SUFFERING IS SACRED…because it is holiness at work.
Today marks the 28th death anniversary of my daughter Yogita. Among the many lessons I learnt from her the most important perhsps us about pain.
Mark Twain once joked,
“I’m not afraid of death. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”
We laugh because it’s true.
But when we ask people what they really fear, they rarely say death.
They say: “I don’t want to suffer.”
Pain Is Real. Suffering Is Created.
What exactly is suffering?
Pain is physical, emotional, or situational.
But suffering is the inner reaction—the story we build around pain.
Pain is what happens.
Suffering is what the mind does with it.
The mind rehearses disaster.
It paints monsters in the dark.
It magnifies and extends pain into the future.
This is why suffering feels endless—because imagination has no end.
But when we stop rehearsing disaster—
when we trust ourselves to meet what comes—
the fear dissolves.
We stop suffering in advance.
When Yogita Was Born Blind — My Suffering Began Before Hers
The diagnosis was pain.
But my questions were suffering:
Why me?
Is this karma?
Is this divine retribution?
What did I do wrong?
And beneath it all:
Will she ever see me?
Will I ever be enough?
It wasn’t her blindness that broke me.
It was the story I feared would follow—
the imagined future I believed I could not bear.
I was wrong.
She did not come to punish me.
She came to wake me up.
Suffering as Sacred Work
Sacred suffering strips away illusion.
It removes our false protections.
It asks:
Who am I without control?
Who am I when life does not obey me?
Who am I when I cannot fix what hurts?
Here is what I learned:
If suffering is created, it can be un-created.
If it is imagined, it can be reimagined.
If it is a story, I can become a wiser storyteller.
My suffering did not end when hers began.
It ended when I stopped resisting it.
That is when it became sacred—
not cruel,
not random,
but transformative.
Refining.
True.
A Reflection for You
When you sit with your suffering—
not run from it,
not numb it—
what sacred truth begins to emerge?
What is your pain making visible
that comfort never could?
AMOPIA PRINCIPLE #1 — SUFFERING IS SACRED
Not because we want it.
But because it reveals us.
Rearranges us.
Reshapes the soul.
