experience, without a strong aversion to other experience. No unpleasantness is involved at all.
The taste difference between apples and bananas introduces contrast into my experience, and I experience a preference for apples, and a desire to eat more apples than I do bananas, but no suffering is involved! (Bananas aren't that nasty lol!)
2. A personal experience of minor unpleasantness, but with no major impact on my life, and not something to 'dread'.
For example, I might bump my head, and experience pain for a minute or two. The experience of pain leads to a desire for a pain-free life. But the negative experience is very fleeting, and of no real impact on my general happiness. It is enough to inspire a strong desire for a consistent experience of physical health and comfort however.
3. A personal experience of major unpleasantness, with a major impact on my life. These are the kind of experiences that most people dread.
Examples include a terminal illness, serious accident, extreme poverty, etc. Such experiences will certainly produce strong desires for something better, and if the person finds their way out of the situation, can be good 'lessons' in the sense that people usually mean when they talk about the value of adversity for personal growth (I really don't buy that whole 'life is about learning 'lessons'' mentality, but that's the subject of another article!). But these experiences are also the result of serious vibrational misalignment with Source, and as such, there is no reason for us ever to have to experience anything like this, so long as we maintain our alignment.
Life isn't about 'learning lessons', it's about having fun. We're born knowing it all already, and that knowledge remains available to us for as long as we maintain our Source connection! When you think about it, the main 'lesson' learned through extreme negative experiences is how to let go of whatever negative vibrational pattern was responsible for creating the experience in the first place. But it's so much easier not to create those negative patterns (or to nip them in the bud early on), than to create them, manifest some personal disaster, and then have to un-create them, and all the while dealing with the trauma of the physical manifestation too!
4. Observation of others who are experiencing undesirable (to us) situations, and feeling their pain.
We don't even need to personally manifest negative situations at all, ever, in order to know we don't want it to be part of our experience. Observing the manifestations of others can be enough. Whatever we give enough attention to, we begin to vibrate in alignment with. If we're empathising with the suffering of another, we're bringing that suffering into our own vibration, and the negativity we then feel is an example of contrast. That contrast will then launch a desire that we not experience someting imilar ourselves. (It might alos cause us to desire that the other persons suffering be stopped of course, but we can't vibrate for them, and our suffering along with them certainly won't help them either! But that's a topic for another article!)
5. Observation of others who are experiencing undesirable (to us) situations, and NOT feeling their pain.
We can observe the negative situation being experienced by another, and acknowledge that their situation is not one we'd want for ourselves. Once again, we've experienced contrast and launched a desire, but without any (or with very little) negative feeling on our part. We didn't have to personally experience the bad situation either physically, or empathetically, in order to know that we'd prefer something different. As Abraham says,
"Giving your thought to a supposed situation will bring forth the emotion to let you know how you feel about it, just as if it were a real experience." ('Law of Attraction', ©Abraham-Hicks Publications)
And, although some people may feel that it is callous to observe suffering without feeling bad ourselves, in reality, suffering along with another does nothing to help them, but does add to the total negativity in the world, and does mess up our own experience, often signficantly. Suffering has no essential value, ever.
No, not no value, but no essential value. We can certainly gain much of value from a negative situation, and if we are suffering for some reason, we can learn how not to suffer, and let the nasty situations go, and there's certainly value in that. Abraham notes on their 'Law of Attraction' Special Subject CD:
"All experience is of great value. Some of your experiences, you say, 'no good came from that, except that I know I don't want that again. That is of great value, for it more clearly helps you identify what you do want. You say for example, there is not gain without pain, and that has evolved from what you've just offered. You say, there is good in all experience, and then you continue that thought to saying, if there is to be good gained, then we must have bad experience. And what we are wanting to clearly state here is that it is never necessary to attract a bad experience in order to understand that there is a better one to be had." (©Abraham-Hicks Publications)
The point is, suffering isn't necessary; it doesn't have intrinsic value. It doesn't give us anything (knowledge, growth etc), that we don't already possess by virtue of our nature as aspects of Source energy. Source is pure positive energy; suffering is inimical to it. It's a result of our disconnection from Source, and there's no need to ever lose that connecton. Suffering may inspire us to regain our connection (whether we recognise it as that or not). It isnpires us to stop suffering and feel better. But if we decide that we should feel good all the time anyway, and thus maintain our connection - because feeling good and maintaining the conection are one and the same - then suffering will never be an issue, because we won't be in vibrational alignment with it.
And if that's the case - that we're only in alignment with feeling good, then we can't attract that which doesn't feel good. it just doesn't match up. So we'll still experience the contrast which produces new desires, but that contrast will most likely be mostly from the first category, and maybe from the second and fifth categories too - the contrast which is more purely just variety, and not, as the person on the recording saw it, something to be dreaded.
With typical syncronicity, I received my weekly Abraham CD a couple of days after writing this article, complete with some relevant insight on this topic. Here's what they have to say:
"You are appreciating the contrast of your time and place? Easier to answer that some times than others, yes? Depending on the degree of contrast. By contrast, do we mean ecstasy and agony? Do we mean fair wealth and foul weather? Good relationships, bad relationships? Plenty of money, not enough money? But we are not really meaning so much, 'contrast', in the sense of all of those extremes, so much as variety, although that kind of contrast certainly is variety, isn't it! But we want to remind you that you are focusing mechanisms, and although of course, when contrast is extreme, it's quite easy to focus, toward what you are wanting, in the sense that, you can tell very clearly what you prefer when you're living something you don't prefer. Easy to say it at least. And we want you to know that, from our perspective, we see rockets of desire shoot from you, when your contrast is exaggerated. But we're not here only to talk about the desires that are born from that strong contrast. We want to talk about all desire that is born from all variety." (05-11-15, Boca Raton, FL ©Abraham-Hicks Publications)
