When I believe my thoughts, suffering becomes a kind of addiction.
I think and believe that I am suffering and I hate the suffering. So I take action to end my suffering. But if I don’t question what I’m thinking and believing, the only options available to me to end my suffering are things that cause me more suffering: anger, attack, submission, people-pleasing, numbing, isolation, intellectualizing, shaming, whipping into shape...
Just like a heroin addict using the cause of their suffering as the cure, I become convinced that more suffering is the only way out of my suffering. “If I just suffer a little more it’ll all go away.”
I seem to have to “hit bottom” before I discover that there is no way out of suffering as long as I’m determined to live in the ego-centered existence of an unquestioned mind.
The only way out of suffering is to question the notion of suffering itself - to love every innocently confused thought that leads me to believe I need things to be different than they are, and question it.