The ego loves suffering. Because suffering enables me to shift the burden onto something else. I’m left high and dry, innocent, and right.
I get to have the benefit of specialness, and you get to bear the cost.
The object can be the alcoholic, or the government, or society, or, best of all, physical illness.
Physical illness is a wonderful thing to blame, because it apparently places responsibility firmly beyond me, and, even if there is an actual pathogen or injury, any number of other physical, mental, or emotional states can be rolled up into it, for full, florid revelry.
Even with pathogen-based illnesses and actual physical injuries, I can often tie my susceptibility to preceding mental states. When I’m off on a tangent of self-will, I often get sick physically. When I’m agitated, I often have accidents and injure myself.
Best of all: ‘congenital’ conditions. I’ve succeeded in manipulating people in the past on the basis that I have Asperger’s.
Suffering, especially construed as victimhood, conjures great power. The unhealed rescuers descend, willing to minister or mount the barricades on my behalf. Guilt can be induced, like turning the dial on an electrical device hooked up to my target, until I secure allowance, concession, compliance, or obedience. Sometimes it’s not even guilt. People do what I want just so I will shut up and leave them in peace.
Whenever ‘I’ [who is the ‘I’?] ‘suffer’ [am subject to or feel negative things because of my negative interpretation of?] ‘injuries’ [physical or abstract? are they actually there? can I see them?], my ego leaps on them as the seed around which to grow a huge crystal of suffering in the saturated solution of self.
All of this is ultimately unnecessary, with a lot of work. With the programme, ‘events’ still happen (though many can actually be avoided through forethought, evasive manoeuvres, and good decision-making), but suffering becomes an optional pastime rather than a curse. When I catch myself at it, as I regularly do, I now know what’s happening, and I have tools to spot and eliminate it.