I found this earlier this week online and it felt deeply relevant for the times we’re living in.
Not only relevant, but empowering, because with awareness, you get to choose your experience. So I decided to share it with you today.
A Parable of Suffering and Joy
A student came to the teacher and asked,
“Why am I suffering all the time?”
The teacher smiled gently and said,
“Because suffering is easy.”
—
Seeing the student’s confusion, the teacher continued:
Suffering requires no training.
The mind knows how to worry, compare, crave, and fear without anyone teaching it.
—
But happiness… happiness is a skill.
It takes awareness.
It takes choosing where you place your attention.
It takes returning — again and again —
to gratitude, to breath, to presence, to truth.
—
Anyone can suffer.
But choosing happiness again and again…
that is the true practice.
This parable touched my heart deeply.
It made me reflect on my own life and realize, once again, that yes — the practice is indeed choosing happiness, independently of what is happening around you.
I love the saying: “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.”
And I think it’s important to define both here.
Pain is raw sensation — physical or emotional. It’s related to what happens, and yes, shaped by our perceptions, but it is felt in the body.
Pain is the experience.
Suffering is what we do with what happens. It is the mind’s response to pain.
The problem begins when the mind decides pain is a problem.
When we can’t process it fully, the mind tries to soften it with a story…
a story that, if we hold onto it, we end up carrying forever or much longer than necessary.
But pain holds many gifts.
If it’s met directly, pain softens the heart. It opens compassion. It grounds presence. It strengthens resilience. It reconnects us with truth.
It makes us more human.
Pain brings us back to our core.
I genuinely consider myself a happy person. And looking back, I attribute that happiness to one thing: my practice of being with the pain
and, while processing it, choosing the breath over and over and over again.
Why am I sharing this here?
Because in my opinion, building a Sacred Business is painful…
but it’s an extremely joyful journey.
And I honestly believe it’s only possible if we can sit with the pain.
This path — the one your Sacred Business invites you into —
demands that you meet yourself.
All the pains you’ve avoided. All the stories you’ve created.
It demands the end of suffering.
It invites you back to the breath.
My miscarriage
Over a decade ago, I had a miscarriage.
It was one of the most painful experiences of my life, not only physically but emotionally.
I remember being in the shower, bleeding and crying in desperation, overwhelmed by the intensity of what my body was releasing. Shame, guilt, feeling incapable, feeling like I had failed… everything arrived at once.
My whole body contracted. I was taken by the pain.
And in that moment, I felt all of it.
When the bleeding stopped, I went to my bedroom and curled into a fetal position.
Empty.
Broken.
And the grief came… fully. I chose to feel it.
Every bit of it, without holding my breath.
My mind tried to create stories that would make the pain easier in that moment… but those stories would have stayed with me forever.
So I didn’t choose them.
I just felt what I was feeling. And because of that, I received a gift.
It’s a gift that can only be experienced on the other side of pain.
What my mind insisted was wrong… that the baby should have lived, that I had done something wrong… was replaced by the grace of what that little light-being taught me.
I experienced unconditional love for the invisible in a way I had never experienced before.
I couldn’t see, smell, or touch that life, but it was inside me.
I could feel it.
And I could love it deeply.
It was probably one of my first true encounters with God.
If I had chosen suffering, if I had rejected what happened, maybe that encounter would never have existed.
God exists in the oneness with what is, not in the judgment of what should have been different.
The truth beneath the parable
The parable reveals something essential:
It’s easier to go into the story.
The mind is trained for survival and separation.
It tries to soothe contracting feelings by justifying them.
It tries to help … and ironically, suffering becomes the easier path.
But the more you feed your suffering, the more attached you become to your stories… and the harder it becomes to step into the courage required to create something meaningful.
Your whole system is trying to protect you from pain, you will find every good excuse to postpone your work and those excuses will feel true.
You can only create at the level you’re willing to feel.
When I think about my miscarriage now, all I feel is gratitude.
It might sound strange, but the gratitude is so deep that it actually feels like joy.
And the same is true for many painful experiences in my life.
Each one has built this overflowing happiness inside me… this deep encounter with something greater than me.
Every time pain has come, I’ve received a gift. And in the space between pains… I’ve had fun.
There is a huge difference between living your life avoiding pain
and living your life seeking or allowing expansion.
Happiness doesn’t come from things going your way.
It comes from how often you let yourself meet the light. And if you only meet the light when life goes your way, your experience stays very small.
In meeting that light again and again, it becomes your guide.
When you stop choosing suffering you start choosing happiness and everything changes.
With love,
Carolina
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What’s next?
Phil and I are ready to support you in creating a business that align with your heart’s calling. Here’s how we can help:
Click to Find Your Hidden Business Pattern (Free): The Harmony Map Assessment reveals which version of you is running your business - the one stuck in old patterns or the one ready to emerge. Discover which frequencies are keeping you authentic to your past instead of your potential, and why no amount of strategy can fix what’s actually a frequency problem. For entrepreneurs ready to transform both their energetic signature AND their business results.
Read the Sacred Business Manifesto (Free): Learn the core principles of building a Sacred Business through our founding story and framework. See how we transformed our approach to business by understanding that everything is connected.
This is so profound, thank you for sharing, Carolina! ❤️